Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd. Photo credit: TechCrunch, licensed under CC BY 2.0

Dating app Bumble has forged ahead with its previously reported plans of going public and has courted investment banks Goldman Sachs and Citigroup to lead a public offering, according to a report [paywalled] by Bloomberg. Bumble is said to be targeting a valuation of between $6 billion to $8 billion and could list as early as the first quarter of next year.

Bumble was started in 2014 by Whitney Wolfe Herd, an entrepreneur who previously co-founded the popular dating app Tinder. She founded Bumble after leaving Tinder under tumultuous circumstances that led to a lawsuit and later a settlement from the company. 

Bumble was initially part of MagicLab, a dating app collective that was founded by Russian entrepreneur Andrey Andreev. Andreev was the first investor in Bumble and held a majority stake in the dating app before selling it to private equity firm Blackstone last year. Following the sale, the MagicLab collective has rebranded as “Bumble”, consisting of the Bumble app itself and another popular dating site, Badoo.

Andreev left Bumble after its sale to Blackstone last year and has already founded a new company, the social audio app Stereo. His departure transferred the leadership of Bumble to its founder Whitney Wolfe Herd, who’s now apparently set to take the company public. A Bumble IPO would mark it as one of the few publicly-traded dating app companies, similar to the Match Group which owns Tinder, the dating app she previously co-founded.

Share this...

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Linkedin

Whatsapp

Email

Print