How 31-Year-Old CEO of dating App Bumble Became World’s Youngest Female Billionaire

Whitney Wolfe Herd, CEO and founder of dating app, Bumble has become the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire at age 31.

Shares of Bumble Inc soared 67% in its trading debut to $72 at 1:03 pm on Thursday where her stake left her with a net worth of $1.5billion.

According to Bumble’s prospectus, Wolfe Herd owns 21.54 million shares, equivalent to 11.6% of the company.

In addition to being the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire, she is also the youngest female CEO ever to take a company public in the U.S.

Bumble is the second big dating app to go public, after Match.com parent Match Group’s 2015 IPO. Match Group tried to buy Wolfe Herd’s company in 2017 for $450 million. At $76 a share early Thursday afternoon, Bumble’s market capitalization is $8.6 billion. Match Group, which also owns dating app Tinder, has a $45 billion market capitalization.

Wolfe Herd founded Bumble in 2014 shortly after she sued Tinder, her previous employer, for sexual harassment. She alleged that her former boss and boyfriend, Justin Mateen, had sent threats, derogatory texts and stripped her of her cofounder title at Tinder. Tinder denied any wrongdoing, and the case was quickly and confidentially settled.

After she left Tinder, Wolfe Herd worked with Andrey Andreev, a London-based Russian billionaire who had been building successful online dating apps for the European and Latin American markets, to start Bumble.

On Bumble, only women can make the outreach first, a differentiating factor from Tinder and other online dating apps.