Bumble Stumbles: How The Dating App Got To This Point

On February 19, Bumble announced in its 2024 financial report that it is sunsetting its acquired dating and relationship apps, Fruitz and Official. This is just the most recent downsizing decision in a series of tactical efforts to cut costs for the company, an industry giant alongside Tinder and Hinge. Bumble’s declining profits, falling engagement, and leadership shuffle has prompted the question: “How did we get here?”

The answer may lie in the current state of the dating app industry, which has been transformed by burgeoning technologies like AI and an increased user demand for safety. Which app can provide the most cutting-edge service the quickest? Which can drive the most engagement? Modernization costs big bucks, which makes consistent growth vital. Bumble, meanwhile, has only seen sluggish growth in the last year.

The numbers are grim: Markets Insider reported that Bumble’s value has fallen 92% in the four years since it first went public.

Let’s take a look back at Bumble’s origin to track its rise — and its potential fall.

Bumble Launches in 2014

“When I founded Bumble, it was because I saw a problem I wanted to help solve,” Bumble’s founder, Whitney Wolfe Herd, wrote in an open letter on Bumble’s website in 2020. The problem she noticed was how outdated gender dynamics often favored men over women, leading to an imbalance of power, particularly in the early stages of a relationship. “I thought, what if I could flip that on its head? What if women made the first move, and sent the first message?”

What made Bumble unique was its women-led infrastructure, and we mean “women-led” in more ways than one. Wolfe Herd not only founded Bumble, but led the company as its CEO. Wolfe Herd, who co-founded Tinder but left after alleging sexual harassment and sex discrimination, struck gold when she emphasized Bumble’s feminist values.

Women want to feel safe in the dating world, and Bumble’s female-friendly mission resonated with its users.

In 2017, Bumble Represents The Growing #MeToo Movement

The 2010s was a golden age for dating apps — and for Bumble. But by the end of the decade, #MeToo and #TimesUp put the spotlight on the sexual harassment countless women experience on a daily basis. Dating apps reflected on how they could make their users safer while promoting a positive user experience.

By giving women the power to make the first move, Bumble stood out as a relatively safe space for female daters. Bumble was a prominent voice for women’s empowerment during this time, and it wasn’t all talk. In 2017, Bumble became one of the first dating apps to implement photo verification in an effort to ensure its users’ identities.

By 2016-2017, Bumble wasn’t only about dating anymore. It expanded into what Wolfe Herd called a “lifestyle brand” that included Bumble BFF, a friendship-making app, and Bumble Bizz, a professional networking app.

Bumble’s success was evident when it was valued at $1 billion in 2017.

In 2021, Bumble Goes Public

Bumble’s success reached new heights when it registered its IPO in 2021. Valued at over $13 billion, Bumble solidified its place as one of the most popular and recognizable dating apps in the industry.

However, 2021 marked one year of the pandemic, and the stress showed; dating app users across the board reported dating app fatigue. For the first time since the 2010s, young people looked elsewhere to make meaningful connections. Popular dating apps competed for the consumer’s waning enthusiasm, making their next moves all the more vital.

Bumble Makes Key Acquisitions in 2022 & 2023

Despite waning user retention, Bumble, Inc. stuck to its 2020 goals when it acquired Fruitz, a European dating app, in 2022. The app company also acquired Official, a relationship app for couples, in 2023.

By this time, it was clear that dating app fatigue wasn’t going anywhere. Bumble’s dating trend predictions for 2022 were particularly telling. It highlighted the modern daters’ interest in new experiences and meeting new people — off the apps, it’s implied — as well as people embracing the single life. It was a sure sign of the times when Bumble released the app Bumble For Friends in 2023, which emphasized platonic connections over romantic relationships.

2023 marked big changes for Bumble when Wolfe Herd departed as CEO. Slack’s former CEO, Lidiane Jones, took the helm. Q4 earnings were disappointing, due in part to inflation tightening users’ purse strings and limiting in-app purchases.

Bumble Pivots In 2024, With Lackluster Results

Under Jones’ leadership, Bumble acquired the friend-finding app Geneva in 2024. But a fresh viewpoint didn’t prevent sluggish earnings, which led to layoffs of 30% of Bumble’s workforce.

With a smaller team and more properties than ever, Bumble focused on innovation to stand out from the crowd. Bumble, Inc. announced that it was developing an in-app chatbot in an effort to refresh people’s enthusiasm. 2024’s overall earnings, however, showed a continued decline in revenue and user retention.

Total revenue decreased 4.4% from Q4 in 2023 to 2024, and the app lost 57,000 paying users between Q3 and Q4.

Bumble’s Future is Unclear in 2025

So far, 2025 has been a year of shake-ups at Bumble.

Bumble anticipated Q1’s total revenue to land between $242 million and $248 million. But just as it passed the mid-point of Q1, Bumble projected that its anticipated earnings will fall short of its projections. This led to the company’s stock (BMBL) falling, too – by 27%. Perhaps Bumble’s next move, then, was unsurprising. “We have made the strategic decision to discontinue Fruitz and Official,” Wolfe Herd announced in Bumble, Inc.’s 2024 financial report. “We expect the closure of these apps to result in an approximately $12 million revenue headwind for the year.”

In addition to sunsetting Fruitz and Official, Bumble also announced that Wolfe Herd will be returning to Bumble as CEO. This signals a companywide effort to focus on what it does best: providing a safe dating app experience for women, with empowerment as an overarching goal. Still, Wolfe Herd herself has said that the values Bumble was founded on are not as relevant today as they were in 2014.

“When I started Bumble, a big part of our success was that it was about removing rejection and filling confidence, but we are in a new dawn,” she said. “We need to make sure that this is being initiated in every touch point of our product.”

To combat falling engagement, Wolfe Herd has refocused her attention to Bumble properties that exist outside of the romance space. “When you look at the post-grad audience, which is Gen Z, they are eager, and I hate to use this word, but quite literally desperate to find friends,” she said in the recent earnings call. “Women in particular have no issue joining our product even when they’re in a romantic relationship so that they can find community and friends.” Perhaps this is why Bumble, Inc. retained the friend-finding app Geneva, despite it not earning revenue as of December 31, 2024.

There may be better days ahead for Bumble: TechCrunch suggested that Wolfe Herd’s return will lead to a confidence boost among investors.

According to Wolfe Herd, Bumble’s revitalization is dependent on its ability to innovate while staying true to the values that made it a billion dollar company. In this way, Bumble must return, in part, to its company roots, which were born from opposition. Bumble was originally created to empower young women in the dating world, and Wolfe Herd has suggested that expanding on this vision may be the key to recovery.