Bumble S-1
sec.gov
sec.gov
I know a lot of you are married so let me put this out here: I (and most young people) will not put their romantic life on pause cause of a virus. Every dating app got an influx of people due to bordem from lockdowns.
I'm biased towards (investing in) bumble because it has anecdotally acted as the best dating 'middleman' compared to tinder/hinge. I've had only great experiences taking bumble girls on dates.
Compared to tinder, bumble has more serious people looking to date. The system is set up so girls message first and matches will expire after 24 hr. When a girl messages you first, she is already more invested in getting to you know than when a guy using a cheesy pickup line on tinder.
I've always loved the philosophy bumble took to the dating scene compared to the apps part of $MTCH.
Way back when I used Bumble, a lot of girls used to drop 'Hi!'(double standards), and never bothered to reply to my reply which felt very annoying to say the least.
I would wish every dating app to add a simple feature, if the other person is active on the dating app and isn't responding to you, just unmatch the pair say after two/three days of the last message. I don't understand what's the purpose of just being a name/chat on someone's list.
This is a good point. However, some women (due to men spamming them) don't have notifications turned on, so genuinely don't get around to seeing a message until they have time to sit down and scroll through the pile
Also (as I'm sure you know), anything that can be used as a "measure of cool" will be used as just that. And having a huge list of matches can be a huge self-esteem boost to some.
I agree with your point though. It can be tiresome to have to periodically clean out matches every so often
That's why I wrote "if the other person is active on the dating app and isn't responding to you, just unmatch the pair say after"
> anything that can be used as a "measure of cool" will be used as just that.
Agreed. I have been guilty of this as well, though I also do realize that it is still a human being at the other end and giving a closure by unmatching is much better than leaving it hanging.
> It can be tiresome to have to periodically clean out matches every so often
I think more than cleaning out the matches, if you were interested in someone and were having a conversation with them and suddenly they disappear, you don't know if that's just because of being busy. The delay might be just anxiousness for the other person.
Ultimately the types of girls to use bumble in my college, home town, and when traveling aligned with the types of girls I like. I know hinge is super popular in major cities like LA/NYC. But in the suburbs of SoCal 90%ish of hinge girls seemed socially awkward and I did not find their pics/writing prompts attractive.
Yeah girls do tend to drop 'hi! :)' on bumble. You just have to be clever when responding to it. I treat it as she is signaling me to make the 'opening move' which sets the tone of the whole conversation.
You can always unmatch (on any dating app) if the conversation stales. At least bumble unmatches if the guy does not respond to the girl in 24 hours.
Blackstone owns it.
Bumble founder was an executive at Match group. She was sexually assaulted. Why she would sell it to them - only to go back to a horror show?
Most people I know have put their dating lives on hold. Not all of course, but most. It’s like any of the rules people have been asked to follow during the past year: most people have followed them, it’s only a selfish minority that have not.
Edit: My point is not to excuse shitty behaviour by pretending everyone else is doing it. Consider the world doesn't revolve around you and that occasionally people need to work together for the greater good, each making a variety of sacrifices.
I am in my 20s as well and can see where he is coming from. I have not gone out on dates this past year and it feels bad. 20s are the prime dating years, it feels like a year was taken out where I aged but my life hasn't moved.
To make things worse, the whole staying at your home thing has made the desire of having a relationship even more strong as the alone periods do hit you hard.
Though to put things in perspective, a lot of people had it way worse than just their dating life/travel being disrupted.
So yeah there are people who are choosing to go on dates, gather, party, etc. Those people are very visible. I get it, there can be FOMO. Why should you sacrifice when they're having fun?
Does it help to consider that there are lots of people (dare I say a majority) your age who are making the same sacrifice you are? If/when things return to the old normal, you'll have some sense of solidarity and shared maturity with them. Selflessness is a good quality in a potential spouse.
(Of course, unlike the "I voted" sticker, there's no "I stayed home" sticker, so in two years you're not going to be able to tell who did what now.)
> To make things worse, the whole staying at your home thing has made the desire of having a relationship even more strong as the alone periods do hit you hard.
I get this. My wife passed away 9 months before the pandemic hit full swing and I'm lonely af. I don't get to see adult friends really at all anymore.
> Though to put things in perspective, a lot of people had it way worse than just their dating life/travel being disrupted.
Exactly this. Every time you choose not to go to a party or whatever, you could be averting the death of a family member (yours or a friend's, or friend-of-friend's, etc).
And so we've pretty much burned a year of life for everyone. I know many, many people for whom 2020 has been the worst year of their life, in large part due to the lockdown. The people who have suffered least are the people who are basically at home anyway; professionals established enough in their careers to thrive during WFH; the already coupled; and those with kids. Although inconvenienced, they can still progress with their lives. But for many singles in their 20s or 30s, this has been a lost year. And that's very costly: particularly if you want to raise a family, losing a year or more of dating and socialization from your late 20s or 30s is incredibly damaging to those chances.
> The people who have suffered least are the people who are basically at home anyway [...] and those with kids.
hol up. Not to downplay what you're saying (I personally know it can be tough wondering whether you're going to find somebody to spend the rest of your life with), but do you think raising kids is easy?
After this is all done, the world is going to be split between people who spent lockdown with one or more 2- to 4-year-olds, and those who have their sanity.
A year wasted versus a year spent raising a kid. For the latter, you'd be raising them anyhow regardless of quarantine. That's not to say juggling WFH and being around your kids 24/7 isn't difficult--I'm sure it is--but at the end of it, your year was spent on something meaningful. It's analogous to spending a year at a shitty intensive 80 hr/week job vs being a NEET living in your parents basement. Neither enviable, but at the end of the day most people would prefer to be the former.
> the world is going to be split between people who spent lockdown with one or more 2- to 4-year-olds, and those who have their sanity.
As opposed to people who spend months on end, devoid of any meaningful social contact at all? Neither situation is ideal, obviously, but at least with one you're accomplishing something.
It's rather entitled and judgey to imply that people who still have some human contact are bad. Assuming the worst of people basically.
Trying to suppress life's prime imperative is always a losing battle.
If there's one ugly thing about the Covid situation that I hope our society reflects on with great remorse in the future, it is this justification for moralizing the private behavior of others. Covid seems to have unleashed the self-righteous scolds of the world in a way that I haven't seen in my lifetime.
If two consenting adults weigh their own personal risks and choose to go on a date, it isn't your business to judge their behavior. Catching a virus is not a moral act.
Obviously, people who interact with high-risk individuals should take special precautions. But if I am a healthy young person, live by myself and want to date someone else who is in the same situation, you can take your judgments and go pound sand.
That's fine if it was just a risk to them. But it's not, unless they decide to live together and never leave the house after their first date, or quarantine for 14 days after every date.
The "miniscule risk to others" argument can be extended to literally any intrusion on personal liberty, and is exactly why I hope society looks back on this trend with horror and regret.
How far do you take this logic? Do I have to quarantine myself for 14 days after going to the park? Home Depot? A restaurant? If not, why not? I can catch Covid every time I leave my home. Must I lock myself indoors forever, or is it just for things that other people don't approve of?
If your date is a walk in the park six feet apart, then great, you're probably fine.
If your date involves touching, hugging, kissing, or vigorous sex in a small bedroom for more than 15 minutes, then you have a much higher chance of spreading the virus.
Here's a suggestion: Have some empathy and consider that it's highly likely that you have knowingly or unknowingly made plenty of mistakes over the year that have contributed to the spread of COVID.
Yeah I get it, it sucks, you can't have random hookups. I feel for you, I really do. There's lots of things I can't do either. But if we all sacrifice a bit, this will be over sooner. We've all had to change our lives during this pandemic. You're not unique in your suffering.
If you choose to raise your risk of catching COVID, a few things can happen:
(1) You don't catch COVID
(2) You catch COVID, and recover safely in the privacy of your own home
(3) You catch COVID, and accidentally spread it someone else while pre-symptomatic
(4) You catch COVID, get very unlucky and have to be hospitalized. The hospital's ICU beds are full, and they prioritize your young life over someone else's old life, and that old person dies.
If the only possible outcomes were (1) or (2), I would agree with you that it's a private decision that no one should scold you for.
But as the likelihood of (3) and (4) rise, your actions increasingly impact others. At a low likelihood, it's not a big deal and we can probably round down to zero in our moral calculus, just for convenience. But when R is above 1, and the average person is likely to pass on the disease, it's very possible that your infection on average leads to dozens or hundreds of infections over the next year. The expected value of quality adjusted life years lost at this point is not negligible. Tens of thousands of people are dying every day, and it's only going up[1]. ICUs are full in a non-negligible fraction of US hospitals [2].
I get that all of our actions impact other people, and it would be hassle to constrain your freedoms by that fact alone. But when it comes to COVID, your actions affect others by a much larger degree than other everyday choices.
Incidentally, this is why we as a society have made speeding a crime and not a 'personal choice.' Driving very fast is usually safe but occasionally hurts others, and we've decided that that risk is large enough to be worth restricting your freedoms over. Not all externalities meet that threshold, but some do.
So if one unnecessarily risks catching COVID and passing it along, then scolding seems ok to me. People who recklessly pass on COVID are why millions are dead and dying. Countries with much better adherence have much lower death tolls.
I personally have curtailed my dating life this year to try and save lives. I encourage others to do so as well.
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/covid-deaths?country=~USA
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/covid-hospitals-...
Likewise, how far do you extend this logic? I can catch and spread Covid literally any time I go outside. Do I have to avoid all other human contact, or is it just the things that a tribunal of strangers on the internet thinks is unnecessary?
> So if you take dumb risks and raise your odds of catching COVID and passing it along, then I am happy to scold you. People who recklessly pass on COVID are why millions are dead and dying.
I made a comment about two consenting adults, who live alone, taking a calculated personal risk. I am not sure who is being reckless here, but at the least this is an exaggeration.
I don’t know how things are where you live but here (Germany) it’s been severely restricted why (and how) you can do things. There’s actually a defined list of reasons under which you’re allowed to go outside. Now that list is pretty generous and include exercise, shopping, etc. but it exists. Any store that doesn’t serve a basic need is closed and at best can do “Click & Collect”
Likely this weekend things will go further here in Berlin. The airport will be shut down and you won’t be able to go further than 15km outside the city limits. Again there’s a defined list of reasons why you can go, just as en example visiting your spouse is ok. Visiting your parents or adult children is not unless you’re a care giver.
I say this in so many words not to say look at us, we got it so bad. But because what you said is true, _anytime_ you go outside you can catch and spread COVID. That’s why we have restrictions on when you can go outside.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55292614#:~:text=A%20m....
It's more like drunk driving. I may evaluate that after 4 beers I'd still be comfortable with the risk of driving. It's my life to lose after all. Except I'm not the only one affected by it.
It's on the same order of risk as driving. Many young people die driving every year, yet we still do it plenty, with reasonable precautions. If you take reasonable precautions, are young and healthy, it is a risk worth taking to many.
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2918-0/figures/2
Edit: To be fair, the same argument can be made in reverse as well, that it is selfish for older people to insist on universal lockdowns, which primarily benefit themselves. To that, I would argue (1) that death is not the only negative result from covid-19, and (2) that the relative magnitudes of benefits and harms need to be compared.
Note that the OP said it was selfish to be out and about, not against self interest. So your statistic is irrelevant to the point made. Selfish means you're benefiting yourself while harming others. That's exactly what happens if you catch COVID, pass it on, and then recover. You're fine. Others may not be.
We could go further and outlaw cars that don't have speed governors. That would save lives. Lower speed limits would save more lives as well. Now we have a balance between freedom and safety.
> Tens of thousands of people are dying a day right now because not everyone is taking the precautions they have been asked to take.
That was true during the flu season of 2018 as well. The excess deaths from COVID are higher, but not orders of magnitude higher (more like 3x) [1]. The response is off the charts, economically and culturally devastating. Not the right balance.
(Plus, letting it burn through the whole population comes with downside risks of more mutations.)
It's a hard case to make. Sweden for example has had less excess death than harsher lockdown countries like Spain & UK.
Lockdowns have done little if anything in US states. New York and Florida have similar stats (worse in NY if anything).
Most people who have followed the rules are people who believed fake propaganda. Now even the staunchest supporters of lockdowns, e.g. NYC and Chicago mayors, are coming out against them.
Browsing Tinder in Westminster with the search distance set to the lowest possible, half the people you see are 1000s of miles away.
Unless you're ready to hop on a plane and go fuck your match halfway across the world why even bother? Is it for all the people hoping to hook up when they arrive at their vacation spot?
Furthermore, I've used it plenty of times before traveling to set it to a country where I will be going. I am very clear about not wanting a hookup and just meet up with locals and that has been working quite well.
Not everything is about having a hookup.
1) A small number of desperate people in poor countries trying to score a way out. Marriage is one of the rare ways for unskilled people from the 3rd world to get legal residence in the 1st world
2) Tons and tons of crypto scammers. So many crypto scammers. "I'm actually in Hong Kong right now. I made tons of money investing in $ponzi, and now I'm a free agent. You should make an account too, then we can travel together!"
Maybe long distance is not your thing. Some people have bigger intentions than just fucking on a first date.
Not really true, Bumble engages in less shitty behavior than Tinder, so they don't prevent you to match with the people who are compatible with you basically. Which is more likely to create a serious relationships. But the 24hr thing for matching doesnt work anymore, that just eliminates girls who only want more followers on insta.
But yeah overall the app works better than Tinder, because Tinder needs to capture as much money as possible from their user to be the most profitable as possible. Bumble doesn't have to, at least it didnt have to, now that they become public, they will become as bad
Can you elaborate on this? What is Tinder doing in this respect? How does preventing matching compatible people allow them to capture more profit?
So if you want more recurring paying customers, prevent them to meet with compatible people ;)
What they do ? Show you attractive girls but don't show your profile to them. Keep a 90/10 ratio of men to women on the app. Make you feel like there is an endless list of people to meet and all better than others. Tell you you have 99+ waiting likes (when in fact thats only the girls who liked you but you didnt like). Dont limit the number of guys that a girls can match. Dont delete matches that are inactive (push you to collect matches). Almost force you to choose a long term membership instead of a month, ...
The mechanism is still there.
In my experience...Facebook Dating is just a like factory in which people aren't seriously looking rather boosting their ego or have a huge list to filter through even if they liked you the conversations doesn't go far(I only continue a conversation if she asks about me too). It's definitely not a dating app to find women who are serious about dating.
Overall during Covid I've had more dates then usual. Women are out there looking and dating at least here in the suburbs/rurual areas of MD and PA; restaurants are open for outside and inside dining.
Most prefer Tinder/Hinge because it allows them more control over their dates/matches (i.e they can put in more time/work to get more dates) whereas Bumble is more of a passive experience. It's used as more of a "bonus" or "extra".
This is my experience of the three...
Hinge: I talk to people, and sometimes that leads to a date
Tinder: I talk to people, but no dates happen
Bumble: Nothing happens.
what is The company worth?
This is an overly optimistic take that I cannot confirm.
The first messages received on Bumble are either "hey/hi" or a GIF that is typically a waving bear with the word "hello". That is despite profile text and images with dozens of things that could spark a conversation or question. In fact, most people never read my thoughtfully crafted profile - there certainly is no investment in getting to know me. Instead my reply is expected to be creative/funny or the conversation will end, essentially making this conversation no different from Tinder. In my experience the typical Bumble user in major metro areas wants to date, but not with long term in mind. If that isn't important to you, fair enough. As an aside, I also find that Bumble has less diversity than other apps - racially, socioeconomically etc
Given Tinder and Bumble I vastly preferred Tinder. Tinder has far more users of every kind of background with every imaginable kind of intention. The key is to be intentional in your profile or your first messages about what you are looking for and move on if it is a mismatch. I know how to identify a Tinder profile that is a good mutual match for me, but I definitely will get tendonitis from swiping left in the process of locating such a profile. If you save your free daily super like for that person and assuming you are introspective enough to accurately assess whether this person will be interested in you you have a high chance of being seen and matching.
If you would like to date seriously without it feeling forced or desperate I highly recommend Coffee Meets Bagel (if you are in an area where this app is being used). It never takes me long to find someone wonderful there that makes me want to quit all apps.
In my experience, no matter what you are looking for, Bumble isn't your best choice for any of those things.
If your goal is dating to establish a healthy romantic relationship then number of matches isn't what you want to optimize:
Accept who you are, how you think and feel. No need to hide the real you. No need to please the masses. You can find people who will appreciate you the way you are. And I can't emphasize this enough: *Respect the other person* - everyone is equally looking for (and entitled to find) what is right for them.
With experience it gets easier to quickly identify people who think and feel like you, who share similar values and lifestyle.
I don’t think it’s fair to characterize it as “women punting the ball back” so much as it’s just not usually worth the effort for a lot of people — no matter their gender — to think of something more original to say.
I don’t know why people complain about it though. It seems like the perfect way to really stand out in the crowd. Everyone wants to be recognized as a unique individual and when your inbox is full of “hey” all the way down then a message from someone who took the time to get to know you a bit is definitely going to be opened and replied to more often.
And every conversation starts with a hello. Sure, if it gets boring after then it's a diff issue
Bots are generally easy to spot. Coming up with something at least semi-relevant the person’s profile is not much harder than a “hey” for the type of person who shows enough personality on their profile to be interesting in the first place.
Your success rate will easily shoot up 5x from the baseline of “hey” by saying something even remotely interesting.
IMO no one likes writing dating app bios and no one likes reading them. People are gonna match based on looks anyway. You’ll learn about someone on the date, not by reading some painstakingly crafted autobiography
Maybe that's changed, but I honestly believe the only dating app currently available that's actually worth using if you want a relationship and not a hookup is Coffee Meets Bagel. I had more and higher quality dates, including meeting my now 3+ year girlfriend, on CMB than any other app.
I'm Gen X, I came of age the last time there was a virus going around that had potentially lethal repercussions if you got it.
We didn't stop dating. We took reasonable precautions. To be blunt, you didn't raw-dog someone you just met.
Only fools expect you to abstain for years. Only fools look at a person and think "well they _look_ healthy, I'm probably OK."
After this I gave up and just accepted the fact I might be sooo ugly to get any matches on online dating websites.
And I don't approach women in real life either now because honestly if there's no common courtesy online and then I get no interest, in real life people just giving me response out of courtesy.
People in middle age that choose to travel solo are open minded, a bit lonely, and are completely dissatisfied with all of the "normal" social bullshit.
don't let that put you off talking to new people IRL though. dating sites tend to give you an unrealistically low impression of your attractiveness. before the pandemic, I used to go out to local bars a few times a month for dinner and a drink. I was mostly focused on eating, but more often than not whoever was sitting nearby would start a conversation with me, some of them very attractive women who I'm sure would have swiped left on me without a moment's hesitation.
keep in mind, all dating failures stem from one or both of the following: unreasonable expectations and simply not talking to enough new people. both are within your power to change.
I don't think these are the same thing. Swiping right is expressing a positive attraction and intent to go out for a date. Having a conversation in a bar is just... having a conversation. People do that with anyone and everyone. It doesn't mean any attraction at all.
Consider that Bumble was started by Whitney Wolfe Herd, after she left the company she co-founded, Tinder. Tinder of course was acquired by Match Group, and went public in November of 2015.
The Tinder CEO at the time was, uh, unfamiliar with how quiet periods are supposed to work in IPOs, and, I want to say interviews in general. As such Match had to amend their S-1, filing a free-writing prospectus, to include this absolute dumpster fire of an interview given during the quiet period. If you're having a tough morning, at least remember that you're not responsible for the only instance of the word "sodomy" on the SEC website. [1]
I'd highly encourage you to read the whole thing.
He continues: “Apparently there’s a term for someone who gets turned on by intellectual stuff. You know, just talking. What’s the word?” His face creases the effort of trying to remember. “I want to say ‘sodomy’?”
Rosette shrieks: “That’s it! We’re going to be fired” and Rad looks confused. “What? Why?”
I tell him it means something else and he thumbs his phone for a definition. “What? No, not that. That’s definitely not me. Oh, my God.”
On that note, a big congrats to Whitney, huge step for a great company!
[1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1575189/000110465915...
It's hard to even imagine how many missteps and failures had to line up just right for us to wind up with this FWP.
I'm sure there's a lesson in there somewhere.
I remember when paying for dating apps was considered taboo. I don't envy single people...I don't doubt they intentionally make it difficult to get a date now if you're not paying.
I wonder how sustainable the boost dynamics are. It does make things a bit pay to play. You sell out the integrity of your game long-term in order for short-term gains. It might take people a while to move on to something new, but they eventually will. OkCupid eventually lost mindshare to Tinder and Bumble.
With pay to play is that the players who pay aren't necessarily the best players, per sé. They're just the whales most financially and likely psychologically involved. The more I describe this, the more disturbed I am thinking about how the Bumble and OnlyFans attention economies really work. The whole thing just seems like a skinner box designed to psychologically and physiologically prey on humans in isolation. To harvest their sexual instincts and sell it back to them with interest. It's cruel.
Nevertheless, as they say, there's nothing novel about human nature going on here, and none of the fundamental dynamics are really changing. Maybe the most disturbing part is how little has actually changed.
In the scheme of things this seems like a relatively small price to pay. People in relationships tend to enjoy significantly higher life satisfaction than single folks. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I believe the gains are on par with an extra $20,000 in income. (Not to mention all the actual savings that go with consolidating two people into a single household.)
If premium dating boosts increase your chance of a relationship by even 5% per annum, then $100/month probably is worth it.
I like the idea of that one time fee compared to the monthly IAP through tinder/hinge.
However I can’t provide any anecdotes on the paid stuff, I prefer not to spend money on those things.
Ya I feel like it was until recently that dating apps attracted normal people. Now references to ‘swiping right’ are common in pop songs.
I know many girls that will share their dating app experiences with their parents, which I find odd.
" (ii) cash proceeds to our Founder in an amount of $125 million, (iii) a loan to an entity controlled by our Founder in an amount of $119.0 million, as described further below under “—Loan to our Founder,” (iv) certain transaction expenses and (v) the contribution of $87.0 million to the balance sheet of the surviving company of the Merger."
“ The loan [to our founder] accrues interest at a rate per annum equal to the long-term federal rate established pursuant to Section 1274 of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code as in effect on November 8, 2019 (which was equal to 1.93% per annum), is secured by our Founder’s Class A units in Bumble Holdings and any net cash proceeds of such pledged units to the extent received by Beehive Holdings III, LP, and allows for repayment at any time”
I heard they added a way to select nonbinary as a gender, but still force you to pick one or both of the binaries for interests.
Of course, it’s your choice to use Bumble, and I support its right to exist, but it feels odd that it’s largely seen as a progressive take on the dating app, when, to me anyway, it seems regressive and imbalanced, putting one gender in the position to pick and choose, and the other passively waiting for that choice
However, I’m sure there are other meritorious perspectives on this, and I’d be pleased to hear them
Edit: I’m seeing in other comments that mainly they have this feature for the purely cynical reason of getting female users on the app - and generating publicity. That makes sense, but I’m more commenting on the media reaction itself, than the ethics of the company
Dating has never been an even playing field. Why would an app be egalitarian?
The word progressive has become more or less meaningless but in this case the hypothetical app your described earlier is essentially almost every dating app in actual day-to-day practice.
Essentially the status quo is already completely imbalanced, they are just putting a twist on it that serves as the app's hook.
> According to OC&C, within the North America freemium market, Bumble has approximately 30% more female users for every male user compared to the gender mix of users in the market who do not use Bumble.
The phrasing itself is interesting, as they don't ever reveal the actual ratio of male users to female users AFAICT. But going with the typical 2:1 ratio, that suggests a ratio closer to 3:2.
Realistically dating apps just need to attract females and provide a safe space for them to meet people online. The males will follow.
There is two goals here: the first is to ensure the dating pool is relatively unbiased towards one sex (I call this Tinder's "sea of dicks" problem), as well as creating a bit of implicit social validation (this person is on the app essentially because they had a friend of the opposite sex who was willing to vouch for them) and then the other is trying to attack the problem of overly-polished conversation: people who are charming via text when they have a moment to think of a response, and decidedly less clever when speaking in person (this is something I'd like to change about myself, personally.) But the advantage here is that this is true for a lot of people, and puts some humanity back into meeting people online.
But any way for the OP, the technology for matching people who like each other is already there. The only piece missing, is to create an app which doesnt have has a goal to make a lot of money. A bit like Signal is free and rely on donations while all others texting app rely on ads
So basically the better they do their job, the less revenue they make.
At least they never advertise or tell in their S-1 than they want people to find exclusive relationships. But they are not alone Tinder neither advertise themselves like that, they always use tricky expression like "Bumble empowers users to connect"
Today their product is great compare to Tinder (Tinder is more profitable mainly because their product prevent guys to match with girls, don't forget that dating apps, the less people match, the more you make money) so they are gaining users. But I bet in 2 years, they will have the exact same profitability that Tinder has today, and their product will be as bad.
Consider a company that sells dishwashers. Most people only need one dishwasher, so as you soon as you buy a dishwasher from that company, you're out of the dishwasher market. At that point, the company no longer will get revenue from you, so they might as well sell you a dishwasher that doesn't last and breaks down. And yet, we see that some dishwashers are actually fairly functional and long-lasting. Why is this? It's because (a) you might need another dishwasher in a few years, so it's good to give you a good experience, (b) if you have a good experience you'll recommend this dishwasher to other potential customers, (c) you might be the type of customer who buys many dishwashers in volume and this good experience will cause you to buy more here. All three mechanisms incentivize selling a quality dishwasher.
Similarly, a dating app that achieves good outcomes for its users may, in the short-term, deplete its pool of users. But in the long-term, those satisfied users may (a) come back, (b) tell others the app is good, or (c) continue using the app.
And there is no monopoly in the dishwasher market. Match until 2019 owned almost all the popular dating apps.
This article for more info : https://marker.medium.com/what-i-learned-about-the-business-...
Or maybe it's irrelevant and no-one is doing lockdown properly anymore anyway.
Most of my single friends still seem to be dating.
I can write and sound and look like a certain group, but when I meet people in real life my accent becomes an instant turn-off. That's why I decided to only ever go out with ones whom we met first in real life. Not to mention the privacy implications. Lookup stories of people whose photos were used by scammers in other countries on dating apps..
Your goal is to be yourself and attract people who like you as you are. Then you don’t have to be someone you aren’t.
I’d recommend the book Models by Mark Manson.
I only had good luck (LTR 3 years and counting) on Coffee Meets Bagel, which limits your matches each day for both genders to try and make things less of a numbers game.
That said, IMO the market for Tinder vs Bumble is quite different even though they are in the same space.
Anecdotally, my friends use Tinder for FWB / Hookups etc. while Bumble is more-so for casual or serious relationships.
I also find the risks interesting. Not a ton of people are paying for dating (which is opposite to the advice given on Reddit for example).
It's so stupid how one of Bumble's main differentiators from Tinder, the one they advertise as 'empowering women', is the feature women seem to enjoy the least.
At least something like Meetup pre-selects for fairly specific interests.
Precisely. Bumble got popular because Tinder was not successful in helping connect people for meaningful relationships. Tinder works exceptionally well for keeping you engaged, and for a subset of users, good at fostering some sort of connection.
As you are aware, Bumble's only innovation over tinder was requiring women to initiate the first message after matching.
In their S1 filings, note they do not list any sort of relationship based metrics, rather all usage based.
They are not in the business of helping people find love.
As other products come on the market, users will eventually migrate away to services that are vested in creating long term partnerships.
In my opinion, dating apps still have not solved the fundamental problem for straight couples--for a majority of women, they are overwhelmed, and for men they are lost in a sea of choices.
But...that said, I have two dates this weekend from Hinge. Highly recommend Hinge over Bumble.
We've known for over a hundred years that capitalism doesn't work without competition and yet we seem doomed to keep repeating the same mistakes over and over.
"Bumble and Badoo are two of the highest grossing online dating mobile applications... generated $376.6 million... in the period from January 29, 2020 to September 30, 2020."
Actually higher than I was expecting.
Also, I wonder how they deal with fraud? Huge problem for them and Tinder.
Tons of phishing attempts / attempt to get you off app to sell you paid Snapchat or Onlyfans
Here is an interesting article about the fake profiles on Tinder
http://in.lifestyle.yahoo.com/us-model-sues-dating-1-5-b-ove...
" The lawyer for a Florida model suing dating site Match.com as part of a 1.5-billion-dollar-class-action-lawsuit said that Match.com can easily weed out fake profiles by using software that can help pinpoint most fake profiles. Yuliana Avalos, a mother and part-time model, said that hundrerd of fake profiles on Match.com have used her pictures without her consent. The class action lawsuit filed in Manhattan Federal Court on Thursday alleges that copyright laws were broken by the dating site, which also committed common law fraud by allowing fake profiles with unconsenting people's images to be approved, ABC News reported."
Check the FTC filling against Match.
The fake profiles get you engaged, and then you get a notification of your match. By the time you actually view it the other account is disabled. But you already paid.
One needs to think of the ideal consumer of this stuff. Let's create a character , Dave.
Dave logs on, gets a match the first week. He goes out with Sarah . They hit it off and he cancels his subscription.
Very bad for dating apps. That's lost revenue.
Let's play it back. Sarah was actually a bot which got disabled before Dave could even chat. But as Dave has no way of knowing this, it motivates him to stay subscribed.
Which one of these two scenarios is more beneficial to Match / Bumble , etc ?
In my experience I actually went out with a good amount of people. All were 30ish , unemployed and constantly complaining about their parents. Since I'm not interested in people like that I only date in real life.
The results have been tremendous. I went out with several six-figure earners in 2019, including one special girl who was making 200k. Plus I don't really trust bumble or whoever to not sell my private information to make a few extra bucks.
Life is a journey not a destination
FYI, it comes across poorly the way you seem to evaluate partners based on their income.
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2019/09/ftc-s...
>FYI, it comes across poorly the way you seem to evaluate partners based on their income.
In my experience people ether have fantastic careers and know where they're going in life, or don't want to do anything at all.
Getting involved with anyone who doesn't have a job is never going to end well. I learned this the hard way...
Why? The answer is simple: women have plenty of options and also absolute power over those choices so no need to do much - it's a natural, rational and logical choice. Hence the dynamics aren't going to change no matter what tech you apply to the "problem". If you forced somehow to write a more thoughtful initial message, they'd just go to some other app (or the majority anyway).
How I see it is if Bumble grows as much as Tinder, it'd suffer from the same problems. Except that women will receive less initial gross messages (if that's an actual wide issue, I have no idea). Men are left in the same situation, which is how it should be I guess.
Pre-Tinder, Badoo was a fast growing dating app that was shady af, full of dark patterns on the site/app - https://www.wired.co.uk/article/sexual-network [2011]
Then this came out a while ago, and I can't say I was surprised how the founder is portrayed https://www.forbes.com/sites/angelauyeung/2019/07/08/exclusi...
(and I would also not be surprised at all if I found out that Bumble's data was being sold to others - AFAIK no signs of that currently happening)
* The experiment of making women go first failed, it's simply not something most women want to do. It worked well as marketing, but from a product perspective, it's a gimmick. It's a classic product management error of not separating what users say they want to do, what they think they want to do, and what they actually end up doing.
* I commend Bumble on being among the first, if not the first, on having implemented verified profiles. This is a huge issue on apps like Tinder where, at least in big urban hubs, bots can often make up 50-80% of the profiles you're displayed. Knowing that you won't be wasting $2 to Super Swipe a scammer is a relief.
* I appreciate that most apps implemented in-app audio and video calls. That's a game changer for people who do not like the idea of sharing their phone number with a total stranger.
* I still don't believe they've done much to expunge inactive profiles from the site. It might have gotten better recently, but historically you could spend way too much money on Super Swipes on profiles that haven't logged in months and had no plans of doing so. That doesn't feel amazing as a user, it feels scammy at best.
* All dating apps are commoditized at this point. It's fundamentally the same feature set, with the only difference being the pools of users, and even those mostly overlap. Being on multiple apps at the same time gives you the chance to match with someone who swiped left on you on a different app, and gives you access to a slice of the pool that you didn't have on a different service. Having "opportunity 2, 3 and 4" to match again with someone on a different service is typically worth the extra cost in subscription and time spent swiping.
* I'm surprised they haven't allowed men to pay more to get ahead. Tinder has been on that road for a while now, culminating in $10 boosts and $40/mo pricing tier. Men are eager to deploy their resources in being successful at mating, and would be happy to spend more if that meant better results. I suspect that app makers simply can't think of anything else they could monetize for a higher price.
* I wish companies did more to encourage people to actually interact once matched. As of right now, once you match, often the male has to message the female for days before hearing back at all. It ends up being similar to the Rule of Seven in sales. It would be much better to have the app shut the conversation down if it's obvious that it's going to be one-sided, but why would an app voluntarily reduce user in-app time? Perverse incentives.
I don't know if there's a way to make online dating great as an experience, at least in the heterosexual space. Like with job searches, there are lots of resumes submitted into black holes, not hearing back from hiring managers, being in the middle of the process for a role that's about to be filled by someone else, the company suddenly pivoting right after you join and so on.
I suspect that there's much, much more that these apps can do to make it a win-win environment for their users, but they also need to keep the cash flowing. I don't know if there's a way for the app to make more money, while also increasing the quality of the matches that their users are receiving, that actually turn into real dates and real relationships down the line. My hunch is that these two drives are not easy to align.
huh?
Spamming Super Likes on Tinder has worked well for me, but I'd be curious to hear others' experiences.
In other words, that spend tends to be spiky. You go all in for a couple of months, swiping, boosting, super-liking, building a giant funnel top. Hopefully a few people make it through and you both agree in the end that it's a long-term match, and you can immediately delete the apps and focus on building something meaningful together. Ideally to never have to swipe again, at least at this point in my life.
The same can work if you're trying to "play the field", it's just not where I'm at anymore at this point.
In 2020 and beyond, at least until vaccinations are fully rolled out, you don't go to bars, clubs or any kind of social gatherings with strangers. Online dating is about the last option people have to meet someone new until things return to normal. Especially if you're working a lot and find yourself in a new city with no existing connections.
Completely wrong. The goal, again, is not to make people meet, is to get the more users as possible. By making girls making the first move, you empower girls, you prevent them to get a insulting message from all your matches, you make them feel they decide. Girls are happy of this environment and stay on the app. More girls means more guys. Overall it means more users. And one day it will means more money
> I'm surprised they haven't allowed men to pay more to get ahead.
That's not their goal their. Their goal was to grow in term of users. Now that they become public, and they focus on profitability, don't worry for them, price will go up
> I wish companies did more to encourage people to actually interact once matched.
Not going to happen, the more people interact, the more they meet and the more they quit the app.
> I suspect that there's much, much more that these apps can do to make it a win-win environment for their users
As long as dating apps founders want to make money thats not going to happen. You will always make more money by addicting your users to your app. That doesn't mean there is no solution. Actually one of my life goal is to create that kind of app, but I need at least $50M to create it. So you will have to wait a few years
Respectfully, that doesn't make sense. All you did is introduce another step before the male sends them an insulting message. Previously they would get the message right away, now they get it after saying "hi" and pressing the Send button. I still see the "women go first" as pure marketing, with no real empirical backing of being empowering.
Maybe the genius of this is that it forces the woman to re-examine the profile of the match one more time after the swipe to see if this is someone they would actually want to talk to. It forces a second sanity check of the match. I could see that argument, but I'm not fully buying it.
But I don't think it was designed as a genius move, that was just the idea at the beginning and it ended up being a positive workflow
I don't mean to take this into a culture wars direction, but, this sounds less "empowering" to me and more along the lines of "Hey female user, we know you already expressed interest in this male user by swiping right, but are you really, really sure you actually want to talk to him?".
That's a pretty far stretch for the term "empowering".
The experiment has not failed.
If you are an attractive, reasonable man in your 20's to 30's, you are going to have some very good dates with relatively serious girls on bumble.
If you are not honest with yourself about where you are in the dating pool, bumble is not so good. In particular, money doesn't really move the needle on bumble that much for initial contact.
If you are looking for hookups, tinder is where it's at, but the site is filled with scammy / scummy types as well as a result (women looking for men for fan pages, men super swiping desperately trying to get laid, bots etc).
For example bumble promotes profiles that are new in an area. In theory that sounds good, if you move somewhere it gives you a little help meeting people. In practice, this means that a huge number of profiles I see are just people at the airport. It also means that I get most of my matches when I'm traveling. This way Bumble gives me the dopamine hit of getting multiple matches per day (which never happens at home for me), while reducing the risk I'll get into an actual relationship and leave their service.
That, plus their shady handling of user email addresses, has gotten me to prefer other apps
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7q0M12pOmQk
It does make we wonder what their pitch to investors looks like.
Yet another promising company prostituting itself to public shareholders for those precious tendies. Le sigh.
Who wants to take bets on how much Bumble is going to suck in a year or two?
They're transitioning out of a model where investor money subsidized our dating lives. That means things will change regardless of who owns it.
But now, the only thing that's going to work for them in the long run is growth. At all costs. Far beyond whatever is the most appropriate point for what could have been a humble dating site, because the public will demand no less for a return on their investment.
Because VCs aren't charities and prefer to invest in moonshots instead of a potentially sustainable business models.
Any company starts to 'suck' from the moment the VC money teat is taken away. These companies are not profitable when they IPO, how can they survive without trying to cash in by any means necessary?
Something that is remote first (but regional), group based, and shared activity based. Like playing a board game or among us style game with audio or something with two groups of 3.
Might be too short lived with vaccines on the way.
It’s still too hard to tell whether this will be a good investment or not until the boxes left blank are filled in on the S1. What I’m going to be looking for 2 things:
1) Good/fair voting rights for shareholders. Voting rights should be as good as Netflix/Amazon/Tesla/Peloton’s and not like useless like Snapchat/Facebook/Google’s. (Management shouldn’t fear voting rights because shareholders generally vote in agreement with everything management says but it should have language to prevent short sellers from borrowing shares to vote which is known as a “poison pill” to protect the company from bad actors.)
2) A lower market cap to user ratio than Match Group. When Snapchat IPO’d it had the opposite: a higher market cap to user ratio than Facebook so it dropped from $25 to $5 and overall lagged behind it’s competitor.
Optional moonshot 3: An in-app benefit or perks system for directly having a share of stock. The uniqueness and demand generation of this would send the stock soaring in the same way Ethereum flew from $350 to $1250 after the transition to Ethereum 2.0 which primarily requires you to possess 32 Ethereum to be a miner — something that hasn’t even been rolled out to Coinbase yet and will likely appreciate much further once it does.
Bumble’s “designed by women for women” approach has caused Bumble to do a better job at attracting women to their platform than Tinder or Hinge. More women naturally attract more me. In my area the women on Bumble are noticeably much higher quality in terms of looks, education, and profile description than Hinge’s while on Tinder women are flooded with 100+ matches after a day or two now even if their first photo is just a picture of a floor* while men get magnitudes less attention due to the massive gender disparity.
In summary, I think Bumble is the better dating app company but that won’t matter if the stock is overpriced or isn’t shareholder friendly.
Short Tinder video of a male vs. a female with a floor photo on TikTok: https://m.tiktok.com/v/6912611072226741509.html
*Disclosure, I already hold Match Group shares (which are pretty good shares to hold) and expect Match to try and at least bid on Bumble by diluting their shares again. Whether that’s an outcome everyone wants is a totally different topic..
Then Bumble. By the same woman. Targeting women (first), but then better for males actually. As the skew is less via attracting more women.
Funny.
Ironically, the term "incel" was created by a women before it was coopted https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45284455
https://www.statista.com/statistics/241572/death-rate-by-age...
Primarily from accidents and violence if I recall correctly.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/241488/population-of-the...
[1] https://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-03.pdf
The average woman on dating sites gets hundreds of messages, and the average guy gets tens. That is a MASSIVE imbalance in favor of women.
It’s not hard to imagine that this could cause problems that would lead to a group like incels being created.
I think we need to look more into the cause (why are men so devalued on dating sites) and not the symptom (why are men getting bitter and becoming incels).
Men are generally lauded by society for casual dating and "spreading their seed," while women receive the opposite treatment. They are still generally honored for being very selective in their dating and only engaging in a monogamous relationship with the best mate. Hence, many men end up trying to sleep with most women on Tinder, while not committing to a monogamous relationship. While more women are trying to find the best mate that will commit to a monogamous relationship.
Note: The above only applies to hetero dynamics. I'm ill informed on lgbtq+.
Anecdotally I don't believe this to be the case anymore. A good quarter or so of the women I see on dating apps pretty proudly claim they're polyamorous.
Not sure that's necessarily a massive imbalance. It depends on the quality of the guy sending you those messages, and maybe on the actual message that they send (but it's more important that the guy is hot than that what he says is funny or something).
For example, I get a ton of emails from spammers about penis enlargement methods, and I rarely send my own emails asking if they have any penis enlargement methods available. Does that mean there's a massive imbalance in favor of me? It's not like I'm at a huge advantage because of all this email I'm getting.
Incels are due to gender skew being realized. Appearing larger than true, mainly due to marketing and lumping in with males who weren't getting any anyway (, are shy/insecure, and/or still in high school).
The top half is typically seen as viable by males when they stretch (and women explicitly seek the top 20%). That is, all viable 50/100 women are gobbled up by the top 50/200 (ie, 25%) males. Not even out of "attractive" males and the viable women are already gone. The top 20% of males then end up being enough due to the swipe skew.
The gender skew really made possible the accessing of the top 20% by the last slice of viable women. The top 80% of women have always gone after the top 20% of males. The top 20% (hot) and top 3rd (hot + outright attractive) generally succeeded, leaving the rest of the top 50% (viable) for everyone else. With this skew and overall warping of the mind/perception, now the top 50% often succeed at procuring a male in the top 20%. That is, all viable women are generally gone before getting to the other 80% of males.
As it gets even clearer to women, it'll keep getting worse. Women want to be with AND to be impregnated by the top 20%. If they realize that longer-term relationships are bogus anyway and they start being able to financially support themselves (as the prevailing norm), the "bottom" 80% of males simply won't exist. Most of the action gotten by them came from the 1/6th above the line and below the top 3rd.
Women like commitment, so maybe it'll linger anyway. It's already the case that 80% of white people over 40 have been married at least once. 80% of women over 40 have had at least 1 child. 57% for males over 40.
Get it? During the roaming days, they ideally want the top 20% There doesn't have to be enough to gobble up ALL women, as only the top half are seen as viable by males anyway. Beyond that, the ideal choice for males (ie, top 3rd) are already gobbled up by the top 20%. Further, the rest are had by extending to the top 3rd. The bottom 2/3rds of males never existed. Now it's the bottom 80% and total inaccessibility of women in the top 50%. The last 1/6th deals the most noticeable blow.
Confusion primarily stems from difference in measure used to create the top 20%. Women have a different measure, but males often assume they are primarily about aesthetics.
Have you run that idea past a woman?
In any event, the top 20% is where they really want to be and they'd just settle there if they could. To the extreme they'd rather share one (ie, get cheated on) than be caught dead elsewhere. Look at the extremes they go to, bypassing all logic and sensibility. On the other hand, they get old or are seeking someone to help raise their child.
The main means of imprisonment/trapping of women in prior generations was financial dependence and being seen with scorn (mostly by other women, as they had the same happen to them) if not married (, a teacher, or nurse) by 21.
As women grow more financially independent, they are less dependent on males. That leaves only/mainly the top 20%. For play and impregnation. The bottom 2/3rds of women have a harder time grabbing a top 20% male. Older women have the same experience. On the other hand, the pool that does not have a problem is the same as the pool most men desire. That is, all viable women are increasingly out of reach with time.
Keep trusting or even hearing what a woman says. Even if they aren't trying to be misleading, what they are saying is unusable and is to be ignored.
Men that are a part of the top 20% have the same experience as women.
If you're married/involved and she is attractive to you, great! Most don't get that far, especially after the first 2-3 years.