Last week I was quite surprised to hear the news about the IPO of Bumble. Bumble is a dating application that puts women to make their first move. Wolfe Herd; the CEO of Bumble, became the youngest self-made woman billionaire in the world after the IPO. She made a warm celebration by carrying her baby in her company’s NASDAQ opening.
Bumble started catching my attention when Wolfe Herd was being interviewed in the Master of Scale podcast by Reid Hoffman. She told the story about how she started Bumble. Bumble is not her first dating application, she was a co-founder of Tinder before. We all know Tinder is one of the largest dating applications in the world known by its swipe gesture in picking the profile we want to connect to.
Wolfe Herd left Tinder after she realized that Tinder not only became a tool for finding potential couple to meet, but also became a tool used by some irresponsible people who commit sexual harassment. Tinder also makes someone judge other people by only looking at their appearance or their weight. Tired of that fact, Wolfe Herd left the company and did not want to deal with any dating application ecosystem anymore.
The decision changed after Wolfe Herd and her new co-founder found that they still can help people find their match in a better way. She had an idea about building a dating application that put the woman in “the driver seat”. Instead of the woman becoming an object of the aggressive man’s behavior, the woman becomes the one who has to send the message first.
Wolfe Herd believes that small tweak could decrease the potential of sexual harassment and the swallow way of judging someone. Wolfe Herd said it was very hard in the beginning to persuade new users to use her new application. Changing user behavior is not easy. Therefore, from Wolfe Herd’s experience we know that we can always find another way to encourage people as long as we have strong belief in our solution.
Bumble now became the second largest public owned dating application company in the world. Used by more than 100 millions users around the globe, Bumble generated more than USD 400 millions revenue last year. Today Bumble is not only used by people who want to look for their match, but also used by people who want to find their business partners.
I learned how our strong belief can lead us in finding some ways to reach our goal. Wolfe Herd believes that there is another better way to help people finding their match. She left her previous company and boldly started her new business.
Fighting for what we believe is also not always done by huge steps. It can be started by a small tweak like changing how the user interacts in our application. Do not underestimate a small thing in our lives. A Small tweak with the scalability power of technology can change the way we interact and the way we behave. It can be good or bad. It is we who can choose how to use it.