Swiping Right: A Texas Dating App is the Focus of New Hulu Film

This week, Hulu announced a new original film, Swiped, which follows the real-life story of American entrepreneur and dating app founder Whitney Wolfe Herd, en route to becoming one of the youngest billionaires in history.

Swiped stars Lily James as Herd, alongside Hollywood newcomers Myha’la and Jackson White. The trailer, which was released this week, feels like a 21st-century cautionary tale in the vein of The Social Network and The Wolf of Wall Street. The film is directed by Rachel Lee Goldenberg, who has primarily directed television, most recently five episodes of the '70s drama Minx. Goldenberg, along with Bill Parker and Kim Caramele, wrote the film.
The tale hits particularly close to home for us in North Texas. In real life, Wolfe Herd graduated from Southern Methodist University in 2011 with a degree in international studies. From there, she joined the startup that became Tinder, eventually becoming the company's vice president. But only two years later, Wolfe Herd resigned from Tinder and filed a lawsuit against the company for sexual harassment. Undeterred, she moved to Austin, where she created her old employer's biggest competition, Bumble.

We tend to think it's no coincidence that after leaving Tinder on bad terms with the group of men that founded it with her, Wolfe Herd's concept for Bumble revolved around women making the first move, offering a degree of protection from online harassment on the app. Bumble launched in December 2014 out of Austin, and already had millions of users within its first year online.

In February 2021, Bumble went public, making Wolfe Herd the world's youngest female billionaire. Details on which part of Wolfe Herd's story will be covered in Swiped are still under wraps, but we'd expect to see a good amount of coverage on her transition and fallout from Tinder to Bumble.

Wolfe Herd's story is in tandem with two of the biggest dating apps in the world, but Dallas is no stranger to it's own brand of online dating. Of course, Match.com, one of the oldest online dating services, is headquartered here. And we can't forget the State Fair of Texas dating app, which we're sad to report was just an April Fool's joke.

Swiped streams on Hulu beginning September 19.