Just a few years ago, finding love on the internet would be about as risky as it was embarrassing. “What makes you so desperate?” many asked. But today, US online dating boasts annual revenues of over 3 billion that continue to climb. Clearly, there’s a strong market in streamlining the connections we make with strangers we find attractive. Perhaps the anonymity and scalability a Tinder profile provides became one of the most exciting changes to dating our culture has ever entertained.
Whitney Wolfe was hired as a marketer for Tinder. There she innovated ways to reach and saturate new markets of bachelors and bachelorettes. After leaving Tinder following bouts of online abuse, sexual discrimination, and a lawsuit, she founded Bumble. All before her 25th birthday.
After leaving behind the trauma of online abuse and with the encouragement of an early investor, Wolfe resolved to change the culture of an abusive online dating culture. In an interview for an NPR program, Wolfe succinctly frames the problem current dating platforms left unaddressed.
“Men are raised from very early age to be the go-getter in a heterosexual relationship. Go get her. Go make the move, right? And women, on the flipside, are trained to play hard to get. So here you’re telling men to be overtly aggressive, and here you’re telling women to be the inverse of that. And so now you’re training two human beings to act in opposite directions of each other. And so what you do when you do that is you set both up for failure” – Whitney Wolfe, How I Built This: Bumble
To remedy this, Bumble withholds all connections until the female user permits the male to start messaging. If you’re interested in hearing more about how this app has accumulated 28 million downloads since it’s launch in 2014, read or listen to the interview linked above. Wolfe is a fantastic example of how a well-framed problem with a brilliant solution delivered can propel an entrepreneur to be worth as much as 250 million.
Interesting article and captivating title. I was unaware of the risk factors that tinder presented and am impressed with how Wolfe created a new dating app that makes an effort to resolve these issues- especially at such a young age. I like the safety features with communication that her app has made and the cultural stigma she is trying to break. I can see why her business has done so well. Great read!