Chapter 1: What led Whitney Wolfe to sue Tinder in 2014?
Audible subscribers can listen to all episodes of Business Wars ad-free right now. Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app. It's May, 2024. In the hours before dawn, installation crews fan out across Los Angeles and London, hanging posters for the online dating app Bumble. Above highways in Los Angeles, workers and cherry pickers rise toward massive 14-by-48-foot billboard frames.
In London, crews head underground, carrying rolled-up posters into subway stations. By rush hour, these crews have hung the ads along major commuting routes. They're part of a sweeping rebrand by Bumble, which is trying to redefine how people think about online dating. And these ads are aimed squarely at people who feel burned out by it.
One ad reads, you know full well a vow of celibacy is not the answer. Another declares, thou shalt not give up on dating and become a nun. When Bumble debuted in 2014, it made a bold promise.
Chapter 2: How did Bumble redefine online dating with women making the first move?
Unlike other dating apps, women would make the first move. It was framed as the feminist answer to hookup culture. And the message resonated. In 2021, Bumble's IPO exploded onto Wall Street. The stock surged on its first day of trading, pushing the company's valuation close to $14 billion. Its founder, Whitney Wolf Hurd, became the youngest self-made female billionaire at just 31.
But that high didn't last. Revenue growth slowed, and the stock cratered, down more than 80% from its peak. Wolf Hurd lost her billionaire status and eventually stepped down as CEO. And Bumble isn't alone with these issues either. Across the dating app world, users are exhausted. People are deleting apps, skipping swipes, and opting out altogether.
Chapter 3: What were the outcomes of Bumble's IPO and Whitney Wolfe's rise to billionaire status?
Some even say celibacy sounds better than suffering through one more miserable meetup. Bumble has spent months trying to adapt, but this billboard campaign with its anti-celibacy message lands with a thud. To many of Bumble's core users, particularly women, it feels like the brand is scolding the very people it once claimed to empower.
Within hours, social media is flooded with outrage, including this YouTuber's incredulous reaction.
Did they think we were going to see this billboard and their advertisement and be like, oh my God, you're right. All this peace that I've been experiencing being celibate, I should just stop it. I should just go back to hookup culture and just give men my body and continue down that toxic path that I have been on. That is so insulting.
Plenty of other creators agree. And some say they're insulted enough to dump Bumble altogether, including one TikToker who mocks the new ads.
Celibacy is not the answer. I've never wanted to cancel a company more in my entire life.
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Chapter 4: Why did Bumble's stock value decline after its initial success?
Celibacy is actually the answer to most things. Reduce transmitted diseases, celibacy. Reduce unplanned pregnancies, celibacy. Protect your peace, celibacy. Increase your safety with meeting random strangers online, celibacy.
As the backlash spreads, Bumble's top brass pulls the campaign. The billboards and the posters come down. The company offers a written apology on Instagram saying, we made a mistake. But not everyone is buying it, because this isn't just about a bad ad campaign. As part of its reinvention, Bumble has made a seismic change.
For the first time in its 10-year history, men can now make the first move. This means that the radical rule that defined the app, Women Go First, is gone.
Chapter 5: What backlash did Bumble face from its latest advertising campaign?
And that raises a much bigger question. A question that will haunt Bumble for months to come.
Once you've thrown away what made you special, can you ever get it back? Oh, okay. I'm Lampun Henki, and you're you, and you know what happens next. You have three wishes, and you can't wish for more wishes. What do we put in? Kulho, lusikka, and that new valio-yogurt, luonnonmakea, whose sweetness is from fruit sugars. Kulho, lusikka, valio-yogurt, luonnonmakea.
Quittiin, arjen klassikka, valio-yogurtti.
From Audible Originals, I'm David Brown, and this is Business Wars. So, you looking for love?
Chapter 6: How did Bumble's core principles change amidst legal challenges?
Or maybe just a situation ship? Or even someone who won't ghost you after three days? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, well, chances are you've tried the apps. Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid, maybe even Bumble. And if you've ever swiped through profiles or watched someone else do it, you know the drill, right?
The endless profiles, carefully chosen photos, witty bios, the flicker of hope that this match might be different, and the crushing realization that it probably won't be. For millions of women, Bumble once promised something better. In 2014, 25-year-old entrepreneur Whitney Wolf launched Bumble with a simple but radical rule. Women make the first move.
No unsolicited messages, no digital catcalling, no waiting around. If a connection was going to happen, women decided when it started. This gave women control, safety, a sense of power, something no other dating app was offering.
Chapter 7: What impact did the gender discrimination lawsuit have on Bumble's identity?
Women responded. By 2019, it's estimated that Bumble had more than 10 million users worldwide. In 2021, Wolf Hurd became the youngest woman ever to take a U.S. company public. She also became a media sensation, gracing the cover of Forbes, speaking to audiences around the world, a high-profile advocate for women's issues.
But lately, to some users, Bumble looks like it's swiping left on its own principles. The app now lets men message first. 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.
Chapter 8: Can Bumble survive without its founder, Whitney Wolfe Hurd?
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. Two months later, she filed her lawsuit, claiming that Mateen was verbally abusive toward her. Wolf says that at a company party, her ex even called her a whore.
The lawsuit claims Tinder tolerated this behavior and describes the company's culture as misogynistic. Wolf may have sued Tinder, but in calling out the alpha male startup stereotypes, she was also taking aim at something bigger, Silicon Valley's boys club. And now, alone in the dark, scrolling through message after message, she's seeing what happens when you challenge that system publicly.
The backlash is immediate and vicious. The messages are filled with profanity and threats and accuse her of being an opportunist, Wolf takes the insults personally, and they hit hard. A feeling of worthlessness starts to creep in. Later that day, a journalist knocks on Wolf's door. He's hoping to get an exclusive of her side of the story. Wolf doesn't open the door.
Go away. I'm not talking to you.
There will be more days and nights like this to come. More nasty texts. More journalists trying to get a scoop. Eventually, Wolf deletes her Twitter account and prepares to leave Los Angeles. But before she packs her bags, one more message comes through. This time, it's not a threat or an insult. It's an email from a Russian tech mogul named Andrei Andreev, and he has a proposition.
It just so happens that Wolf has been busy hatching a plan to turn the Internet into a kinder, gentler place. To do that, she'll need money, and the wealthy Russian who just slid into her inbox has plenty of it. So they set a meeting. And when they finally sit down together, it won't go the way either of them expects. It's late summer 2014.
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