Dating app Bumble, where only women can make the first move,
soared 64 percent in its market debut, valuing the company Chief Executive
Officer Whitney Wolfe Herd’s stake at $1.5 billion.
The Texas-headquartered company’s stock closed at $70.31 in
New York, putting its value at roughly $13 billion including debt. It raised
$2.15 billion with its initial public offering (IPO) and had its share jump
over 80 percent during the early minutes of trading. The shares had debuted at
$43 apiece.
The stunning IPO catapults 31-year-old Wolfe Herd into a
rare league of self-made female billionaires. According to the Bloomberg
Billionaires Index, self-made women make for less than 5 per cent of the
world’s biggest fortunes even though the females constitute nearly half of the
world’s population. Two-thirds of the wealth index is occupied by self-made
men.
It is interesting to note that out of the 559 companies that
have gone public in the US during the past 12 months, only three, including
Bumble, have women founders.
By catering to an underserved market, Wolfe Herd went on to
build a multibillion-dollar company that aimed to obliterate one of the most
common yet terrifying experiences of women entrepreneurs — sexual harassment.
“Hopefully this will not be a rare headline,” Wolfe Herd,
the youngest woman to take a large company public in the U.S. as CEO, was
quoted as saying in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Thursday, in
reference to the uniqueness of Bumble’s female-led management. “Hopefully this
will be the norm. It’s the right thing to do, it’s a priority for us and it
should be a priority for everyone else,” she added.
In fact, it was harassment that led Wolfe Herd to quit
Tinder, which she had co-founded, and launch Bumble as competition in 2014. The
split was marked by a sexual harassment lawsuit in which Wolfe Herd mentioned
being repeatedly called derogatory names by executives and stripped of her
position as a co-founder because having a “girl” in such a role “makes the
company seem like a joke”. The lawsuit was, however, settled later.
Although Wolfe Herd was initially focussed on creating a
women-only social network, she settled for match-making following the advice of
Russian tech billionaire and founder of dating app Badoo, Andrey Andreev.
That’s how Bumble was born as a “by women, for women” service with a strict
policy against harassment.
When Blackstone Group Inc. bought a majority stake in
Bumble’s owner for nearly $3 billion last year, she took over from Andreev. As
part of the agreement, she received about $125 million in cash as well as a
$119 million loan that has been fully repaid. At that time, Andreev had told
Bloomberg that he was “very comfortable handing the baton to Whitney” and that
“she has proved to be very insightful and innovative in the dating space”.
In an interview on February 11 with Bloomberg Quint, Wolfe
Herd expressed gratitude to other women who have paved the way before her. She
added the Bumble IPO proceeds would be used to pay down debt as well as for pursuing
acquisitions
Who is Whitney Wolfe Herd'
An American entrepreneur Whitney Wolfe Herd, is the CEO and
founder of dating application Bumble. It was launched in 2014 followed by
BumbleBFF and BumbleBizz in 2016 and 2017 respectively. While Bumble originally
is a dating app allowing women to make the first move, BumbleBFF and BumbleBizz
allow them to find friends and professional network. Forbes has valued the
company at more than $1 billion. Earlier, Wolfe Herd was even named one of
2017's and 2018's Forbes 30 Under 30 list. Now, after becoming the rare female
billionaire, the 31-year-old not only expressed gratitude but also said: 'today
is what happens when women make the first move'.
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