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Bumble, Badoo, Billionaires

'Be the CEO your parents
always wanted you to marry'

Whitney Wolfe Herd, founder and CEO of female-led and focused dating app Bumble, has certainly practised what this company tagline preached by becoming "a rare female billionaire" (Bloomberg).
'Make the first move'
Founded in 2014 with a women-first approach, Bumble differentiates itself with a system whereby in heterosexual matches, only female users can make the first contact with matched male users, while in same-sex matches either person can send a message first.
The encouragement to 'make the first move' is supported with sassy ads like the 2020 campaign below.  Comedian/actor Tiffany Haddish ('Like A Boss', 'Night School', 'Girls Trip') teams up with NBA baseball player Montrezl Harrell for a newscast spoof where they watch unsuspecting couples on a first date, comment, and decide when to step in....
Wolfe Herd, 31, was initially backed by Russian tech billionaire Andrey Andreev, who founded another popular dating app, Badoo, in 2006.
Andreev supported the 'by women, for women' approach which has boosted Bumble to the No 2 slot (behind Tinder) in the USA. Wolfe Herd's stake is now valued at $1.5 billion.
Badoo and the Private Detector
'Date honestly' is the message from Badoo, and this campaign, which also went out during the lockdown months of 2020, brings a light touch to the ongoing issue of unwanted 'dick pics'.
You'll need to watch the whole 2'20" to get the full effect as Badoo presents its Private Detector, software it's brought in to prevent dating participants from being sent unsolicited images of other members' members.
As British rapper Big Narstie says in the ad, offering premature pix of your sausage is, to say the least, unnecessary. The safety feature uses artificial intelligence to picks up dick pics, nudes, and any other type of images that are of an intimate nature and blurs out the content so that the recipient can choose to see it or not. 
Vive la différence?
There are, of course, still differences in how people perceive the dating scene. Many would like to maintain some mystique in the process, for example - 'equality' and respect do not mean everyone is the 'same'.
On the financial side of things, Wolfe Herd told Bloomberg she hopes news of women billionaires will cease to be a rare headline.
She also said of women-led management:

“Hopefully this will be the norm. It’s the right thing to do, it’s a priority for us and
it should be a priority for everyone else.”

Statista reports that in 2019, the billionaire global gender split was 2,489 men and 336 women.
This chart puts a visual on another différence - the geographical distribution of female-controlled wealth:


Posted by Tree Elven on 07/08/2021

Keywords: Bumble, Badoo, Billionaires, dating apps, Whitney Wolfe Herd, female wealth, female-led companies, female billionaires

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