Bumble Founder Whitney Wolfe Herd Hands Reins to Slack CEO Lidiane Jones

Female-focused dating app Bumble has named a new chief executive officer.

Lidiane Jones, currently the CEO of Slack, will take the job at Bumble at the start of next year, the company announced in a Monday (Nov. 6) press release. Jones will succeed Whitney Wolfe Herd, who founded Bumble in 2014.

“I’ve thought hard about what type of leader could ultimately step into the CEO role as a successor and help continue taking Bumble to even greater heights, and I am so pleased to have found Lidiane,” Herd said in the release. “Lidiane’s expertise and track record in product and technology is exceptional and having her leading the next chapter of Bumble Inc. is a major win for our company, customers and team.”

Upon stepping down, Herd will become Bumble’s executive chair, a move she said in the release will allow her to “get back to my founder roots.”

Before taking the CEO job at Slack, Jones was executive vice president and general manager for Salesforce Digital Experiences. She has also held leadership roles at Sonos and Microsoft.

“As a woman who has spent her career in technology, it’s a gift to lean on my experience to lead a company dedicated to women and encouraging equality, integrity and kindness, all deeply personal and inspiring to me,” she said in the release.

Some of Bumble’s efforts to make its female users feel secure include a ban on body shaming and technology to block unwanted lewd pictures in private messages, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Monday.

Speaking to the WSJ, Jones discussed how artificial intelligence (AI) can continue that work.

“We really want to embark big on AI,” she said. “AI and generative AI can play such a big role in accelerating people finding the right person, finding the right friends and the right community. There’s more that we think we can do.”

Bumble has explored other AI initiatives, such as the use of a chatbot as a dating coach.

These efforts come at a time when 73 million consumers across the U.S. are logging in to dating apps every month, with 25 million doing so daily, according to PYMNTS’ “The ConnectedEconomy Monthly Report: The Love and Social Media Edition.”

PYMNTS Intelligence also showed that the share of consumers using dating apps climbed 21% year over year, meaning that 13 million more consumers used them in 2023 than last year.