Bumble has a new queen bee

Bumble founder and chief executive Whitney Wolfe Herd is stepping down as the company’s CEO, the WSJ first reported yesterday. The dating app has also already swiped right on a replacement: Lidiane Jones, who became the CEO of Slack this past January.

Background: The 34-year-old Wolfe Herd, who became the world's youngest self-made female billionaire when she took Bumble public almost three years ago, founded the female-focused dating app following an acrimonious departure from Tinder (which she co-founded). The idea underpinning Bumble was that having women initiate conversations with prospective partners would help weed out unwanted messages and put them in control of their romantic lives, per the WSJ.

📸 Big picture: Wolfe Herd’s replacement, Lidiane Jones, a 44-year-old tech-industry vet who worked for Microsoft for more than a decade and later became an exec at Salesforce, is taking over the company at a time when Wall Street is souring on dating apps like they were Warheads. Bumble shares, which hit a high of $84.80 in 2021 shortly after its IPO, dropped to a record-low of $12.29 following yesterday’s announcement, and are now down 36% for the year.

Match Group isn’t doing too hot either. Its stock is down 31% for the year, and dropped more than 15% after reporting Q3 earnings last week that showed a continued decline in the number of paying users on Tinder.