WALL STREET JOURNAL – Nov 14 – Speaking at The Wall Street Journal's WSJ Tech D.Live conference on Wednesday, Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd said an IPO could give her company more momentum to expand further internationally. Wolfe Herd founded the dating app in 2014 as a site where women must make the first move. The company now has ~45M users and is profitable, she said. Still, an IPO is more of an option than a necessity for Bumble right now. Wolfe Herd said her company's next phase of growth isn't contingent on raising this money this way and noted the offering is far from certain. "We're exploring a lot of different options right now," Wolfe Herd said.
Category: Bumble
Bumble’s Mental Health Notification Missed the Mark
How Bumble Plans to Get Buy-In From Women in India
WALL STREET JOURNAL – Nov 15 – Bumble founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd discussed the dating app's strategy for getting women in India to buy in and the company's move to producing primetime video content. "In India, we recruit hyper, hyper local influencers – people who have a voice in a college, people the young women look up to and respect," she said. "No social platform has really been able to create major traction because they have not had the buy in from women in India. Women don't feel safe. Women are not even creating profiles for themselves because of the safety issues", she continued. "We are launching all sorts of safety features. You have to verify yourself as a user, we are letting women register without their first name, just the first initial."
Bumble Launches BumbleSpot, Verified Locations Where Users Can Meet Matches in Real Life
BUSTLE – Nov 8 – The first BumbleSpot partnership is with Moxy Hotels, Marriott International's experiential brand, where official Spots will be at eight of their locations: two in New York (Times Square and the Financial District), and one apiece in Chicago, Denver, New Orleans, Seattle, Tempe, and Minneapolis. Bumble will be rolling out more Spots throughout the year at various restaurants, bars, and coffee shops across the U.S. and Canada, and in some international locations in 2019. Some of the BumbleSpot locations will have Bumble benefits and promotions, too. For instance, with the Moxy partnership, Bumble users will receive complimentary access to Moxy's workspace for entrepreneurs on the go, food discounts, two-for-one cocktail specials.
LA Clippers Push Women’s Empowerment With Bumble Deal
CNN – Nov 7 – In the era of #MeToo dating app Bumble has teamed up with a high-profile sports team to "shake up" a predominantly male-driven industry. The Los Angeles Clippers signed a reported three-year $20M sponsorship deal with Bumble. The partnership launched with a #strongerwithher campaign at a Clippers game – encouraging fans to honor women who impact their lives. The deal places the dating app's logo as a patch on the Clippers' uniform.
IPO Could Value Bumble At $1.1 Billion
BLOOMBERG – Nov 5 – An IPO in Bumble could value the app at as low as $1.1B, below the $1.5 billion figure it was reportedly seeking in January, according to calculations by Synovus Trust senior portfolio manager Dan Morgan. Andrey Andreev, majority holder of Bumble's parent company, is talking to banks including JPMorgan Chase & Co. about a possible Nasdaq listing. Morgan applied the average multiple to an estimated 2019 revenue of $283M to get a $1.1B IPO valuation, though said it could increase on Bumble's plan to launch advertising next year.
by Shelly Hagan
See full article at Bloomberg
This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.
Bumble To Promote Bumble Bizz At Melbourne Cup Carnival
Bumble Is Slowly Backing Off On Its $400M Lawsuit Against Match Group
THE VERGE – Nov 2 – Bumble is looking to drop its $400M countersuit against Match Group. Yesterday, Match filed a notice of non-opposition, essentially saying that it's okay with Bumble dropping its claims so long as the court issues declaratory judgments absolving Match from allegedly stealing Bumble's trade secrets. Match is also hoping the court will issue declaratory judgments validating its patents and Bumble's alleged infringement of them, which are involved in its original lawsuit from March. Both companies seem okay backing away from this case for now, but Match seems to want to get some absolution out of it, especially if it'll benefit the company's lawsuit against Bumble. Match sees Bumble's countersuit as serving only as a publicity stunt to bolster its reputation.
by Makena Kelly & Ashley Carman
See full article at The Verge
Bumble Launches In India With Hindi Language Option
INDIANWEB2 – Nov 2 – Bumble launched in India last week by its founder Whitney Wolfe Herd and celebrity actor Priyanka Chopra, who is Bumble India's investor as well as brand ambassador of Bumble's India campaign. The app has Hindi language option too. The launch was done with a private dinner party at Gramercy Park Hotel in New York, hosted by Whitney Wolfe and Priyanka together. In India, Bumble will compete with local dating apps such as Woo and TrulyMadly besides Tinder of course. Bumble had a reported 22M users as of Nov 2017, and 27M downloads as of Feb 2018.
Why Dating Apps Are Trying To Stop Users Blanking Each Other
THE GUARDIAN – Nov 1 – Bumble and Badoo have announced plans to crack down on ghosting. Bumble has recruited an in-house 'ghosting' expert, Kate Leaver, and Badoo has introduced a series of suggested responses, such as: "Hey, I think you're great, but I don't see us as a match. Take care!" Leaver's role, building on the expertise she developed writing her book The Friendship Cure, is focused on pushing for "a revival of kindness and respect," she says. "People are ghosting everyone all over the place. I think they are too lazy, or too cowardly to have the difficult conversations," Leaver adds. "There has been some extreme psychological damage for people who are living without any explanation as to why they've been ghosted." Google, for instance, recently updated Gmail to introduce a feature called "nudges". The service prompts users to reply to emails that they "might have forgotten to respond to" and to "follow up" on emails they sent that never received a reply. While it can occasionally be useful, the feature is attempting to fight a symptom of information overload by adding more information to the pile. It's not enough to ignore an email. We now have to ignore it twice. Could nudging ghosters in the dating world simply add to the overload of the modern era? After all, as the psychologist Maya Borgueta has written in HuffPost, "ghosting is avoidance and often stems from fear of conflict. Which means that ghosting is about wanting to avoid confrontation, difficult conversations and avoid hurting someone's feelings." If that is the case, Badoo's pushy attempts to restart conversations could have the opposite effect: if you ghost because of a fear of confrontation, then it's not much help when your dating app begins confronting you.
by Alex Hern
See full article at The Guardian