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Tinder adds a new home for interactive, social features with launch of Tinder Explore
Tinder is redesigning its app to put a larger emphasis on its social, interactive features with the launch of “Explore,” a new section that will feature events, like the return of the popular “Swipe Night” series, as well as ways to discover matches by interests and dive into quick chats before a match is made. Combined, the changes help to push Tinder further away from its roots as a quick match-based dating app into something that’s more akin to a social network aimed at helping users meet new people.
This shift could resonate better with a younger generation that may feel like traditional online dating has lost its novelty. Today, these users are turning to apps marketing themselves as places to meet new friends, while newcomers to the dating app industry are experimenting with other means of connecting users — such as with short, TikTok-like videos, as in Snack, or even audio, as in SwoonMe. For Tinder, these market shifts may have represented an existential threat to its own business. But instead, the company has doubled down on interactivity as being core to the Tinder experience, and as a means of maintaining its dominant position.
At launch, Tinder Explore will include a handful of existing features alongside a new way to meet people. The latter allows users to connect with others based on interests — like Foodies, Gamers, Music Lovers, Social Causes, Entrepreneurs and more. Over time, more interests will be added, which will allow Tinder members to find someone based on what they’re like, rather than just what they look like.
Image Credits: Tinder
Explore will also be home to Tinder’s “Swipe Night,” the interactive series that launched in 2019 as an in-app “choose your own adventure” story which helped to boost Tinder engagement as it gave users a reason to relaunch the app at a specific time. Tinder hailed “Swipe Night” as a success, saying the feature attracted over 20 million users during its first run and led to a 26% increase in matches. In November, the series will return — this time, with new characters and a new “whodunit”-style storyline. It will now also leverage the “Fast Chat” feature that powers Tinder’s “Hot Takes” experience, which allows unmatched users to chat.
“Hot Takes” will also appear in Tinder Explore, which the company describes as a more low-stakes way to match with other users. As a timer counts down, users who are chatting can choose if they want to match. If the timer expires, they meet someone new — similar to an online version of speed dating. Since launching this summer, millions of Tinder users have tried “Hot Takes,” which is only available from 6 pm to midnight local time.
However, the bigger story about Tinder Explore isn’t just what sort of features it will host now, but what the company has in store for the future. Earlier this year, Tinder parent Match bought the Korean social networking company Hyperconnect for $1.73 billion — its largest acquisition to date. And it’s preparing to use Hyperconnect’s IP to make the online dating experience even more interactive than it is today, having announced plans to add audio and video chat, including group live video, to several of its top dating app properties, Tinder included.
Tinder Explore provides a platform where features like this could later be added — something Tinder hints toward0s, noting that the section is designed to offer users access to “a growing list” of social experiences with “many more to follow.”
“A new generation of daters is asking for more from us in the post-Covid world: more ways to have fun and interact with others virtually and more control over who they meet on Tinder,” said Tinder CEO Jim Lanzone, in a company announcement. “Today’s launch of Explore is a major step in creating a deeper, multi-dimensional, interactive experience for our members that expands the possibilities of Tinder as a platform,” he added.
Tinder Explore began rolling out to major English-speaking markets on Wednesday, September 8, and will be available globally by mid-October.
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Does SoftBank have 20 more DoorDashes?
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Natasha and Danny and Alex and Grace were all here to chat through the week’s biggest tech happenings. This week felt oddly comforting from a tech news perspective: Facebook is copying something, early-stage startup data is flawed enough to talk about and sweet DoorDash is buying robots for undisclosed sums.
So, here’s a rundown of the tech news we got into (as always, jokes aren’t previewed so you’ll have to listen to the actual show to get our critique and Award Winning Analysis*):
- Ethena raising $2 million more for corporate training that is not awful, and Zeta raising $1.5 million for couples’ banking. Natasha has been killing the early-stage beat lately.
- How seed data could be getting harder and harder to parse from Alex’s desk, and why VC data in general is dicey, from Danny’s. We discuss if directional data is useful, and why the limited numbers could have a cultural impact on signal.
- Reddit raises $250 million, but doesn’t tell us who the investors are and what the money is precisely going to. Still, the company has had quite a year so far, so the capital comes at an interesting time.
- Justo, an online grocery based in Mexico, raises $65 million as the pandemic continues to shake up the way we live and shop.
- DoorDash buys a salad robot, which brings Natasha nostalgia and Danny anger.
- The inverted SoftBank J-Curve thesis is a must-listen and read.
- And from the world of dating, a big M&A deal that caught our attention, and the latest from the Bumble IPO.
In good news, long-time Equity producer Chris Gates is back starting next week, which means we’ll have our biggest crew ever helping get the show put together. And, in other good news, there’s going to be more Equity than ever for you to hear. Coming soon.
Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PST and Thursday afternoon as fast as we can get it out, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
*OK, so not award-winning yet. But soon enough, because manifestation works.
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Bumble prices IPO at $43 per share
This afternoon Bumble priced its IPO at $43 per share, ahead of its raised IPO range of $37 to $39 per share.
Bumble filed to go public in mid-January, and offered up its first price range on February 2. That range, $28 to $30 per share, wound up coming up short. Bumble raised its price range to $37 to $39 per share earlier this week.
Before counting a possible underwriters’ option, Bumble raised $2.15 billion by selling 50,000,000 million shares in its public offering. The company will begin to trade tomorrow morning.
Bumble’s debut comes amidst a number of other 2021 offerings, including MetroMile’s SPAC-led public combination earlier this week. Other well-known companies are anticipated to list this year, including Coinbase and, perhaps, Robinhood.
The public offering of Bumble shares comes after a sustained period when one company, Match, was presumed to be the only possible public dating company. However, the smaller Bumble has proven that there is room for at least one more.
TechCrunch explored Bumble’s financial results here, if you’d like more.
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With a higher IPO valuation, is Bumble aiming for Match.com’s revenue multiple?
The IPO frenzy is not letting up, Bumble informed the world this morning.
Per a new SEC filing, the dating company raised its target IPO price range, indicating that its previous attempt to quantify its per-share value was an undershoot. This means we’ll need to calculate a host of new valuations and revenue multiples for the company.
But more than that, we have a question to answer: Is Bumble aiming for a Match.com price, despite not being as profitable as its already-public rival? The last time we covered the pair, Bumble’s implied revenue multiples were discounted compared to Match, but with this new price, has the smaller company gained ground?
The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. Read it every morning on Extra Crunch, or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.
And if so, does it mean that we’re seeing more public market enthusiasm for private companies? We’ll find out.
When it comes to the frenetic demand for IPO shares from public investors, I am reminded of a particular Dilbert. In this particular strip, Wally gets fired and is then hired back as a consultant. People outside the company appear smarter, he said, so he’s now back and getting paid more money than before.
This, but for private companies going public. Some companies appear to have huge promise while private, only to fizzle slowly while public. Or they manage huge price gains during their IPO process, only to cede those wins after they have a few trading months under their belt.
Is that what’s going to happen with Bumble?
Bumble’s new IPO pricing range
Bumble targeted a $28 to $30 per-share IPO price when it first set a range, implying a greater than $1 billion raise. Now the company is selling more shares at an even higher price. From 34.5 million shares to 45 million, and at a new $37 to $39 per share price range, Bumble could raise $1.66 billion to $1.76 billion in its IPO.
And that’s not counting its underwriters’ option of 6.75 million shares, which might bring its total raise to $2.02 billion at the top end of its new pricing interval.
What is Bumble worth at those new prices? Using its simple, shares-outstanding post-IPO count of 112,745,301 — inclusive of its underwriters’ option — the company would be worth $4.17 billion to $4.4 billion.
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Equity Monday: Tesla buys bitcoin, Nexthink raises and Bumble
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here — and be sure to check out last week’s main ep that dug into Robinhood, Miami and a host of other topics.
This morning we had a pile of news to get through. Here’s the rundown:
- Pony.ai raised another $100 million, which underscores our growing thesis that there is no amount of money yet that will produce the tech required for self-driving cars to work. Perhaps we will get there, but it is going to cost a pretty penny or two.
- Sticking to cars, the Apple-Kia tie-up is kaput, which we should have known the moment it became known. Apple previously bought startup Drive.ai back in 2019, of course.
- Vroom, a 2020 IPO, bought a Super Bowl ad. Who would have expected that? Its shares are up, however, after the ad.
- Still on the car beat, Tesla bought $1.5 billion in bitcoin, and may accept the stuff as tender to buy its vehicles in the future. The move sent the price of bitcoin higher.
- Clubhouse got banned in China.
- Phable raised $12 million, Nexthink raised $180 million and Bumble is targeting a higher share price in its impending IPO.
- And we may have figured out the ∆ between what investors are saying about the seed market, and what data has largely said.
Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PST and Thursday afternoon as fast as we can get it out, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
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A lake house architect, a Miami VC and a homeowner walk into a wine bar
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Natasha and Danny and Alex and Grace were all here to chat through the week’s biggest tech happenings. The good news is that we managed to fit it all into a single episode this week. The bad news is that that means the show is pretty long. Sorry about that!
So, what took us so much time to get through? All of this:
- Robinhood raised $3.4 billion after its trading hiccups, and we also chatted over what we know about the company’s Q4 2020 numbers. In short, the company is growing nicely.
- RPA is big and UiPath is cashing in on the trend, raising $750 million at a $35 billion valuation. That’s a lot of cash for very little dilution.
- Databricks raised $1 billion at a $28 billion valuation, after reaching $425 million in ARR. The company’s growth is hot, but its valuation may be even hotter.
- Bumble is going public, so we chatted about its results, and how founder- and venture-friendly the dating market may be in the future.
- In a big exit for the Boston startup ecosystem, alcohol delivery platform Drizly has sold to Uber for $1.1 billion.
- Sticking to the alcohol beat, Danny talked us through the Vivino news, describing himself as a wine sophisticate with a distaste for sommeliers, which is just about the most Danny thing he has ever said. But the company really is neat.
- Divvy homes raised a $110 million Series C to make it easier to buy a home, after financing five times as many homes in 2020 as it did in pre-pandemic times.
- And then there were some neat early-stage rounds to chat about: Balance raising $5.5 million to bring B2B payments to the modern world, Alloy Automation raising $4 million for e-commerce automation and Beam raising $9.5 million to build a new browser.
- Make sure to read Natasha’s profile of the new Expectul CEO here.
- And, we closed on some Miami news.
And somehow we still have another entire day before the week is up! So much for 2021 calming down after 2020’s storms.
Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PST and Thursday afternoon as fast as we can get it out, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
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Bumble files to go public
The dating and networking service Bumble has filed to go public.
The company, launched by a former co-founder of the IAC-owned Tinder, plans to list on the Nasdaq stock exchange, using the ticker symbol “BMBL.” Bumble’s planned IPO was first reported in December.
Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd was on the founding team at Tinder before starting Bumble. She filed suit against Tinder for sexual harassment and discrimination, which was at least somewhat inspirational in her quest to build a dating app that put women in the driver’s seat.
In 2019, Wolfe Herd took the helm of MagicLab, renamed to Bumble Group, in a $3 billion deal with Blackstone, replacing Badoo founder and CEO Andrey Andreev following a harassment scandal at the firm.
The company is targeting the public markets at a particularly heady time for new offerings, with investors embracing venture-backed IPOs throughout late 2020 and the start of 2021. Previously privately held companies like Airbnb, Affirm and others have seen their fortunes soar on the back of prices that public investors are willing to pay, perhaps inducing more IPO filings than the market might have otherwise seen.
You can read its IPO filing here. TechCrunch will have its usual tear-down of the document later today, but we have pulled some top-line numbers for you to kick off your own research.
But before we do, the company’s board makeup, namely that it is over 70% women, is already drawing plaudits. Now, into its numbers.
Inside Bumble’s IPO filing
Let’s consider Bumble from three perspectives: Usage, financial results and ownership.
On the usage front, Bumble is popular, as you would imagine a dating service would have to be to reach the scale required to go public. The company claims 42 million monthly active users (MAUs) as of Q3 2020 — many companies will try to get public on the strength of their third-quarter results from 2020, as it takes time to close Q4 and the full calendar year.
Those 42 million MAUs translated into 2.4 million total paying users through the first nine months of 2020; the percent, then, of paying users to MAUs is not 2.4 million divided by 42, but a smaller fraction.
Turning to the numbers, recall that Bumble sold a majority of itself a few years back. We bring that up as Bumble’s financial results are complicated thanks to its ownership structure.
After the IPO, Bumble Inc. will “be a holding company, and its sole material asset will be a controlling equity interest in Bumble Holdings,” per the S-1 filing. So, how is Bumble Holdings doing?
Medium? Doing the sums ourselves as the company’s S- 1 is fraught with accounting nuances, in the first nine months of 2019, Bumble managed the following:
- Revenues of $362.6 million
- Net income of $68.6 million
And then, combining two columns to provide a similar set of results for the same period of 2020, Bumble recorded:
- Revenues of $416.6 million
- Net income of -$116.7 million
For those following along, we’re using the “Net (loss) earnings” line, for profitability, and not the “Net (loss) earnings attributable to owners / shareholders” as that would require even more explanation and we’re keeping it simple in this first look.
While Bumble saw modest growth in 2020 through Q3 and a sharp swing to losses on a GAAP basis, the company’s adjusted profitability grew over the same time period. The company’s adjusted EBITDA, a very non-GAAP metric, expanded from $80.0 million in the first three quarters of 2019 to $108.3 million in the same period of 2020.
While we are generally willing to allow quickly growing companies some leniency when it comes to adjusted metrics, the gap between Bumble’s GAAP losses and its EBITDA results is a stress-test of our compassion. Bumble also swung from free cash flow positivity during the first nine months of 2019 to the first quarters of 2020.
If you extrapolate Bumble’s Q1, Q2 and Q3 revenue to a full-year number, the company could manage $555.5 million in 2020 revenues. Even at a modest software-ish multiple, the company would be worth more than the $3 billion figure that we discussed before.
However, its sharp unprofitability in 2020 could damper its eventual valuation. More as we dig more deeply into the filing.
Finally, on the ownership question, the company’s filing is surprisingly denuded of data. Its principal shareholder section looks like this:
When we know more, we’ll share more. Until then, happy S-1 reading.
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Bumble reportedly filed confidentially for an IPO
Today Bumble, a popular dating-focused startup, was reported by Bloomberg to have filed IPO documents, albeit privately.
The news that Bumble is pursuing an IPO is not a surprise. TechCrunch covered the story in September, noting the huge revenues that its rival Tinder has managed to accrete, possibly indicative of a sufficiently large market to support two public dating players.
That Bumble has privately filed puts it, along with the crypto-focused Coinbase, as far along the IPO path before we can see their numbers. When they make their S-1 filings public the two companies will provide the market a look into their financial results.
Bumble and Coinbase are preceded in making such disclosures by Roblox, Affirm and Poshmark. The five companies will join others in seeking IPOs over the next few months.
According to a recent interview with GGV’s Hans Tung — an investor in Affirm and Airbnb and other unicorns — TechCrunch understands that quarters one, three and four in 2021 could prove to be active IPO periods. Bumble joining the fray in the final weeks of 2020 underscores how active the start of the year could be for highly priced private companies seeking liquidity while public markets trade near all-time highs.
TechCrunch reached out to Bumble for comment on the IPO report. The company declined to comment.
Bloomberg reports that Bumble could target a valuation of between $6 and $8 billion. This squares with prior reporting. How much revenue the market will require of Bumble to reach those prices, and at what pace of growth, is not clear.
But with the company reaching 100 million users earlier this year, perhaps all the math will pencil out.
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Facebook to launch ‘virtual dating’ over Messenger for Facebook Dating users
Facebook will soon allow users to go on “virtual dates,” the company announced today. The social network is planning to introduce a new video calling feature that will allow users of its Facebook Dating service to connect and video call over Messenger, as an alternative to going on a real-world date. This sort of feature is much in demand amid the coronavirus pandemic, which has forced people to stay home and practice social distancing.
But for online dating apps, which aim to connect people in the real world, it’s a significant challenge for their business.
For the time being, government lockdowns have limited the places where online daters could meet up for their first date. Restaurants, malls, bars and other retail establishments are closed across regions impacted by the coronavirus outbreak. But even when those restrictions lift, many online dating app users will be wary of meeting up with strangers for those first-time, getting-to-know-you dates. Video chat offers a safer option to explore potential connections with their matches.
When the new Facebook Dating feature goes live, online daters will be able to invite a match to a virtual date. The recipient can either choose to accept or decline the offer via a pop-up that appears.
If they accept, the Facebook Dating users will be connected in a video chat powered by Facebook Messenger in order to get to know one another.
As the feature is still being developed, Facebook declined to share more specific details about how it will work, in terms of privacy and security features.
Facebook is not the first online dating service to pivot to video as a result of the pandemic. But many rival dating apps were adopting video features well before the coronavirus struck, as well.
Bumble, for example, has offered voice and video calling in its app for roughly a year. The feature there works like a normal phone call or Apple’s FaceTime. However, users don’t have to share their phone number or other private information, like an email address, which makes it safer.
The company says use of the feature has spiked over the last two months as users embrace virtual dating.
Meanwhile, Match Group has more recently rolled out video across a number of the dating apps it operates.
This month, the Match app added video chat that allows users who have already matched to connect over video calls. Match-owned Hinge also rolled out a “Dating from Home” prompt and is preparing its own live video date feature, as well, Match says. Plenty of Fish (PoF), another Match property, launched live-streaming in March, giving singles a new way to hang out with friends and potential matches.
Match Group’s flagship app Tinder has not yet embraced live video dates, but still offers a way for users to add video to their profiles. The company couldn’t comment on whether or not video dating was in the works for Tinder, but in the post-COVID era, it would be almost bizarre to not offer such feature.
Other dating apps have also launched video dating, including eHarmony and a number of lesser-known dating apps hoping to now gain traction for their video dating concepts.
Facebook says the feature will roll out in the months ahead and will be available everywhere Facebook Dating is available.
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New York’s ERA invests in esports org Gen.G
Esports are the Wild West right now. There’s clearly a huge potential for the industry to become incredibly lucrative, but everything from the infrastructure of competition to the overall culture isn’t quite ready for prime time.
This introduces a huge opportunity for the tech world to get in on the action. We’ve seen traditional VC money start to sniff around esports in ways big and small. Bessemer Venture Partners has invested in Team SoloMid, while Sequoia has invested in 100 Thieves.
Today, Gen.G has announced that it has accepted investment from the Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator, a longstanding New York City-based accelerator program.
Gen.G started as KSV (Korea plus Silicon Valley) in mid-2017 with a debut in the Overwatch League. In 2018, after expanding to other games, including Heroes of the Storm, PUBG and League of Legends, KSV eSports rebranded to Generation Gaming (Gen.G) and launched a Clash Royale esports team.
At the end of 2018, Gen.G made yet another huge move. They lured Chris Park from his position as executive vice president in charge of product and marketing at Major League Baseball to join Gen.G as CEO.
Since then, Park has been thinking about the long-term opportunities for the esports org and the industry as a whole. He secured $46 million in funding from Los Angeles Clippers minority owner Dennis Wong, Will Smith’s Dreamers Fund, NEA, Battery Ventures, Canaan Partners, SVB Capital and Stanford University, among others.
And he signed a partnership with dating app Bumble to create Team Bumble, an all-female professional Fortnite squad.
Gender inclusion is one of the biggest misses in the esports world right now. Data shows that 46% of gamers are female (ESA) and that nearly one in four esports viewers are female (Nielsen). Despite no physical differentiators between men and women, women are severely underrepresented in the esports world.
Not one female competed in the Fortnite World Cup in 2019, despite the fact that qualifiers were completely open to any player. A big reason for the disparity here is that the gaming community isn’t generally a safe environment for female gamers, in big and small ways. Many female gamers experience abuse while playing games, like this streamer, and it’s gotten bad enough to push a small percentage of female gamers away from playing entirely.
But exclusion comes in many forms. Ninja announced in August 2018 that he won’t be streaming with female gamers, which you can read about here.
Beyond general principles about equality, the female gamer is a lucrative demographic that has yet to be properly tapped by any particular esports org, publisher or otherwise. Gen.G is now ahead in the race to acquire female gamers as fans, customers and future talent.
Another forward-thinking move by Gen.G is its recent partnership with the University of Kentucky to help create and manage its esports program. We’ve seen startups like PlayVS look to build out the infrastructure and connective tissue that will eventually bind education and professional sports, as has been the case with traditional sports for generations. Gen.G is now tackling that ever-important bridge from academia to professional life by looking at universities.
The funding from ERA, the amount of which has not been disclosed, not only allows Gen.G to grow its foothold on the East Coast — it also gives the esports org a strategic partnership with ERA, which invests in super early-stage tech startups. As more founders tackle the mounting challenges in esports, Gen.G is now in a prime position to watch over those deals closely and potentially tap into some of the solutions and services sure to sprout up in the next five to 10 years.
“We are focused on ways to make it easier for people in the gaming community to connect,” said Park, hinting at some of the technology in which Gen.G is interested. “My hope is that over time, platforms as well as teams treat fans and athletes as more than just users, and more like collaborators and partners.”
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