Whitney Wolfe and Leandra Medine are speaking at the Girlboss rally in New York City. Cindy Ord is the photographer for Girlboss Media.
Getty.
One day it is, the next it is not. Much like with the heart, wealth can change very quickly.
Whitney Wolfe Herd, the world's youngest self-made woman billionaire, has seen her fortune knocked down by a steep drop in Bumble shares.
At Monday's closing price of $35.03 per share, the Wolfe Herd was worth an estimated $940 million. Since third quarter earnings were released three weeks ago, her net worth has fallen by more than $200 million. Wolfe Herd founded a dating app in which women make the first move. Her family office previously told Forbes that she will have about $100 million from the sale of a portion of her ownership in 2020.
Representatives for the family office of Bumble and Herd did not respond to questions about the story.
At its IPO in February, Bumble had investors buzzing. The second big dating app to go public after Match Group in 2015 raised over $2 billion at an $8.6 valuation after opening trading at $76 per share. The success of the IPO made Wolfe Herd, the world's youngest self-made billionaire woman, as well as the youngest female CEO to take a company public.
Since, it has struggled to hold onto the same steam. The share price peaked at $78.89 per share on February 16. They were near $60 in September and then plummeted. The company posted a decline in overall user growth for the first time since its IPO, with total paying users dropping to 2.87 million in the three months through September, down from 2.93 million in the prior quarter.
While the drop in users was mostly tied to Badoo, which is popular outside the U.S., investors were more concerned by the performance of its namesake women-focused dating app, which didn't tally nearly as many new paid users as expected. Match Group reported a record number of users for its dating app, while Bumble added 60,000 new paid customers.
The company as a whole beat Wall Street expectations with a total revenue of $201 million for the quarter, and raised its full-year revenue forecast as a result. The company lost more than double what analysts predicted, but it trimmed its losses to $10.7 million.
There are other companies that are struggling after their IPO. Half of the companies that raised more than $1 billion at IPOs this year are trading below their listing prices, despite strong performances of stock markets and the surge in IPOs, which have raised $330 billion so far this year, according to data provided by the Financial Times. The market cap of Swedish oat-milk darling Oatly is about $7.5 billion below its May debut. Deliveroo and Paytm are both still below their listing prices after seeing steep stock drops following high-profile IPOs.
Wolfe Herd launched the dating app after leaving the dating app. She sued her former employer for sexual harassment and discrimination, claiming she was stripped of her co-founder title and sent threats and derogatory text messages to her ex-boyfriend. The case was quickly and confidentially settled by the company, and Wolfe Herd enlisted the help of a Russian billionaire to build an alternative dating app focused on providing women with a safer environment.
The Badoo/Bumble company's London headquarters was found to be a toxic, misogynistic environment by a Forbes investigation. Shortly after the Forbes article was published, he launched an investigation into the alleged toxic office culture. The private equity firm bought a majority stake in MagicLab, the parent company of the Bumble/Badoo brands, in a deal that valued the group at $3 billion.
