A big start for Bumble, the online dating app.
The company was entering Wall Street on the basis of a valuation of nearly $ 8.2 billion.
The introductory price of Bumble Holdings (which owns Bumble and Badoo) was set at $ 43 per unit but within minutes the stock was trading at $ 76.
Or a jump of 77%!
In total, the company raised $ 2.2 billion from investors.
If Bumble pleases so much, it's thanks to his feminist vision of dating.
The application, when someone please, simply swiper ( "
sweep
" in English) to the right of your screen.
Normally, you have to wait for the other person to swipe you to start the conversation.
On Bumble, only women can engage in dialogue, which makes it possible to secure exchanges for the fairer sex.
For co-founder Whitney Wolfe Herd, “
archaic gender dynamics and old-fashioned traditions still reigned in the dating world (...).
This led to all kinds of unhealthy dynamics which ultimately robbed women of their power and created unnecessary pressure on men
”.
A romantic story
At the head of Bumble Holdings, is Whitney Wolfe Herd, "
the new priestess of dating apps
" according to
Vanity Fair
.
It must be said that the thirty-something has experience in this area.
In 2012, at only 23 years old, she co-founded a dating service that is now known worldwide: Tinder.
At the time, she was in charge of the company's marketing and managed to get it off the ground.
In 2014, the young entrepreneur slammed the door of Tinder and filed a complaint for discrimination and harassment against the company and her ex-boyfriend, Justin Mateen, also one of the co-founders.
“We will never be yours.
"
Whitney Wolfe Herd
A few months later, Whitney Wolfe Herd launched Bumble with Russian billionaire Andrey Andreev, who created Badoo in 2006, another famous dating site.
Bumble is progressing quickly and starting to make people envious, including Match Group, the owner of Tinder.
In 2017, the group made a buyout offer of $ 450 million, which was immediately refused.
“
We 'swiped' left on your multiple attempts to redeem us, copy us and now intimidate us.
We will never be yours,
”Whitney Wolfe Herd publicly stated in 2018. According to
Forbes
, her net worth amounts to $ 575 million.
As she owns nearly 20% of Bumble, the young woman is in the process of becoming a billionaire.
Far behind Tinder
Today, Bumble takes second place in the dating apps podium for revenue generated around the world, according to App Annie.
The company reported revenue of $ 417 million for the first nine months of 2020, with a net loss of $ 117 million.
Far behind Tinder, it is however ahead of Pair and Badoo.
With the Covid-19 pandemic, dating apps have also gained a lot of users.
At the end of September 2020, Bumble had 42 million monthly active users and around 2.4 million “
premium
”
profiles
, ready to pay a subscription for additional features.
The application is especially popular with "
millennials
", that is to say people born between the early 1980s and the late 1990s. In France, Bumble is still struggling to establish itself and is placed in tenth place for monthly active users.
Launched in 2016 in France, the application is ranked lower than other sites such as Happn, Once, AdopteUnMec or Meetic.
Lately, it is Facebook which launched its dating service in Europe, thus reinforcing competition in this environment.
/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/KMEYMJKESBAZBE4MRBAM4TGHIQ.jpg)
