Whitney Wolfe Herd opens the double doors of her suite at the Oberoi Hotel in New Delhi in a hotel bathrobe, her face hidden beneath a sea foam–green beauty mask. “Do you use any dating apps?” she asks the trio of room-service waiters as they roll a large trolley table into the room. Indeed they do. “Bumble has changed my life,” says a handsome 23-year-old named Shlok, who could be a spokesperson for the four-year-old dating-and-networking company. “We don’t have time to meet people.”

Wolfe Herd’s eyes widen, delighted. And though it’s 1:30 a.m. on a December night, and she has just changed out of the floor-length beaded Indian gown that she wore to Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas’s Delhi wedding reception (the last of five days of Chopra-Jonas festivities), the Bumble CEO and founder doesn’t seem remotely tired. It is mid-morning in Austin, Texas, where the company has its headquarters, and there’s work to be done. Wolfe Herd, 29, is joined by three female Bumble staffers in sweatpants and company T-shirts, MacBooks clutched under their arms. She serves everyone red wine and Margherita pizza. The mood is buzzing, on-brand-business meeting meets pajama party.

Wolfe Herd tells me Bumble is profitable, in the range of $200 million in revenue last year

A company by women for women: Bumble was founded on this idea before it became fashionable, in what could be called the PreToo era, in the days before power woman T-shirts were sold at J.Crew. It began as a dating app with a simple concept: Give women the agency to dictate their own relationships and overturn the dynamics of online courtship by letting them make the first move. Now, Bumble wants to be nothing less than a purveyor of female empowerment worldwide, a social and professional network as much as a romantic one. Συνέχεια ανάγνωσης Inside Dating-App Bumble’s Bid For Global Domination →