Whitney Wolfe Herd

Whitney Wolfe Herd
Born	Whitney Wolfe 01 07, 1989
Birthplace	Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S.
Nationality	American
Occupation	Entrepreneur, business executive
Known for	Founder of Bumble, co-founder of Tinder
Education	Southern Methodist University (BA)
Children	2
Awards	Time 100 Most Influential People (2018)

Whitney Wolfe Herd (née Wolfe; born July 1, 1989) is an American entrepreneur and business executive who founded the dating application Bumble and serves as its chief executive officer and executive chair. Before launching Bumble, she was a co-founder and vice president of marketing at Tinder, one of the first mobile dating platforms to popularize the swipe-based matching model. Wolfe Herd departed Tinder in 2014 and launched Bumble later that year, building the app around the core principle that women make the first move in heterosexual matches — a design choice intended to shift traditional gender dynamics in online dating. Bumble grew into one of the largest dating platforms in the United States, and when the company went public in February 2021, Wolfe Herd became one of the youngest women to take a company public on a major American stock exchange. In 2018, Time named her one of its 100 Most Influential People. After stepping back from the CEO role, Wolfe Herd returned to lead Bumble in 2025, announcing plans to reimagine the platform for a new generation of users.

Early Life

Whitney Wolfe was born on July 1, 1989, in Salt Lake City, Utah. She grew up in Salt Lake City and attended school in Utah before pursuing higher education in Texas. From an early age, Wolfe demonstrated entrepreneurial instincts. While still a student at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, Texas, she launched a clothing line called Tender Heart, which sold bamboo tote bags to raise money for areas affected by the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The project attracted attention and demonstrated her ability to combine a social cause with a consumer product — a theme that would recur throughout her career.

Details about Wolfe Herd's family background and childhood remain limited in publicly available sources. What is documented is her early inclination toward building businesses and her move to the technology sector shortly after completing her undergraduate education.

Education

Wolfe Herd attended Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree. During her time at SMU, she was involved in entrepreneurial activities, including the Tender Heart clothing venture. Her time at the university also connected her with networks in the technology startup world that would prove significant for her subsequent career at Tinder.

Career

Tinder

After graduating from Southern Methodist University, Wolfe joined the team that was building Tinder, a mobile dating application that used a swipe-based interface to allow users to quickly approve or pass on potential matches. Wolfe is credited as a co-founder of Tinder and served as the company's vice president of marketing. In that role, she played a central part in popularizing the app, particularly among college-age users. Her marketing strategy included visiting college campuses to promote the platform, and she is credited with coining the name "Tinder."

In 2012, Tinder launched and quickly became one of the most downloaded dating applications in the world, fundamentally changing how people met romantic partners. The app's rapid growth made it a cultural phenomenon and established the swipe mechanic as a defining feature of modern mobile dating.

However, Wolfe's tenure at Tinder ended in acrimony. In June 2014, she filed a lawsuit against Tinder and its parent company, alleging sexual harassment and discrimination. The suit named Tinder co-founder Justin Mateen and CEO Sean Rad, among others. Wolfe alleged that she had been subjected to harassing text messages and that her co-founder title had been stripped because the company's leadership said that having a young female co-founder "made the company look like a joke." The lawsuit drew extensive media coverage and became part of a broader public conversation about the treatment of women in the technology industry.

The case was settled in September 2014 for a reported sum of just over one million dollars. Under the terms of the settlement, Wolfe was restricted from publicly discussing certain aspects of her experience at Tinder. Justin Mateen was suspended from his position at Tinder in the wake of the allegations.

Founding of Bumble

In the months following her departure from Tinder, Wolfe initially considered stepping away from the dating app industry entirely. However, Russian entrepreneur and Badoo founder Andrey Andreev approached her with a proposal to build a new dating platform. Wolfe agreed, on the condition that the new app would address the problems she had experienced and observed in online dating — specifically, the harassment and hostile behavior that women frequently encountered on existing platforms.

Bumble launched in December 2014 with a distinctive feature: in heterosexual matches, only women could initiate the first message. This mechanic was designed to reduce unsolicited and often inappropriate messages that women received on other platforms and to create a dating environment where women felt more empowered. At a 2018 SXSW panel, Wolfe Herd described the company's founding ethos, stating: "What I originally wanted to do with Bumble is rewrite the Internet." The company attributed its growth to the fundamental principle that women should be able to make the first move in romantic connections.

The app grew rapidly. By 2017, Forbes described Bumble as "America's fastest-growing dating app," reporting that the company was on track to reach a billion-dollar valuation. The platform expanded beyond dating to include Bumble BFF, a feature for finding platonic friendships, and Bumble Bizz, a professional networking mode. Wolfe Herd positioned Bumble not merely as a dating app but as a broader social networking platform centered on respectful, women-first design principles.

Wolfe Herd also pushed for legislative change related to online behavior. In Texas, she advocated for a law that would criminalize the sending of unsolicited sexually explicit images — commonly known as "cyberflashing." Bumble's lobbying efforts contributed to Texas becoming the first U.S. state to enact such a law.

Bumble IPO and Growth

On February 11, 2021, Bumble Inc. went public on the Nasdaq stock exchange under the ticker symbol BMBL. The initial public offering was a significant milestone for the company and for Wolfe Herd personally. On its first day of trading, Bumble's stock surged, pushing the company's valuation to approximately $13 billion. Wolfe Herd, who was 31 at the time, became one of the youngest women to take a company public in the United States. Reports described her as the youngest self-made female billionaire in the world at the time of the IPO. She owns approximately 23 million shares of Bumble Inc.

In an interview with Fortune at the time of the IPO, Wolfe Herd discussed her vision for the company's future and the importance of creating safe online spaces. The public offering also represented a moment of validation for Bumble's women-first business model, which had attracted both users and investors.

Departure and Return as CEO

After leading Bumble through its IPO and years of growth, Wolfe Herd stepped back from her day-to-day role as CEO. However, by 2025, she returned to lead the company amid challenges facing the broader dating app industry. A New York Times interview in May 2025 described the context of her return: Bumble was struggling, and Wolfe Herd said she had a plan for engaging Generation Z users who had grown skeptical of dating apps. In a New York Times piece, she reflected on how the general sentiment about technology had shifted since she co-founded Tinder, noting that when Tinder launched, "the overwhelming feeling about apps and screens and tech in general was optimism."

Wolfe Herd's return coincided with new strategic directions for the company. In an August 2025 Wall Street Journal feature, she discussed new ideas for Bumble, including the integration of artificial intelligence to reshape how users form connections on the platform. She also expressed a broader interest in addressing what she called a societal loneliness crisis through technology. In a Time interview, she framed her ambition as using technology to address loneliness, a theme consistent with her career-long focus on fostering human connection through digital platforms.

Cultural Impact and the Swiped Film

In September 2025, the Hulu film Swiped was released, dramatizing events surrounding Wolfe Herd's time at Tinder and the founding of Bumble. Time magazine published an extensive article examining the true story behind the film, while Biography noted that Wolfe Herd had "helped launch the dating app revolution with Tinder" in 2012 before creating "its fiercest competitor" two years later. Fortune noted that the film focused primarily on Wolfe Herd's experiences at Tinder rather than on the building of Bumble itself. The existence of a major film about her story underscored the degree to which Wolfe Herd's career had become intertwined with the broader narrative of the technology industry's cultural impact.

Personal Life

Whitney Wolfe married Michael Herd, and the couple have two children together. She has been based in Austin, Texas, where Bumble is headquartered. Wolfe Herd has spoken publicly about the challenges of balancing executive leadership with family life, and her experiences as a working mother have informed her approach to company culture at Bumble.

In media interviews, she has discussed her own experiences with online harassment and the impact they had on her mental health and career trajectory. These personal experiences were a motivating factor in designing Bumble's safety features and in her advocacy for anti-cyberflashing legislation.

Recognition

In 2018, Time named Wolfe Herd to its annual list of the 100 Most Influential People in the world. In 2014, Business Insider included her on its list of the 30 Most Important Women Under 30 in Tech.

The Bumble IPO in 2021 generated widespread media coverage, and multiple outlets profiled Wolfe Herd's journey from Tinder co-founder to leading a publicly traded company. Management Today described her as the world's youngest female self-made billionaire at the time of the offering.

She has been profiled by Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Forbes, and NPR, among other outlets. Paper magazine and Grazia have also featured her in profiles examining the intersection of technology, dating culture, and feminism.

Legacy

Wolfe Herd's career has been defined by two of the most consequential products in modern dating culture. As a co-founder of Tinder, she helped popularize mobile-first, swipe-based dating, which fundamentally altered how millions of people initiate romantic connections. With Bumble, she introduced a model that placed women's agency at the center of the user experience, a design choice that influenced other dating platforms and broader conversations about gender dynamics in technology.

Her public departure from Tinder and subsequent lawsuit drew attention to issues of sexual harassment and gender discrimination in the technology industry, contributing to an ongoing public reckoning with workplace culture in Silicon Valley and beyond. The 2025 Hulu film Swiped further brought these events into the mainstream cultural conversation.

Bumble's advocacy for anti-cyberflashing legislation in Texas represented one of the first instances of a major technology company using its platform and influence to push for laws specifically addressing digital sexual harassment. This effort positioned Wolfe Herd and Bumble at the intersection of technology policy and women's safety advocacy.

As of 2025, Wolfe Herd continues to lead Bumble as it navigates an evolving market in which younger users have expressed growing ambivalence toward dating apps. Her stated focus on using artificial intelligence and addressing societal loneliness suggests a strategic direction that extends beyond Bumble's original dating-app model.

References

<script type="application/ld+json"> {

 "@context": "https://schema.org",
 "@type": "Person",
 "name": "Whitney Wolfe Herd",
 "birthDate": "1989-07-01",
 "birthPlace": {
   "@type": "Place",
   "name": "Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S."
 },
 "nationality": "American",
 "jobTitle": "CEO and Executive Chair",
 "worksFor": {
   "@type": "Organization",
   "name": "Bumble Inc."
 },
 "alumniOf": {
   "@type": "CollegeOrUniversity",
   "name": "Southern Methodist University"
 },
 "description": "American entrepreneur, founder of Bumble, and co-founder of Tinder.",
 "sameAs": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitney_Wolfe_Herd"

} </script>