In the olden, un-golden days, marriages were made not in heaven, but sometimes they served as matters of convenience. Blue-blooded women were political pawns; Jewish girls were at the mercy of the shadchan. Parental concern centered on dowries, not trivialities such as mutual affection or commonalities. In our more enlightened clime, finding one’s life partner hinges on free will, but the desire to find one’s soul mate leads to the nonaromatic scent of desperation, the relentless ticking of the biological clock. What’s a lonely heart to do?
Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice famously begins, “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” Alas, this observation is fifty shades of wishful thinking, and that is why the $2.4 billion online dating industry has exploded. Only shipwrecked survivors marooned on deserted islands are oblivious to Match.com, JDate, Christian Mingle—or the website for marital cheaters, Ashley Madison. Although these modern matchmakers have led to love, more often than not they translate to looking for love in all the wrong places. Enter Bumble.
Whitney Wolfe is a five-foot-six blonde (five-foot-ten when sporting suede Manolo Blahnik pumps) who looks like she was raised under the California sun, although she was born in 1990 in a small town outside Salt Lake City, Utah. Her father, Michael, was a property developer; his wife, Kelly, was a stay-at-home mother to her two daughters. When Whitney was eleven, her father took a sabbatical and moved the family to Paris, where she attended an international school with the children of diplomats and royalty. Upon her return to small-town USA, she stood out—but not in a positive way. Classmates mocked her for her clothes, which were fashionable in France but outlandish in the heartland. At age nineteen, a student at Southern Methodist University, Whitney demonstrated her entrepreneurial and altruistic streak when she established her first business, designing and selling bamboo tote bags to raise money in the aftermath of the catastrophic BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The bags attracted the attention of actresses Denise Richards, Nicole Ritchie, and Kate Bosworth, with proceeds being earmarked for the Ocean Futures Society. She also volunteered in orphanages in Southeast Asia; the trip inspired her to start a travel website.
Ms. Wolfe did not set out to change the dating game. She was twenty-three, unemployed, and living with her divorced mother in Montecito, California, when she met two wealthy Jewish men of Persian descent: Sean Rad and Justin Matteen. (Whitney is Jewish on her father’s side.) The three, along with Jonathan Badeen and three other men, all in their twenties, upended the way single people connect with their smartphone app: Tinder. With fifty million users per day—from diverse places such as Rome, London, and Rio de Janeiro—the company has evolved into a three-billion-dollar enterprise. Downloading its app was the equivalent of having a 24/7 singles’ bar in one’s pocket. During Tinder’s nascent rise, Whitney and Justin began dating; however, it ended, according to Wolfe, because he became verbally controlling and abusive. After she put the brakes on their relationship, Justin acted as if “hell hath no fury like a man scorned.” His texts became peppered with words like “slut” and “whore.” Whitney reported this abuse to Rad, whose response was that if she did not back down, he would terminate her employment. He also tried to strip her of her cofounder status, because having a woman at the helm made the company “look like a joke.” Wolfe resigned, but she did not go quietly. She filed a lawsuit claiming sexual harassment and sexual discrimination. The resulting legal showdown—played out in the public eye—was malicious and illustrated the challenges women face in a notoriously bro-friendly tech culture. Overnight she became Silicon Valley’s Gone Girl. Tinder’s parent company admitted no wrongdoing, but awarded her a settlement of one million dollars and corporation stock.
One would think that, given the public fallout of her messy departure and with a well-padded bank account, Whitney would open up a Parisian bookshop or act on her youthful aspiration of owning a travel agency. However, based on the cruelty she experienced at school and in the workplace, Whitney planned to create Merci, an app for teenage girls to share photos and converse, a chat room where users would leave compliments rather than comments. Her plan changed when Andrey Andreev, a London-based Russian cofounder of the European dating behemoth Badoo, a multibillion dollar social network, suggested that Merci’s ethos could be used in the turbulent world of online romance. A feminist version of Tinder was born.
Due to humanity’s universal habit of passing aesthetic judgment on others, Bumble operates on the same smartphone dynamic as Tinder: a profile pic is posted, and users swipe right for “yes,” left for “no, thank you.” A match is made if the interest is mutual. Yet there is one major difference that distinguishes Bumble from its competitors—only women can initiate the online messaging. An addendum is that the ladies have to reach out within twenty-four hours or the match disappears. After all, if Cinderella had played too coy, her carriage would have turned into a pumpkin and her cover would have been blown. This innovative dynamic lets women be the hunters, not the hunted.
Whitney always felt that there was something amiss in society’s social network, with its ingrained—and she believes antiquated—notion that the only time it is permissible for the ladies to make the first move is at a Sadie Hawkins dance. To Whitney it never sat right that she and her girlfriends were kicking ass in all aspects of their careers, but were expected to resort to Jane Austen’s code of etiquette when it came to approaching men. Wolfe contends that putting women in the driver’s seat does not emasculate men by stripping them of their innate hunter-gatherer nature, but rather takes the pressure off males who are tired of always acting as the aggressor. Her philosophy is that this entrenched norm is not innate, but rather is borne of societal conditioning. This mentality explains Bumble’s subway campaign in New York: “Life’s Short, Text Him First.” Because of this core philosophy, Wolfe initially wanted to call her app Leap, as according to Irish folklore February 29 is the only acceptable day for women to propose marriage. Whitney said, “I think that’s the last frontier—the proposal. It doesn’t seem like we’re quite there yet though.” The name Bumble is derived from the fact that women are in control in a bee colony, especially its queen.
Another commandment of Bumble concerns online accountability: “Thou shalt not display bad cyberspace manners.” There is zero tolerance for men whose profile pic is a shirtless selfie, a shot of them in pants reminiscent of the Mae West line about whether you have a gun in your pocket, or a picture of genitals sans fig leaves. There is also a lid on nastiness. After a female user sent screenshots to Bumble of a conversation with a guy named Connor where he ranted about “gold-digging whores,” the company barred him with: #LaterConnor. Another man was deleted for fat-shaming. Users regularly receive notifications to “Bee nice,” along with saucy emojis.
The Bumble app claims eight hundred million matches, ten billion swipes per month, and more than five thousand engagements, giving Tinder a run for its money. And speaking of money/honey, Wolfe has appeared on Forbes’ prestigious “30 Under 30” list, a nod to her personal fortune of two hundred and fifty million dollars. However, success does not mean resting on her laurels, and Whitney, who rises at 4:00 a.m., is forever abuzz with new ideas. She has added BFF, a matching service for women looking for their new bestie—something that can prove as elusive as finding a romantic partner—and Bumble Bizz, a networking app. It acquired Chappy, an app for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people looking to circumvent the landmines of many online dating agencies. The entrepreneur is also turning her hand to writing; she is working with an imprint of Penguin Press on her memoir-slash-dating guide Make the First Move. Bumble is also rolling out their own version of Siri called Beatrice, which calls during a date to make sure the escort is behaving in a manner befitting a gentleman.
The hub of the hive is in Austin, Texas—there are satellite offices in New York, Los Angeles, and London—all crammed full of bright yellow Bumble-branded merchandise, including T-shirts, champagne, mugs, and lip balms carrying bee logos. Jack, Whitney’s giant golden Labrador, sports a Bumble neckerchief.
Ironically, the Queen Bee of online dating met her own match IRL—Internet speak for “in real life”—on Valentine’s Day 2014, on a ski trip in Aspen. Not only was Michael Herd’s appearance swipe-worthy, he also happens to be the heir to a multi-million-dollar oil fortune. Perhaps, “a single man in possession of a large fortune” is indeed sometimes in want of a wife. On the couple’s free time, they fly to luxurious locales on his private jet. He popped the question on a sunset evening after a day of horseback riding on his Texas ranch. Ms. Wolfe accepted and is now sporting a colossal, antique pear-shaped diamond. The power couple’s wedding is planned for 2017 in Positano, Italy. Whitney, by not following the rules, but by adhering to her own, is a shining example that it is still possible to love and land Mr. Darcy.