The Money Honey

Whitney Wolfe turned online dating into a giant Sadie Hawkins dance with her megahit app Bumble. Now she wants to help women score their dream job the same way she helped them score their dream date— by making the first move.

Whitney Wolfe is perched on a chaise longue in a suite at Austin’s South Congress Hotel, a sleek, boutique-y outfit that epitomizes the city’s hipster renaissance, straining to remember the slang used in China to refer to single women over 30. “A girl in China just told us about it, and I found it fascinating,” she says.

“It’s like ‘left on a shelf’ or something,” offers Wolfe’s coworker Louise, a stylish twenty something with a British accent and a glittery ear cuff.

“Leftovers?” Wolfe asks. No, no, that’s not it. Finally: “Expired? Expired!”

This is the type of anecdote Wolfe lives for. In late 2014, she founded Bumble, known as the “feminist dating app” for its requirement that women message men first and for its kicky, you-go-girl interface (female users are encouraged, via push notifications, to “make the first move, honey!”). In just two years, Bumble has become the fourth-most-downloaded dating app on iTunes—with 21 million registrations worldwide—and the app of choice for upwardly mobile millennial women who are sick of getting dick pics on Tinder and are too cool for Match.com.