Bumble | Business Upturn

Top 7 women entrepreneurs in the world: From Bumble founder to Canva founder

Adnan Nasir — Tue, 07 May 2024 19:14:25 +0000

It is a well documented fact that women led businesses receive significantly less funding than those with men at the helm. However, this is not it as there are many more barriers which are specifically faced by women entrepreneurs. It is important to spotlight women, who overcome these hurdles and reach the incredible heights of success.

Top 7 women entrepreneurs in the world

Susan Wojcicki

Susan Wojcicki is a well- known female entrepreneur in the tech world, most recognized for her leadership as the former CEO of YouTube (2014-2023). Her journey to success is interwoven with the rise of Google and YouTube itself. She played a crucial part during the early days of Google, as she rented out her garage, which served as the company’s first office space in 1998, and also became the tech giant’s 16th employee.

Sheryl Sandberg

Sheryl Sandberg is someone who cannot be ignored in the tech industry, as she is not only a highly successful entrepreneur but also a prominent author and advocate for women in leadership. Her most recognizable role was as the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Meta from 2008 to 2022.

Beyond Facebook, Sandberg is the founder of LeanIn.Org, a non- profit organization that empowers women to achieve their ambitions.

Reshma Saujani

Being the founder of Girls Who Code, Reshma Saujani’s path to success in the tech world is a unique one. While many focuses on building businesses, Saujani’s passion lies in empowering women through technology. She pursued career in politics after graduating from Yale University. Her platform Girls Who Code has managed to reach 450,000 girls in all 50 US states and across 20 countries.

Kiran Mazumdar- Shaw

Following her father’s footprints, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw earned an undergraduate degree in zoology from Bangalore University and a graduate degree in brewing from the University of Ballarat, Melbourne. Unable to land a job in brewing, she started consulting, before meeting Leslie Auchincloss, then owner of Biocon Biochemicals. Leslie took Kiran as a partner in Biocon India, the company, which was launched in 1978 in India.

Anne Boden

Anne Boden is a name synonymous with innovation and a breath of fresh air in the often stagnant world of FinTech. As the founder and former CEO of Starling Bank, UK’s first mobile only bank built entirely from scratch, she over came the glass ceiling and became the first ever woman in the history of UK to establish a bank.

Melanie Perkins

Melanie Perkins is an Australian billionaire known for revolutionizing graphic design accessibility with a little company you might have heard of called Canva. She launched the company in 2013 with her partner Cliff Obrecht and friend Cameron Adams. Despite of initial investor skepticism due to its Australian origin, the platform went on to garner 60 million monthly user and have attracted companies like Zoom and Intel for their paid plans.

Whitney Wolfe Herd

Whitney Wolfe Herd is not only the most successful women entrepreneur, but is also currently active in reshaping the online dating scenario as she founded the popular dating website Bumble. She has served as CEO and is currently the Executive Chair on the dating app known for its “women make the first move” policy.

Before Bumble, Wolfe was one of the co-founders of Tinder, another prominent dating app, and played a key role in its initial marketing and user base growth.

Zeenat Aman has got the best advice if your family opposes your partner due to caste, race, religion or gender; “In the long run – great…”

Sheetal Choudhary — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 10:09:51 +0000

Zeenat Aman is one of the wholesome personalities on the internet. The veteran actress is quite active on social media and keeps sharing interesting anecdotes from her early life. Today, on the occasion of Valentine’s Day, Zeenat shared a post with a few dating tips for teenagers. Her wisdom on peculiar topics will surely give you enlightening solutions.

In her latest collaboration with the dating app Bumble, the actress shared a bunch of snaps on her Instagram account. “If your family opposes your relationship because of matters of caste, class, religion, gender or any other such divisive construct — challenge them! But if they dislike your partner for deeper reasons, hear them out. I’m not saying they’re necessarily right… I’m saying that often our loved ones can grant us missing perspective. There’s certainly been an occasion or two where I wish I’d listened to my amma!”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Zeenat Aman (@thezeenataman)

The actress further added, “Those first few heady months of a relationship will strip you of your reason. That’s usually the ploy of infatuation and lust, don’t mistake it for love!”

Zeenat explains the mere importance of enjoying mundane activities with your respective partner. “In the long run – great sex, a stacked bank account and sweet talk are meaningless if you can’t enjoy the mundane together. This is not to say that sex and finances are unimportant. Compatibility on those fronts are essential too!”

The actress addresses red flags in a relationship and how to be more reserved, “Preserve your sense of self against all odds. If your partner wants to entirely change you, they don’t love you. They love control. On that note, make sure you’re financially independent of them. A relationship should be a choice not a circumstance!”

Zeenat Aman was married to the late filmmaker Mazhar Khan. She has two sons from her marriage- Azaan Khan and Zahaan Khan.

Talking about her dating life, she said, “These days I’m dating myself. I do for me all the things that a loving, long-term partner would, but without the irritation of having to deal with another human’s flatulence and snores.

“Which brings me to my final realisation – in love, there are no givens! And if you can’t find a person to love you as you deserve, then it should be enough to love yourself.”

Bumble Inc. gives 700 employees a break to recover from COVID-19 burnout

Diya S. — Tue, 22 Jun 2021 07:01:36 +0000

Bumble Inc., the dating and relationship app has temporarily shut its offices this week. The app where women have to make the first move has provided its about 700 employees a ‘much-needed break’ to combat COVID-19 burnout or simply, workplace stress.

All fully vaccinated employees are required to return to the office by fall in corporations like Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Company. Apply Inc. has pursued a hybrid work-from-home strategy while Twitter has stated that many employees will work from home indefinitely.

An internal letter seen by The Verge, said that Apple’s policy has “already forced some of our colleagues to quit.”

During the pandemic, as Zoom happy hours, Netflix parties and online coffee dates were introduced, in-person dates went virtual.

Companies such as the accounting firm KPMG has introduced new steps to combat the fatigue and burnout some of the workers might experience after more than a year of working in a set up that was less than ideal home.

Many businesses have thrived but many of their workers are on the verge of quitting. According to a study by Microsoft Corporation , 41 percent of the workers may quit in 2021.

Amidst a trend of employers persuading their employees to stay as they have their best interests, the paid vacation for Bumble staff and employees at its Latin American unit Badoo has come into existence.

Bumble founder, Whitney Wolfe Herd becomes youngest female billionaire

Sanah Shah — Fri, 12 Feb 2021 08:10:19 +0000

Bumble, a social application that is woman-centric has led to its founder, Whitney Wolfe Herd to be declared a billionaire. Wolfe Herd is an American entrepreneur and founder and CEO of Bumble which was launched in 2014.

Shares of Bumble Inc. surged 67% in its trading debut to $72 in New York, valuing Chief Executive Officer Whitney Wolfe Herd’s stake at $1.5 billion.

The listing betters a tale that’s both an inspiring and alerting narrative for women tech founders. Wolfe Herd capitalized on an unattended and underserved market and created a multibillion-dollar company that was in some sense born from one of the most antagonizing hurdles for women entrepreneurs: sexual harassment.

“Hopefully this will not be a rare headline,” Wolfe Herd said on Thursday 11th February in an interview with Bloomberg Television, about Bumble’s remarkable 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.”

Bumble’s IPO launches Wolfe Herd into an exclusive league of self-made and independent female billionaires. While women make up about half of the global population, self-made women (mainly from Asia) hold less than 5% of the world’s 500 biggest fortunes, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Self-made men occupy almost two-thirds of the wealth index.

There have been 559 companies that have gone public in the U.S. over the past 12 months and just two, apart from Bumble, were founded by women. This can also be seen with blank-check firms, Wall Street’s preferred wealth-boosting vehicle currently. Women-sponsored SPACs summed up to be lesser than a dozen, a fraction of the 349 that listed in the past year.

This means that women are largely being left behind in what’s likely the fastest wealth-creation boom in history. Last year the world’s 500 richest people gained $1.8 trillion, yet 91% of that bonanza was sent to men, according to the Bloomberg index.

“This is a huge win,” commented Allyson Kapin, general partner at investment firm W Fund and founder of the Women Who Tech network. “Whitney saw an opportunity that wasn’t being addressed for women and based on her expertise she’s made it into this gold mine, not just for her and her team but also her investors.”

Among the numerous obstructions and barriers to women and other underrepresented groups in the startup world, including people of colour, harassment is one of the most common. A Women Who Tech survey last year found that 44% of female founders polled reported they’d experienced harassment on the job, with more than a third of that group facing sexual harassment.

Harassment propelled the creation of Bumble. Wolfe Herd founded the Austin, Texas-based company in 2014 post her departure from Tinder, the rival dating app she assisted in founding. The split was bitter, highlighted by a sexual harassment lawsuit Wolfe Herd filed against the company, claiming among other things that she was repeatedly called demeaning names by executives and her co-founder title waken removed since having a “girl” with that title “makes the company seem like a joke.” The suit was settled later.

Growing Experience

Wolfe Herd began with an idea to create a female-only social network for women to send each other compliments but landed up focusing on match-making based on the advice of Russian tech billionaire Andrey Andreev, the founder of dating app Badoo.

With Andreev’s support, Wolfe Herd founded Bumble as a service “by women, for women,” promoting it as a place where women were empowered and harassment was vehemently kept in check. It’s has gone onto growing into the second-most popular dating app in the U.S. with the assistance of advertisements carrying tag lines such as: “Be the CEO your parents always wanted you to marry.”

Wolfe Herd took over from Andreev when Blackstone Group Inc. bought a majority stake in Bumble’s owner at a valuation of about $3 billion last year. As part of the deal, Wolfe Herd received about $125 million in cash and a $119 million loan that she’s repaid in full.

“I felt very comfortable handing the baton to Whitney,” Andreev said in an email. “She has proved to be very insightful and innovative in the dating space.”

Main Obstacle

Wolfe Herd’s partnership with Andreev helped her overcome a key obstacle of funding to women-led, women-focused startups. Less than 3% of venture capital dollars go to startups founded by women, according to Pitchbook data, a figure that’s barely moved over the past decade.

Venture capitalists tend to fund what they know and who’s in their network which creates the gap. Evidence shows that women-led startups actually produce better returns than those founded by men. Studies by the Kauffman Foundation, MassChallenge and BCG found that female-founded companies generated more revenue and were notably more capital efficient.

“This isn’t about charity, it’s about making a ton of money,” said Women Who Tech’s Kapin.

Another high-profile listing on the horizon is that of the Honest Co., a baby and beauty products company co-founded by actress Jessica Alba that’s apparently preparing to go public.

Women in the startup world are optimistic about a new horizon. “Whitney’s success will help further the case for investing in businesses that serve a female audience or that are founded by women,” said Austin venture capitalist Kelsi Kamin. “It’s a super exciting time.”

Bumble, OkCupid, Grindr etc can affect millions of Android users: Here’s how

Sarthak Yadav — Tue, 08 Dec 2020 07:53:25 +0000

Some of the popular dating, travel and video calling apps on Google Play Store are vulnerable to a known bug CVE-2020-8913, which can be exploited by hackers and can inject malicious codes as well as steal personal information or spy on users, researchers at Check Point found. It is found to be in the Google Play Core library that is used by app developers to send updates with new features to their respective apps on Android phones.

Apps such as Bumble, OkCupid, Cisco Teams, Yango Pro, Edge, Xrecorder, PowerDirector, and Grindr can affect millions of Android phones users.

If not fixed, they can wipe clean all sensitive information such as login details, passwords, financial details from the applications on the phone.

The bug was discovered several months ago by researchers at Oversecured and they notified Google to kill the bug in the Play Core library and the company duly updated the library.

An advisory was sent to all application developers to upgrade to the latest version of the Play core library but very few such as Viber and Booking have complied with the request, while Cisco Webex Teams, Ynago Pro, Grindr, OkCupid, Bumble, Edge, Xrecorder and PowerDirector, and many other, which form 8% of the total apps on Google Play Store are still using the old Play Core library with vulnerabilities.

Aviran Hazum, Manager of Mobile Research, Check Point, said “We’re estimating that hundreds of millions of Android users are at a security risk. Although Google implemented a patch, many apps are still using outdated Play Core libraries. The vulnerability CVE-2020-8913 is highly dangerous. If a malicious application exploits this vulnerability, it can gain code execution inside popular applications, obtaining the same access as the vulnerable application. For example, the vulnerability could allow a threat actor to steal two-factor authentication codes or inject code into banking applications to grab credentials. Or, a threat actor could inject code into social media applications to spy on victims or inject code into all IM apps to grab all messages. The attack possibilities here are only limited by a threat actor’s imagination.”