Bumble Founder Whitney Wolfe Herd Faces Employee Backlash As Hulu Biopic Falters

Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd is facing a storm of criticism from inside her own company just as a Hulu biopic celebrating her rise to power has been panned by critics.

The film “Swiped,” which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, depicts Wolfe Herd’s ascent in the male-dominated tech world and her eventual launch of Bumble. Starring Lily James, the project was billed as a triumphal retelling of Wolfe Herd’s career, but it arrives as she faces accusations of fostering a toxic workplace and delivering tone-deaf responses to recent mass layoffs.

In July, the 36-year-old announced job cuts affecting 30 percent of Bumble’s global workforce. Employees said her reaction to their concerns only deepened frustrations. According to the National Enquirer, she allegedly dismissed staff complaints by telling them, “I see a lot of freaking-out emojis, y’all need to calm down. This is being taken out of context … Everyone’s going to have to be adults in dealing with this.”

The Hulu film traces Wolfe Herd’s early years at dating app Tinder, which she co-founded in 2012 before leaving amid sexual harassment and discrimination allegations against a fellow executive with whom she had a past relationship. The lawsuit was settled without Tinder admitting wrongdoing.

In 2014, Wolfe Herd launched Bumble with its signature “women make the first move” model, later expanding the app to more than 150 countries before taking it public on Nasdaq.

Despite the storybook narrative, former and current employees have long painted a different picture. Some claim they were excluded from promised profit-sharing arrangements despite helping build the app into a global success.

“I can’t count the number of conversations I’ve had where I mentioned I was an early hire at Bumble and people are like, ‘Oh, wow, congratulations, you must be rich,’ and it’s just sort of like, ‘Um, I got nothing,’” a former employee told Business Insider in 2022.

Bumble’s culture also came under fire during its years under the control of majority owner Andrey Andreev, who founded the London-based app Badoo. A 2019 Forbes investigation described drug-fueled parties where nude women served sushi. At one event, a male employee was fired for allegedly groping a co-worker but was later reinstated after appealing to executives, including Andreev and Wolfe Herd. In response, Wolfe Herd issued a statement saying she was “mortified” by the allegations and “saddened and sickened” that anyone would feel marginalized in the workplace.

Meanwhile, investors have watched Bumble’s stock collapse. Since its 2021 IPO, shares have lost 92 percent of their value, wiping billions from its market capitalization, according to Business Insider.

For employees disillusioned with the company’s trajectory, the film’s chilly reception was a small measure of vindication. “Swiped” earned just a 29 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes after its premiere.

“Far from the feminist triumph being celebrated on screen, Bumble has been plagued by toxic culture and disastrous management under Herd,” one insider told the National Enquirer.