Who is Whitney Wolf Heard – the founder of the fastest growing dating service in the USA Bumble
Today, Badoo’s investment app is valued at more than $ 1 billion, and 50 million people use the platform.
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Whitney Wolf Heard Fortune
Before Bumble, Whitney Wolf Heard was engaged in marketing at Tinder in a team of co-founders. In 2014, Business Insider named Wulf one of the “30 Most Influential Women Under 30s.” In 2017, she was on the Forbes list of “30 to 30 years old,” and in April 2018, on the Time’s list of “100 Most Influential People in the World” .
Wulf was born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah. Her father worked as a builder, and her mother was a housewife. When she was 11 years old, her family moved to Paris. But then Wulf returned to Utah to graduate from high school. After her graduation, she went to university in Dallas. Initially, Wulf planned to study at the school of advertising and marketing, but she was refused. Therefore, she entered into international relations.
The girl launched her first business when she was 19, while still studying. Together with stylist Patrick Aufenkamp, she came up with the design of bamboo bags and founded the charity Help Us . Each bag cost $ 24, and the money from the sale of products went to support those affected by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.
The project became known in the local market, after which the bags got into the InTouch magazine and The Rachel Zoe Project TV show. So the idea received the attention of the American press.
Then, with Aufenkamp, she developed the Tender Heart clothing line, which was produced in Nepal. The goal of the campaign is to raise awareness of human trafficking and fair trade in clothing. After graduating from university, she went to Southeast Asia for six months , where she helped several orphanages.
Jobs at Tinder
Upon returning, Wulf moved to Los Angeles and got a job as a sales and marketing manager at the Hatch Labs incubator. There she met a young entrepreneur, Sean Red, who worked on the Cardify loyalty card aggregator.
During the Hatch Labs hackathon, Sean Red and programmer Joe Munoz made the Matchbox dating app. As Wolfe later said in a legal complaint, she was a co-founder who first understood the potential of the service and successfully lobbied her colleagues to quit Cardify and focus on Matchbox.
From left to right: Justin Mathin, Jonathan Badin, Sean Red, Whitney Wolfe
Her work on promoting the platform began in September 2012. Wulf states : she came up with the name Tinder. Together with Red and his old friends and business partners Jonathan Badin and Justin Matin, the girl received the status of co-founder.
In February 2013, Woolf began dating Matin, who became the company’s marketing director and direct manager. But at the end of the year the couple broke up.
The entrepreneur then claimed to have been sexually harassed by Mateen and CEO Sean Red during most of her work. Wulf says that they withdrew her co-founder status because the five founders were “too many” and because she was a woman.
Wulf says her relationship ended with Mateen when he began to “verbally control and insult.” On this occasion, she complained to Red and the CEO of Match.com (the Tinder company) Sam Yagan, but they replied that they didn’t care. In the end, the girl was forced to quit.
In June 2014, she sued the company for harassment and numerous “sexist, racist and other inappropriate comments, letters and messages” to her. The Tinder scandal went public, and Wolfe faced a wave of insults and threats on the net. She developed panic attacks and paranoia.
Making Bumble
Wulf began to look for a way to use the experience gained in a new project. So the idea of the Merci social network was born, which is based on “compliments, kindness and good behavior”. Compliments about the appearance in the Merci were not provided.
While the entrepreneur was building the idea, Andrey Andreev, founder and CEO of the largest Badoo dating service, contacted her. He saw her leaving Tinder as an opportunity to invite Wulf to the position of director of marketing.
Wulf did not consider the offer, was sure that she would never work on the dating sites market again, and told Andreev about Merci. He supported the idea of a social brand focused on women, but advised to develop in what she is an expert in dating applications. To launch, Andreev offered Wulf financing and access to the Badoo technical team.
Bumble Headquarters Laura Dominguez, Texas Monthly
But she was not interested in creating such a platform, and Andreev – in participating in a new social network. Nevertheless, thanks to the support of her husband, Michael Heard, Wolfe decided that the conditions were too good to refuse, and went to London – there she made a deal with Andreev.
Andreev invested $ 10 million in the company to start the promotion. The shares were distributed as follows: 20% went to Wulf, 79% to Andreev and 1% was shared by Chris Gulchinski and Sarah Mick, who joined the project on a full-time basis. The first name Moxie was registered, so the company was renamed Bumble.
Wulf says that in the first eight months of the application, 5 million unique dialogs took place in it. By February 2018, 27 million users had downloaded Bumble . A SurveyMonkey report released in April 2016 says that 49% of users log in to the app daily. 46.2% of the audience are women.
According to the New York Times, as of March 2017, 800 million matches and 10 billion svaypas occur in the Bumble month.
Bumble has appeared in the established online dating market where less than 10% of startups are successful. Still, the company made a profit by focusing on the needs of one audience – women.
Bumble was launched in December 2014. The main mission of the application is to create a place where women will feel at home. Even the first advertising campaigns were held under the slogan “safe and respectful community.”
According to Wulf, many problems in the online dating world come from not knowing the rules, and as Bumble grows, it creates new ones. For example, shirtless selfies are prohibited. And checking photos reduces the risk of creating fake accounts.
The service began monetizing with in-app purchases in August 2016. In 2017, sales exceeded $ 100 million. In November of the same year, Forbes rated the company more than $ 1 billion and called the service the fastest growing in America.
More than 10% of users pay $ 9.99 for a monthly subscription to get additional features like increased response time: in the standard version, the girl has a day. According to a Jefferies investment company report, only 5% of users pay for an extended subscription at Tinder.
In 2018, the company created the Bumble Fund venture capital fund, for the organization of which more than $ 1 million was allocated. The Bumble Fund will support companies headed by women, especially representatives of racial minorities. Amount of investments – from $ 5000 to $ 250 thousand.
Wulf’s equity reports vary, but the average estimate is around $ 250 million.