How I Built Resilience: Whitney Wolfe Herd of Bumble

Listen, I mean, I think you have the opportunity to control very few things in life right now. And so, all I've got is my attitude every day. And so, I'm trying to see the bright side of all of this. And I think the bright side with the new baby is as a working woman and as a CEO of a growing business, how would I have ever seen my child as a baby when I went back to work? And so, there's absolutely silver lining in this. Even if it's stressful, even if it's overwhelming, you know, completely nerve-wracking at times, I get to be with my baby. And so, I think there's a huge opportunity in that as well.

It's really hard. But, you know what? The other thing that I find comforting is that for the first time maybe ever, the entire world is in something together. All of us suffer from struggles on either an individual level or community-wide level or a town-wide level and sometimes a statewide or nationwide level. But, it's very rare that we have a collective struggle that is so similar around the globe. And so, I think there's something about this togetherness, even in a time that's so isolating.

Or Armageddon. I mean, it's one of the two.

Absolutely. So, first and foremost, we started as a dating app, but we are really now a broad connections platform. What's fantastic is that as we launched the dating app back in 2014, where women had to initiate the conversation. So, let me give you the very basics. You download the product. If you're looking for a heterosexual relationship, and of course, we're inclusive to all orientations, no matter what you're seeking. But when you are looking for a heterosexual relationship, once a woman and a man match, only the woman can initiate the conversation. And what this has done has really turned things on its head in a positive direction in the sense that they're in control. We as the women, we have an extra kind of encouragement of confidence and this mechanism to say hello and make that first move. And we've always been about putting the power into the women's hand, not to make women above men, but to equalize this kind of broken system. We felt that women were historically a bit below men in this like totem pole of relationships and who should go first and who has the power. So, by having the woman make the first move, you essentially just bring her up and then you stabilize her for everyone. Anyway, since then, we saw this huge desire for women to be able to connect platonically as well. And because there was this barrier to entry, women were really feeling safe and encouraged to use it to friend find or to business network. And so now we're facilitating connections across the board, but under the guise of this strong foundation of safety, empowerment, kindness, and accountability.

Yeah, so you know, I think this was a troubling time for everyone across the globe, but quite remarkably, our theory that no matter what happens in the world, the need for human connection and love and friendship and overall connectivity, that doesn't go away. In fact, it just becomes more important and more critical. And so, we saw this fascinating event take place, which was a huge surge in activity. We had very fortunately been ahead of the curve with in-app video chatting. That was a feature that historically had moderate to low use, and we always wondered, why are people not using this more? This is a great mechanism to get to know somebody. Imagine if you could avoid that first date in public because you figured out that person wasn't for you by video or you could go ahead and skip the awkward, you know, crowded coffee shop because you're nervous about meeting a stranger and you could go straight to that dinner you wanted to have or that walk in the park or maybe through a video chat you recognize that you had a lot of shared interests and you want to go for a bike ride, whatever. So, all of a sudden, you know, we're all sitting on the edge of our seats like, what's going to happen to our business? This is so crazy. People aren't allowed to date. Is this going to wipe us out? It was a very concerning and confusing time, but remarkably, the usage just went through the roof. And so, we really just saw people using our product in such a deeper more meaningful way.

So we're seeing a decrease in this casual culture of dating where you might go out with someone for a night and then you don't see them again. That has decreased significantly, but remarkably more meaningful relationships are coming out of this. So you're getting people and they're spending days if not weeks video chatting. We've heard of these really incredible stories of people ordering from the same restaurant and having a dinner party with each other through the screen. They're watching movies or reading books together or they're doing projects. They started gardening or whatever people started doing all this banana bread stuff. And it's been really incredible. So the amount of success stories we have heard and seen come out of this. And when I say success stories, I mean we are exclusive together type of love. We have heard of countless stories of this because of not having this transactional, you know, see each other for a moment in real life, forget about them the next day. Not only that, but the friendship success stories those are the ones that have really struck me as fascinating because people can't see their friends right now. And so many of us have to travel to see our friends anyway and that's been wiped out for the time being. And so seeing people check in on their community through Bumble has been amazing.

Back up. Back up. What I'm saying is instead of matching on Bumble, exchanging a 'Hey, what's up? Let's meet at the coffee shop. See you tomorrow.' type of thing, they're doing a lot of the foundational groundwork on the product first. And then they're meeting once it's safe. So, there are folks that said, 'Hey, you know what? We've really hit it off on this video chat. Let's self-quarantine now for 2 weeks or whatever the guidelines are, and then we'll meet in person.' And so, why I'm saying they're more meaningful is if we're a little more thoughtful and spend a little more time getting to know the individual behind the screen before we go meet in person, the success rate is so much higher.

Yes, people are nervous. They are nervous, and rightfully so. We should be nervous. But, if you follow the guidelines and you get access to testing or you take precautions to ensure that you and that other party are safe, then it becomes a lot less risky. And so, I think what is awesome here is for me and my friends in particular, I think a lot of my personal disdain and a lot of my girlfriends' disdain for this transactional dating culture that has kind of come because of the early dawn of dating apps and so on and so forth, you know, there has been some romance lost over the years. And I think what is so special in the silver lining in this love in the time of COVID is that we are taking more time to know one another before we are meeting a stranger in real life. And when you think about this, go back 10 years ago before the explosion of the industry that I'm in, if I had told you you get to exchange two or three messages with a stranger, you've seen two or three photos, now go meet them in public. That's a daunting dangerous suggestion. Yet that has become so normalized. That is what millions of individuals around the world are doing. I personally believe and our team believes that the added safety, security, and success rate, if you will, is going to be amplified because of this forced moment of social distancing.

Thank you for asking that, because this is a huge, huge focus of ours. So, first and foremost, we have this incredible feature called photo verification. And what's so interesting to us is photo verification had really only existed for credit cards or for your finances. But why would we treat your finances as more secure than the people you're meeting? I mean, there's nothing more important than your own personal security as a human being. And so, photo verification is this incredible feature where you take a photo of yourself in real time, and it compares it to your profile photo. And within 30 seconds to 1 minute, it will analyze, 'Are you who you say you are?' And if you are who you say you are, then you get a check mark, and you are verified. And so, that way you know you're not getting catfished, you know you're not talking to somebody pretending to be someone else. So, that's just a first step. We have incredible block and reporting features. So, if something makes you uncomfortable, or you feel like somebody might be a risk to you or to others, you can block and report, and we take that very seriously. We have a huge team that looks into all of this. And so those are just two examples of how we really try to create an accountable ecosystem.

So, I can't comment on revenue as a direct metric, but what I can say is that we've been an incredibly durable business across the board. But, I think that there is no business in the world that has not had to at least tweak their ways. And so, all of us have had to make concessions. All of us have had to make changes. But, what I will say is that we've been on the side that would be least impacted because we've been such a digital business. I'm watching all these local businesses around me. All of a sudden, they're modernizing. You know, you're ordering from the phone. They're bringing it to the car, and it's this really modern thing. And I'm sitting here scratching my head going, 'Oh my goodness, how did it take a global pandemic to actually modernize these businesses that are perceived as quite current and hip?' And we have not had to do that. And so, because we haven't had to go and rewrite our model. And another example is so much of our workforce was already remote. We have offices all over the world because our business affords us the luxury to be remote. We haven't had to adapt to the same degree that so many individuals have had to do. And so, you know, we have been very fortunate. And I think that this has proven a theory that we were trying to enforce for years before this hit, which was connect digitally first. It's safer. It's more meaningful. And then, what becomes really interesting is how do we connect groups, right? So, lots of these events have gone out the window for now. So, what you used to be able to do and go to a concert, you used to be able to go to a dinner party, you used to be able to go to an event where you had this connection with more than just one individual. So, what we're really focused on right now is how do we connect you to more than just one person? How can we bring you together on shared interest? For example, how do we build the digital dinner party and the equivalent of that so that you don't lose access to building your network? It's not just about one-to-one. It's about many-to-many and one-to-many. And so, I think that's a huge focus as we go forward.

You know, it's not so much to meet demand because we have a really well-staffed team, but this is an opportunity to hire in a way that we never thought about before. Usually, where we're just hiring at our two main locations, our three main locations, now that things are moving remote, we're opening up our talent pool opportunities.

Oh, by the way, some days I'm not motivated, right? Like this is affecting all of us. Truly, what keeps us going is the need to connect people, right? We understand when we go to our job, when we show up, when we're on these Zooms, the work we are doing is helping connect people. It's helping people find love, start families, find fun, find an escape, find a friend, find a business partner. That's meaningful and that's motivation in and of itself. But I have to give a lot of credit to my team and then of course to Blackstone. So, you know, we did a majority acquisition of my former shareholder last year. And then just a couple months later this pandemic hits and so their support and their infrastructure and all of the opportunities they've granted us has been remarkable. And then our leadership team and our user base. So, I would say that's kind of the thing that keeps us going every day.

I think my favorite story was actually a woman and a gentleman I actually met. He was in his, I want to say 70s and she was in probably her late 50s and if she's listening, I'm sorry if you're younger than that, you look amazing. But, you know, she had lost her husband tragically and she heard about Sharon Stone Bumble and so she joined Bumble during COVID. And they talked and they talked and they talked and they video chatted and he said, well, you know, all the restaurants are closed. What about a parking lot picnic? So, they agreed to a parking lot picnic, you know, 6 ft apart and when she arrived there was a white table cloth parking lot picnic at some obscure shopping mall somewhere in Florida and they had a lovely lovely romantic parking lot picnic, very socially and they really hit it off and they have now been together ever since and I ran into them in Colorado and they are a lovely couple and had it not been for his son encouraging him to get on Bumble and for Sharon Stone talking about her Bumble experience, they would never have found each other and so that was just one example of a really charming and lovely story that I had first hand interaction with and there's many many more to that.

Thank you so much. You're always such a joy to speak with and thank you for having me. I appreciate it.