Fighting Sexism & Winning: The Founder Behind The $1Billion Dollar Tech Company Bumble

I'm legally really not meant to comment on the Tinder times I don't even know if I've told the story but Whitney wolf heard the CEO and founder of bumble Whitney became one of the few

women who can add billionaire to her title the dating app that puts women in charge of making the first move making the first move can change your life but you have to do it no one can do it for

you which would then become bumble's entire Mantra I've seen all the things that Bumble have done over the years and it's always seems to be original in its nature it was a lot of these tiny

hacking Concepts that made no sense no one had ever done these things before but if you understand what moves and motivates people then you have this opportunity to connect with them and so

that's been the superpower of ours over the years as 31 years old you're the youngest woman to take a company public what's the personal toll on you in those moments it's been pretty dark it's been

pretty heavy departure from Tinder read to me like it was horrific and sexist it was Soul Crush I was being described in all sorts

of ways I had reporters trying to go through my window and it was really violating there's a whole Persona that's been created about me out there in the world how am I ever going to escape this I was 24 years old

[Music] if I asked your teams must what do you like as a leader what would they say to me I don't know we did ask them oh so

Whitney [Music]

what is the early context that I would have to understand about you and your life to understand you I think

probably broken gender Dynamics growing up so I grew up in Salt Lake City Utah I don't know if you know much about I

know Salt Lake City Utah yep so it's a very LDS it was kind of the formal religious term um or better known as Mormon place

and my dad is Jewish and my mother is Catholic so I'm already total um anomaly in this place and it's a very

tough Community to fit into when you don't look act behave like everybody else or have the exact same belief systems and the Mormon faith

and the LDS faith not to generalize but it's very much a community or at least it was I was born in 1989 so growing up back in the 90s it was very much a man's

world where the man is the you know the breadwinner or the man is out mom is at home in an apron and

everyone follows rules lots of rules very strict rules in fact and I think I always grew up with a

conflicting set of values to my community to this ecosystem I was placed in or was raised in rather and then that

started to come out in relationships so my first you know real boyfriend that I ever had it was quite toxic and these were kind of these undertones of my

entire life that would then set the stage for my entire career using that first relationship that first sort of toxic relationship is an example

of how your belief system at that point was causing problems um could you give me some color to what you mean there yeah it was a it was you

know it was a new experience for me I was a young young girl at the time and I think there was this set of behaviors I

was expected to adhere to to be on his rules his his um you know what he believed was right and

it was quite demoralizing frankly and I don't think at the time I fully recognized what was taking place until later in life but it set the stage for

me about unhealthy relationships and I recognized just how unequal women were when it came to their romantic relationship so if you were to fast

forward here I am running this business where women make the first move which when I put that into the product in 2014 was

squawk that and eyes were rolled and people couldn't understand why we would do such a thing because women aren't supposed to talk first so if you look at

that moment of a business being born there's so much more than just a Eureka thought it's really pent up

years and years of confusion passion purpose Brewing to essentially be born into this moment of bumble were you rebelling at all

against that environment or that belief system I think there was two sides of that coin there was the

side that wanted to fit in desperate to be a part of my community desperate to be a part of what was around me and to fit in and to fit the mold because

that's humans humans want to fit into their environments they want to be accepted no one wants to be the child sitting alone at the lunch table this is

what devastates humans to be left out right so there was a part of me that's so desperately wanted validation and to fit and then there was a part of me that

said this is wrong this doesn't feel right this feels against my Soul this doesn't feel like how things should be

and I feel like that's been a theme of my life there's been Duality on on this topic in every every situation I've been in and that's

that's part of navigating it how do we navigate that Duality because we all we all experience those sort of conflicting needs at the same time often one of them is like an

external one can fly can colliding with an internal need that's going unmet and it feels sometimes like we have to choose as you said like the external Comfort fitting in or validation versus

like this doesn't feel good to me yeah inside I think for me at least I have to live in a place of

authenticity and I've lived in chapters of my life that were not authentic that I knew what I was participating in or

what I was doing didn't feel authentic to what I really believed in or what I knew to be right and genuinely authenticity wins that's

my fundamental belief and I think that when you follow and Chase that authentic space the world opens up for you the world unlocks

sometimes in the short term when we especially if we've had a prolonged period of being inauthentic what we've done accidentally and inadvertently has created an environment and a community

and a job and a an environment where that's built on that in authenticity so to make the change just to one day be like you know what today I'm going to be authentic requires it seems like quite a

lot of short-term loss I expect disprove of people going stay stay stay in line stay who we thought you were you know be the person that we resonated with even if that was your inauthentic self

so that like I think I see so many people kind of contend with that they want they kind of might know who they are that voice inside but the apparent cost of pursuing it seems circus mom and dad and my

boyfriend and I have to leave the city and my job and my friendship you know of course you have to leave the tribe yeah it's terrifying terrifying

it's almost unimaginable for people and I've been there I felt that feeling before and I think this is why so many

people stay in whatever situation they're in stay in a marriage stay in a business stay in a church

stay in a team stay in a you name it this is what perpetuates the cycle of of the quest to

fit in versus just truly being who you really are and so that age-old saying be yourself it's harder than it looks it's really hard

and it comes with a lot of risk and it's scary and it's dangerous and what if I fail and what if no one likes me and what if everyone judges me these are real things but at

the end of the day nothing could be worse than having a broken relationship with yourself right I personally think a broken relationship with yourself is

more toxic than a pseudo phony good relationship with a hundred other people but it's hard to give ourselves that love and compassion we're hard on

ourselves the things we say to ourself is something we would never say to another ever I mean think about that rhetoric the internal self-talk we would never say those things to other

people right and the compliments we pay others it's very hard to pay ourselves so when you think about that narrative how can we expect people to have the confidence and courage to be authentic

to themselves if they're not even willing to accept themselves so I think that's a big piece of it right and I've watched over the years women I grew up with in

Salt Lake City just now in their 30s they're coming out of their cage they're quite literally coming alive and they're taking to tick tock into social media

and they're taking to all these platforms like a roaring lion saying I'm alive and I've been hiding and I've been living by standards and I've been living by rules

and I've been living by X Y and Z and it's not authentic so at some point it will burst open you know like that the truth is the truth does prevail

when you when you were 18 what was acceptance or success to you if I asked you were 18 years old what you want to be post uni when you grow up what would the answer have been at that point

well the answer of what I really wanted to be was not what I would have said because I would have said something to fit in right that's standard so I think the young women when I was in college

all wanted to go work for a fashion brand or get a job at a bank or be successful and they wanted to get married and they wanted to find someone that they could marry settle down with have

kids with eventually maybe not next year but that was part of the program right this dating game exists as college students and

this is where the undertones of bumble started to really form because I remember being in college and being completely judged and made fun of

by girlfriends of mine if I texted a guy first I remember I went on a date which was so out of my character I really believe it or not being so ingrained in the dating world I think I've been on

maybe three dates in my life that sounds weird but I went on a date and then I texted the guy afterwards and they were

like oh no you have committed a sin a sin like you should be ashamed of yourself it made me cry I felt so embarrassed I felt so ashamed and I remember thinking

this is wrong what is wrong with you why why can we not text who wrote these rules what are these rules these rules are ridiculous so this this desire to

break the rules change the rules rewrite the rules with something I inherently felt deep down but everybody's felt that you felt that everybody has felt that

it's just who chooses to go and actually act on it is the difference I was I was thinking then when you when you talked about um being 18 and having this kind of sort

of social expectation of what success would look like and then having a family was the orientation of a lot of young women at that point do you think there are any gender differences that are innate

to us that have a bearing on the path or the way that we show up that are innate I.E not social constructs but do you think there's anything in us as as men and women that

makes us want different things from birth innately you know it's a good question and I have two little boys right now

and I think a lot of this is imposed on us as a society I really do I think the toys we buy our children and the clothes we put on our

children and the shows we show our children you have to really ask yourself is this not truly forming what they're interested in and what they care about

and what their Ambitions are I do believe that there may be something and I see this in

men too folks that genuinely want to have a family and have children and be part of that type of a life and then folks that

just genuinely don't but I don't really see it with I don't think it's a gender thing I really think that these are just a personal soul level thing but I think

Society comes in and puts bows on it or puts trucks on it and says here's your path so it's it's interesting now raising kids seeing if I really believe

this nature versus nurture thing and I think there's components to it but I think it's definitely more imposed Upon Us by others around this

morning I was watching my son read a book at breakfast I don't know where he found the book I think it was something he found at the restaurant but I opened it and it was a picture of a pig family in a little house and you could see

everything in all the different rooms and Daddy was upstairs in the bathroom combing his hair in a suit and the pig mom was in the it's like the pig family

the piggy mom was in the kitchen in a pink dress with an apron cooking eggs and I was just thinking to myself here is a almost three-year-old these are the books they're reading and it says

where's Daddy and where's Mommy so we have to imagine that we we do some of this to the to the kids around us you burn the book I took a picture of it and raved about raged about it at work

for about three hours and we will not be reading the book again what was your normal education I say what was your in terms of University or anything like that what did you study yeah so

um I went to college in Texas and I really wanted to go into marketing and I wanted to go into advertising and marketing which is funny because now somehow I've ended up there a little bit

and I sat down for the test and completely failed it I could not answer any of the questions it was so confusing to me it was all about

you know return on investment and television views and it was super not to be disrespectful but super boring I was like um this is probably not for me but

anyway I did not get it accepted so I studied um International Studies and that was just this huge mix of big people problems you know

globalization anthropology women's studies gender studies um international relations I mean it was really

fascinating and that was the best marketing degree I could have ever gotten because it's the study of people why do people do what they do and if you look at the business I'm in I'm quite literally immersed all day

long into why do people date who they date why do they want what they want how do they behave why do they get aggressive what causes aggression what causes online abuse where is this

stemming from and this stuff is really interesting so I'd say my education really did help me connect those dots and as you leave that that degree

that gap between like the Working World and leaving University College what was that Gap and how what were you thinking in that moment where were you heading what were you applying for where were you

um seeking the next chapter of your life so I really wanted to be a Travel Photographer like a photojournalist and I had no training in that obviously

but I was just obsessed with the idea and it's actually funny at the Bumble office right now we have this photo of this incredible woman that I met in

Burma and she is holding a bumble lighter and it's my never made it to Nat Geo moment that was my dream I wanted to be a Nat

Geo photographer and so I went traveling through Southeast Asia and took a lot of photos and I remember on my travels thinking gosh there's such

a disconnect for someone trying to explore a new country place it's only TripAdvisor and if you follow TripAdvisor you end up eating a hamburger in Laos at some version of a

hard rock right and this is not really the experience I thought why can't I get to know a local I want to ride around on the back of a moped and Laos and I want to go understand what do they do here

like where do the 18 year olds go what what what was their life like what does their day look like and I thought why is there not an app that does this why is there not something on my phone that can

put me in touch with these people but then of course that idea fell by the wayside went into you know the back of my brain somewhere and by chance one day

would end up in this wild world of connecting people on the internet so some of these things were already brewing and already starting to Bubble

Up in ways that wouldn't totally expose themselves yet by chance you ended up in this weird world of Connecting People what was that chance

so the chance was that I went to a dinner in Los Angeles one night with one of my very dear

friends and she had been friendly with a couple of these These Guys in LA and we all ended up at dinner because I didn't end up driving back to my mom's

house that night it got too dark and it was quite a long drive so we all had dinner and I was staying at her house and one of the guys at dinner was the general manager of this incubator and

was telling me all about this incubator and here I was a 22 year old just barely 22 if that even two-year-old woman that needed a job I needed to make money I

needed to find my way in the world and I'd just been kind of adventuring and you know seeing the world and exploring and taking this very you know

risky path of not going straight into a career and going to travel and going to see the world and find my passion and he said well maybe you could take a marketing job and I said okay I'll try I mean I'll call you tomorrow and he's

like okay probably thought I'd never call and I did long story short that incubator would be the incubator where we ended up launching Tinder so it was

um by happen stance that that connection happened but I think it was about taking advantage of an opportunity right seeing an opportunity and

it didn't feel perfect and I think this is a good lesson for people is the way it was described to me at that dinner people think oh well she got so lucky she you know she met the so-and-so of

so-and-so that's not what it was like this that concept of Tinder was never mentioned it was never called Tinder at the time and it was a totally different opportunity but it was putting my foot in the door of something that would then

turn into something else and something else and I think so many people wait around for the most perfect headline when it comes to an

opportunity that they can't really see or read between the lines and everybody has that potential everybody can do that they just have to be willing to say well

this is a stepping stone or this is a door that I could bust open right and I think that's kind of how I've tried to approach most things in my career it's so true it's you know that moment

there there's so many other outcomes that could have happened from a dinner um namely one of them is you just don't call the person back I mean the amount of times in my life someone's giving me their number and said call me and I just haven't called back most 99 it's like

all of us do that yeah yeah but there's a philosophy of like leaning into stuff especially when you're young just like leaning in regardless of certainties you've just got a chance yeah and people have a I see this in people I'm sure you

have as well where people have a tendency to be like lean in people or kind of just lean out people even when the world is changing crypto a Bitcoin blockchain all these things matter

typically people lean in or lean out yeah and um I think people that lean in are the ones that end up creating opportunity which looks like like in hindsight yeah I agree with you and being brave enough to just say even

if it doesn't work out at least I explored it right I think people what I've seen and it's something that I'm guilty of as well in my life is

it's a risk and we have to be willing to get excited about risk instead of being afraid of it um it's the uncertainty though isn't it how good are you at dealing with

uncertainty without how how guaranteed do you need the outcome to be before you take a step right and for me not very guaranteed personally because

it's like what do you have to lose right are is are you creating risk for yourself not really but I do think that it's scary to pick up the phone and make that first move right which would then

become bumble's entire Mantra and tagline and product and everything but making the first move and taking that first step can change your life

but you have to do it no one no one can do it for you and I learned that the hard way I I had very little support along the way in terms of Advocates or

Community you know I had a handful of people I could call upon but candidly even when I was starting Bumble all of my confidants with the exception of a couple were like no don't do this why

why would you expose yourself to this what's the point that won't work there's already dating apps They're Gonna Eat You Alive

and you can get bogged down in that you know it's really it's easy to drown in that noise in those in those early years of Tinder I remember being told the story maybe 10 years ago in San Francisco when I was

working there with um a guy called Michael Birch it was the old Bebo founder you'll know Bibo Bebo the old social oh no it didn't go to the US it was just a production I remember that it was like Facebook here before before

Facebook okay cool um and he in his little sort of incubator that I was in when I was 20 they were telling me the bump the Tinder story of how you went to a fraternity

for people that don't know what fraternity is what's a fraternity uh so I guess in the UK it would be like college clubs maybe do they have like members clubs or something like that so

basically sororities and fraternities and sororities are a house of women and fraternities are a house of men and there's different names so they all have these Greek names right so for example

the one I joined was Kappa Kappa Gamma you could have um try Delta there's all sorts of them and essentially a lot of college students

they do something called Rush where they rush and they go house to house and they meet all the women or all the men and then they basically pref they put in the name of the one they would really love

to be a part of and then they see who accepted them back it's been criticized up and down and there's a lot of things that are not you know spectacular about it but this is a way a lot of people

find friendship and Community it's it's a community gathering for their college campus so with Tinder I essentially went back to my alma mater at SMU I just

graduated so a lot of my best friends were still in school so I got access to the campus and I would start at the sororities and then go to the fraternity so I'd essentially have all the young women

download it and then run to the fraternity and then they would download it and then everyone would start connecting so you know is that good is that bad how do you want to chop that up 10 years later who knows

but that's the reality and you know can't escape the truth but so so you heard about this way back when I heard about this 10 years ago because we were building community center caps we're building something called blab which resembles what Clubhouse is now

um and when we were talking about the marketing strategy Tinder kept coming up and Sean Perry who's now who when the company got acquired by Amazon in the end twitch um who owned Amazon other way around Amazon in touch

um but yeah that was the that was the thesis it was like should we go to fraternities and go get you know and to try and build that sort of

isolated tight Community to try and get product Market fit yeah because Network effects really really matter and especially in the dating game the most important yeah that's why there's only a handful of dating apps that have ever

survived I mean at least during my time doing this which is almost a decade now but what's interesting is there's such a not to not to say only I could do this

or only somebody else could do this but there was a superpower in the timing of it all because I just graduated

and I I knew all of these people so if some random startup founder knocks on a sorority door the police are coming you know like you can't you can't do

that so I felt like I had this Insider hook right because I was technically an extension of that by proxy because I had just been on the college campus and all

my girlfriends were still there so they were part of these sororities and all my guy friends were there they were part of these fraternities so I'll never forget I took the photo of one of my guy

friends back then who was you know all the young women had Mega crush on on him and then I took the photo of my best friend

um Danielle who was very well liked on campus and I went into Danny's journalism class because she was still a student and I basically snuck into her

journalism class and used Photoshop and I took the Tinder screens and I put the guy's face on one and her face on the other and said find out who likes you on campus and then I saved it to a file

because this is the olden days at this point and I went to FedEx which is like the office supply store across the street and I printed a thousand copies and I quite literally handed different

students on campus twenty dollars to go distribute them under dorm doors and put them on windshields and to put them you know in their different Social Clubs and to essentially distribute these flyers

everywhere so this entire campus and now in hindsight it's probably not great it's littering there's all sorts of bad things involved with it but like I'm just telling you a story so

um yeah basically that was that was just one of the tactics I I used to go and put it all over campus and then I had a

few t-shirts printed up that said don't ask for my number find me on Tinder and I had my girlfriends wear the t-shirts and we went to the bar and so I gave them you know a couple hundred bucks

and they would go around and buy drinks and then when people would ask for their number they'd essentially say you have to download Tinder so it was a lot of these tiny hacking Concepts that made no sense no one had ever done these things

before I had no Playbook it wasn't like you know I was reading some manual to marketing it was just what felt around me it was it was just bringing

the real life dating experience to life through through an app um marketing there's like so many important messages of marketing there I mean the first one that you said was was that you were the customer you were so

close to the customer that you understood them I mean even you said um about how for another startup had come and knocked on the sorority well they wouldn't even know which door to knock on for a star that's true right it would have knocked on the wrong door got the wrong people

um and they wouldn't have understood those people their motivation so like really you being the customer I think is such a key thing and then the second thing you said about like if I'd read a marketing book um and you were kind of just doing it based on intuition

I've I've seen over and over again from speaking to really successful CEOs and Founders how important naivet he was like not knowing so important just following your gut yeah because then you that's like first print that's creating

something from first principles as opposed to Convention that's real Innovation right like and it creates solutions that are more suited for today and for the challenge that you're solving which no one has ever had the challenge of solving right on that date

right right um but naivety you know this is this is sometimes why I think some of the best Founders don't come from like business school or from marketing School the best marketeers aren't marketing graduates

because naivety is such a superpower it's a superpower and following your instinct

and if you understand what moves people and what motivates people then you have this opportunity to connect with them on a real level I mean

we've done things that are ridiculous so I remember we would make these signs that said they had the big X's like no you know like you're not allowed to and they said no

Facebook no Instagram no Snapchat no bumble this was like week three of bumble or something some ridiculous early maybe first year I can't remember at this

point and we would post those all over the universities so there was this Association where it was like wait I can't do the things I really want to do I want to sit in class and Snapchat I want to sit in class and Instagram what

the hell is Bumble and so we were essentially seeding this psychological curiosity and then we were actually sending

young women wearing Bumble shirts into classes 10 or 15 minutes late interrupting a class of 300 people and saying oh sorry wrong room but everyone's looking at this young woman

and or a young man whoever it was wearing a bumble t-shirt so we were seating curiosity in this like why is Bumble everywhere type of thing and so

you know a lot of people think oh well I can just go start a an app and I'll just buy some you know Instagram ads and I'll just be successful but if people only

knew the fraction of the insane everyday little hacks that you know I did and our team did to bring

this to life we were the first people certainly the first tech brand to do humor accounts to pay for the humor memes do you remember the humor means well we ran a bit of 100 million

followers on Meme accounts so yeah so you know all about this but like we were way back years and years ago I remember reaching out to I can't remember what it was one of these meme accounts and

they're like wait you want to pay us to I'm confused how does that work and we're like okay here's the deal we'll give you 100 bucks or whatever it was we turn around a year later that same account is charging a hundred thousand

dollars a post so we there's also something about luck and timing being just right before something you know and

if you look at Bumble we were also beating the woman drum the the this this drum of we need to advocate for women

beating this drama of let's put women first let's let's Elevate women women are not equal in their relationships women are not being treated respectfully women are being abused on the internet women are not

being treated right we were saying this in 2014 and then me too would come a couple of years later so I think we've we've been lucky as a business

to basically be right before the wave and then we've been able to be a part of that wave versus chasing a wave and so many people

chase a wife so many people chase away if they look around them like well what's cool how do I chase that and I feel like we've always had the good fortune or whatever you want to call it

um sure inspiration to go first and so that's been maybe a superpower of ours over the years because you're making those decisions it's so clear to

me that you're making those decisions from original thought and from like what I think Elon calls like first principles as in what do we know is true and create a solution from that versus

how is it done how's it been done before and that like and even you being early to the meme account things just for context um we were probably like probably probably

maybe one of the first companies in the world I'd say to to do the meme thing that's really like how my business began we had like 100 million followers on these meme accounts that became this big social media business this big Media company and it can e-com and then it

went public but it started with meme accounts this is how I met I think you're original investors hi Matt Purdue so I remember speaking to having these long conversations with them in London about we'll make you

Trend number one on Twitter we'll do a Thunderclap or they can't say at the same like but for you to have been one of the brands that was leaning into that do you know what their brands had no and to your point yes the meme accounts were there you were pioneering all of that

but I don't know if you experienced this Brands did not see their place there and the brands that did that I had seen had been like by my bracelet or by my

fashion company you know it was something very consumer Centric which made sense but it wasn't the download my app yeah and that was such a different

way of promoting something even for the app world it was it was so out of bounds for the app space because the app space used traditional app space yeah

acquisition strategies you're right it wasn't it wasn't and the reason why we managed to get so many followers is because um people didn't value those accounts so I remember buying beef at motivation which had about 10 million I'll say

followers um love food which had about seven million followers and beef at motivation on Twitter which had two million followers on Twitter um just those just that 20 million

followers cost me about 10 grand oh God imagine it's like really good real estate it's like buying a house and it's a crazy part of London a thousand years

ago and then all the other accounts were free because unbelievable I I offered the people jobs that random you'll have a proper job you get paid loads I know your mum doesn't think it's a job I think it's a job I see you I validate you

people like oh you're exploiting well nobody valued it back then and then they eventually did value those social media accounts and what you're talking about the whole you know it was attention it was it was attention it was eyeballs and

from a first principles perspective you go well we want attention and eyeballs they are here I don't care if it's safe cool or the dumb thing that's where we're gonna go and I saw Bumble doing that and and I've seen all the things

that Bumble have done over the years and it's always seems to be original in its nature it feels that way it feels like someone has had an original thought today about how to solve a problem and

not just they're not just focused on showing what Bumble is that that communicating how you should feel about Bumble that was always the goal yeah and I think there was a lot of

people that thought it was ridiculous early on they're like why are you doing a campaign that has nothing to do with dating you know we did this huge campaign where our team

put together this you know huge push on be the CEO your parents always wanted you to marry and then in parentheses it said and then find someone you actually like for want

to date and I remember a lot of people being like we're not going to do this this there's no Roi here what's the ROI there's no call to action there's no download in the App Store

and what was fascinating was it built this wild following of our brand so people that would never have downloaded a

dating app are now wearing our hat now their mother is carrying around a bumble tote because they're proud of the brand

and they are you know it created this untangible feeling right this magic and there was a sentiment that was more

powerful than any you know Roi campaign you could do on any other channel and so I feel like for me I always wanted Bumble to be more

than just an app in your pocket I want it to be something that gave you a feeling and a good feeling not a bad one because so many of these products give

us bad feelings and they make us feel uninspired and they make us feel lonely they make us feel broken they make us feel exhausted and I wanted us to do

something different and our team wanted us to do something different we had such a passionate team we still have an incredibly passionate team but that early community of our team is really

what made this company so magical right it was that genuine purpose and buy-in and candidly naivete our team was young

our team was separated from a lot of our infrastructure meaning like a lot of the more technical stuff was isolated from the marketing stuff and I've been criticized over the years by the you

know the tech Publications and the tech this and the tech that and whatever I don't really care the point is it's been like well this isn't this isn't how Silicon Valley does it we're the engineers and why are this and why

aren't you sitting with the engineers and there was a method to the madness it was let's let this team go out and paint the

town yellow and do it with no interruption no distraction and then let's let our fantastic infrastructure team really

solve big problems through Tech while these two heart and brain can operate together right and I had never really been done before in this like

traditional Silicon Valley world my first startup experience is not like my second startup experience you learn all the lessons you learn well you hopefully learn the lessons I think I've learned hopefully learned some of them

um but your first startup experience at Tinder this is when you know because especially when it's moving at the speed of light you know I mean my startup didn't move

at the speed of light quite like Tinder did but still absolutely the speed of light Tinder moved at and there's that culture out in San Francisco about you know move fast and break things which is

I think Facebook popularized I think that was their slogan but everyone kind of has adopted that mindset of just go [ __ ] lightning fast and figure it out later fix it while it's fix it while we're falling kind of

thing um talk to me about that talk to me about the the cost of that what it taught you and really give me a picture of what it was like in those early rocket ship days

well you know I think it was so new to everyone involved no one no one really

understood what the next day held this was such a different time also you know Instagram had just had its big sale now in

retrospect not such a big sale but at the time remarkable right um still remarkable regardless and it was just such a new environment Tech was

still relatively niche mobile was very Niche right it was not super mainstream apps were kind of hitting the scene but not like where we are today there's an

app for this after that and we were this tight tribe of people that really probably had not much to do with each other outside of this but

it became this 24 7 unit and we were just fighting every day to keep it going I mean our Blood Sweat and Tears went

into this business right so when I left it was completely devastating because I wasn't just leaving this rocket ship of

a business that's one thing but I've just been essentially you know one day in a 24 7 environment with the same people for more than two years to

the next day never seeing any of them ever again and in the middle of that ending up on the front page of all sorts of magazines

and newspapers because of the Narrative of the ending right and it was it was extremely traumatic extremely I was

I think I was stuck in fight or flight mode for years um because you know that was all I knew for years and it had been such a

zero to a hundred experience as you know when you're in these startups it's they're almost their own I'm definitely not accusing the company of making this

but they become their own little Cults and it's really hard to go from that one day to not that the

next day and then to go end up launching a woman version to some degree within six months of leaving

so if you can just try to imagine what every day looked like to both mourn and grieve my exit from Tinder and deal with all the

logistical pieces of it and the media pieces of it which were coming at me I had reporters trying to go through my window at my little

apartment in Beverly Hills from some rag magazine I mean this is just crazy for me I was a nobody I mean I'm still technically a nobody but it's not like I was on some reality show and I became

popular overnight like this was traumatizing to me and you know it's funny like the land of everyone trying to be famous I was probably maybe one of the only people

not at that point right so it was very crazy to just all of a sudden in a very scandalous way by the way I was described in the media

I was literally painted as this like scandalous Gone Girl of the tech world and it was Soul crushing because it's not who I was it's not who I am

so I was watching this narrative unfold about me and I was in these Twitter discussions with all the most important people in the tech world and it was just crazy I was just watching this narrative unfold about this person that wasn't me

and then I'm turning around in the same breath meeting up with Andre and then I'm you know

even before that trying to start mayor C this compliments oriented Kinder social network which then I meet up with Andre and one thing leads to another and now Bumble is my new path and now we're

starting Bumble and this is all going on it was a whirlwind a whirlwind what is what is the the context you're able to share about why they were

writing those headlines about you and why you are ostracized from your as you've described it something that felt a little bit like a cult which is actually a good description of how all my companies have

pretty much started it feels like a 24 7. does it feel that way come on we're

7. does it feel that way come on we're going to take over the world is that kind of it's I mean it's crazy yeah I mean like the way people speak about what you're going to do I mean they're such big ideas and there's such like

passionate ideas and then you go from real world which is so mundane right it's like quite boring out there in the real world to this like super like high energy

you know there's you know gonna be a disaster if we don't do this in the next five minutes this is crashing that's crashing this metric's up this metric's off one day you're booming the next day you're crying I mean the adrenaline you

know what I'm talking about the ups and the downs and the hard work that goes into it and the skipping meals and the no sleep and everything feels potentially fatal as well at that point

isn't it fatal and the other thing that is interesting is you can't connect with everybody else the way you used to because they're they can't quote unquote get it they don't

get it you know so it's like trying to like have a Sunday afternoon meal with your family or your friends during that you're like I can't like we don't even speak the same language anymore so I'll

just avoid them yeah you have no idea what's going on so which in hindsight I think I lived in that mindset for years between Tinder

and Bumble I mean kind of coming up for air now and having time to breathe and think like that's a I'm sure a lot of people that have built companies feel this way though I'm sure you feel this way where you're like whoa

I isolated myself from a lot of important relationships that there's regret to that at some point do you ever feel that way 100 I was incredibly lonely I didn't speak to

my family didn't really see them for many many years and I thought that I thought that something mattered much more and eventually even if I used to think I was immune but eventually your

body will remind you that you are a human too and you have needs and you need to be unmet and the signal will come in many ways I hear the signal sometimes come for people that have panic attacks they'll feel a growing sense of loneliness their health will

give out I've had said examples where the body has just shut down yeah and I've gone through that yeah as you know Intel are now one of the sponsors of this podcast and I'm here to tell you

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your business get ahead and if you already drive a Mercedes EQ let me know how you find it I read that your departure from Tinder was um ominous to say the least in fact that's actually

the word that's written in my notes in 2014 and in the early days of the Foundation the founding of Tinder you'd had a relationship with somebody that relationship had ended you were then

treated in a pretty horrendous way from everything that I read online um threatened multiple times people saying that they would they would fire you for things they didn't have a

justification to fire you for um sort of patronizing condescending Behavior to the fact that you were a young female co-founder and and how they would take that co-founder title from

you um it's actually really hard for me to read actually just from it kind of makes me a bit feel a sense of Injustice in my core um you were called Annoying and dramatic

at certain times when you raised certain concerns and as a result um you you know you were you ended up leaving the company you're

fired I read you're fired from the company which is even worse when you raise certain concerns you then filed a lawsuit um which went on and there was certain

actions taken and there was a reported settlement reached at one point but overall your treatment while you were at

Tinder specifically from Men read to me like it was allegedly horrific and unfair and sexist

um and then upon leaving Tinder there's this huge wave of press who are mischaracterizing you what happened and you fall into this situation where

you've been in this cult we'll call it cult because that's how it often feels to both of us for so long you come out of that and you're greeted with this wall of like mischaracterization attacks

um from all sides and you're kind of out on your own then that's the moment where you're ostracized from the tribe um and you're dealing with this wave of negativity

yeah so you know I'm legally really not meant to comment on the Tinder times but what I will say is

I was literally broken during that chapter where I was waking up to headlines about myself like you

said I was being described in all sorts of ways and people were calling my you know my uncle and my ex-boyfriend I

mean it was this digging weird investigation into my life and all I wanted was to just do my job right and so

it was a very dark toxic moment and I felt so alone and I felt so unsupported because this

was before me too this is before time's up any woman that said anything out of line was called names and this was still

during a chapter even in modern land that was not really pro-women and so no matter

what I said or did I wasn't going to be able to get through there was judgment I had friends from college didn't want to talk to me anymore they were like oh

this this feels this feels icky I don't um This Isn't that cool you know like all I was ostracized I was just I had a Scarlet Letter and that was such a devastating feeling

because let's just remember it was just a young professional I was 24 years old and I've been working my tail off for two plus years I had

obviously Teamwork Makes the Dream Work I still fundamentally believe that but I had played my role and an important one right to get the company to where it was so to be called all these names and to

be basically just written off by Twitter and the random media and the random everyone and I have big respect for media and I'm

not criticizing them I'm just saying this was the narrative at the time so it was really hard I was super depressed I was paranoid

I was actually don't think I left the house for like uh three weeks at one point I'll never forget Actually I don't even know if I've told the story maybe I have but when I was launching Bumble

again because you have to remember Bumble launched within six months of my departure so not the departure itself but six months from kind of

when the legal pieces were put to bed that was August I want to say August 3rd December 1st Bumble is live in the App Store

you know how much work goes in to launching something it's a 24-hour job I had another 24-hour job of grieving and being in fight or flight defense mode of

whatever Twitter was coming after me with and it was really hard so I think there was a chapter where I didn't leave the house for several weeks and when I was launching Bumble um I think it was Business Insider I can't

remember who they were doing a piece on Bumble and they needed a picture of me and I was like well I'm not taking any pictures there's no way I'm in sweatpants and UGGs I'm not leaving this house so I went outside in my front yard

and swept pants and UGGs with a sweater on and did like a half fake smile and had someone take a picture on some camera I had at home that I had you know used way back when when I wanted to be a

travel journalist and use that and I just had to peel myself back up I just had to peel myself off the ground and I was lucky to have a couple really strong

people in my life that had my back like my now husband like Andre um there were a couple people that were like I don't care what people say about you I don't care

we believe in you we know that you're capable we know you're smart we know that you can do this again so you need to go chase your dreams you're not done and you know I'd very soon after leaving

Tinder in this moment of Despair and drinking too much not like socially like at home like very depressed trying to numb

myself in any way I could um I had this moment where I was like I have to solve this part of my psyche is find a problem and solve it it could be

anything micro anything it's it's just part of the way my brain works and the being attacked on the internet felt like such a big problem to me and I felt like this was something so many people were

going through so many young girls in particular were going through being bullied and I thought to myself I'm an adult like I can get in a car and I can drive to a grocery store and I can do all these things these young women are

trapped at home after school often in bad circumstances at home and they're being abused by people they actually know how horrible would that be I'm getting attacked by strangers they're getting attacked by friends at school

and strangers not really in the sense of stranger to us like proxy strangers right friends of friends and I was like I have to fix this I have to fix this it's my duty on Earth to fix

this so I started quite literally with a pencil and a pen I still have the early drawings sketching out a new Social Network

it was called mercy and the only currency and the only way to communicate with compliments so instead of saying you know you're stupid or you don't look good or you're this or body shaming or

that or even hey you're so skinny something that is negative even though it feels positive I wanted it just to be compliments and so it was essentially supposed to be the girl's dressing room the girl's bathroom

when when young women go out to nightclubs there's this saying that young women are so nice to each other in the bathroom at a nightclub and I wanted to bring that to life so I started sketching that out to basically rebuild

myself and long story short um eventually Bumble would become what it was you know I met Andre and then I mean I had known him but I reconnect with Andre

one thing led to the next and Bumble was born so I think what people don't realize they've I've had a lot of people that maybe I went to college with they're like oh my God you've had such a good career you're so lucky you're so

successful I'm like um it's been pretty dark it's been pretty heavy mark is there a because I reflect on my darkest times and I can typically

typically remember a worse day a day when you know I just couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel what was your darkest day throughout that period

I've several that are pretty visceral and memorable but one that I think maybe is something people can actually tangibly like put themselves into this moment

um I mean you can imagine there's lots of tough moments along the way but one was we had worked so hard to build Bumble in

stealth mode starting from about August through call it November so head down four or five months of just like 24

hours a day back into the you know the grind and it was really important to me not to attach my name to it I was so scared of putting my name on it I didn't want to

muddy it I was like you know I'm in the media as this like scandalous person right now and I don't I don't want to be known for I don't want I don't want this to be about me I want this to be about what the product

is and what the mission is I want women to go first in their relationships I want women to be empowered and I remember we had worked so hard to keep my name out of it I

had like a pseudo email that I was using to reach out to certain people that I thought could you know maybe leak that this was happening and we were going to launch in

mid-December they'd gone on this investigative adventure of sorts of following all my early employees and ambassadors and they were going through all the images and piecing together this

story about this new product that was launching and the headline said something along the lines maybe not verbatim but it was really hurtful it

was like basically I'm summarizing how I internalized it surprise surprise like the scorned woman from Tinder launches her own dating app but women go first

and oh I hear she really likes bees she's called a bumble like it was so hurtful and I just sobbed and I sobbed because there had been so much work that

went into coming back rising from the ashes and pulling myself back up and to keep it in this kind of self position away from me and not make it

about that not make it about that you know I women have a and everyone every gender we all have an opportunity and a I believe a human

right to start over we all have the right to start over none of us should be held Hostage to a certain chapter in our lives or a certain thing in our lives like we

should all be able to get back up right if we're still breathing you have that right and that felt like my right to starting over on my own terms was taken from me and it was really violating so

in my typical fashion I cried about it for a while and then I pivoted so I called my early team I said we have a we have a problem

whoever it was has basically um leaked this information which is their job I you know I don't hold them again it's not their fault but they basically

have have told everybody that we're doing this app and that it's coming out and that I'm behind it but they're kind of missing the point of what the product really is

um I think they're misunderstanding why we're starting this I think for them it read more of like in a Revenge novel right which was not the case it was about Mercy then evolving into a positive

dating space so I said okay um you're all jumping out of an airplane tomorrow and they're like what do you mean enjoying up an airplane tomorrow and I said you have to explain that it's

just not that scary to talk first on a nap as a woman like if if a woman can jump out of an airplane they can certainly send the first message and so we just pivoted and we went and filmed this little launch video of literally my

first three employees jumping out of an airplane and the whole tagline was um it was something along the lines of like if we can jump out of an airplane you can send the first text and that was

kind of how we reframed the discussion and took you know took control of the narrative that point about your right to kind of reinvent yourself or not be defined by a previous chapter I think is

so important it's also why you know I've got to be honest like I don't I don't love talking about it like the Tinder stuff because it it's it's a it's a step in your journey it's important

contextual stuff yeah of course you know it's it's inspired you in in many ways in terms of your mission and your vision and your and all of those things but um I'm glad we could fill that context I

when I asked the um the question about your your hardest your hardest moment the darkest times I was reflecting on some of the quotes I'd read about when you were in that moment feeling like maybe life wasn't

worth living anymore yeah and that kind of thing and it's hot it's hard to um I think for a lot of people I hope it's hard for them to understand that mindset like getting to that place I hope it's hard for them to understand I Hope they've

never had to experience it but for someone that has what what is that like are those are those words real that that that Prospect of like maybe maybe life would be better without me in

it I most certainly felt that way at times for sure leaving when I was going through that chapter I most

certainly had moments where I thought well this is it I mean what what now I there's a whole Persona that's been created about me out there in the world

how am I ever going to escape this I'm going to be suffocated by a definition a group of strangers have

assigned to me and my tribe is gone I'm gone I everything I can identify with this you know the startup world can feel like

a cult at times right and so that all felt gone and I told you earlier you disassociate from a lot of the life you once had

friends family you lose connection with them when you're trying to build something right and so when you leave that thing you're building it's not like okay well let me just go home to Grandma's house

that doesn't feel like an option you don't feel like you can relate to anyone anymore and I just did not understand what the point was anymore

but it was right in that moment literally I want to say like that was the same same piece of the same storm

of feeling such a deep pain in such a deep problem which the problem to me was toxic internet and how toxic it could be and how detrimental it could

be for your mental health that a solution came and so I really channeled that dark dark dark

loathing and pain and instead of drowning in it I kind of started swimming as fast as I could

for for air and my air was go rebuild yourself right and so I think that that that's

ultimately the way I was able to reframe that and I think the internet can make you feel very alone and very isolated and very lonely and we start believing it as our

reality right what the internet says is not really what's in the park across the street and I think that's important for people to hear is that whatever you're feeling based on what people are saying

on the Internet or whatever you've read turn off the phone for a little bit and go outside right because I didn't do that in that moment and I think we have to realize that it's not always our

reality very powerful this leads to Bumble which is um which was a game changer in its industry it was the first of its kind it was the first of its kind in many

respects including just the look and feel and messaging that's really you know as a marketeer that's the thing I I always respected I mean I really respected the um the point of women getting to go first because I'd never

seen that before I've never seen that done in the way that it's done on Bumble but from a marketing marketeer's mindset I really respected how bold how clear how much Bumble were willing to position

themselves as the antithesis the the opposite of everything else that existed it was really willing to take to bring A New Concept and a new idea to the market

um when you look back at the earliest days of bumble like the first year two years of bumble now with the hindsight of knowing how things all how the dots

connected why did you win I'm not sure did we win listen how many customers did you have over the years we have a lot a lot

and that's an interesting point that it doesn't feel like you've won oh no okay so this is crazy I in my head still feel like we're

tiny genuinely I'm not even just saying that to you like the concept of going public and all of these things in my mind I go to the office every day and I'm like

okay how are we gonna get off the ground like literally I don't think you understand I'm genuinely locked in a place of we have so much more to do and we have so much more

growth to be had that I feel like it's a reset every day so I will say how is it possible to be happy when you're you're never there but it's not that I'm never there in a

personal sense it's not like I'm like oh I don't feel like validate it's it's not that anymore it's that there are still billions of people

around the world that have never heard about Bumble and there are still millions and millions and millions of women around the world right now in bad relationships toxic relationships where they don't

understand that they should can and eventually will go first in their life they can leave a bad relationship they can go into a good relationship there

are women as we speak you know very well we're all watching this unfold it's absolutely heartbreaking just advocating to be able to have simple freedoms

just wanting to have the freedom to exist in their society as an equal so when I go to the office every day and saying okay how are we going to launch

we're 132 years away from gender parity maybe 136 okay either way it's not great and so that's where I feel like I don't

have enough time in this lifetime to achieve what I want to achieve forget the personal accolades I don't care about that stuff I am I am personally on a personal level now thank God it's

required a lot of you know self-care therapy wonderful husband beautiful to healthy children thank you God I am happy now but I'm not

happy about where women are globally and that I feel unfulfilled because until we really look around us and say women are not in these toxic terrible relationships

and living in an unequal playing field I've got to go to work I gotta like get back to the office and that's how I feel

pursuing that goal comes somewhat at the expense of yourself in some in some degree right whether that's your you know because life could be easier if you just decided not to pursue that goal it could be easier yeah I could probably be

drinking pina coladas kind of beef somewhere right now so and I always always think about this you know the the pursuit of this of a goal versus like you know

self-preservation and and taking care of yourself and you seem like someone that is somewhat willing to sacrifice themselves to a degree sacrifice something to fulfill a

goal that might even hurt yourself in your own life in a sense of like psychological harm or balance or you know it's definitely sleep yeah no this

is this is probably the biggest uh this is the This Is The Balancing Act we all talk about right but you can't do it all every single day why not go to the beach you know why not go

and have a pina colada you want to go have a pizza okay um there's gotta be like a group therapy for like why why why won't you go have a pina colada on the beach

um foreign I don't know I just I feel very passionate about what I'm doing and when I stop feeling passionate I'll

go have a pina colada and then I'll go do something different but this is it feels like my life's work and I I try to be a good mom and I try to be a good wife and I try to be a good to myself

and take those times and I think anyone that sits around tells you like oh it's all about balance and I mean maybe they're right maybe they've got some secret that I don't know about

but my God I don't know I don't I don't think any day is fully balanced right I don't think any of us go to sleep every night feeling like wow I just got a 10

out of 10 on every single category today I think you just do your best and for me I get joy out of pushing

this brand forward I get joy out of the women that come up to me and tell me that they were in an abusive marriage for 20 years and read a story about

Bumble and left their spouse and got on Bumble and are happy in healthy relationships like that's what this is all about for me it looked like that question made you a

bit emotional yeah I am emotional about it because I'm kind of doing this for my 17 year old self also right I don't want another generation of

me at 17. I don't want another generation of that I don't want another generation of young women that felt unworthy and felt lesser than and felt like they needed a

man to tell them what to do and I just don't I don't want to see that as this next wave of 17 year old so

I also don't want to see all these women suffering from domestic and emotional abuse across the world so you know there's lots of ways and a lot of people around the world that are doing a lot to

fix this but I don't have those skill sets I don't have you know maybe I don't know how to do what they know how to do and I know how to do this so I feel like I better just lean in

while I can and plus I I'm definitely old for the Gen Z people out there but I'm 33 so I feel like you know I might have a little bit more on me somewhere

if you're old I'm old so I thought how old are you I just turned 30. so wait

you're three years younger than me that's like I just turned 30. it's like

five decades younger no it's not we're in the same we're in the same school well happy birthday whenever it was yeah it was about a couple of weeks ago well happy birthday yeah

that for me that answer really answers a lot of questions because it shows where the drive is coming from and that's the reason why the Pina Coladas seem like a

lower priority than the mission going back to the question which I kind of took us off in a tangent away from um about why you think Bumble won

um or was successful was able to break through into that very small category of dating apps or your dating sites where there's really only like a handful of real players

why why because I know you know I have to say something I know that the other dating apps because I was sometimes in the room tried to launch dating apps of themselves so they took their existing

Network they tried to launch a new dating app into it and it didn't work yeah I've seen it happen over and over again I know Michelle she's one of the people I used to work with when we were doing the marketing at

Purdue oh really yeah yeah she's I I think what she's done is awesome yeah I love peanut it's it's great but but I but I know it's not easy and I know it's not chance and I

know it's not luck because I've seen I can't tell you a social chain how many times we had dating apps come to us and say can you do our marketing maybe 200 times there's 5 000 dating apps in the App

Store it's impossible it's impossible it's impossible possible to start a new one because of the network effects and all of those things it's impossible impossible so why you

how you how every other dating product until Bumble had been solving for the wrong side of the coin they've been thinking about men that's all they woke up in the morning

and thought about how to make a dating app good for guys and they had it backwards why are you solving for men when this is

all about what women need and what women want no one was asking women you think women want to get abused on the internet think again like

find me a woman that enjoys being harassed on a dating app not one but for some reason that problem didn't strike anyone as a problem

so it's not that hard to say wait a second this is a double-sided Marketplace this product can't survive without women yet we're exploiting and degrading women

on a lot of these products not naming any names what and so for me it was all about taking that original

concept of Mercy a kind space for women a safe space for women and to Andre's push got to give him got to give him some credit for being so

interested in dating right I was so turned off of dating I wanted nothing to do with dating when Andre was like oh let's do a dating you know come be my CMOS first of all I'm not for hire I'm starting my own company I

must be founder and CEO of whatever I do next I cannot work for someone I just I have to be my own boss and um you know I got to give him a lot of credit because he trusted that and he

said okay do whatever you want to do but it just my one stipulation is it has to be in dating because I know dating and I want to get behind a dating product so

when I was sitting there you know we were we had kind of agreed to okay we're going to do this dating app what's it going to be what about Mercy I wanted to be Mercy I wanted to be about women and

I want to be women only I want safety and kindness and accountability there's no internet spaces for women nothing's been built for women we have to do this for women and then it kind of just all clicked

and I sat there and within literally minutes it all just wrote itself I said wait a second

I know the problem women don't go first men do men message as many women as they can women are getting inundated they never

respond the lack of response is causing a rejection and the rejection is triggering an aggression and that aggression is now translating into

harassment and this is why women are being abused on the dating apps because if only they would go first the man wouldn't feel rejected they'd feel empowered it would totally calibrate this whole experience and I

said okay great I know what we're gonna do women have to talk first on this product and they only have 24 hours to do it I knew nobody else could conceptualize the way I would explain it so I was like

thanks Cinderella the pumpkin and the carriage and men can send one extend on time a day to capture their attention if they want to now we have to also call

out something this was back in 2014 in a very heterosexual oriented dating app experience the landscape has evolved we have to be

inclusive to all and so of course we are and of course we are currently as we speak spending countless time and putting all of our heart and soul into

how to make the experience better for a non-binary for the trans Community for anybody that identifies as a woman as well right and so that's a big portion

of the future but that was really how I would say we became successful because of two things woman making sure that we were solving

for women's real problems on the internet marketing to women so when I went back to those sororities and fraternities instead of going in with you know

whatever we had gone in at Tinder I went in with things for women I went in with items women wanted cute yellow cookies like I understood that we are going to build a cute brand not a

sexy brand and that's what set us apart I wanted it to feel warm and cozy and inviting and

soft and feminine and safe and that's the beginning and still the current through line of bumble

what do you like as a leader because leadership has evolved you know over the last 10 20 years from like the Steve Jobs days where you've got this kind of tyrant that from what I've heard

so so hard to deal with that they put him in his own building and only people could we could work in that building if they were really resilient I had all these stories I spoke to was was didn't tell me that was um was the closest I've ever got to

Steve to Steve Jobs but leadership and the concept of what a leader looks like and how they behave and how they treat people in a post-internet world where we have the ability to speak up because we

can tweet and go our store and all of these things leadership the leadership has changed uh our perceptions of it how they behave in a post-pandemic world leaders are much more vulnerable

because I think a lot of them had to be really vulnerable during the pandemic to to guide their teams through what if I asked your teams if I said you know what's Whitney like as a leader what would they say to me

um I feel like I try I try and so you know I'm sure I could be told otherwise I try to

be empathetic and I try to think about everyone around me probably to my detriment honestly um I think it's probably done me more harm than good over the years because I'm

trying to solve for every single person in the room that maybe it doesn't solve anything sometimes um but I really I try to just be the brand we are externally internally

um it's hard you know there's so many conflicting needs as a business you have a marketing and brand team that when I do one thing you have a technical team that needs to do another you have

IPO teams that have to do another and so you end up being this conductor of a very um

um loud Orchestra and I try to create harmony with people but um I don't know I I guess I wouldn't say I follow any I don't read leadership books I don't like take leadership

courses maybe that's something I should do I don't know but I just lead with my gut I just do what feels right I try to do the right thing I try to listen and hear what people are saying and I try to

listen to other people too so if one person calls me and says X Y or Z I try to call the other person and say what's your version of this before I

jump to a conclusion um I really try to have compassion for where everybody's coming from but it's tough and then I also have to put my

head down and say okay no sometimes this is just how it's going to go right because I feel like I can see certain things that maybe aren't present to everyone in the dating

space because I've been in this thing for a decade now and I feel like I understand the nuances of it very well so I don't know I don't know what they would say you talked about creating Harmony amongst the orchestra which I

feel like is the perfect example of the role of a CEO but a role of the CEO of a public company becomes even more difficult because then you have even more conflicting

um expectations when you're that person that's trying to create a Harmony in all of this Orchestra keep everybody happy meet all the needs

how do you create Harmony within yourself so I personally have beliefs that you know there's something bigger than what we're dealing with

every day right like I tried to zoom out zoom out into something that we can't even see right there's obviously influences of the universe that none of us know about you and I cannot sit here

and say that we know every corner of why we exist and what what's going to happen tomorrow and so I try to just trust the process I try to laugh Andre was always really

good at that he would just laugh in really stressful situations and I learned that from him it's just like have a laugh he'll be okay and also to realize that we are just a blip on the

radar like this is going to be like if we're lucky like Bumble will be like a half page in a book one day at the hundreds of years from now like it's

just not that big of a deal the daily dramas and the nuances of everything and so I tried to just zoom out like is this really going to still matter this one

moment in interpersonal Dynamics or this one moment in um a a failed launch or whatever it might be is this really going to matter in five years is this gonna matter in

five months and I really try to do that exercise of like how big of a deal is this before I allow it to disrupt my Harmony does that make sense I don't know if

that made any sense it does make sense it does make sense um I was reading things about your your sort of sleep work routine and you sounded a lot like me

I'm the type of person that has an a fairly unhealthy relationship with my phone throughout through throughout the early hours of the morning especially especially when I was running the company especially when I was at Social chain still um I'd wake up in the middle of the

night I was probably I was worried too too often when we couldn't make payroll and I knew it was payday in a week I'd be riddled with little sort of slithers of anxiety when we spoke to

um I think it's Robbie oh yeah he's great Robbie and your team Robbie said she makes no pretense of being always strong and is openly vulnerable with the team

where you might walk into the office one day and let them know that you've been struggling with something might you might be anxious or struggling with anxiety that day and encourage your other team members if they're feeling the same way to take the time that they

need well that's really nice of him but yeah I mean vulnerability is it has to be authentic I've watched so many people the last few years ride this

vulnerability Trend and I'm like that's not real vulnerable like vulnerability can't be a scapegoat or an exit or a crutch for me I don't know I just I just tell the

truth if I'm having postpartum depression back when after my first baby I would just say that to my all hands because that was the truth and why would I be anything other than truthful if I

want to lead a company that tells the truth and I want to run a business that instills behaviors that are truthful and and healthy and and better like why

would I want to operate in any way that's disingenuous to that so I just get up and just try to tell the truth um convention would say well that's not your leaders are strong and then that

they don't they don't have any problems and they they're always tough and they you know they you know so what if and this is honestly what I used to worry about I used to think well if I if I'm truly honest that that things affect me

too my team are going to think I'm weak and then I can't lead them and that's the kind of narrative that ran out in my head yeah but and I get that

but the reality is everyone's everyone's feeling something and I'm in a connection business how can I run a connection company if I can't connect

and the only way you can connect is through vulnerability it's the only way to connect with anyone I'm being very vulnerable with you right now because we're sitting here connecting so I might as well you know I could sit here and be

like well it's a business book I read you know there's this theory of like you know this many hours a day do this and like that's just not my vibe we sit here in 10 years time

and we say that that was a really successful 10 years for Bumble what would have happened in those 10 years we would have built world-class features that were

industry changing for safety and Trust on the internet we would have become the safest platform for women not only to date but to find any trusted contact

that they need a mentor a mentee a babysitter a friend somebody that has the same illness as them as rare as it

might be somebody who is struggling with any type of Mental Health crisis the platform to find anyone on a trusted safe wavelength and we would have also

gone and created a suite of laws to actually build real legislature around the gaps that exist for physical and digital accountability as it pertains to

women's well-being and we would have scaled globally to every corner of the Earth where women need us the most and we would be a trusted product for them to

find their innate strength to quite literally make the first move out of something bad and into something good and we would have built a brand that showed everybody that you can

have Mission and profit live under the same roof and you can be a Kinder connected company irrespective of how everybody else has done it before

so that's what I would hope for thank you understanding your understanding you and understanding what's driving you I would certainly bet on that becoming a reality

um and I think that's the most that's really you know of all the the business success the marketing Brilliance and all of the things that you've done and the resilience and the getting back up and all of those things that in and of themselves you kind of we describe them

in a couple of minutes but I but any human that struggled and been rejected and had you know been mischaracterized knows that those aren't small things so for many people even one of those things is entirely fatal but there's clearly

this unbelievable resilience in you because he said well where does that you know I think I think you said it where I think you said it on a podcast one time where you said it doesn't matter if you lose your confidence you still have your drive and I really pondered that when

you said that I thought is that true because the thing is lose your confidence yourself well you do you still have the drive whether you have the the the belief that comes from confidence that you can have it but you still have that drive and that's exactly

what I've I've learned from you today which is that unshakable bigger than myself a mission bigger than me drive which is driving you and your company and that's

why I think you're an unbelievable inspiration but Bumble is an unbelievable bet on the future a future which I think is inevitable in the future that is necessary so thank you for your time today it's a huge honestly when I say it's a huge honor I mean it's

a huge honor I feel the same way about you so thank you for having me um today we have a closing tradition on the podcast where the last guest asks a question for the next guest they don't know who they're leaving it for

so they just leave it in the diary I open it and I get to read it now um the question they left for you not knowing it was you was what is the last belief you would relinquish

it's an interesting question like what would I let go of what belief do I have like what is there a belief I have that I would let go of yeah so I hear me shouldn't give away

who it is he means like what's the it's basically what's the most important belief to you what's the last belief that you would give up oh um the last belief that I would give

up is that people are inherently good somewhere deep down that rejection and insecurity and lack of communication

Drive cruelty and that I'm not going to give up on a world where we can actually connect good people together because I think there's a lot of a lot of good people out there that just

need a Kinder way to connect amen thank you Whitney thank you quick one some of you may know we've got a brand new sponsor for this podcast it's American Express and this

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thank you