Finances

Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd

Over the last four years, Bumble has conquering dating, friendship, and business networking. Now the buzzy company has set its sights on a new arena: startup investments.

Bumble Fund is a new venture focused on early-stage investments for female-founded and female-led businesses. The fund will invest amounts ranging from $5,000 to $250,000 in companies that primarily serve women and are spearheaded by female leaders from diverse backgrounds.

“Investing in and empowering women in business is something that our founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd is deeply passionate about and is at the very core of what Bumble stands for,” said Sarah Jones Simmer, Bumble COO, who will lead Bumble Fund’s investment strategy alongside Bumble Senior Advisor, Sarah Kunst. “Through Bumble Fund we’ll look not only to support those women leaders who have been largely ignored, but we’ll also demonstrate why those investments build smart, successful businesses.”

Sean Rad, Co-founder of Tinder

Former and current Tinder employees slapped a lawsuit against parent company Match Group, claiming the popular dating app was purposefully devalued at the time Match Group was valuating stock options. The Tinder employees suing Match Group were placed on administrative leave, according to a report by MSN.

The ten former and current Tinder employees initiating the lawsuit include founder and ex-CEO Sean Rad along with co-founders Justin Mateen and Jonathan Badeen. Tinder’s VP of Communications Rosette Pambakian has also joined the lawsuit, and claims that IAC/ Match Group executive Greg Blatt sexually harassed her at a company party. (IAC changed its name to Match Group, but the company is still owned by media mogul Barry Diller.)

Pambakian wrote an email to Tinder employees explaining her decision, as reported by Fortune Magazine:

Match Group, the parent company of popular dating apps such as Tinder, OkCupid, and PlentyofFish, reported second quarter earnings of $421 million, exceeding industry analyst expectations.

The rise in profits was thanks to its star app Tinder, which gained an additional 300,000 subscribers in Q2 alone, and has seen a record 3.8 million subscribers to date. Match Group expects to earn $1.72 billion this year, with Tinder expected to exceed $800 million in revenue, according to Fortune Magazine. Match Group’s subscribers for all apps total about 7.7 million.

“Retention and conversion were a bit stronger than we thought they would be,” Chief Executive Mandy Ginsberg told website MarketWatch.

This week, Match Group announced it has acquired dating app Hinge. According to the press release, the deal gives Match Group a 51 percent stake in the company. Match first started buying shares in Sept of 2017 and has the option to buy remaining shares of Hinge within the next year.

Hinge has spent the last few years revamping its image and features, creating an app that countered Tinder’s hook-up reputation, and aimed to create a space for more serious daters. This included dumping its initial Tinder-like swiping feature and allowing clients to build profiles more like traditional online dating sites. Interestingly, Match Group (which owns Tinder) initially invested in Hinge in the fall of 2017, soon after it debuted its new design.

Hinge is most popular among “urban, educated millennial women looking for relationships,” according to Match Group CEO Mandy Ginsberg. It has also grown its user base to “five times what it was a year ago,” according to an article in The Wall Street Journal, making it an attractive purchase for Match Group.

It’s been a tumultuous month for Match Group. The company’s share price dropped over 25% in the wake of Facebook's announcement that it was entering the online dating space, prompting CEO Mandy Ginsberg to assure users and investors that Match Group had little to fear from its new competitor.

“People don’t want to mix Facebook and their dating lives,” she said in an interview with Bloomberg.

She may be right. Looking at Match Group’s Q1 2018 Earning Results, also released this month, the company appears to be in a strong position despite the recent hit.

Spark Networks SE, the platform behind dating brands including EliteSingles, Jdate, Christian Mingle, and Silversingles, has released its second half and full year 2017 financial results.

The report comes nearly six months after Affinitas and Spark Networks Inc. merged to form Spark Networks SE. The companies’ combined portfolios position Spark Networks SE as a leader in the serious segment of the dating market with a global network of nearly half a million monthly paying subscribers across 29 countries.

"With the close of the merger between Affinitas GmbH ("Affinitas") and Spark Networks, Inc. ("Spark") in November 2017, we have created a pure-play leader in the dating industry with increased scale and a portfolio of well-known brands," said Jeronimo Folgueira, Chief Executive Officer of Spark Networks SE, in a statement. "We have only just begun to realize the benefits of the merger, as the results we reported today include just two months of Spark's performance.”