Whitney Wolfe Herd Talks Bumble Future at TechCrunch Disrupt
Whitney Wolfe Herd took part in a Q&A discussion at the recent TechCrunch Disrupt event in San Francisco.
The Bumble CEO spoke about the company’s early days, working out of her apartment and using the bathtub for conference calls.
The first few questions referred to the ‘Me Too’ movement from the past year, due to the dating app’s women-first mentality and focus on female empowerment.
Wolfe Herd explained: “Seeing society catch up and acknowledge – the empowerment of women, and the equality of women and really standing up for the right thing – was something we were so excited about – it was something we had been waiting for for a long time.”
“Bumble has always taken firm decisions based on our values, so [embracing the ‘Me Too’ movement] was one of those moments where it was a no brainer.”
The interview moved onto BFF and Bizz, Bumble’s platforms that aim to help women find friends and business partners. She revealed that there used to be hundreds of thousands of Bumble dating profiles created stating that they were in a relationships, but looking for other social connections.
The success of these two features led her to describe Bumble as: “a full-fledged social network in its own right.”
This was the first time that Bumble’s new Snooze feature was revealed, which would allow users to take an extended break from the app without ignoring their matches. Wolfe Herd herself admitted that she had not used any social media for the past three weeks.
She also announced that “physical Hives” would be created next year, and gave her thoughts about Facebook Dating (which GDI wrote about here).
The Bumble founder is very optimistic about the future of the company as a dating app, a social network and potentially a media group. She said that the world would see more video content from them in early 2019.
Five years from now, Wolfe Herd wants Bumble to be “the world’s premiere empowerment company”.
Visit the Bumble website here.