Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd is leaning into new projects after 19% revenue growth last year

Bumble CEO and founder Whitney Wolfe Herd is in the business of love. She created and launched the dating app Bumble in 2014. Since then, it has seen 100 million users worldwide and helped some people find "their person."

Its success led to Bumble making its Wall Street debut in 2021 — making Herd the youngest female CEO to take a company public.

Bumble has seen financial growth since then. Its 2022 earnings report showed that revenue was up 18.7% from the previous year, beating out analysts' expectations.  

As the company trended upward, Herd last December relinquished some of her roles to Drena Kusari, who was hired to become the Bumble app's first-ever general manager. Herd said bringing Kusari on is about giving her more time to work on projects within Bumble that she wants to see grow and flourish.

"This gives me more time to actually lean into the areas that I am super passionate about and add the most value," she told CBS News on Thursday. "So really focusing on our product and safety and engineering, a more accountable way forward and thinking about GenZ and women in general, but also public policy and really all of our brand efforts."

Herd said the company plans to release additional features this year.

"We have a lot of features already that really show that somebody is who they say they are. We were the first to have photo verification, for example. But we can do more and that's what 2023 is about," she said. "We are coming out with a lot of exciting features in 2023, partnering with a lot of really important initiatives that do keep people safer." 

Along with dating, Bumble can help people make friends. Bumble BFF was created as way to meet new people and expand a person's social circle. 

It works similarly to the dating feature, but users are matched based on their interests, rather than their romantic compatibility, which Herd believes helps build friendships and community and goes back to what Bumble really is about: connection. 

"There is no shortage of demand for love and what's really interesting is love does not have to be just romantic. And that's why we're so excited about our platonic offering. This is about self-love, this is about friendship," she said.