HERD MENTALITY
“WE’RE NOT ONE OF OUR COMpetitors that’s just trying to hook people up,” says Whitney Wolfe Herd, the 30-year-old CEO of Bumble, the online dating platform where women have to initiate potential interest. “We’re trying to say, ‘Let’s change thousands of years of behavior. Globally.’ Do you see why this is so challenging?”
It’s an early afternoon in late May, and Wolfe Herd is in the posh ski village of Deer Valley, Utah, for Bumble’s annual retreat. A light snow falls outside despite the fact that it’s almost summer, and Wolfe Herd—slim, blond, and dressed in skinny jeans and furlined ankle boots—gives off an après-ski vibe. Although she’s prone to bouts of angst—at one point during her state of the company address to Bumble’s employees, she admits, “I have terrible anxiety. I have it right now. I kind of feel like I’m going to faint”—she’s chill when discussing Bumble and her ambitions.
Wolfe Herd, who founded Bumble in 2014, is fueled by a utopian vision of social justice, where women feel empowered to make the first move in all areas of their lives, and it drives virtually every decision at the company. It influences her hiring: 82% of the employees are female, along with almost all of the executive leadership. It affects product: The company has made big bets on nondating extensions to help women find friends (BFF) and professionally network (Bizz). It informs its policies: Last year, shortly after the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, Wolfe Herd banned images that contained guns, even though it led to threats against her own safety. It affects how she deploys her resources, from commissioning a 2019 Super Bowl ad starring Serena Williams to persuading the tennis great to back her Bumble Fund, which invests in a new
