World’s youngest self-made woman billionaire at just 31! Meet dating app Bumble’s CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd

Image Courtesy: Twitter/@WhitWolfeHerd

New Delhi: Dating app Bumble’s CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd has joined the super rich club, entering the billionaire on the company's stellar performance at its IPO.

Whitney Wolfe Herd, 31, ended the day (Thursday) with a net worth of $1.5 billion based on Bumble stock closing at $70.31, as per a Forbes report.

The company is among a number of high-profile Silicon Valley tech startups, which are seeking to cash in on record-breaking demand for new shares on U.S. capital markets. Her nearly 12% stake in the company was worth $1.6 billion as of 12:40 p.m. EST on Thursday, Forbes added. 

Austin, Texas-based Bumble was founded in 2014 by Whitney Wolfe Herd, a co-founder of rival app Tinder, which she left earlier that year.

The Bumble app is one of the first dating apps built with women at the centre, and the Badoo app, which was founded in 2006, is one of the pioneers of web and mobile dating products. Bumble currently employs over 600 people in offices in Austin in the US, Barcelona, London and Moscow.

Bumble is the parent company of Badoo and Bumble, two of the world`s highest-grossing dating apps with millions of users worldwide and faces competition from the Tinder and Hinge. Last year, tennis star Serena Williams joined Priyanka Chopra as an investor of the social and dating app.

In 2019, Blackstone paid about $3 billion to acquire a majority stake in MagicLab, which owned the Bumble and Badoo apps at the time, from founder Andrey Andreev. Wolfe Herd was named Bumble`s chief executive officer after the deal.

Wolfe Herd, had sued Tinder alleging that her co-founders subjected her to sexual harassment. Tinder parent Match Group Inc, which denied the allegations, paid about $1 million to settle the dispute, said a Reuters report. A court fight, however, broke out in 2018 after Bumble rejected a $450 million acquisition offer from Match. Match had filed a lawsuit against Bumble alleging intellectual property infringement. But Bumble counter-sued two weeks later accusing Match of fraud and trade secrets theft. Both lawsuits were later dropped that same year.