TINDER CO-FOUNDER WHITNEY WOLFE ON WHY BUMBLE IS DIFFERENT
The new dating app—which nudges women to make the first move—may be just the social crutch we needed.
Saturday night, 1 AM. The twilight of the weekend prowling hour. I found myself, as I often do, at a crowded bar with a handful of single girlfriends in a room full of attractive young New Yorkers. Furtive glances abounded. Pickup lines, not so much.
As I watched the mood quickly deflate along with the prospect of meeting someone, I started to get fed up. Why were these educated, progressive, impressive (and yeah, hot) young women so completely paralyzed? It certainly wasn't because the men didn't want them to approach them—anEsquire/Cosmopolitan survey recently found that only 4 percent of men believe that making the first move "should" be up to them. So I dispatched my gloomy friends one by one to talk to whomever they'd had their eye on. No one walked out of the bar last night without exchanging numbers with someone.
I'm not always in the mood to be that pushy—just as I'm sure my friends aren't always in the mood to be set up, middle school dance style. That's where Bumble, the new dating app from the female co-founder of Tinder, comes in.
Dozens of new dating apps have hit the market in the last few years, each with its own twist on the swipe-right formula: Hinge connects you through your mutual friends; Happn uses location-based technology to link you with passersby; Grouper sends you out on blind group dates. But Bumble's formula is by far the most interesting. Once you've got a match, the clock starts ticking. Within 24 hours, the woman has to initiate conversation if she wants to hold on to a match. Otherwise he disappears.
When Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe met me on a freezing March afternoon in New York City, I could have believed she'd stepped into the building straight out of the California sunshine. She's irrepressibly bright, with blond hair and two-tone hazel eyes that lend her an easy, comfortable gaze. She is not what I expected.
Following her departure from Tinder and a sexual harassment scandal that won her an unknown—but surely significant—settlement, the media coverage of Wolfe was not entirely kind. When you Google her name, for example, one of the first images to pop up poses her next to a pile of gold bricks with the caption "Digger?" But about five minutes into our chat, it became clear that bitterness was not on the table.
When I asked her if there was even the tiniest revenge fantasy behind her newfound success, she told me quite sincerely that the opposite was true: "The truth is that I wanted nothing to do with the dating world ever again." When the idea for Bumble came along, however, she looked back at her experience and realized that she was uniquely qualified to reform the online dating landscape. "There are so many women in this world that don't have the resources to go and do something like this and be innovative. I have every ingredient to do it. If I didn't, it would be a real waste."
If Tinder is defined by male-dominant—and, arguably, misogynist—leadership, Bumble brings just the opposite to the table. The startup's feminist origins are reflected in the nature of the company and its product. Wolfe asks me to conjure an image of a tech startup. Pale, skinny guys in sweatshirts come to mind. "We have a badass team of women." Even the programmers? "Our coder is a beautiful woman."
I had to give the app a test run. It was like someone had sifted through the population of Tinder and left only the choicest picks. Gone were the shirtless selfies and the "Is that a banana in your pocket?" sweatpants. And yet there was something for everyone: Finance bros, guys in bands, startup founders, outdoorsy types. I picked a few matches and watched the 24-hour timer set in motion.
That's when that familiar feeling set in. How do I break the ice? Are they going to think I'm too intense? This is embarrassing. I should just walk away. I remembered what Wolfe had told me: "Bumble is your excuse. If you say hi to him first, it's Bumble's fault. You being forward and empowering and confident—we'll take responsibility for that. We made you do it!" What the hell, if she was willing to own up to it for me….
I let one match expire without saying hello. I messaged another and never heard back. I struck up a conversation about Texas with the third—Craig, whose profile told me his hometown—and a few messages later, he asked me out for drinks.
Bumble does for our adherence to dated dating rules what Tinder did to the fear of unrequited admiration: It gives you no excuse not to break the mold. Sure, there is something inherently artificial about all this, but even if it takes someone or something else—whether an iPhone app or a pushy best friend—to throw you into the deep end, you're still going to have to do the swimming yourself.
Things didn't work out with Craig, but when I went to a wedding a week later, I bashfully eyed a cute guy all weekend. During the reception, I finally saw him standing alone by the dance floor. I tossed back some champagne, made a beeline for him, and asked if he wanted to dance. It worked out just fine. I guess I blame Bumble.
