Whitney Wolfe Herd returned in March to lead Bumble, the dating app she founded and took public, following the unexpected departure of CEO Lidiane Jones. Now, in a New York Times interview, Wolfe Herd opens up about what happened.
“I had no intentions of coming back,” Wolfe Herd says. Her post-Bumble life initially brought existential questions about her identity, eventually giving way to daily meditation and board calls from the sidelines. That changed when Jones reached out to confess she was overwhelmed. Shortly after that conversation, Jones resigned.
Wolfe Herd dismisses speculation of conflict between them. “I think the world wants people – particularly when it’s a woman to a woman – they want there to be some riff. There’s no riff,” she emphasizes.
Wolfe Herd recognized her own burnout reflected in Jones’s exhaustion. “I felt like I was looking in a mirror. I felt like I was looking at myself a year prior… [Jones] herself had made some of the same mistakes I had made, which was working that extra hour, putting in that extra trip.”
Herd, who announced Friday on Instagram that she’s expecting her third child, addresses the company’s struggles in her Times interview. With Bumble this week reporting first-quarter earnings that fell 7.7% year-over-year, she say that, “Bumble needs me back. It’s an extension of me to some degree, and watching it fall from its peak has been very hard.”
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