[11][12] While in college and at the age of 20, she started a business selling bamboo tote bags to benefit areas affected by the BP oil spill.

[13][14] Soon after, she introduced a second business with Aufdenkamp called "Tender Heart", a clothing line dedicated to raising awareness around human trafficking and fair trade.

[15][16] In 2012, at age 22, Wolfe Herd joined the startup Cardify, a project led by Sean Rad through Hatch Labs IAC incubator.

The project was later abandoned, but Wolfe Herd joined the development team for the dating app Tinder (previously known as MatchBox) with Rad and Chris Gulczynski.

[12][16] She was reportedly behind the name of the app, taking inspiration from the flame logo and the idea of tinder, which is easily combustible material used to start a fire.

[12][24] Having received online hate, Wolfe Herd started sketching out a female-only social network centered around compliments which was to be called Merci.

[35] In March 2019, Wolfe Herd testified before the Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence committee about the prevalence of unsolicited explicit photos sent to female users on dating applications.

Wolfe Herd became CEO of the newly acquired MagicLab, valued at $3 billion with an estimated 75 million users, and received an ownership stake of approximately 19% of the company.

[43] In November 2023, Wolfe Herd announced she would enter the role of executive chair in January 2024, with Lidiane Jones stepping into the position of CEO of Bumble.

[43][44][45] In May 2024, Wolfe Herd suggested at the Bloomberg Tech Summit that single people might use AI dating concierges as stand-ins for themselves when contacting potential partners online.

[47] In 2017, UK-based gay dating app Chappy was co-founded by Jack Rogers, Max Cheremkin and Ollie Locke and funded primarily by Bumble and Wolfe Herd.