(Reuters) – Bumble Inc Chief Executive Officer Whitney Wolfe Herd’s stake in the women-centric dating app operator was worth nearly $2 billion, as shares rallied for a second straight day after a blockbuster debut on Thursday.
Bumble, backed by Blackstone Group Inc, was valued at $15.69 billion on Friday, with its stock price nearly doubling from the initial public offering price of $43 per share, underscoring investor’s insatiable appetite for tech shares in a buoyant U.S. equities market.
Wolfe Herd owns 21.5 million shares in Bumble, equating to a 11.6% stake, regulatory filings showed.
With the blockbuster IPO, Wolfe Herd, 31, became the youngest female CEO to ever take a company public as she rang the opening bell from Bumble’s Austin-based offices with her one-year-old son by her side.
The women-first approach has set Bumble apart in a competitive online dating market, Wolfe Herd told Reuters on Thursday.
Bumble users are more likely to pay for premium offerings to have a deeper level of connection or a different approach to connection, said Wolfe Herd, listing offering incognito mode as a popular feature for people to browse others’ profile while being anonymous.
Wolfe Herd, who graduated with a degree in International Studies from the Southern Methodist University’s Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, launched the Bumble app in 2014.
Wolfe Herd is also a co-founder of rival app Tinder, which she later sued, alleging that her co-founders subjected her to sexual harassment. Tinder parent Match Group Inc, which denied the allegations, paid about $1 million to settle the dispute.
Bumble’s shares were up 13.5% in afternoon trade on Friday, after rising as much as 20.6% to $84.8 earlier in the session.
(Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru and Krystal Hu in New York; Editing by Anil D’Silva)
