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

Whitney Wolfe Herd 0:00 I'm legally really not meant to comment on the Tinder times. And I don't even know if I've told this story. But ... (music)

Steven Bartlett 0:09 Whitney Wolfe Herd, the CEO and founder of Bumble.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 0:12 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.

Steven Bartlett 0:28 I've seen all the things that Bumble have done over the years, and it always seems to be original in its nature.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 0:33 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 a superpower of ours over the years. At 31 years old, you're the youngest woman to take a company public.

Steven Bartlett 0:52 What's the personal toll on you in those moments?

Whitney Wolfe Herd 0:56 It's been pretty dark. It's been pretty heavy.

Steven Bartlett 0:59 Your departure from Tinder read to me like it was horrific and sexist.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:03 It was soul-crushing. 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.

Steven Bartlett 1:22 If I asked your team, "What's Whitney like as a leader?" What would they say to me?

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:25 I don't know.

Steven Bartlett 1:27 We did ask them.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:28 Oh.

Steven Bartlett 1:28 So ... (sighs) Whitney, what is the early context that I would have to understand about you and your life to understand you?

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:50 I think probably broken gender dynamics. Growing up, I sorta grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah. I don't know if you know much about-

Steven Bartlett 2:01 I know it from Mormonism.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 2:02 ... Salt Lake City, Utah. Yeah. So, it's a very LDS, is 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

Whitney Wolfe Herd 2:20 already a 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, um, a man's world, where the man is, um, the, you know, the breadwinner, the man is out, Mom is at home in an apron, and everyone follows rules, lots of rules. Uh, 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, um, these undertones of my entire life that would then set the stage for my entire career.

Steven Bartlett 3:39 Using that first relationship, that first sort of toxic relationship as an example of how your belief system at that point was causing problems, um, could you give me some color to what, to what, to what you mean there?

Whitney Wolfe Herd 3:50 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 relationships. 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 squawked at, 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.

Steven Bartlett 5:14 Were you rebelling at all against that environment, or that belief system?

Whitney Wolfe Herd 5:18 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 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.

Steven Bartlett 6:19 How do we navigate that duality? 'Cause we all, we all exp- experience those sort of conflicting needs at the same time. Often, one of them is like an external one confli- con- 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 of fitting in or validation, versus like, "This doesn't feel good to me-

Whitney Wolfe Herd 6:40 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 6:40 ... inside."

Whitney Wolfe Herd 6:42 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. Um,

Whitney Wolfe Herd 7:07 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.

Steven Bartlett 7:22 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 is created an environment, and a community, and a job, and a, and a, an environment where that's built on that inauthenticity.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 7:36 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 7:36 So, to make the change just to one day be like, "Do you know what? Today, I'm going to be authentic," requires, it seems like, quite a lot of short-term loss, espec- disapproval, people going, "S- stay, 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 auth- inauthentic self." So, that like... I think I see so many people kinda contend with that. They want... They kind of might know who they are, that voice inside, but the apparent cost of pursuing it seems cir- 'cause mom and dad, and my boyfriend, and I'd have to leave the city, and my job, and my friendship, you know?

Whitney Wolfe Herd 8:09 Of course. You have to leave the tribe.

Steven Bartlett 8:12 Yeah. It's terrifying.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 8:14 Terrifying. It's almost unimaginable for people, and I've been there. I've 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.

Steven Bartlett 9:27 Hmm.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 9:27 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 TikTok and to 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.

Steven Bartlett 10:40 When you were, when you were 18, what was acceptance or success to you? What i- if I asked you at 18 years old what you want to be post-uni when you grow up, what would the answer have been at that point?

Whitney Wolfe Herd 10:52 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

Whitney Wolfe Herd 11:28 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 am, believe it or not, being so (laughs) ingrained in the dating world-

Steven Bartlett 11:46 (laughs)

Whitney Wolfe Herd 11:46 ... I think I've been on maybe three dates in my life.

Steven Bartlett 11:48 (laughs)

Whitney Wolfe Herd 11:48 (laughs) And 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 rule- rules are ridiculous. So this, this desire to break the rules, change the rules, rewrite the rules, was something I inherently felt deep down. But everybody's felt that. You've felt that. Everybody has felt that. It's just who chooses to go and actually act on it, is the difference.

Steven Bartlett 12:33 Do you... 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?

Whitney Wolfe Herd 13:06 You know, it's a good question.

Steven Bartlett 13:07 Mm-hmm.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 13:07 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, to 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.

Steven Bartlett 13:55 Mm-hmm.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 13:55 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 is Daddy?' And, 'Where is Mommy?'" So we have to imagine that we, we do some of this to the, to the kids around us.

Steven Bartlett 15:00 Did you burn the book?

Whitney Wolfe Herd 15:01 I, I took a picture of it and raved about it- uh, raged about it at work for about three hours-

Steven Bartlett 15:05 (laughs)

Whitney Wolfe Herd 15:05 ...and we will not be reading the book again. (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 15:09 (laughs) Okay. Good. What was your, what was your formal education, per se? What was your, in terms of university or anything like that, what did you study?

Whitney Wolfe Herd 15:16 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 'cause now somehow I've ended up there a little bit. Um, 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, "Mm, 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

Whitney Wolfe Herd 15:58 big people problems. You know, globalization, anthropology, women's studies, gender studies, um, i- 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 would say my education really did help me connect those dots.

Steven Bartlett 16:42 And as you leave that, that degree, that gap between like the working world and leaving university or college, what was that gap and how, 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?

Whitney Wolfe Herd 16:58 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, uh, Burma-

Steven Bartlett 17:16 Mm-hmm.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 17:16 ...and she is holding a Bumble lighter, and it's my never made it to NatGeo moment. (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 17:25 (laughs)

Whitney Wolfe Herd 17:26 But that was my dream. I wanted to be a NatGeo photographer, and

Whitney Wolfe Herd 17:30 so I went traveling through Southeast Asia-

Steven Bartlett 17:32 Mm-hmm.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 17:33 ...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 a, 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 wanna ride around on the back of a moped in 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? Like, wha- 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.

Steven Bartlett 18:36 By chance, you ended up in this weird world of connecting people. What was that chance?

Whitney Wolfe Herd 18:43 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, um, a couple of these- these guys in LA, and we all ended up at dinner because, um, 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, um, 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

Whitney Wolfe Herd 19:24 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 happenstance 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-

Steven Bartlett 20:41 (laughs) Yeah.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 20:41 ... 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.

Steven Bartlett 21:01 It's so- it's so true. It's, you know, that moment there, there's so many other outcomes that could've happened from a dinner.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 21:06 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 21:07 Um, n- n- namely one of them is you just don't call the person back. I mean, the amount of times in my life someone's given me their number and said, "Call me," and I just haven't called back most of the time.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 21:14 N- 99%.

Steven Bartlett 21:15 (laughs) Yeah.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 21:15 It's like all of us do that.

Steven Bartlett 21:16 Yeah, yeah. Uh, but there's a philosophy of, like, leaning into stuff, especially when you're young, just, like, leaning in, r- regardless of certainty, as you've described it.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 21:23 Take a chance.

Steven Bartlett 21:23 Yeah. And people have a d- I- 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, eh, lean out people. Even when the world is changing, crypto, Bitcoin, blockchain, all these things, meta, all th- ... Typically, people lean in or lean out.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 21:39 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 21:40 And, um, I think people that lean in are the ones that end up creating opportunity, which looks like luck in hindsight.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 21:45 Yeah. I agree with you. And being brave enough to just say,

Whitney Wolfe Herd 21:49 "Even if it doesn't work out, at least I explored it," right?

Steven Bartlett 21:52 Mm-hmm.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 21:52 I think people ... What I've seen, and- 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.

Steven Bartlett 22:06 Hmm. It's the uncertainty, though, isn't it? How good are you at dealing with uncertainty? With, uh, how- how- how guaranteed do you need the outcome to be before you take a step?

Whitney Wolfe Herd 22:16 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." Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And you can get bogged down in that, you know? It's really, it's easy to drown in that noise.

Steven Bartlett 23:20 In those- in those early years of Tinder, I- I remember being told this story maybe 10 years ago in San Francisco, when I was working there with, um, a guy called Michael Birch, who was the old Bebo founder. You'll know Bebo. Bebo, the old social net- Oh, no, it didn't go to the US, it was just in-

Whitney Wolfe Herd 23:34 Yeah, I'm not-

Steven Bartlett 23:34 ... predominantly in the UK.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 23:35 ... sure I remember that.

Steven Bartlett 23:36 It was like Facebook here before b- before Facebook.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 23:38 Okay, cool.

Steven Bartlett 23:39 Um, and he, in his little sort of incubator that I was in when I was 20, they were telling me the Bum- the Tinder story of how you went to a fraternity.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 23:48 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 23:49 For people that don't know what a fraternity is, what's a fraternity?

Whitney Wolfe Herd 23:52 Uh, so I guess in the UK, it would be, like, college clubs, maybe?

Steven Bartlett 23:57 Yeah.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 23:57 Do they have, like, members clubs or something like that?

Steven Bartlett 24:00 We don't really have fraternities.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 24:00 So we have sororities and fraternities, and sororities are a house of women.

Steven Bartlett 24:04 Mm-hmm.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 24:04 And fraternities are a house of men. And there's different

Whitney Wolfe Herd 24:08 names. So, they all have these Greek names, right? So for example, the one I joined was Kappa Kappa Gamma.

Steven Bartlett 24:14 Mm-hmm.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 24:14 You could have, um, Tri 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 w- 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'd 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 fraternities. So I'd essentially have all the young women download it and then run to the (laughs) 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 wanna chop that up 10 years later? Who knows? But that's the reality, and, you know, can't escape the truth. But, so you, so you heard about this way back when?

Steven Bartlett 25:20 I heard about this 10 years ago, 'cause we were building community-centric apps. We were 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 Shaan Puri, who's now, who, we had, the company got acquired by Amazon in the end, Twitch, um, who own Amazon. Who, other way around, Amazon own Twitch.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 25:38 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 25:38 Um, but yeah, that was the, that was the thesis. It was like, "Should we go to fr- fraternities and go get-"

Whitney Wolfe Herd 25:45 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 25:45 ... you know, and to, to try and build that sort of comm- isolated type community to try and get product market fit.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 25:51 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 25:52 Because network effects really, really mat- and especially in the dating game.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 25:54 The most important.

Steven Bartlett 25:55 Yeah.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 25:56 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, 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 had 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.

Steven Bartlett 26:25 Yeah. (laughs)

Whitney Wolfe Herd 26:26 You know? Like, you can't, you can't (laughs) 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 of 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, uh, was sh- very well-liked on campus.

Steven Bartlett 27:05 (laughs)

Whitney Wolfe Herd 27:05 And I went into Dani's journalism class, because she was still a student, (laughs) 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 I 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 1,000 copies. And I quite literally handed different students on campus $20 to go distribute them under dorm doors and to 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 w- 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 when 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 a, through an app, um, marketing.

Steven Bartlett 28:42 But there's, like, so many important messages of, 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 if another startup had come and knocked on the sorority... Well, they wouldn't have even known which door to knock on for a start.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 28:56 That's true.

Steven Bartlett 28:56 You know what I mean? Like-

Whitney Wolfe Herd 28:57 Right.

Steven Bartlett 28:57 ... they 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 s- I've seen over and over again from speaking to really successful CEOs and founders how important naivety was, like not knowing the rules.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 29:18 So important, just following your gut.

Steven Bartlett 29:20 Yeah. 'Cause then you, that's like first pr- that's creating something from first principles as opposed to convention.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 29:25 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 29:25 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 ch- the ch- challenge of solving-

Whitney Wolfe Herd 29:33 Right.

Steven Bartlett 29:34 ... on that date ever.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 29:35 Right, right.

Steven Bartlett 29:36 Um, but naivety, you know, and 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, 'cause naivety is such a superpower.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 29:47 It's a superpower. And following your instinct.

Steven Bartlett 29:53 Hmm.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 29:54 And if you understand what moves people and what

Whitney Wolfe Herd 29:59 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, um, they had the big Xs, like, "No." You know, like, "You're not allowed to."

Steven Bartlett 30:15 Yeah, yeah.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 30:15 And they said, "No Facebook, no Instagram, no Snapchat, no Bumble."This was, like, (clears throat) 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 wanna do. I wanna sit in class and Snapchat. I wanna sit in class and Instagram. The hell is Bumble?" And so, we were essentially seeding this psychological-

Steven Bartlett 30:44 Curiosity. (laughs)

Whitney Wolfe Herd 30:44 ... curiosity. (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 30:46 Yeah.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 30:46 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 young man, whoever it was, wearing a Bumble T-shirt. So, we were seeding curiosity and this, like, why is Bumble everywhere type of thing.

Steven Bartlett 31:09 Hmm.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 31:10 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.

Steven Bartlett 31:40 (laughs)

Whitney Wolfe Herd 31:40 Do you remember the humor memes?

Steven Bartlett 31:42 Well, we- we ran, we had about 100 million followers on hu- meme accounts, so... (laughs)

Whitney Wolfe Herd 31:45 Yeah, so you know all about this.

Steven Bartlett 31:47 Yes. (laughs)

Whitney Wolfe Herd 31:47 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 wanna pay us to... I'm confused. How does that work?" And we're like, "Okay, here's the deal. (laughs) We'll give you 100 bucks," or whatever it was. We turn around a year later, th- that same account is charging $100,000 a post. So we, there's also something about luck and timing, being just right before something.

Steven Bartlett 32:15 Yeah. (laughs)

Whitney Wolfe Herd 32:15 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 drum 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 years later. So, I think we've- we've been lucky as a business to basically be right before the wave.

Steven Bartlett 32:52 Hmm.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 32:53 And then we've been able to be a part of that wave, versus chasing a wave. And so many people chase a wave. So many people chase a wave. They look around them, and they're like, "Well, what's cool? How do I chase that?" And I feel like we've always had the good fortune, or whatever you wanna call it, um...

Steven Bartlett 33:09 Conviction.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 33:10 Sure.

Steven Bartlett 33:10 Inspir- inspiration.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 33:12 To go first. And so that's been, um, maybe a superpower of ours over the years.

Steven Bartlett 33:17 Because you 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 has 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 (sighs) com- 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 became Ecom, and then it went public. But it started with meme accounts.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 33:57 That's amazing.

Steven Bartlett 33:57 And this is how I met, I think, your original investors. It's how I met Badr. It's how... 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. All the accounts say the same." Like, but for you to have been one of the brands that was leaning into that so early-

Whitney Wolfe Herd 34:12 You know what other brands had it? No, and to your point-

Steven Bartlett 34:14 They won.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 34:14 Yes, the meme accounts were there.

Steven Bartlett 34:15 Yeah.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 34:15 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-

Steven Bartlett 34:23 100.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 34:23 ... that I had seen had been, like, "Buy my bracelet," or, "Buy my-"

Steven Bartlett 34:28 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 34:28 "... fashion com-" You know, it was something very consumer-centric.

Steven Bartlett 34:32 Yeah, convention-

Whitney Wolfe Herd 34:32 Which made sense.

Steven Bartlett 34:33 Yeah.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 34:33 But it wasn't the, "Download my app."

Steven Bartlett 34:36 Yeah.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 34:36 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-

Steven Bartlett 34:48 Yeah.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 34:49 ... acquisition strategies.

Steven Bartlett 34:51 Y- you're right. It wasn't- it wasn't safe. And the reason why we managed to get so many followers was because, um, people didn't value those accounts. So, I remember buying BeFitMotivation, which had about 10 million, I'll say, followers, um, LoveFood, which had about seven million followers, and BeFitMotivation on Twitter, which had two million followers on Twitter. Um, just those, just that 20 million followers cost me about $10 grand.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 35:13 Oh, God. (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 35:14 And then the other-

Whitney Wolfe Herd 35:14 Can you imagine? It's like really good real estate. It's like buying a house-

Steven Bartlett 35:17 (laughs)

Whitney Wolfe Herd 35:18 ... in some crazy part of London 1,000 years ago. (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 35:22 Yes. And then all the other accounts were free, because-

Whitney Wolfe Herd 35:24 Unbelievable.

Steven Bartlett 35:24 ... I- I offered the people jobs at random.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 35:26 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 35:26 I said, "You'll have a proper job. You'll get paid loads. I know your mum doesn't think it's a job. I think it's a job." (laughs)

Whitney Wolfe Herd 35:30 I think... (laughs) I see- I see you. I validate you.

Steven Bartlett 35:33 People are like, "Oh, you're exploiting." Well, no- nobody valued it back then. And then- and then they eventually did value those social media accounts. And what you're also talking about, that whole, you know... It- 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 done thing. That's where we're gonna go."

Whitney Wolfe Herd 35:51 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 35:51 And I saw Bumble doing that. And- and I've seen all the things that Bumble have done over the years, and it 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. They're- they're communicating how you should feel about Bumble, what it means.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 36:14 That was always the goal.

Steven Bartlett 36:15 Yeah.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 36:16 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-"

Steven Bartlett 36:38 Mm-hmm.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 36:38 "... or want to date." And I remember a lot of people being like, "We're not gonna do this. This... There's no ROI here. What's the ROI? Th- 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 or, you know, it- 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-

Steven Bartlett 37:21 Mm-hmm.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 37:21 ... 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 wanted 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. Where are the engineers, and where are this, and why aren't you sitting with the engineers, and why are da, da, da, da, da?" 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?

Steven Bartlett 39:02 Mm-hmm.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 39:02 And, uh, it had never really been done before in this, like, traditional Silicon Valley world.

Steven Bartlett 39:08 My first startup experience is not like my second startup experience.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 39:11 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 39:12 You learn all the lessons. You learn... Well, you hopefully learn the lessons I think I've learnt, hopefully learnt some of them.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 39:16 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 39:16 Um, but your first startup experience at Tinder, this is when, you know, 'cause especially when it's moving at the speed of light-

Whitney Wolfe Herd 39:24 Light.

Steven Bartlett 39:25 ... you know? I mean, m- 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, has adopted that mindset of just go fucking 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, and really give me a

Steven Bartlett 39:56 picture of what it was like in those early rocket ship days.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 40:01 Well, you know, I think it was so new to everyone involved. No one... no one really understood what the next day held. Um, 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 n- not like where we are today. There's an app for this, an app for 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- I'm definitely not accusing the company of being this, but they become their own little cults.

Steven Bartlett 42:16 Cults, yeah.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 42:17 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 (laughs) became popular overnight. Like, this was traumatizing to me. And, you know, it's- it's funny, like, the land of everyone trying to be famous, I was probably maybe one of the only (laughs) 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 'cause 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 Merci, this compliments-oriented kinder social network, which then I meet up with Andre, and one thing leads to another, and now Bumble is, uh, my new path. And now we're starting Bumble. And this is all going on. It was a whirlwind. A whirlwind.

Steven Bartlett 44:22 What is- what is the- the context you're able to share about why they were writing those headlines about you, and why you were 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 indoctrinated-

Whitney Wolfe Herd 44:38 Doesn't it feel that way?

Steven Bartlett 44:40 ... come on, we're gonna take over the world. It's that kinda-

Whitney Wolfe Herd 44:42 It's cr- I mean, it's crazy.

Steven Bartlett 44:43 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 44:43 I mean, like-

Steven Bartlett 44:43 Yeah.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 44:43 ... the way people speak about what you're going to do. I mean, they're such big ideas, and they're-

Steven Bartlett 44:48 Yeah.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 44:48 ... such, like, passionate ideas. And then you go from real world, which is so mundane, right?

Steven Bartlett 44:53 (laughs)

Whitney Wolfe Herd 44:53 It's, like, quite boring out there in the real world, to this, like, super, like, high energy, you know, the- 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.

Steven Bartlett 45:08 Mm-hmm.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 45:08 One day you're booming, the next day you're cry... I mean, the adrenaline? You know what I'm talking about-

Steven Bartlett 45:12 Yeah.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 45:13 ... the ups and the downs, and the hard work that goes into it, and the skipping meals, and the no sleep, and-

Steven Bartlett 45:20 Everything feels potentially fatal as well at that point, doesn't it?

Whitney Wolfe Herd 45:22 Fatal.

Steven Bartlett 45:23 Yeah.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 45:23 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."

Steven Bartlett 45:33 (laughs)

Whitney Wolfe Herd 45:33 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.

Steven Bartlett 45:43 (laughs)

Whitney Wolfe Herd 45:43 So... (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 45:43 I'll just avoid them.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 45:44 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 45:44 That's- (laughs)

Whitney Wolfe Herd 45:45 S- 'kay, great.

Steven Bartlett 45:45 That's a waste of time. (laughs)

Whitney Wolfe Herd 45:46 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?

Steven Bartlett 46:14 100%. 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.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 46:26 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 46:26 And y- 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 your needs are being unmet.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 46:34 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 46:34 And the signal will come in many ways. I hear the signal sometimes come for people, they'll have panic attacks. They'll- they'll feel a grow- growing sense of loneliness. Their health will give out. I've had certain examples where the body has just shut down.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 46:44 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 46:45 And it's al-

Whitney Wolfe Herd 46:45 I've gone through that.

Steven Bartlett 46:46 Yeah. As you know, Intel are now one of the sponsors of this podcast, and I'm here to tell you about one of the latest Intel Evo designs. I've been recently using this laptop, and honestly, I've been blown away by how user-friendly it is to use. Intel has spent thousands of hours studying the way people use their laptops, and then collaborating with leading PC makers to co-engineer, optimize, and test these laptops to create the Intel Evo platform, which delivers the ultimate mobile experience. Laptop designers only receive the Intel Evo badge after they've been rigorously tested to pass Intel's own strict requirements, and deliver an ideal combination of features, such as long-lasting fast-charging battery, Wi-Fi connectivity standards, and a super slim design. The result is a premium laptop that delivers an ideal combination of features. In the coming weeks, I'm gonna break down exactly what features you get when you buy an Intel Evo certified laptop, and how they've made my life on the go 10 times easier. To find out more about the Intel Evo platform, go to intel.co at UK/Evo, and let me know how you get on. This episode is brought to you by Mercedes-Benz, who recently got in touch to support the Diary of a CEO. Thank you. I'm a huge fan of their cars. In fact, I have one of my own, which is like an office on wheels. And they have an exciting wide range of cars that I'd love to tell you about. The Mercedes EQ is the luxury electric range of Mercedes-Benz, and it is available across many models, from the SUVs to the saloons, meaning they're ideal for all business needs. The innovative next-generation technology found in all Mercedes EQ cars is really paving the way for the electric car industry. To make your electric car switch so much easier, Mercedes-Benz has a service called Mercedes me Charge. It's a subscription which provides you with access to a wide network of charging stations across the entirety of the UK. The app shows you the precise location and current availability and price at the selected charging station of your choice. And this enables businesses to effectively plan their route ahead of their journey. You can search Mercedes-Benz Fleet today to discover how the Mercedes EQ car range can help 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 they would- 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, um, 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- 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

Steven Bartlett 49:34 at certain times when you raised certain concerns, and as a result, um, you- you know, you- you were... Y- you ended up leaving the company. You were fired, I read. You were fired from the company, uh, which is even worse, when you raised certain concerns. You then filed a lawsuit, um, which went on, um, and there was certain actions taken, and there was this- 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 Tind- 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 a cult, 'cause 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.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 50:48 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, my ex-boyfriend. I mean, th- 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. Um, and I felt so unsupported, because this was before Me Too, this was 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 wanna talk to me anymore. They're like, "Oh, this- this feels- this feels icky. I don't... Mm, this isn't that cool." You know, like, all the... I was ostracized. I was just... I had a scarlet letter. And that was such a devastating feeling, because let's just remember, I was just a young professional. I was 24 years old, and I'd 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 of these names and to be bi- basically just written off by Twitter and the random media and the random everyone... And I have big respect for media, and, uh, 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... I actually don't think I left the house for, like, uh, uh, three weeks at one point. I'll never forget, actually, I don't even know if I've told this 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 wanna say August 3rd. December 1st, Bumble was live in the App Store. You know how much work goes into 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 in sweatpants 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 used 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... 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. 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 was 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 girls' dressing room, the girls' 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 th- I mean, I had known him, but I reconnected 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, "Mm, it's been pretty dark. It's been pretty heavy."

Steven Bartlett 57:14 Dark. Is there a... 'Cause I reflect on my darkest times, and I can typic- typically remember a worst day.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 57:22 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 57:23 A day when (smacks lips) , you know, I just couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel. What was your darkest day throughout that period?

Whitney Wolfe Herd 57:32 I've se- 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,

Whitney Wolfe Herd 58:02 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 wanna 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 wanna 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, 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, uh, adventure of sorts, of following all of 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 Bs, she's called it 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 stealth 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, a revenge novel, right?... which was not the case. It was about Merci then evolving into a positive dating space. (inhales deeply) So I said, "Okay, um, you're all jumping out of an airplane tomorrow." And they're like, "What do you mean I'm jumping (laughs) out of an airplane tomorrow?" And I said, "You have to explain that it's just not that scary to talk first on an app as a woman." Like if it, if women can jump out of an airplane, they can certainly send the first message.

Steven Bartlett 1:01:16 Mm-hmm.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:01:16 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.

Steven Bartlett 1:01:23 (laughs)

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:01:23 And (laughs) 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-

Steven Bartlett 1:01:35 Mm-hmm.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:01:36 ... took control of the narrative.

Steven Bartlett 1:01:37 That point about y- y- your right to kind of reinvent yourself and 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 li- 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 an important-

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:01:53 But it's part of it.

Steven Bartlett 1:01:54 ... contextual step.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:01:54 Yeah, of course.

Steven Bartlett 1:01:55 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- we could fill that context. I- when I asked the, um, the question about your- your hardest- your hardest moment and 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-

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:02:17 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:02:17 ... and that kinda thing. And it's ha- it's hard to, um... I think, f- 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, w- what- what is that like? Are those r- are those words real? That- that- that- that prospect of like-

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:02:36 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:02:36 ... maybe- maybe life would be better without me in it?

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:02:38 I most certainly felt that way at times, for sure. Uh, leaving... When I was going through that chapter, I most certainly had moments where I thought, "Well, this is it. I mean, w- 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 est- identify with, this... y- you know, this 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- 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 wanna say like, that was the same e- same piece of the same storm of feeling such a deep pain and 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.

Steven Bartlett 1:05:03 Mm-hmm.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:05:04 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.

Steven Bartlett 1:05:24 Very powerful. This leads to- 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- 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, 'cause I'd never seen that before. I'd never seen that done in the way that it's done on Bumble. But from a marketing- marketeers mindset, I really respected how bold, how clear, how much Bumble were, um, willing to position themselves as the antithesis, the- 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

Steven Bartlett 1:06:12 of knowing how things all, how the dots connected, why did you win?

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:06:18 I'm not sure. Did we win? (laughs) I still feel like we're so-

Steven Bartlett 1:06:21 You did. I mean-

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:06:21 ... sad.

Steven Bartlett 1:06:21 Listen, how many customers did you have over the years? Like-

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:06:23 We have a lot.

Steven Bartlett 1:06:24 A lot.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:06:25 We have a lot. (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 1:06:26 And it- and that's an interesting point that it doesn't feel like you've won.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:06:29 Oh, no. I- 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?"

Steven Bartlett 1:06:48 (laughs)

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:06:49 Like literally. (laughs) 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-

Steven Bartlett 1:07:02 How is it possible to be happy when you're, you're never there?

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:07:08 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-

Steven Bartlett 1:07:16 Hmm.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:07:16 It's not that anymore. It's that there are still billions of people around the world that have never heard about Bumble.

Steven Bartlett 1:07:23 Mm-hmm.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:07:23 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-

Steven Bartlett 1:07:36 Hmm.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:07:36 ... go first in their life.

Steven Bartlett 1:07:37 Mm-hmm.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:07:38 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.

Steven Bartlett 1:07:52 Hmm.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:07:54 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 gonna 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, and 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 have got to go to work. I gotta, like, get back to the office. And that's how I feel.

Steven Bartlett 1:08:58 Pursuing that goal comes somewhat at the expense of yourself in some, in some degree, right? Whether that's your... You know, 'cause life could be easier if you just decided not to pursue that goal. It could be easier.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:09:08 Yeah, I could probably be drinking piña coladas on a beach somewhere. (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 1:09:13 Piña coladas on a beach. (laughs) Yeah.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:09:13 You know?

Steven Bartlett 1:09:13 So, and I, I always, always think about this, you know, the, the pursuit of this... of, 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 themself, to a degree, sacrifice something to fulfill a goal that might even hurt yourself in your own life, in a, in a sense of, like, psychological harm or balance or, you know, definitely sleep.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:09:40 Yeah. No, this is, this is probably the biggest, uh, this is the, this is the balancing

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:09:46 act we all talk about, right? But you can't do it all every single day.

Steven Bartlett 1:09:53 Why not go to the beach, you know? Why not go and have a pi- piña colada and-

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:09:56 (laughs) You wanna go have a piña colada on the beach? (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 1:09:58 No. No, but I-

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:09:59 Let me ask you this, and read, okay? (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 1:10:03 (laughs)

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:10:03 There's gotta be, like, a, a group therapy for, like, "Why, why, why won't you go have a piña colada on the beach?" Um-

Steven Bartlett 1:10:11 (laughs)

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:10:13 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 piña 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 and tells you, like, "Oh, it's all about balance," and that, I mean, maybe they're right, maybe they've got some secret that I don't know about. But my God, I don't, 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.

Steven Bartlett 1:11:23 It looked like that question made you a bit emotional.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:11:25 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-olds. So, I also don't wanna 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 in me somewhere.

Steven Bartlett 1:12:30 If you're old, I'm old. So I, I thought we were, we were very young.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:12:32 How old are you?

Steven Bartlett 1:12:33 I just turned 30, so.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:12:35 Wait, you're three years younger than me. That's like-

Steven Bartlett 1:12:37 Yeah, I just turned 30.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:12:37 ... that's like five decades younger than me.

Steven Bartlett 1:12:39 No, it's not. We're in the same, we're in the same school.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:12:41 Well, happy birthday, whenever it was.

Steven Bartlett 1:12:43 Yeah, it was about a couple of weeks ago.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:12:45 Well, happy birthday.

Steven Bartlett 1:12:45 Do you want a tissue?

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:12:46 No, I'm okay.

Steven Bartlett 1:12:46 You sure? You're-

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:12:47 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:12:48 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 piña coladas seem like a lower priority than the mission.Going back to the, the question which I kind of took us off on 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 dating sites-

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:13:16 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:13:16 ... where there's really only, like, a handful of real players. W- why? Why? 'Cause I know... You know, I have to say something. I know that the other dating apps, 'cause I was sometimes in the room, tried to launch dating apps of themselves, so they, they took their existing network, they tried to launch a n- new dating app into it, and it didn't work.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:13:34 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:13:35 I've seen it happen over and over again. I know Michelle-

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:13:37 Yeah, she's great.

Steven Bartlett 1:13:38 ... from Peanut. Sh- she's one of the people I used to work with when we were doing the marketing at Perdue.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:13:42 Oh, really?

Steven Bartlett 1:13:42 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:13:43 Yeah. She's... I, I think what she's done is awesome.

Steven Bartlett 1:13:46 Yeah, I love Peanut. It's, it's great. But, but I, but

Steven Bartlett 1:13:49 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 at Social Chain how many times we had date- dating apps come to us and say, "Can you do our marketing?" Maybe 200 times? Uh-

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:14:01 There's 5,000 dating apps in the App Store.

Steven Bartlett 1:14:04 It's impossible. It's impossible.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:14:05 It's impossible.

Steven Bartlett 1:14:05 It's almost impossible to start a new one, because of the network effects and all of those things.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:14:09 It's impossible.

Steven Bartlett 1:14:10 Impossible. So why you? How you?

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:14:15 How?

Steven Bartlett 1:14:15 How?

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:14:18 Every other dating product until Bumble had been solving for the wrong side of the coin. They'd 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 Marcy, a kind space for women, a safe space for women, and to Andre's push, gotta give him, gotta 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 CMO." I was like, "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've 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, 'cause 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?" "W- w- what about Marcy? I want it to be Marcy. I want it 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 men 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 going to 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, "Think 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.

Steven Bartlett 1:17:35 Mm-hmm.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:17:35 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 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: women, making sure that we were solving for women's real problems on the internet-

Steven Bartlett 1:18:10 Mm-hmm.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:18:11 ... 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-

Steven Bartlett 1:18:37 Safe.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:18:37 ... and feminine and safe.

Steven Bartlett 1:18:39 Mm-hmm.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:18:41 And that's the beginning, and still the current through line of Bumble.

Steven Bartlett 1:18:47 What are 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, uh, from what I've heard, so, so hard to deal with that they put him in his own building, and only people could, could work in that building if they were really resilient. I heard all these stories.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:19:05 Oh, God. (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 1:19:06 Um, I spoke to Woz. Woz didn't tell me that, but Woz...... um, was the closest I've ever got to Steve, hi- 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 Glassdoor and all of these things, leadership, th- uh, leadership has changed. Uh...

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:19:27 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:19:28 ... 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

Steven Bartlett 1:19:35 vulnerable during the pandemic to, to guide their teams through.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:19:38 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:19:38 What, what if I asked your teams, if I said, you know, "What, what's Whitney like as a leader?" What would they say to me?

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:19:44 Um... (smacks lips) 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 (laughs) 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 wanna do one thing. You have a technical team that needs to do another. You have IPO, um, teams that have to do another. And so you end up being this conductor of a very, um...

Steven Bartlett 1:20:41 Hmm.

Whitney Wolfe Herd 1:20:42 ... loud orchestra. And I try to create harmony with people. But, um, I don't know. I, 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, 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 gonna 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.

Steven Bartlett 1:21:47 You talked about creating harmony amongst the orchestra, which I f- feel like is the perfect example of the role of a CEO. But a role of a, 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