Can Lidiane Jones be Bumble's perfect match?

Dating app Bumble is taking on Lidiane Jones, a well-regarded leader in tech, as its new boss. Can she work her magic in a new arena?

Lidiane Jones speaks at 2023 WSJs Future Of Everything Festival at Spring Studios on May 03 2023 in New York City
(Image credit: Joy Malone/Getty Images)

For an industry supposedly “devoted to facilitating love and partnership”, the history of the matchmaking sector is full of “strife and division”, says the Financial Times. One woman hoping to change that, or at least turn it to her advantage, is Lidiane Jones – the fast-rising, Brazilian-born tech executive, who has just jilted Slack after less than a year in charge to join the female-forward dating site, Bumble.

Jones, 44, arrives with glowing testimonials that wouldn’t look out of place on a dating profile. Last year, as Fast Company notes, she was effusively described by Slack’s co-founder and guiding light, Stewart Butterfield, as “pragmatic and caring, insightful, passionate, creative, kind and curious”, as well as hardworking and collaborative. Just the person, one might think, to turn the tide for Bumble, which has lost roughly 80% of its value since its 2021 initial public offering (IPO). But investors aren’t yet sold, says The Wall Street Journal – collectively “swiping left” by sending shares to an all-time low when her appointment was announced.

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Jane writes profiles for MoneyWeek and is city editor of The Week. A former British Society of Magazine Editors editor of the year, she cut her teeth in journalism editing The Daily Telegraph’s Letters page and writing gossip for the London Evening Standard – while contributing to a kaleidoscopic range of business magazines including Personnel Today, Edge, Microscope, Computing, PC Business World, and Business & Finance.

She has edited corporate publications for accountants BDO, business psychologists YSC Consulting, and the law firm Stephenson Harwood – also enjoying a stint as a researcher for the due diligence department of a global risk advisory firm.

Her sole book to date, Stay or Go? (2016), rehearsed the arguments on both sides of the EU referendum.

She lives in north London, has a degree in modern history from Trinity College, Oxford, and is currently learning to play the drums.