Bumble co-founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd said on Tuesday that selling the 12-year-old dating app, whose share price has fallen to nearly $2, is essential to "the long-term continuation of Bumble's mission," citing how the public capital markets have treated the company.
Earlier this month, emerging technology investment firm Ithaca Holdings finalized a $1.3 billion deal to take Bumble private. Herd said she will no longer fixate on share price fluctuations and has regained optimism about Bumble's future.
This was Herd's first interview since Bumble reached the sale agreement. Speaking at The Information's Women in Tech, Media and Finance Summit, she said: "For the past five years, I've felt like I was being held underwater by a massive wave, but now I've finally made it to the beach."
Herd said the company will use AI to modernize its products. She noted that the current product has become disconnected from "the revolutionary technology now within reach," such as Anthropic's Claude large language model. Bumble can leverage AI to push more suitable offline events and communities to users, satisfying people's "intense desire to reconnect with others in the real world."
Under the terms of the deal, Wolfe Herd will step down as CEO, and Ithaca Holdings' two founders — Ravi Gupta, a former Sequoia Capital partner, and former Meta executive John Hegeman — will serve as co-CEOs.
Bumble was founded by Herd in 2014, with the core feature being that women must initiate the first message to a potential match. Herd said she will remain deeply involved as an active shareholder, continuing to work on brand-related efforts.
She admitted: "I'm not a tech expert — technology isn't my area of expertise. But if you need to build a brand, call me anytime, I'm fully capable of that."
When the board voted on the privatization deal, Wolfe Herd chose to abstain, while the remaining directors unanimously approved the plan. Even so, she remains optimistic about the deal, calling it "the best outcome given how the public markets are currently valuing our business."
Bumble went public in 2021 at a valuation of approximately $14 billion. Hit by declining revenue and fewer paying users, the company's market value has now shrunk to less than $1 billion.
Discussing the reasons behind the company's struggles in recent years, Herd attributed them to burnout among users in their twenties and thirties, a group that "has developed severe aesthetic fatigue with all kinds of tech products." But she insists that even as the entire industry faces difficulties, demand for dating apps still exists. "Fundamentally, I believe people's desire for love and social connection has actually grown stronger compared to when I first started the company."
Bumble has been adjusting its core product features. Earlier this year, the company announced it was re-examining the classic swipe-to-match feature. Herd said "swiping isn't dead, but we are redesigning it," while also launching AI assistant Bee to help users complete matches. According to Herd, the company will also use AI to improve match recommendation quality and strengthen platform safety.
She said: "This company should have a life beyond me — that's why I've held on until now. I'm not caught up in a founder's unrealistic fantasy; I genuinely believe this."
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