Thread by @ankithharathi

After battling an exhausting personal lawsuit, she was on the brink of giving up.

But one meeting with an elusive Russian tech mogul reignited her spirit.

Yesterday, she became the youngest woman to take a company public, and a billionaire.

Here’s how that meeting went 🧶👇

1) In June 2014, Whitney Wofle Herd found herself in the middle of the toughest professional and personal challenge she’d ever faced.

She was suing the company she co-founded, Tinder, for sexual harassment.

2) She was stripped of co-founder title, received death threats from complete strangers, and was publicly humiliated.

Yet she still continued to fight.

3) After everything subsided, Whitney was drained.

“I was broken”

She retreated to her family’s house in Texas, away from the spotlight and the drama.

4) While Whitney was recovering, something else started coming into play.

Andrey Andreev, the British/Russian founder of Badoo, the world’s largest online dating network, took an interest in Whitney.

5) He’d been first captivated by her during a 2013 company dinner, while she was still at Tinder.

Badoo was now looking for a CMO and Andrey thought Whitney would be perfect. So he shot her an email.

6) After no response, Andrey, who maintains a purposeful secrecy, reached out through Whitney’s lawyers to get in touch.

Whitney’s reply was not what he was expecting.

7) She wasn’t interested. At all.

“Dream on. I'm not for hire"

But rather than deny Andrey over email, she decided to meet him in London and let him know face-to-face.

8) Whitney and Andrey met, and she made it very clear that she was not going to come work for him at Badoo.

But to his further surprise, she pitched him on a new startup idea she’d been quietly thinking about.

9) Merci.

Merci was a women’s only social network, all about empowerment, with no negativity or emphasis on physicality.

Andrey liked the idea and its theme…but felt Whitney should stick within her domain of expertise: dating.

10) Rather than head back home, Whitney stayed in London and spent time discussing with Andrey what combining her idea with a dating-concept would look like.

How could women feel more empowered?

"What if women make the first move, send the first message?”

11) She likened it to Cinderella, or a high school Sadie Hawkins dance where the girls ask the guys.

“What if we could hardwire that into a product?”

12) Andrey, fascinated with her talent and product intuition, offered to invest $10M in this still unnamed company.

Whitney accepted, and Bumble was born.

13) Yesterday at 9:30am ET, 6 years after founding Bumble, Whitney became the youngest woman to take a company public and a billionaire in the process.

Her journey has only just begun, and there's one thing you can be absolutely sure of.

She’ll keep making the first move.