Whitney Wolfe is an example of a young entrepreneur and what is called a self-made woman. From an Industrial Relations student at the University, this woman, born 33 years ago in Salt Lake City (Utah), went on to become one of the youngest billionaires in the world.
His rise has been meteoric. At just 23 years old, he helped create Tinder, one of the most popular dating apps internationally. And at 25 she founded Bumble, another app of the same style with the peculiarity that it is the woman who has to send the first message for the relationship to flow. In 2021, at the age of 31, she was already part of the Forbes list of millionaire women. And she is currently credited with a heritage of more than 1,000 million dollars.
She is the successful CEO of Bumble, valued at $14 billion. Until arriving here the way has not been easy. While working at Tinder, a name she came up with alluding to the explosion of a spark – Tinder means “dry and flammable material” – she began dating Justin Mateen, one of the co-founders. When they broke up, he controlled her, threatened and insulted her. She sued the company for sexual harassment. The case settled quietly: a million-dollar settlement, a stock package, and her leaving Tinder.
But far from giving up, Whitney grew up and started Bumble. She did it with virtually no resources: with just four employees (including herself), no office, and working from a small apartment. With the creation of this application in 2014, she revolutionized the world of online dating for women. "If we can take some of the pressure off the man and leave the initiative in the hands of the woman, I think we are taking a step in the right direction in terms of feminism," the businesswoman explained in 2016.
In its early days, investors told him that he was wrong because they considered that an app to find a partner that gave control of the match to women could not be a good business. Whitney likes to say that her power lies in having been underestimated too many times. “Personally I love being underestimated. I have trained myself to motivate myself when someone tells me no ”, she has recounted.
Bumble went public in 2021 with an estimated value of $13 billion. Dressed in yellow, the corporate color of her app, and with her first baby tucked on her hip, Whitney made her Wall Street debut. With an 11.6% stake in the company, she became a billionaire and the youngest CEO to take a major US company public. The number of active users on Bumble is 100 million users worldwide. world (first place is taken by Tinder with more than 530 million).
As a great connoisseur of the dating application segment, she has invested in other projects of this type. An example is Chappy, specialized in the homosexual public. In addition, she has partnered with tennis player Serena Williams to invest in projects led by women.
Whitney has been married since 2017 to Michael Herd, an oil heir and restaurateur from Texas. The couple met four years earlier in Aspen when they were both on vacation. They have two sons, Bobby, who is three and a half years old, and Henry, who is almost one. As a powerful woman, Wolfe has managed to shield her private life, although on her own Instagram profile, with just 15 posts, she shares some images of her with her children.
She has confessed that despite the fact that she suffered from anxiety and panic attacks for a long time due to her addiction to work, being a mother has made her take life differently. “No one should have to sacrifice her mental health for her career. In my case, if I get up early to answer all the emails, in the afternoon I will have time to be with my children”.
