Bumble founder and CEO to step down early next year, Slack chief executive to succeed her
Whitney Wolfe Herd, founder and CEO of the dating app Bumble, is stepping down from her role at the helm of the company early next year.
Bumble requires women to make the first move with dating prospects, and Wolfe Herd founded the company in 2014 as a way to create an empowering and safe online dating space. She will be succeeded by Lidiane Jones, CEO of Salesforce’s cloud-based messaging platform Slack, on Jan. 2, 2024, according to a company release Monday.
Shares of Bumble closed down more than 4% Monday and have fallen 38% year to date.
“It’s a monumental moment, one that has taken a great deal of time, consideration and care, for me to pass the baton to a leader and a woman I deeply respect,” Wolfe Herd said in a release. She will transition to a new role as executive chair when Jones takes over as CEO.
Jones secured the top job at Slack earlier this year after holding other executive roles at Salesforce and spending more than a decade at Microsoft. She said she has “long admired” Bumble’s mission and is looking forward to driving “long-term, sustainable growth” at the company.
She added that she is “grateful to have the support of my colleagues at Slack and Salesforce.”
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said Jones’ new role is a “hugely-deserved achievement.” The company will announce a new head of Slack on Nov. 13, according to a spokesperson.
“While we will all of course miss her greatly (especially me), we recognize what an amazing opportunity this is for Lidiane in becoming a public company CEO. And all the more so at Bumble, a truly great company, with great values that we admire dearly,” Benioff said in a statement to CNBC.
Bumble is scheduled to report its third-quarter results on Tuesday.
–CNBC’s Jordan Novet contributed to this report
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