The coronavirus outbreak and lockdown might not please everyone, but entrepreneur Whitney Wolfe and her company have surly seen some benefits. While this name might not ring a bell, Wolfe has helped people around the world in finding their soulmates. She is the Founder and CEO of dating app Bumble, which, like other dating apps, has seen an uptick in user activity during the pandemic.

Wolfe entered the world of dating apps in 2012, and less than a decade later, is leading a multi-billion-dollar company, founded on the basis of her own experiences in the dating world. Her taste for entrepreneurship and marketing developed during her time at the Southern Methodist University where she was an international studies major.

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However, at the age of 19, her first goal was to make a difference. She started a business selling bamboo tote bags to help those affected by the BP oil spill. After graduation, she traveled and worked with orphanages in Southeast Asia.

It is at the age of 22 that she eventually became involved with a tech company called Cardify, led by Sean Rad. The project was abandoned but both teamed up to create dating app Tinder. None of them expected it to be such a huge success.

Nevertheless, due to escalating tensions between herself and few other company executives, Wolfe left the company in 2014 and filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against Tinder. Although it eventually settled for more than $1 million, Wolfe experienced the sort of online abuse that can be familiar to women who have made similar public allegations.

The next chapter could be ripped from a guide to revenge. With Andrey Andreev, the founder of Badoo, she created Bumble, a female-focused dating app. "I really wanted to clean-up the internet for young girls. I shared this vision with Andrey and he said, ‘that’s a great vision’…We decided to flip the script, and empower people through connections, reducing rejections on the man’s side, and empowering women to make the first move and be confident."

Wolfe is now ranked No. 39 on Forbes’ 2020 list of America’s self-made women with a net worth of over $500 million. Not bad for someone who once had to walk away from a billion-dollar company that she helped build. And Bumble, which reached 100 million users in 2020, has now filed to go public, opening even more possibilities for Wolfe and her company.