Whitney Wolfe Herd

Whitney Wolfe Herd (born July 1, 1989)^[1] is an American entrepreneur most notable as the founder, executive chair, and CEO of Bumble, one of the most popular online dating platforms.^[2] She is a co-founder of Tinder and was previously its Vice President of Marketing.^[3][4]

Whitney Wolfe Herd
Herd in 2018
Born	Whitney Wolfe (1989-07-01) July 1, 1989 (age 36) Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S.
Education	Southern Methodist University (BA)
Occupations	Entrepreneur business executive
Known for	Founder and CEO of Bumble Co-founder of Tinder
Spouse	Michael Herd ​ (m. 2017)​
Children	2

Herd in 2016

Wolfe Herd owns approximately 23 million shares of Bumble Inc.^[5]

Early life and education

Wolfe Herd was born as Whitney Wolfe in Salt Lake City, Utah, to Kelly Wolfe and Michael Wolfe.^[6][7] Her father is Jewish and her mother is Catholic.^[8]

Wolfe attended Judge Memorial Catholic High School.^[9] For college, she attended Southern Methodist University, where she majored in international studies and was a member of the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority.^[10][11]

While in college and at the age of 20, she partnered with celebrity stylist Patrick Aufdenkamp to launch the non-profit organization called "Help Us Project" to sell bamboo tote bags to benefit areas affected by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The bags received national press after celebrities, such as Rachel Zoe and Nicole Richie, were photographed with them.^[12][13] Soon after, she introduced a second business with Aufdenkamp called "Tender Heart".^[12]

After graduating, Wolfe Herd traveled to Southeast Asia where she worked with orphanages.^[14][15]

Career

Early career

In 2012, at age 22, Wolfe Herd joined Cardify, a startup led by Sean Rad through Hatch Labs IAC incubator. The project was later abandoned, but Wolfe Herd joined the development team of Tinder (previously known as MatchBox) with Rad and Christopher Gulczynski.^[16][17][18]

Wolfe Herd became vice president of marketing for Tinder.^[11][15] She reportedly came up with the name of the app, taking inspiration from the flame logo and the idea of tinder, which is easily combustible material used to start a fire.^[19] She has also been credited with fueling its popularity on college campuses and growing its user base.^[20][21]

Wolfe Herd resigned from Tinder in April 2014. In September 2014, she received just over $1 million from settling a lawsuit against the company for sexual discrimination and sexual harassment after dating a Tinder co-founder who became "verbally controlling and abusive".^[22][23][11]

Bumble Inc. (2014–present)

Wolfe Herd started sketching out a female-only social network centered around compliments which was to be called Merci.^[24]

Badoo founder Andrey Andreev encouraged her to start a new dating app and brought her on as a partner in his company, MagicLab, later renamed Bumble Inc. Andreev retained 79% ownership in the company for an investment of $10 million, along with additional investments, consulting services, and use of Badoo's infrastructure; Wolfe Herd served as CEO and received a 20% ownership stake.^[25][26][27] She planned to name the app Moxie, but this name was already taken.^[28]

In December 2014, Wolfe Herd moved to Austin, Texas.^[23][15][29]

By December 2015, Bumble reached over 15 million conversations and 80 million matches.^{[23][30][10][11]}

In April 2019, Wolfe released the first print issue of Bumble Mag in partnership with Hearst.^[31]

In November 2019, Andreev sold a majority stake in Bumble Inc. to The Blackstone Group. Wolfe Herd became CEO of the company, valued at $3 billion with an estimated 75 million users, with an ownership stake of approximately 19%.^[32]

In 2020, Bumble Inc. replaced MagicLab as the parent company of both Bumble and Badoo. As of 2020, Bumble had over 100 million users worldwide.^[33][34]

In February 2021, Bumble Inc. became a public company via an initial public offering.^[35] Her 18-month-old son was on her hip as she rang the Nasdaq bell.^[36] She then became the world's youngest female billionaire.^[37][38] She became the youngest woman to lead an initial public offering in the United States, at age 31.^[39][40]

In November 2023, Wolfe Herd announced she would enter the role of executive chair in January 2024, with Lidiane Jones stepping into the position of CEO of Bumble.^[41][42][43]

In May 2024, Wolfe Herd suggested at the Bloomberg Tech Summit that single people might use AI dating concierges as stand-ins for themselves when contacting potential partners online.^[44]

In January 2025, Bumble announced that Wolfe Herd would return as CEO in mid-March, replacing Jones, who was stepping down for personal reasons.^[45]

Awards and recognition

• Named one of Business Insider's 30 Most Important Women Under 30 In Tech (2014)^[46]

• Named as one of Elle's Women in Tech (2016).^[47]

• Forbes listed Wolfe Herd at number 33 of the top 100 "America's richest self-made women" (2022)^[48][49]

• Time 100 list (2018)^[50]

• Bloomberg's 50 Most Influential ranking (2021)^[51]

• Forbes 30 Under 30 (2017 and 2018)^[52][53][54]

• InStyle’s "50 Women Who Are Changing the World" (2018)^[55]

• Listed in a TechCrunch feature on 42 women succeeding in tech (2017)^[56]

Personal life

In December 2013, she met oil and gas heir Michael Herd on a skiing trip in Aspen, Colorado.^[57] They married in 2017 at Positano, Italy.^[57][58] They have two sons, born in 2019 and 2022.^[59][60] The family lives in Austin, Texas.^[58]

The 2025 film Swiped is based on Wolfe Herd’s life and stars Lily James.^{[61][62][63][64]}

Advocacy

In March 2019, Wolfe Herd testified before the Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence committee about the prevalence of unsolicited explicit photos sent to female users on dating applications.^[65]