Bumble Founder Whitney Wolfe Herd Slammed by Employees Amid Her Hulu Biopic Being Critically Panned

Furious former and current staffers at the popular dating app Bumble are rolling their eyes at an upcoming feature film gushing over its founder and CEO, Whitney Wolfe Herd.

The Hulu flick, Swiped, heralds Herd’s triumph in the rough and tumble male-dominated digital world. However, many workers claim that under the 36-year-old’s leadership, Bumble has been plagued by toxic culture and disastrous management, according to published reports and an insider.

Touted as the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire at age 31 in 2021, Herd recently announced massive layoffs at Bumble. She also is said to have infuriated workers by issuing a tone deaf “calm down” messages after announcing the cuts, which affected 30 percent of its worldwide workforce.

“I see a lot of freaking-out emojis, y’all need to calm down,” she allegedly said, referring to social media posts by employees. “This is being taken out of context … Everyone’s going to have to be adults in dealing with this.”

Swiped, starring Mamma Mia star Lily James, details Herd’s 2012 rise in the corporate world as the cofounder of Tinder — and her subsequent split with the company two years later amid accusations of sexual harassment and discrimination against one of her cofounders with whom she had a previous relationship. (The lawsuit was eventually settled with Tinder walking away admitting no wrongdoing.)

In December 2014 she launched Bumble, a “women make the first move concept” featuring the famous “swipe left” to reject and “swipe right” to accept option. The dating app would go on to be used in 150 countries and eventually list its shares on Nasdaq.

But insiders and published reports reveal a darker side of the feel-good story, with former workers and staffers who helped turned the app into a worldwide sensation claiming they were allegedly cut-out of the promised profit sharing.

“I can’t count the number of conversations I’ve had where I mentioned I was an early hire at Bumble and people are like, ‘Oh, wow, congratulations, you must be rich,’ and it’s just sort of like, ‘Um, I got nothing,’ “ a former employee told Business Insider in 2022.

At the time, a Bumble spokesperson told Business Insider that it was made clear to the workers the equity is not available at this time but “if they stayed with the business there could potentially be opportunities in the future.”

Former and current workers also blasted Bumble’s former majority owner Andrey Andreev — the CEO and founder of Badoo — for allegedly fostering a misogynistic culture that Herd allegedly embraced during his notorious parties with nude models as sushi platters and drugs, according to published reports.

According to a 2019 investigation by Forbes, a male employee at Badoo was canned for inappropriately touching a female co-worker during a party but was rehired after he filed an appeal with the executive team – which included Andreev and Herd.

Herd issued a statement saying she was “mortified” by the allegations detailed in the Forbes article adding “I am saddened and sickened to hear that anyone, of any gender, would ever be made to feel marginalized or mistreated in any capacity at their workplace.”

Since its IPO, Bumble’s stock has cratered losing 92 percent of its value and shedding billions leaving shareholders in the lurch, according to a February Business Insider report.

“Far from the feminist triumph being celebrated on screen, Bumble has been plagued by toxic culture and disastrous management under Herd” an insider tells the National Enquirer.

“Fed-up” workers, however, were recently given a reason to rejoice after the film was panned by critics earning a 29 percent approval rating on popular Rotten Tomatoes website following its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.