David Brown

The disastrous billboard campaign seemed to suggest users just need to try harder.

And more and more people are starting to wonder if Bumble and other dating apps are actually trying to help people find relationships or just keep them swiping and paying for as long as possible.

Bumble still has millions of paying users, but whether the company can keep them and attract new ones, that's another matter.

Because the app that once stood out for its unapologetically feminist approach has lost its defining feature.

Bumble was revolutionary.

Now, it's flirting with irrelevance.

But there may be one person who might be able to save it.

The person who built Bumble in the first place, Whitney Wolfe Hurd.

This is episode one, The Queen Bee.

It's July 2014 in Los Angeles.

24-year-old Whitney Wolf wakes up in the middle of the night.

Her phone is buzzing over and over again.

She reaches over to her nightstand and opens Twitter.

There are dozens of messages waiting for her.

She's just made headlines for suing Tinder, Match.com, and their parent company, IAC.

Wolf alleges she was the victim of, quote, atrocious sexual harassment and sex discrimination during her two-year stint at Tinder.

Shortly after graduating from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Wolf co-founded Tinder and began marketing the fledgling app to college students, pushing it through sororities and fraternities until Tinder spread across campuses nationwide.

But while the company was taking off, her personal life was unraveling.

Wolf had been dating Tinder co-founder Justin Mateen, and the pair did not prove to be a match.

When the relationship ended, things unraveled fast in the office, and Wolf left the company.