The majority of the company's staff in the early days were women - a rare sight in the tech world - and its brand was based around female empowerment. Bumble's defining feature was that after a match, women would be the first to message. It was designed like this to give women more control in the online dating space, but over time has sought to become more gender inclusive - allowing anyone to message first in same-gender matches or those between two non-binary people.