This week shares in dating company Bumble soared more than 40%, as the company gave an upbeat update - guiding that it expects to pull in more than $930m in revenue across its apps in the coming year thanks to its fast-growing user base.
Women move first
Founded by Whitney Wolfe Herd, who was an early marketing exec at dating app Tinder, Bumble's core feature is that in heterosexual matches it is the woman that has to initiate the conversation after a successful match.
That feature, among others, has proved popular. Bumble now boasts more than 40 million active users, 1.6 million of which actually pay to use the app's premium features. And they pay a lot.
Put a price on love?
Bumble reported that on its core app the 1.64 million paying customers brought in a total of more than $150 million in revenue in the last three months of 2021. If you do the math that works out to ~$30 per paying user per month. It's hard to put a price on finding love, but $30 a month is not a bad start.
Red-flags-as-a-service
With customers willing to spend that much to find that special someone, the dating app industry remains intensely competitive. Just this week industry giant Tinder, which does roughly 3x Bumble's revenue, announced that users would soon be able to run simple criminal background checks on potential dates.
