- Whitney Wolfe Herd returned as Bumble CEO amid big leadership changes at the dating app.
- Last month, rival company Match Group also replaced its CEO.
- The new CEOs are highlighting changes for trust and safety.
The owners of some of the world’s biggest dating apps — Match Group and Bumble — just went through big leadership shake-ups.
On Monday, Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd returned to her position as CEO after a year away from the role. During that time, she was Bumble’s executive chair.
Wolfe Herd founded the company in 2014 and said she stepped away to pursue her “founder roots” instead of running a public company’s day-to-day operations.
She replaced Lidiane Jones, the former Slack CEO who resigned from Bumble for “personal reasons” after just over a year in the position. Jones changed Bumble’s iconic feature, in which women make the first move, and oversaw a marketing campaign with messages that included “A vow of celibacy is not the answer.” Bumble apologized for the ads.
On Bumble’s February earnings call, an analyst asked Wolfe Herd if she was “in it for the long haul.”
She responded that she is “fully, fully, fully committed.”
“I have no plans of making this a short-lived or interim focus,” she said.
Wolfe Herd’s return follows other senior executive departures at the company. Bumble’s chief financial officer, Anu Subramanian, who led the company during its 2021 initial public offering, exited last week to pursue other opportunities, according to a company filing. Shelby Drummond, the chief marketing officer, also left Bumble last month. The company said it was searching for a permanent replacement for Subramanian. The company added that its chief business officer and chief technology officer will depart in late March and the end of June, respectively.
Last month, rival Match Group, the parent company behind Tinder, Hinge, and OKCupid, also replaced its CEO. Spencer Rascoff, who led the real estate platform Zillow, took over from Bernard Kim, who served as CEO for two years. Rascoff is the fourth CEO in six years.
Match’s various sites and apps had 13.2 million unique visitors in November, while Bumble — the second-most-used dating app — had nearly 3 million, per Comscore data.
The back-to-back executive changes at both companies coincide with their overhaul plans, as more women and Generation Z shift away from using apps for dating. Swiping fatigue and the rising costs of going on dates are leading users to ditch apps for outlets that allow in-person connections.
Both companies recently announced plans to boost their safety features, such as verifying identities, removing bad actors, and flagging inappropriate messages. On Monday, Bumble said that users can filter for ID-verified profiles and ask that their matches complete a verification check.
Bumble had 4.1 million paying users on its apps, up 11.5% from 2023.
“Our members candidly deserve better than what this category has been giving them over the last several years,” Wolfe Herd said on February’s earnings call.
Match had 9.5 million paying users across platforms in the quarter ending in December, a 5% drop from the same period a year ago.
In a letter shared on LinkedIn last week, Rascoff wrote: “Too often, our apps have felt like a numbers game rather than a place to build real connections, leaving people with the false impression that we prioritize metrics over experience. That needs to change.”
Match’s stock is down nearly 11% in the last year, while Bumble is down almost 54%.
Neither company immediately responded to requests for comment, sent outside standard business hours.
