How a dating app built a $3 billion empire using “crazy hacks,” psychological warfare, and billion-dollar marketing strategies In 2014, Whitney Wolfe Herd had just left Tinder amid a sexual harassment lawsuit. Within months, she had launched Bumble with a radical premise: women make the first move. But here’s the real story – it wasn’t the feminist angle that drove explosive growth. It was a series of ingenious, borderline guerrilla marketing tactics that turned college campuses into user acquisition goldmines and transformed a startup with a “modest budget” into a dating app giant.