The company filed paperwork on Friday for an initial public offering, potentially setting it up for a Wall Street debut at a time when dating apps have become lifelines for single people during the pandemic. Bumble was founded in by Whitney Wolfe Herd, who started her career at Tinder. She initially set out to create a women-focused social network before landing on the concept of a female-focused dating app. Bumble requires women searching for heterosexual matches to make the first move, the idea being that this feature would empower women to make their own choices.
It took off: Bumble, headquartered in Austin, has become a household name and now includes services beyond dating, including professional networking Bumble Bizz and finding new friends Bumble BFF. According to its IPO paperwork, the Bumble dating empire counted Bumble is poised to go public on the heels of other successful tech IPOs. Airbnb and DoorDash each soared in their recent public market debuts, suggesting strong investor interest. Unlike many other technology companies, the majority of Bumble's board is made up of women.
Investment firm Blackstone bought a majority stake in Bumble's parent company -- then called MagicLab but since renamed Bumble -- from Russian billionaire Andrey Andreev in The parent company also includes Badoo, a popular digital dating service outside the United States, founded by Andreev in Andreev served as a partner to Wolfe Herd since Bumble's start. As part of the deal, Andreev sold his stake and stepped down from the business; Wolfe Herd took over the helm.
But Wolfe Herd has worked to set her company apart -- from publicly slamming and blocking a misogynist user to banning gun photos and flagging lewd images sent through direct messages on its app. She's also used her profile to throw her weight around issues pertaining to women and the digital world. In , she and Bumble successfully advocated for a new Texas law outlawing digital sexual harassment.
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