Bumble’s first day on the stock market in February 2021 was a roaring success. The dating company achieved a market value of $13 billion on its first day being listed. The app helped changed the face of dating upon its launch in 2014 when it added a feature that placed women in the driver’s seat of any budding relationship. The success on Wall Street made a billionaire of CEO Whitney Wolfe and showed that the concept of women making the first move is financially lucrative. Is the secret to success moving traditional industries online?
How Did Bumble Succeed?
Shares in Bumble were initially priced at $43 but quickly rose to $76, helping the value of the company grow to around $13 billion. Perhaps the antics surrounding the GameStop stock in January led to an influx of people who had previously counted out the stock market buying shares in Bumble. Those who purchased must have been sure of the company’s success, especially in a minefield of competitors such as Tinder and Match.com.
The main reason that Bumble succeeds is that it takes the edges out of online dating. Just like those looking for dates need to stand out, so too does the software they use. Placing women in the powerful position of deciding if they’ll speak to a match or not helps to ensure there is less hassle on the apps. Wolfe actually co-founded Tinder but left amidst a harassment suit that net her $1 million in the dispute. Spurred on by inequality at her own workplace and the original app, she led Bumble to its stock market success.
But this doesn’t just show that allowing women to make the first move is a successful business strategy. It shows that the future of dating is undeniably in the digital sphere. It also shows that success can be achieved by doing things differently and changing how existing structures work. Is the future of success down to new ways of doing things in a digital space?
How Does Tech Change the Traditional?
Technology has enabled us to make changes to how our lives have been run. Not only have we been able to streamline complex processes and bring the world to us, but we’ve been able to solve longstanding problems and bring about social change. But it’s not enough to just move a traditional industry online. They also need to offer something different and unique that their competitors can’t.
For instance, AirBnB took the traditional concept of booking accommodation and helped enable smaller venues to compete with those with more money behind them. Levelling the playing field in this way benefitted everyone. As the Vegas Slots Online list of online casinos shows, there are dozens of examples of how traditional casino games have migrated online. Not only do they maintain the gameplay quality, but use the digital platform to create VIP programmes, help players customize their experience, and offer many payment methods – all of which helps to make sites stand out. Elsewhere, Monzo and Starling’s rate of growth shows that digital-only banking has found an audience. People can do the standard banking tasks as well as check their spending statistically, which prompts many to try to save and reconsider how they manage money.
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— BorrowMyDoggy (@BorrowMyDoggy) February 6, 2021
Also, the app BorrowMyDoggy took an extremely traditional concept and used the amplification of online means to bring it to life. Those who sign up to the app as dog walkers can borrow the pets of those who sign up with their dogs. While this isn’t inherently new, technology has facilitated strangers borrowing other strangers’ pets. Similarly, the NextDoor app has taken the neighbourhood notice board and turned it into an online forum. Older people are more likely to be involved with NextDoor than they are with social media, so it enables people to communicate about local issues and even strike friendships with those nearby.
This comes before the likes of social media and video sharing, which completely changed communication. Not only has social media created a new shorthand for the way we speak, but it facilitates change, forms communities, and spreads messages in a way that was trickier to do beforehand.
The main reason for Bumble’s success as a tech brand is that it couldn’t be done in any other way. While Tinder simply facilitates matches, similar meetings could happen in real life. But Bumble, by adding the women talk first rule, cannot be replicated physically. There is no way in a real-life bar scenario that it could be replicated. So, not only has Bumble taken the concept and improved it for digital audiences, but it has used technology to reshape it in a way that couldn’t be achieved in real life.
Bumble’s success may have come as a surprise, but it really shouldn’t. It took one of the oldest industries and moved it online, then made sure to stand out from competitors. Some of the most popular and successful concepts can also fit this mould – they have taken something classic and repackaged them using technology to offer something above and beyond.
