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Hello boys and girls. Damas. This is Tim Ferris and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris show where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers of all different types from philosophy, chess, business, entertainment, you name it, academia, research to tease out the habits, routines, favorite books, favorite cereals, morning routines, whatever it might be that I think is tactical, practical that you can apply to your own life.
And my guest today is Whitney Wolf Hurd on Instagram. You can say hello at whitwolfeherd. She is the founder and CEO of Bumble, one of the fastest growing social networking apps in the world. She launched Bumble in 2014, is the only dating platform where women make the first move. And in 3 years, counted out, 36 months, her vision has led to Bumble's growth to more than 28 million users worldwide in 144 countries. Bumble launched Bumble BFF, that's best friends forever, in 2016 as a friend finding feature and launched Bumble Bizz for professional networking in 2017. Wolf Hurd was named to Forbes' 30 under 30 list for 2018 and has recently been on the covers of not just Fast Company, but also Forbes and Wired magazines. Without further ado, please enjoy this conversation with Whitney Wolf Hurd.
Whitney, welcome to the show.
A local. Here we are. Austin, Texas.
So, I wanted to start at the beginning and for those people who aren't familiar, a bit of the Genesis story and also the name itself. So, how did Bumble come to be? Why did it come to be?
So Bumble is somewhat of a unique story in the sense that it wasn't just a singular aha moment somewhere. It was really a response to a couple different things in life and then there was a little bit of serendipity involved. I had just started becoming the, you know, kind of the center of this attacking, violent internet abuse. And all sorts of strangers and random people online were just ripping me apart all day long in the media and in the comment sections and on Twitter. And it sounds silly to think that that could affect you.
Oh, no. I've been on the receiving end of plenty of that. Yeah.
But it devastated me and it made me just, it just made me so depressed. And I started to realize that there was something wrong with the internet. I started to realize that the lack of accountability on these social networks was a real thing and there was a real risk to that. And I was a perfect example of how dangerous it could be. If I at 24 who had already had a somewhat successful career and had great friends and family around me and I still could barely get out of bed and I could barely see straight. I mean, it just depleted every ounce of confidence that I've ever had. It scared me for what it would mean for a 13-year-old or a 14-year-old or a 15-year-old who was in junior high going through this, right?
And so, I started to really understand the danger of the internet. And it was around that time that I started thinking, what am I going to do next? because obviously I'm not going to just do nothing at 25 after being part of this really high growth startup and having this awesome exposure to so many different areas of the tech industry. And so I was going to start a female only social network where you could only be kind to one another. So you could only share complimentary behavior. And the thought process behind it was compliments are contagious just like hatred is contagious.
What was it going to be called?
Yeah. Thank you. Right. So, it was supposed to be a kind social network, which had never been done. And it was around that time that things kind of parlayed into where we are now. My now business partner in Bumble, who's been a huge force in Bumble coming to life and the course of Bumble, he tried to hire me as his CMO at his dating company. He has this huge dating company that's the match of Europe and South America. His name is Andrey Andreev.
Ever. Right. So, James Bond. Yeah, he's pretty awesome. But he wanted me to go run marketing at his dating company and I thought he had lost his mind. And so I told him what I was going to do. I'm going to start this new way, this new age of social media. And he was like, 'No, you're not. You're going to do that in dating with me.' And I was like, 'You've lost your mind.' But we actually ended up talking through it and the more thought I gave to this new concept of a dating app that could be engineered for women by women, the need became more apparent.
And so that's how I shifted from this concept of Merci into what is now Bumble, which was very much similar concept if you think about it. Creating a brand rooted in kindness, a product rooted in good behavior and really putting women in charge of that, creating the female internet, and that was really the beginning of Bumble.
What was the first name of Bumble? Where did it go?
Moxy. Yes, I really wanted it to be Moxy. So, you know, for anyone that's familiar with that word, it insinuates that someone has guts and is brave. And because Bumble was going to be this platform turning society on its head where women were going to make the first move, which according to society, that's not something women should do. Definitely not in dating, right? I mean, it's a tale as old as time. Men do that. Men need to go first. Or society said and says. And so Moxy was going to be the name, but I couldn't trademark it.
Why couldn't you trademark it?
Somebody else had totally trademarked every corner of it. It's actually a soda somewhere and then there's some big PR firm or some consulting agency that's trademarked the heck out of it and I couldn't do it.
So, how did you land on Bumble then?
I actually hated the name Bumble at first. I thought Bumble...
I did not think of the name Bumble, actually. Someone on our early team did and she had actually called her husband a bumbling idiot and she's got this British accent and she was like, you know what, about Bumble? Because we had all been searching the internet, we literally putting random letters together to come up with words. I mean, anything.
What were the other top contenders?
Yeah, because women were going to take the leap and make the first move and actually leap year is a very interesting story. So in leap year folklore says that women would propose to men during leap year. And so we thought Leap. And then we played with Sadie for like Sadie Hawkins dance.
We played with Sadie Hawkins dance.
You don't know what the Sadie Hawkins dance is?
I'm getting a lot of ugly looks or surprised looks.
So the Sadie Hawkins dance started in the 1930s and it was based off of a cartoon by Al Capp where these women during leap year would make the first move. Essentially they'd ask the men to marry them and this got consolidated into a dance that US school systems started putting into place and it became so popular. You know, the Sadie Hawkins dance, they'd wear the poodle skirts and the black and white shoes. Okay, you're going to have to look into this.
Now is it a dance? It's not an actual dance, it's not like a mating ritual dance?
It's like a school dance. So you have the prom right and then you had the Sadie Hawkins dance and the Sadie Hawkins dance was different from the prom because boys asked girls to the prom. Girls asked boys to the Sadie Hawkins dance. They asked the boy to the dance.
Something really interesting took place when the Sadie Hawkins dance went into effect. It became so popular they made it a national holiday and it became so popular because parents felt that it was a safer option because the way the boys behaved when the girls asked to the dance was much less aggressive. Girls were not crying, feeling left out. So it recalibrated these gender norms around flirting and dating and courting. And so that was a big inspiration behind Bumble, when we were thinking about women making the first move. It was almost the digital rendition of that.
Huh. So did you like Bumble then when it came up?
I did not like it at first. And I'll tell you why. Bumble sounded like fumble. You know, you were fumbling through a dating experience. So, we wanted this to be an app that was empowering for women where they felt confident and in control. And it was not until all of these really cute catchphrases started coming up. People on our team and friends when we're asking, 'What do you think about this name or this name or this name?' And all of a sudden, these catchphrases were coming up like, you know, be the queen bee of Bumble, find your honey on Bumble.
And it was in that moment that we said, 'Okay, this is it. This is brandability. This is how you brand something.' And that was it. Off to the races we went.
Yeah. If it sticks, it sticks.
One of the first things I ask proofreaders who are typically friends of mine who are writers or lawyers because they're really good at spotting sloppy language or words that don't need to be there or things that are confusing. In any case, one of the first questions I ask after they've read a chapter is I will give it some time, say like a half hour, have a cup of coffee, and I'll say, 'Okay, what do you remember?' And I'll see what the first few things are that come to mind.
That's really interesting. All right, I got to tell you, a lot about top of mind. I'm like, yeah, don't think about it too hard. Just read it and then see what sticks.
If it takes too long, it's like, all right, I need to rework the entire chapter.
No, I think that's really interesting advice. Now, how many people roughly at this point use Bumble? And I know there are many different metrics and ways you can go about it, but we look at kind of overall user base in terms of registrations. How many times has somebody downloaded our platform? How many people have registered for our app? We've had over 29 million registrations now in just over three years.
Yeah, it's a lot of people.
That's a few people. Yeah.
So the part of the beauty of the approach, and I know that there's a lot of complexity hidden behind a very simple interface. Believe me, with the amount of time that I've spent with startups, I started using Bumble very early on. I mean sort of, I'm not going to call it alpha or beta, but very early on.
And what I realized very quickly is that by having the woman make the first move you also remove one of the biggest pain points. And you know this from men, which is women receiving 500,000 unwanted messages. And even if Prince Charming is hiding in there, even if you are the one she would pick, it's too much noise.
The signal to noise ratio is so unfavorable that as a guy, you could put out 100 messages and get zero responses. And it just cuts out that first leg of wasted work completely. So, thank you for that.
Well, that's awesome feedback. I guess it's interesting that you highlight that because that just plays into these gender dynamics. You know, women, from the time they start thinking about who they like or having crushes, it's that it's going to be inbound, right? That we're trained to think that's going to come to us, that the boys are supposed to chase the girls and then that turns into the men chasing the women and that we're supposed to essentially play hard to get and not give in, right? And so when the good guy does show up, you oftentimes miss that given those broken dynamics.
And so yeah, when you do flip the switch, it does allow for better and more genuine connections.
So people might be listening or watching and they've read a bit about your story and you're on top of the world, right, in so many ways, stepping up to the plate, hitting home runs every time at bat. But you mentioned when we got started this depressive period, this dark period. So I wanted to read something that I found in the course of doing some research and it may be paraphrase, but I think it's somewhat accurate based on checking with you beforehand.
The quote here, it's from Refinery29, and it talks about how you wanted to build a company that encourages empowerment, confidence, and respect. Because when you have self-respect, it's really hard to get you down. This is the part I wanted to dig into for a second. 'I've been in a place in my life where I've had no confidence, no self-respect, zero self-worth, and it was really easy to hurt my feelings. Anything would trigger me to be sad. Then when you rebuild some of that, you become stronger.' So, I was hoping you could describe for us whether it's that episode, that period that you talked about or another one of the darker, harder times.
Sure. And what a day looked like during that time and then the things you did or the things that helped you get out of that depressive state, and it doesn't have to be depressive, could be anxiety, could be anything else.
Well, you know, and I still have days like that and I think that's healthy for listeners or watchers to understand that just because something's going well or what people perceive to be going well doesn't mean every day is perfect. And I think the hard times in my life have really shaped the good times in my life. And I think many people can agree with that. So, you know, the inspiration behind Bumble was really driven from self-experience and what I've gone through in my life.
Basically, there's been a common theme with every tough time I've ever gone through. And that always comes down to mental abuse. And that has been not just in romantic endeavors. That could be friendships, toxic friendships. And so there's been this recurring theme and you know when I was under so much scrutiny from the internet, from strangers and I was allowing these random strangers to define me and to dictate my day.
Can you think of any particular example? I personally can certainly think of certain examples. I'm like, 'Oh my god, that one year when that thing came out on my birthday and it was a hatchet job piece.' Can you think of one where you're like, 'Oh god, that day'?
It was actually right after my birthday. Funny you say that. It was the summer of 2014 and all of these articles were running and I wasn't speaking to anyone. I wasn't commenting on any articles. I knew nothing about the media at that time. Nothing. And I could not have been more naive when it came to PR and press at that time.
Yeah, there be dragons. Got to be careful.
Yeah. And you know this story came out one morning, one afternoon. My dad sent it to me and it was disgusting. It was talking about, the piece painted me as this, you know, like the Gone Girl of tech. You know, she was a seductress and all of these awful insinuations. And it was talking about ridiculous things, really personal details that were completely inaccurate and it was really gross and ugly and it just made me feel undressed. I felt naked.
What was your dad's commentary?
Well, and that was what was so devastating. My dad was just like, you know, having your father send you an article and be like, 'Is this true?' Like, of course not, but how do you have to justify that at 24 just turning 25 years old to your father? What, how irresponsible can journalism be that no one asked me for comment on that? You know, no one asked if those allegations were true. And to be this young woman feeling like I was part of this like mean girl club and you know, the girl that was being pointed at and laughed at by a group of people. Well, I mean, it was awful.
What did the rest of your day look like?
I was devastated. I actually became physically ill. So, my, he's now my husband and thank God for him. I was having such a mental breakdown. I was actually having a what they call a clinical panic attack. I was hyperventilating. I was distraught. I couldn't breathe. My sight was not right. And he had to take me to his primary doctor, like his family doctor. And the doctor literally had to prescribe me one to two days worth of some, what, I don't know, I don't take any medicine, I'm scared of even Advil, but I think it was like Valium or something to physically calm me down.
I was having a mental breakdown because I had no way to defend myself and I just felt helpless and I felt literally undressed on a huge stage and it was awful.
Yeah. It's not a great feeling at all and it's even worse, I mean it's even worse for women. It's bad for men, but it gets even worse, I think, for women. It can be terrible for men, don't get me wrong, but...
He was talking about very misogynistic things that really only apply to women, and that's what made it worse. You know, making insinuations about who I was as a woman and my intentions as a woman, it wasn't even about business, if that makes sense. You know, it was very... all that stuff is really salacious and exciting compared to the business stuff. So, people like to paint the picture. Hope they got some clicks.
Now one thing I'd love to chat about because it came up in a number of places when I was doing homework for this. And this is certainly not uncommon among founders I know. People think, oh, when the times are going well, you're doing well. When the times are going poorly, you're doing poorly. But a lot of founders, even when their startups are doing really well, have a certain baseline of low-grade or high-grade anxiety. So at points, tell me if this, it's the internet, so who knows if this is true or not, but at some points you were waking up every two hours to check your email or you'd wake up at 4:30, check your email, then go back to sleep and wake up again at 6:30.
I actually, that has just now started to slow down.
Have you always been anxious? Has that been a sort of an emotional home of sorts?
I think it's anxiety paired with drive and ambition and passion. I'm so dedicated to what I'm doing. I can't explain it to you. I mean, it's just part of my blood at this point and it's almost like it's built into my system. So, yeah, the anxiety has been really scary over the years. And there's days where, you know, I couldn't feel my fingers for hours or I didn't think I could breathe. I mean, this started manifesting into physical ailments. And God bless my doctor. He's really going to have to block my cell phone number at some point. But, you know, it's scary. If you don't deal with anxiety, it will take control over your life.
How have you dealt with it? What are the habits or routines or self-talk, anything that has helped you to keep it from going from a fuel to a handicap and something that really takes control?
It definitely has become a handicap at points, but I would say 85% of the time it's a fuel. And actually, back to the doctor talk, my doctor said something really interesting to me, and it's something that stuck with me. I said to him one day, I was like, I don't know if I can deal with this anymore. My anxiety is just so extreme. It's paralyzing me at certain points. Do I need to get on a medicine? Do I need to be medicated for this? And he responded, 'Just keep doing good work. It will recalibrate the way you feel.' And when I thought through that and I was like, you know what, if I can channel this energy and this anxiety into doing good work, meaning work that affects others in a positive way, it genuinely works. It actually works.
You have to shift it and you've got to harness it and control it. And my husband's great about this, too, you know. He's just like, 'What are your thoughts? Let's get your thoughts under control, you know, and how do we harness this and just focus on what's causing this and then how do we shift it into something that's positive versus doing the self-doubt thing on repeat.'
Now, do you do that with any type of help like journaling or is it just a conversation with your husband? Are there any when you feel it starting to spiral? I mean, do you have pattern interrupts that you can use?
Yeah, you know, I try to get outside and take a walk and leave my phone. And I found that that's really helpful. And also sleep. Nothing is more nourishing to your mind, body, and soul than a good night's sleep. And I think if you can have uninterrupted sleep, even if you're a person that's like, 'Oh, I only need five or six hours of sleep,' if you can try to have a good seven, eight hours sleep, it really changes the game.
Yeah. One thing that I've also observed, and I think these are actually very closely related in some people, but at least for people with depressive symptoms, going to bed before or by say 11:00 makes a very big difference in the quality of sleep. In other words, sleeping from 2 a.m., if you're let's say self-employed and have disability or unemployed, to sleep from say 2 to 10 is not the same caliber of sleep that you're going to get from 11 to 8 or 11 to whatever.
So I'm going to flash back to books specifically. And so I had read at one point a, I don't think we're going to spend a ton of time on this right now, but you ask about your team's mood every day, which I thought was very interesting and having them rank it. But what I caught at the end of this I was curious about. So it says, 'A box in the corner contains copies of Originals, subtitled How Non-conformists Move the World by Adam Grant, and Wolf tells everyone to take one home so they can have a group discussion.' Why did you choose to do that with this book? And do you do it with other books? Are there other books that you've also used for employees in the company or leaders, whatever it might be?
So like we were saying earlier, internet time is like a different time zone from every other measure of time. When we were doing that, we were a team of something like six or seven. We were really a tiny team. We were still in our apartment and our conference room was in a bathtub and you know we were really just trying to keep the wheels turning.
And I felt that a good mechanism of keeping everyone, as fast and as crazy as it was all going, keeping everyone on some form of a thread of commonality, you know, where there'd be something everyone could talk about together that wasn't just Bumble, right? So how could we have interesting conversations together as this small team that wasn't just like, okay, what are we going to do with our downloads or what new product are we going to do? How could we focus on kind of interesting insights from someone else?
And so we did kind of a poll early on, what book should we read together? Let's try to do a book club together. And this was at one of those pivotal moments of growth. And so it did not last very long.
The book club did not last, but the intentions were good. The intentions were good. And everyone really liked the idea of trying to turn off. Another purpose of that was I was trying to encourage the team to turn off a little bit at night.
And instead of getting deep into your emails after you've come home from dinner, open a book, you know, read, detach, do something that is going to challenge your mind in a way that you're not being challenged all day long. And so that was the premise of it all. And you know as you grow, we're now approaching 100 employees here soon. It's very hard to do a check on how you're feeling every day. You can't really go around the room with so many people and it's really hard to get everybody together for book club when things are just going so fast.
Yeah. Are there any books personally that you've gifted often to other people or reread a lot yourself?
Yes, I have several different books, but two that we can talk about. Something I've always gifted and just kind of held close over the years is the book Shantram. Have you read Shantram?
I became obsessed with Shantram. Like I tried to join a Shantram fan club online, like a book club. It got weird for a second. But the point is I loved Shantram.
And I loved that it took you into this different element of human understanding and I wanted my team to read it because I think it's actually a great marketing example, how to build a product based on human behavior and how to understand people around you and what makes people tick, not just what's the ROI on some billboard, right? And so I don't know what it is about that book, I can't summarize it in one sentence, but it just gives you a peek into the soul of humanity, if that makes sense. And so that's a book that I've gifted frequently and I love.
Yeah, fascinating story. Also, the author has a really good, effectively, goodbye public world. You're not going to hear from me for a while. I'm going to continue to do my work, but I'm not going to appear anywhere. I'm not going to do anything. And he's made this public proclamation, which I thought was very inspiring since I fantasize about that all the time. But this book, yeah, very powerful story that catches people, very often catches people at the right time.
What's the second book?
So back to the right time when it catches people at the right time. I actually read that book when I graduated from college. I went and got a backpack at REI and went to Asia for a couple, few months. I have no concept of years or time anymore. And while I was over there, I spent time in Singapore and throughout several cities, but I also spent time solo at orphanages in northern Thailand, in Cambodia, and then did a lot of travel through that area. And that was the book I read on that trip. And so I think as you're sitting on this bus that breaks down with a bunch of local Cambodians eating crickets, reading Shantram, you're almost taking yourself out of everything you've ever known to be true and understanding how big and vast and how great the world is around you and really how small one is, right? It just gives you so much perspective. So that's one book.
Another book that I've been gifting and he should probably make me an ambassador. So if he listens to this, this book called The Plant Paradox. Have you heard of it? Oh, this will destroy your life in a good way. So it's basically telling you that everything you've ever heard about health and wellness is completely false. So he tells you plants are bad for you essentially. And I don't know what it is about this book, but it might be a little bit of hocus pocus, but I'm a full believer. And so I think I've sent that book to like 100 people at this point.
How has it changed your behavior or...
Well, the big thing for me as I've been working so much, I'm also starting to understand how health catches up. So for the first few years of Bumble, I mean, I was drinking every night, not at a club. I mean, I have not gone out. I've not been social like a normal 20-some year old since I started Bumble, right? Actually, I became almost a hermit. I became very reclusive and I just wanted to be with my boyfriend who became fiance, now husband, and I just wanted to be with people that I really knew and trusted and I didn't want to go anywhere because I was so paranoid that everyone hated me or assumed these awful things about me that I genuinely just went to work, went home, maybe cooked dinner, maybe cried a little bit, maybe drank some wine and that was it.
And so, this health thing has become a bit more important now. You know, here you go to work and you can create as much success as you're able to, but you have nothing without your health. You have nothing without your mental health. You have nothing without your physical health. And so, that's why I'm kind of getting into these books, because I think it's important to have that type of balance.
Has it changed your diet or anything like that?
Yeah, it actually has. It scares you about what you're putting in your body.
What might a default breakfast or lunch or dinner look like for you now?
Oh gosh, that's a crazy question. There is no default, it's whatever I can find generally. But now I'm trying to be more thoughtful. So, the rules according to this guy are that everything you put in your body is essentially your health, right? And you are what you eat. And so even getting a piece of organic chicken, what you used to maybe think was good for you, well, what is that chicken eating? Right? And so it's just this awful rabbit hole that you go down, but it's interesting and it's important to understand the effects on the planet. And you know, that's a conversation for another time.
All right, cool. I'll check it out. Yeah, everything you put in your mouth on your body is a drug if it has a biochemical effect. So you have to think of it that way. When you said the Plant Paradox and plants are bad for you, there are a lot of plants that really don't want you to eat them.
Exactly. That's what this is all about.
Yeah, there are a lot of them. And it made me think briefly, I'm not going to get into it, of Zooko, who is the creator/co-creator, I'm not sure which, of Zcash cryptocurrency. Really smart guy who eats only meat. He does not eat any vegetables whatsoever. And he's been doing that for years. See, because a lot of the plants have defense mechanisms and they will poison you.
According to a lot of plants, since they are fixed in their mobility, they can't run away from predators, so they develop all sorts of very, very, very clever defense mechanisms.
Like apparently beans are toxic for you.
