Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Philanthropist and political contributor Barbara Lee plans to retire and wind down spending, women are outpacing "biohacking" bros, and Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd is ready for a new chapter. Have a great Tuesday!
- The right swipe. In the nine years since she founded the dating app Bumble, Whitney Wolfe Herd has led several versions of the company. First, she was a hyper-visible founder backed by a quiet majority shareholder. Then, in 2019 she bought him out with the help of Blackstone and became the CEO of a new parent company. In 2021, Wolfe Herd became the youngest woman to take a company public.
Yesterday, she announced a step into the next phase of her career and Bumble's existence. Wolfe Herd will step down as CEO of parent company Bumble Inc., she said, and become executive chair in January. Her successor is Lidiane Jones, the CEO of Slack.
Wolfe Herd founded Bumble at age 24 after exiting competitor Tinder, where she was a cofounder and allegedly the target of sexual harassment, as was well-chronicled in media reports and lawsuits. She came up with the idea for Bumble to solve some of the problems she saw on Tinder—namely that its "explosive and revolutionary" technology was "deeply flawed as it pertained to women," she told me in an interview yesterday.
But Wolfe Herd, now 34, is eager to return to her "founder roots." She's most energized when she's thinking big—not prepping for quarterly earnings calls. “I never started this company to be a publicly-traded CEO,” she says. “I started this company to solve a problem that I experienced. I started this company to solve problems for women around the world.”
She considered moving on from the CEO job for years but waited until she found "the right partner" to succeed her. Bumble's hire of Jones is a bit of a coup; Jones only became CEO of Salesforce-owned Slack 11 months ago. A Salesforce executive before that and an alum of Microsoft and Sonos, Jones is a product-minded executive; Wolfe Herd's biggest strengths are in brand and marketing. Jones takes over amid a difficult time for the dating app industry, which is struggling with falling revenue while high inflation tightens consumers’ budgets. Bumble's share price is around $13, a steep dive from its $70 2021 IPO price, and it dipped on news of the leadership transition yesterday. Jones plans to focus on incorporating more AI into Bumble's family of apps and driving more international growth.
The pair spent the day together in New York yesterday. "I looked at Whitney this morning and said, ‘Wow, from the youngest woman to take a company public to an immigrant that came here on a scholarship—this is what Bumble is is all about,'" Jones told me.
Read my full interview with both Bumble leaders here.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
@_emmahinchliffe
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