Big tech companies usually like to settle their disputes in private,

over meetings and emails, or through arbitrations and takedown notices.

But occasionally, when a company is really fed up, it takes a fight public.

That's what seemed to be happening in the summer of 2018,

when the founder and CEO of Bumble, Whitney Wolf, heard,

came out swinging against match group on CNBC.

Match was unable to acquire us successfully, and they then filed a baseless lawsuit on our company.

Bumble is the second most downloaded dating app in the US.

It's behind Tinder that it kind of feels just like Tinder.

On both apps, you swipe left or right through a stack of people to make connections.

That was the basis of match groups lawsuit against Bumble,

that the competing app stole Tinder's patented precious swipe.

But to Wolf heard, this lawsuit wasn't about product design.

It was about retribution, because match had reportedly tried to buy Bumble twice and failed.

We are a high risk to any of our competitors right now.

Our growth is exceeding everyone's expectations, even our own growth goals.

Bumble was in just its fourth year and, frankly, killing it.

So we've been a profitable business since year two.

We don't even have an ad model yet.

This is strictly on a freemium subscription model.

And so you can imagine we're just scraping the tip of the iceberg for our growth opportunity

and for a revenue opportunity.

...