Bumble: Female-founded dating app tops $13B in market debut
Its Wall Street success made 31-year-old boss Whitney Wolfe Herd a rare self-made female billionaire. Bumble, which also owns Badoo, is one of less than two dozen US firms to list publicly while led by a female founder. Shares in the firm debuted at $43 apiece, valuing it at over $8B. But in opening trade on Thursday they shot up to more than $76 each, making the firm worth more than $13B (£9.4B). Read the full article via BBC News.
Investors are feeling the Bumble buzz
Was it love at first sight? One of the world’s most popular dating platforms rose 76 per cent in early trading as it went public in New York yesterday, turning its 31-year-old founder into a billionaire. Read the full article via The Times.
How Bumble’s clever design helped the app go public
Head of product design for the Bumble app Lara Mendonça joined the company in September 2019, when the core user interface had already been established. But the last year and a half has seen whirlwind expansion for her team—which grew from 1 person to 12—and was key to laying the foundation for this week’s wildly successful initial public offering. Read the full article via Fast Company.
Bumble CEO Talks about IPO and growth strategy
Bumble Inc. Chief Executive Officer Whitney Wolfe Herd discusses the dating app’s initial public offering and growth strategy on “Bloomberg Markets: The Close.” Watch the video via Bloomberg.
Bumble gave women more power in dating. Now the app is giving women power in the boardroom.
Lack of venture capital funding for female entrepreneurs is often cited as a major obstacle for women to leading companies to IPOs. According to PitchBook Data, female-founded companies represented just 13 percent of all venture capital dollars deployed in the first nine months of 2020, down from 15.5 percent in 2019. Read the full article via the Washington Post.