Bumble is discontinuing its two acquired apps, the dating and relationship apps Fruitz and Official. The move was shared during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call. As explained by CEO Lidiane Jones during the call, the choice to discontinue Fruitz, a French dating app, and Official, an app designed to help couples strengthen their relationships, allows […]
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Jess Evans
When Jess Evans was going through a horrible breakup a few years ago, she did what many people do in that situation: downloaded some dating apps.
"What I found there was just your usual string of disappointing experiences," Evans, 33, told Business Insider. "It was just one disheartening experience after the next."
Vowing to ditch the apps for good, Evans thought about other ways to meet someone. Uninspired by the options, she called up a friend and told her she was going to put on her own one-off dating night.
As a journalist with no events experience, Evans worried it would be a flop. But it wasn't. More than 200 singletons looking for love showed up.
That was in February 2022, and Evans hasn't looked back. Bored Of Dating Apps events now take place in London and Manchester in the UK, and launched in New York last year.
It's been so successful that BODA is now Evans' full-time job. She also met her now-fiancee at one of the events, so she swears by how effective they can be.
"Even if they haven't met someone romantically, people go home feeling so much better," she said. "They're like, oh my goodness, I can't believe how many amazing single people there are. It's just about getting off the apps and actually getting people in the same space."
BODA
Many agree that dating apps aren't fun anymore, with Gen Zers in particular rejecting them. A Forbes Health survey of 1,000 Americans last year found that 79% of Gen Z respondents said they were experiencing dating app burnout.
This trend has left some apps struggling. Shares in Match Group, which owns Tinder, Hinge, and Match.com, have fallen 64% over the past five years as the number of paying users dips. Match also announced layoffs last July.
Evans has also noticed people fighting back against the surface-level dating culture that apps promote.
Rather than judging someone on a few photos and a list of vague interests, you get to take them in as a full person. After all, a profile cannot tell you whether you will have chemistry in person.
When she was on the apps, Evans said she felt like she was constantly battling against the perfect idea of a woman. The curse of dating apps is that they encourage you to think the grass is always greener, rather than see all of the good traits of the person you're seeing. Some call this the paradox of choice.
"There's always someone hotter or taller or thinner or someone with a better job, or someone who holds their pen in a particular way so you don't get the ick," Evans said. "As long as we were only ever hooking up, the apps would always have you back in their pocket again."
One of the biggest lessons Evans has learned is for people to embrace dating outside their "type."
"When we look at exactly what that type is, it's often quite an outdated tick list of ours," Evans said. "Someone that we think we ought to like layered over time with our 14-year-old teen crush on an American show doubled with a familiar face of an ex-boyfriend in university that it didn't work with."
Dating apps have led people to shut out people who they could have had a "beautiful relationship with," Evans said, simply because they didn't look exactly right on the surface.
"Because they haven't fitted their rigid, on-paper litmus test, they haven't given it a go," she said. "We've been judging people so much on just a few words on a page."
Bored Of Dating Apps
There's one golden rule anyone attending a BODA event must follow: ghosting is strictly prohibited.
"We want everyone to look after each other," Evans said. "So if you meet someone tonight and go on a date with them, please don't ghost them after."
Evans said this basic rule of social interaction has been lost along the way, largely because of dating app culture.
Ghosting and standing people up have become the norm, with little consideration for someone's feelings.
This cycle is particularly frustrating for people in their 30s who may have friendship groups full of people settling down, getting married, and having children.
Evans felt this way herself. She felt isolated as her friends became more occupied with their own families, and spare cash once devoted to nights out with the girls was set aside for family holidays and living expenses.
BODA gave Evans the opportunity to socialize and find people in the same situation, and it has become a community as well as a place to find love.
"It felt amazing to have those friendships where we could have loads of fun together and go out on a night out together and wing woman for each other," she said.
BODA
BODA events include socials where singles can mingle and "meet-cutes" in bookshops, which mimic the old ways of flirting and meeting a potential match in the wild as depicted in romcoms.
"So many people, both men and women, have just really, really wanted to lean into the element of that romance," Evans said. "People are really, really craving romance right now."
Other past BODA events include hikes, supper clubs, painting evenings, and yoga, where people can practice the art of what Evans called "the spontaneous flirt."
The goal is for people to find deeper connections — and that's working for some. Evans told BI there have been 15 engagements and a "BODA baby" since the events started.
That's what makes all the hard work worth it, she said. "I'm such a hopeless romantic. I love that I get to watch people fall in love."
Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images
Whitney Wolfe Herd is coming back as CEO of dating app Bumble just over a year after stepping down in 2024.
Wolfe Herd, who co-founded the app, transitioned into the executive chair position at Bumble in January 2024. She did so at a time when the dating app industry faced challenges. In her stead, Lidiane Jones had the top job before resigning, citing personal reasons, a press release said.
In 2021, Wolfe Herd made a bold move when she took Bumble public. She was 31 at the time, which made her the youngest female CEO to take a US company public.
Since going public, Bumble has experience ups and downs. Bumble's annual revenue was up 16% year-over-year in 2023, but its latest results for the third-quarter of 2024 dropped 1% year-over-year to $274 million. Wolfe Herd expanded her company and relinquished some of her responsibilities after the company went public, including hiring Drena Kusari, Bumble's first global general manager.
In May 2023, Bumble also acquired Official, a relationship app designed for couples that helps with date planning and mood check-ins, according to Fast Company.
"We're really trying to build the entire relationship journey and take care of the entire relationship from start to finish," Wolfe Herd told Fast Company.
Keep reading to learn more about Bumble cofounder Whitney Wolfe Herd.
Whitney Wolfe
Wolfe Herd was born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, The Times of London reported. Her father is a property developer and her mother is a homemaker, per The Times.
The CEO has been a feminist from an early age, telling The Times that she disliked how Utah's dating culture was dominated by men — women were expected to wait for them to make the first move.
Wolfe Herd went on to attend Southern Methodist University in Texas, and was a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma, per Fast Company. She's still close with many of her sorority sisters and even employs a few at Bumble.
Wolfe Herd also launched her first business at 19 while still in college, per Money Inc. After the Deepwater Horizon oil spill pumped crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico for five months in 2010, Wolfe Herd enlisted celebrity stylist Patrick Aufdenkamp to design tote bags that could be sold to help fund relief efforts. The resulting nonprofit, called the Help Us Get Cleaned Up Project, became nationally known after Nicole Richie and Rachel Zoe were spotted with Wolfe Herd's bags.
Whitney Wolfe
Wolfe Herd spent her time in Asia volunteering at local orphanages, per Money Inc.
AaronP/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images/Getty Images
At 22, Wolfe Herd was hired to work at startup incubator Hatch Labs in Los Angeles, according to The Times of London. After hours, she starting collaborating with a group that was looking to build a dating app.
That app, which is now known as Tinder, quickly grew into a global phenomenon with Wolfe Herd's help. She even came up with the name Tinder, per The Telegraph. She is credited as a cofounder and spent two years as the company's vice president of marketing, per The Times.
Gabriel Olsen/FilmMagic
During her tenure at Tinder, Wolfe Herd dated fellow cofounder and her then-boss Justin Mateen, per The Times of London. She left the company shortly after they split, and filed a lawsuit alleging that she had experienced sexual harassment and discrimination.
The legal dispute was settled privately outside of court, with neither party admitting to wrongdoing.
Following the legal battle, Wolfe Herd also faced online harassment.
"I was inundated with hatred online, lots of aggressive behavior, people calling me names, really painful things that I'd never experienced," Wolfe Herd told The Times in 2018. "I felt like my entire self-worth, any confidence that I had, had been sucked away. There were dark times when I thought, 'Well, this is it. I won't have a career ever again. I'm 24, coming out of one of the world's hottest tech companies, but the internet hates me.' It was a horrible time. Then I woke up one morning and thought, 'I'm going to rebuild myself.'"
Getty/Vivien Killilea
Wolfe Herd was persuaded to forgo her original plan for the app by former business partner and Russian billionaire Andrey Andreev, according to CNN Business.
The app's women-led model was initially inspired by Sadie Hawkins school dances, where women ask men to be their date, Wolfe Herd told Business Insider in 2015.
"We're definitely not trying to be sexist, that's not the goal," Wolfe Herd said. "I know guys get sick of making the first move all the time. Why does a girl feel like she should sit and wait around? Why is there this standard that, as a woman, you can get your dream job but you can't talk to a guy first? Let's make dating feel more modern."
Wolfe Herd has since expanded the app with additional services to help women meet new friends and expand their professional networks, called Bumble BFF and Bumble Bizz respectively. Bumble has also invested in other apps, including gay dating app Chappy, TechCrunch reported.
Bumble has 3.6 million paying users across 150 countries as of June 2023, according to the company.
Magic Lab
In addition to being Wolfe Herd's close friend and business partner who she said she was "incredibly in sync" with and called "two to five times a day," Andreev owned a 79% stake in Bumble, according to Fast Company.
After the allegations of racism and sexism against Andreev were published by Forbes in 2019, Wolfe Herd released a statement saying she had had "nothing but positive and respectful" experiences with Andreev but "would never challenge someone's feelings or experiences."
"All of us at Bumble are mortified by the allegations about Badoo (Bumble's majority owner) from the years before Bumble was born, as chronicled in the Forbes story," Wolfe Herd said in the statement. "I am saddened and sickened to hear that anyone, of any gender, would ever be made to feel marginalized or mistreated in any capacity at their workplace."
Jerod Harris/Getty Images for Fortune
Wolfe Herd typically wakes up every morning at 5:15 a.m. and immediately starts responding to emails, she told The Times of London.
She has even been known to wake up every two hours during the night to check her inbox. "I'm trying to stop that," Wolfe Herd told The Times in 2017. "I get no downtime. I don't get a weekend, I haven't lived like a twenty-something since I started Bumble in 2014."
Photo by Bennett Raglin/Getty Images for Fast Company
Sending unsolicited nude photos — a phenomenon that has plagued dating apps and even AirDrop — is punishable under a new law championed by Wolfe Herd, Inc. reported. She is now advocating for a similar law in California and hopes it will soon be federal law, too.
"It is time that our laws mirror this way we lead double lives, in the physical and the digital," Wolfe Herd told Inc. shortly after the Texas law was passed in August 2019. "You look at government right now, it only protects the physical world. But our youth are spending a lot more time in the digital world than they are in the physical."
The CEO says she doesn't have political aspirations of her own, however. "I could never run for [office]," Wolfe Herd told The Times of London, saying that she is frequently asked if she's considered it. "There are people so much smarter than me."
Evan Agostini/Invision/AP
Wolfe Herd married Texas oil heir Michael Herd in an elegant three-day ceremony on Italy's Amalfi Coast in 2017, per Vogue.
The couple first met while skiing in Aspen in 2013, but Wolfe Herd first saw him on a dating app. "He has the kind of face you remember," she told The Telegraph.
He is now the president of the oil and gas field operator founded by his late grandfather, Herd Producing Company, and also owns a high-end farm to table restaurant called the Grove Kitchen + Gardens.
The pair have two sons named Henry and Bobby, named after Michael's late grandfather, and they makes frequent appearances on Wolfe Herd's Instagram account.
The couple also has a Great Dane named Duke and a yellow lab named Jett, per The New York Times.
"[Duke] is a kind animal but does not understand how big he is," Wolfe Herd told The Times in 2019, while describing her daily after work routine. "At 175 pounds, he could quite literally kill me. I have to lock myself in the car while I wait for my husband to come home and get him away from me."
AP Photo/Richard Drew
"I haven't gone through the testing, but I should," Wolfe Herd told The Times of London. "It's anxiety about everything. I worry about awful things happening to people I love. They say phones are a strong catalyst for making anxiety worse, so I have this interesting balance — how do I make sure I'm on top of everything, but also preserve my mental health?"
Getty Images
The Herds have one home along the Colorado River in Austin near Bumble's headquarters and another further north in Tyler, near Michael Herd's office, per The New York Times. They also own a vacation home in Aspen, Bumble's chief brand officer Alex Williamson told Aspen Magazine.
The couple also owns Michael's 6.5-acre family estate on Lake Austin, according to Mansion Global. The waterfront compound boasts a movie theater, helipad, putting green, 10 garages, multiple boat docks, and a guest house, as well as a 5,000 square foot cabana designed for entertaining. That property was listed for sale for $28.5 million.
REUTERS/Caitlin Ochs
Wolfe Herd takes frequent trips for both work and pleasure. Wolfe Herd told Travel +Leisure in 2017 that her all-time favorite trips include a sailing expedition through Myanmar and Thailand and a family trip to India.
For their honeymoon, Wolfe Herd and her husband stayed at Four Seasons resorts in both Bora Bora and Maui after leaving the site of their destination wedding in Italy, according to a blog post by the Indagare, the group that planned the trip.
Wolfe Herd told Indagare that she wanted a beach-heavy honeymoon because she and Herd were "looking for the ideal place to unwind, where we could take in the sun and swim. Our favorite moments were just relaxing and appreciating each other in such beautiful locations."
In July 2019, she celebrated her 30th birthday with a multi-day party on a yacht off the coast of Capri, Italy, per Guest of a Guest.
Raymond Hall/GC Images/Getty Images
Wolfe Herd's multimillion-dollar fortune landed her at No. 39 on Forbes' list of the wealthiest self-made women in America in 2020.
In 2022, Bumble's total revenue increased to $903.5 million, according to its financial earnings. The company brought in nearly $243 million in quarter one of 2023, a 16% increase, according to Bumble.
Forbes previously reported that Wolfe Herd was the youngest self-made woman billionaire after she took Bumble public — a title that lasted for ten months. Wolfe Herd's net worth is currently $400 million, per Forbes.
"I feel like what I'm doing is quite important," Wolfe Herd told The Times of London in 2018. "A lot of people are, like, 'What do you mean it's important? It's a dating app.' But it's important because connections are at the root of everything we do. Human connection defines our happiness and our health. This company feels like a piece of me. I know this sounds cheesy and weird, but I really feel like it's my mission."
Dipasupil/Getty Images
Bumble announced on November 6 that Jones, then CEO of Slack, would replace Wolfe Herd as CEO of the dating app starting January 2024.
Jones replaced Slack cofounder Stewart Butterfield in January 2023 and was CEO of the company for less than a year before her new role at Bumble was announced.
Wolfe Herd stayed on as the executive chair of Bumble.
Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images for Village Global
Wolfe Herd attended the Bloomberg Technology Summit in May where she said Bumble is eyeing ways to foster "healthy and equitable relationships" using AI.
She used the term "AI dating concierge" to describe tech that would ease the pressure of online dating.
"If you want to get really out there, there is a world where your dating concierge could go and date for you with other dating concierge," she said at the summit.
Evan Agostini/Invision/AP
Bumble announced that Wolfe Herd would return to the CEO role in a press release on January 17 — just over a year after stepping down. She'll succeed Jones, who'll remain at the helm until the change goes into effect in March.
"I am deeply grateful for the transformative work Lidiane has led during such a pivotal time for Bumble, and her leadership has been instrumental in building a strong foundation for our future," said Wolfe Herd in the release.
In her own statement, Jones praised the platform for its "tremendous progress."
"It has been an honor to serve Bumble's stakeholders, and I will remain an enthusiastic supporter of Whitney and the Company, especially the outstanding team behind the brand," Jones said.
Bumble announced today that founder Whitney Wolfe Herd is returning as CEO after stepping down from the position in 2023. Wolfe Herd will succeed Lidiane Jones, the company’s current CEO who has left for “personal reasons,” Bumble explained. Jones, the former CEO of Slack, will continue her role at Bumble until the transition takes effect […]
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Courtesy of Ilana Dunn
Ilana Dunn knows dating — and she agrees that it's tough out there.
Dunn, 30, used to be the lead content creator for Hinge, a dating app with about 20 million users. Now, she hosts the podcast "Seeing Other People," which is about dating in the digital age. It recently hit 5 million downloads and has over 400 episodes.
Its popularity comes as singles complain of "swipe fatigue," a disillusionment with online dating apps that has caused headaches for Bumble and Match Group, which owns Tinder and Hinge, and created a rush of new dating-app startups.
Dunn told Business Insider that she sympathizes with modern daters, who have the daunting task of crafting digital personas.
"Dating apps appeared one day, and they never came with an instruction manual," Dunn said.
There's hope, she added: Some simple tweaks to online dating profiles can help boost the chances of better matches.
In recent years, fans of her podcast have reached out for help with their profiles. Dunn began charging $95 to revamp them, helping clients select the best photos and prompts and curate how they share the story of who they are.
Dunn shared her top three tips to improve any dating profile.
Alicia Windzio/Getty Images
Dunn said some daters fall prey to an obvious impulse — they only select photos in which they think they look the best.
"They're just posting the most attractive pictures of themselves, or what they think somebody would be attracted to," she said.
It can end up looking like a random, bland collection of images, Dunn warned.
Instead, Dunn recommended finding photos that more effectively reflect one's interests and personality. For example, Dunn once suggested that a dater delete a gym selfie from their profile and upload a picture of a marathon they ran instead.
Dunn suggested a simple thought exercise: Think about how your friends might describe you to a stranger, then pick photos that showcase the most important things a potential partner should know about you.
Uwe Krejci/Getty Images
A common complaint from dating-app users is that conversations rarely translate into real-life meetups. This year, Hinge added a feature that blocks users from matching with new people if they have eight unanswered matches.
To encourage real-life plans, Dunn suggests planting an idea for a date somewhere in your profile, ideally related to food or drink you like.
Sometimes it's as easy as tweaking a statement you're already making. For example, Dunn would change a response to the prompt "The one thing you should know about me is…" from "I just moved to New York City" to "I'm looking for the best dollar slice in town."
"It sends the signal, 'We don't have to beat around the bush. We can just get to the date,'" Dunn said.
She added that another strategy is to name your favorite cocktail or café order and then ask where to find it in your profile.
Francesco Prandoni/Getty Images
Dunn said more is better when it comes to listing your interests on your dating-app profile.
You never know what word or phrase might pique the interest of a potential match, so put it all out there, she added.
Dunn recalled filling out Hinge's "I won't shut up about…" prompt when she was dating. She initially listed just her dog, Zoe, but then went back and added the Jonas Brothers and Sugarfish, a buzzy chain of sushi restaurants in New York and LA.
Her future husband ended up messaging her about the Jonas Brothers. The first dance at their wedding? "When You Look Me In The Eyes," by the Jonas Brothers.
"We've now been to 10 Jonas Brothers concerts together," Dunn said. "We may not have met if that wasn't on my profile."
Sydney Bradley/Business Insider
Dating apps are in for a shake-up.
Many users are tired of swiping, dating app giants like Match Group (which owns Tinder and Hinge) face headwinds, and new startups are launching left and right.
Business Insider has interviewed several founders jumping into the dating-app arena as incumbents lose their luster.
Read: Meet the founders behind 11 dating startups
The new crop of dating apps is tackling various pain points in the online dating experience.
Some, for instance, are experimenting with new ways to discover and meet singles (aka not swiping). That includes startups offering users only a small batch of profiles to review each day, such as the New York-based app Pique Dating.
Others are testing how to successfully incorporate artificial intelligence into dating, like Sitch, which offers a chatbot and matchmaking feature powered by AI.
Matchmaking, whether through AI or by friends and family, has also become one of the hottest buzzwords in the dating-startup world.
There's also a wave of IRL-focused startups that forgo the experience of a dating app entirely with in-person events bringing singles together.
Meanwhile, social startups that aren't branded around dating — like Posh, 222, and Pie — are also breeding grounds for new friendships in person that could lead to love down the line as young adults seek to meet people in more organic settings. (Several of these IRL-social startups have also raised venture-capital funding this year.)
Even Big Tech is getting in on the action, with Facebook continuing to expand its Facebook Dating feature and Instagram's long-standing role as a digital flirting mechanism.
Gen Z is also redefining modern dating. Alex Hofmann, an investor and CEO of mobile app conglomerate 9count, recently told BI that younger daters are more interested in connection broadly, even if platonic.
Read more about new dating startups launching to compete with Tinder, Hinge, and Bumble:
