Whitney Wolfe Herd now world’s youngest self-made female billionaire is the CEO and Co-founder of dating and networking site Bumble, which is known for its unique feature where women make the first move to initiate a conversation after getting a match. On Thursday, the company rose to a market value of more than $13 billion after listing shares.
Whitney is world’s youngest self-made female billionaire after the company goes public
The company listed publicly for the first time on Thursday with shares valued at $43 apiece, the company was valued at over $8 billion turning the 31yr old Bumble CEO into the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire. At the moment, the company is now worth more than $13 billion.
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Wolfe Herd owns up to 21.54 million shares which are equivalent to 11.6% of the company. Bumble has had its share of immense growth as it was reported that it made $417 million in revenue in the first 9 months of 2020 up from $363 million at the same time in 2019.
Bumble launched in 2014 when it was founded by Whitney Wolfe Herd and backed by Russian billionaire Andreey Andreev also the founder of Badoo, a European online dating site. The Russian billionaire went on to sell his stakes in both Badoo and Bumble to investment giant, Blackstone. According to bbc.com, the two apps have 40 million active users with more than 2.4 million paying customers.
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Whitney Wolfe Herd was co-founder of Tinder, the dating rival app of Bumble before she left after sexual harassment claims. The company later paid $1 million to settle out of court.
Now the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire, Ms Whitney claims she was inspired by her frustration at the rigid gender roles to create an app like Bumble. Unlike most dating applications, a woman is responsible for starting the conversation when she is matched with a man.
She explained, ‘I have experienced firsthand how unequal relationships negatively impact all areas of life. I wanted to change this.”
Across the globe, self-made female billionaires only account for 5% of the world’s richest people on the Bloomberg Billionaire index. Self-made billionaires who are men make up about two-thirds of the index.
Online dating apps have seen incredible growth over the years with many people slowly embracing the idea of meeting potential partners online. Another factor could be the role played by the pandemic. With very tight restrictions that limited any kind of social interactions for some time, dating apps were a great alternative for people to meet and interact and possibly pass time.
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