Define special dating

Now Bumble is betting that its matchmaking technology can do more than foster romantic or personal connections.

After launching its Bumble BFF vertical a year ago, which pairs users with new friends, Wolfe is repositioning the company to make room for Bumble Bizz, a professional networking vertical debuting in early October where users can look for work, find a business partner, or hire new talent.

One key to Bizz’s success will be drawing a new demographic of users into Bumble’s ecosystem.

“I think what’s been interesting for me—let me say this delicately—when I’ve been surrounded by men who don’t believe women are equal, I didn’t think women were equal, including myself.”During a coffee break at Bumble’s office, more than a dozen members of the staff, who are as loose and casual with one another as longtime friends, crowd around a laptop perched on the kitchen counter. It features the company’s director of college marketing jumping out of a plane shortly after she started chatting with a match on Bumble (the ad’s closing statement: #taketheleap).

It’s on track to take in more than 0 million in revenue in 2018.

(The basic app is free, but more than 10% of its active users pay up to .99 per month for a subscription, which grants access to premium features such as a list of people who have already swiped right on them.) Bumble’s users are emboldened by the app’s impressively low rate of abuse reports; in addition to banning people like Connor, Bumble also blocks those who send unwanted nude photos, and it was the first dating app to initiate photo verification practices, limiting the potential for fake profiles.

In August of 2014, Andreev and Wolfe met in Greece to discuss partnering on a female-centric dating app.

Three years after that first conversation, Bumble has amassed more than 20 million users, and it continues to add more than 50,000 new ones per day.