The Origin
Salt Lake City, a Tote Bag, and the Road to Everything
She was 20 years old when the BP oil spill hit the Gulf Coast in 2010. Her response was to co-design a bamboo tote bag, convince a celebrity stylist named Patrick Aufdenkamp to help sell it, and get Rachel Zoe and Nicole Richie photographed carrying it. That's a Whitney Wolfe Herd move: find the leverage point, build the coalition, make it visual.
Born July 1, 1989, in Salt Lake City - father Jewish, mother Catholic, education at a Catholic high school, sorority at SMU - she is a walking contradiction of backgrounds. She graduated from Southern Methodist University in 2011 with a degree in International Studies. Her plan after graduation was not to launch a billion-dollar app. It was to volunteer at orphanages in Southeast Asia.
Then a startup called Cardify at Hatch Labs called. The project went nowhere, but it parked her at a table with Sean Rad and Justin Mateen, who were building something called MatchBox. She joined. She renamed it. That name was Tinder - inspired by the combustible material that starts fires, because the app had a flame in its logo. You probably know what comes next.
"Tinder is brushwood that ignites a flame."
- Whitney Wolfe Herd, on naming Tinder
As VP of Marketing at Tinder, she invented the playbook that every campus-based consumer app has copied since: tour the sororities, throw pizza parties, get women on the app first, then let the fraternities follow. It worked. Tinder went viral on college campuses and from there, to everywhere. She was 22. She was the only woman in leadership. Then things went wrong in the way that things sometimes go wrong for the only woman in the room.
