What is Whitney Wolfe Herd's net worth and salary?
Whitney Wolfe Herd is an American entrepreneur who has a net worth of $600 million. Whitney Wolfe Herd earned her fortune as the founder of dating app Bumble. Previously she co-founded the dating app Tinder. Whitney left Tinder in 2014 and ended up filing a sexual harassment lawsuit against her former co-workers. She reportedly received more than $1 million plus company stock. Whitney was a billionaire for a time immediately following Bumble's IPO. On November 6, 2023 Herd announced she was stepping down from the company.
Bumble Ownership
As of this writing, Whitney Wolfe Herd owns 21% of Bumble's outstanding equity. When Bumble went public on February 11, 2021, Whitney's net worth officially topped $1.5 billion. Whitney was the youngest CEO ever to take a company to an IPO, accomplishing the feat at 31. Before the IPO she privately sold $100 million worth of shares.
In the two years following Bumble's IPO, the company's share price plunged around 80%. As a result, in November 2021 Whitney lost her billionaire status. By February 2023, two years after the IPO, her stake was worth around $700 million.
Early Life and Education
Whitney Wolfe Herd was born on July 5, 1989 in Salt Lake City, Utah to Kelly and Michael. As a teenager, she attended Judge Memorial Catholic High School. Wolfe Herd went on to attend Southern Methodist University in Texas, where she was an international studies major.
Career Beginnings
While still in college, Wolfe Herd launched a business selling bamboo tote bags to benefit areas impacted by the 2010 BP oil spill. She partnered with celebrity stylist Patrick Aufdenkamp to design the bags, which gained national attention when they were seen with celebrities such as Nicole Richie and Rachel Zoe. Wolfe Herd and Aufdenkamp soon teamed up again to create a clothing line that helped raise awareness of human trafficking and fair trade. After graduating from college, Wolfe Herd worked with orphanages in Southeast Asia.
Tinder
In 2012, Wolfe Herd joined the credit card loyalty app Cardify, run by Sean Rad. With engineer Joe Munoz, Rad had built a prototype for a dating app called MatchBox. As Cardify was being pushed to the wayside, Rad, Wolfe Herd, Justin Mateen, and Jonathan Badeen worked on developing MatchBox, which was finally renamed Tinder upon its launch in late 2012. Wolfe Herd was reportedly the one responsible for the name change, as she took inspiration from the idea of tinder as an easily combustible material used to kindle a fire, or in this context, a relationship.
Wolfe Herd was named vice president of marketing for Tinder. The online dating and geosocial networking app became very popular within a short time, particularly on college campuses. However, in the spring of 2014, Wolfe Herd resigned amid growing tensions with other company executives. A couple months after that, she sued Tinder for sexual harassment, and eventually received over $1 million plus stock as part of the settlement.
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Bumble
Having been the target of online sexist vitriol, Wolfe Herd began thinking up a female-only social network focused on compliments; she was going to call it Merci. She then partnered with Andrey Andreev to create a new female-friendly dating app, which she planned to call Moxie. However, the name had already been taken. In late 2014, Wolfe Herd moved to Austin, Texas and finally founded her female-focused dating app, called Bumble. The app works by allowing only female users to make first contact with matched male users in heterosexual matches. In same-sex matches, either person can send their message first.
Bumble quickly became a success, and by late 2015 it had generated over 15 million conversations and 80 million matches. Two years later, it had amassed more than 22 million registered users. In 2019, upon the sale of Bumble's parent company MagicLab to the private equity firm Blackstone, Wolfe Herd became the CEO of MagicLab. Bumble subsequently took over as the parent company in 2020, by which time the app had grown to over 100 million users worldwide. In early 2021, Wolfe Herd took the company public on the Nasdaq exchange. At the age of 31, she became the youngest woman ever to take a company public in the United States. Moreover, Wolfe Herd became the world's youngest self-made female billionaire.
Chappy
Among her other projects, Wolfe Herd helped fund the UK-based gay dating app Chappy, which was co-founded by Ollie Locke, Jack Rogers, and Max Cheremkin. The app, which takes its inspiration from Bumble, strives to make dating easier and safer for gay men. Chappy features a sliding scale that allows users to search for "Mr. Right" or "Mr. Right Now," and verifies each user through Facebook to weed out photos that don't feature the user's face.
Personal Life
In 2017, Wolfe Herd married oil and gas heir Michael Herd, whom she had first met in late 2013 on a skiing trip in Aspen, Colorado. The two had their first child, a son, in December of 2019.
