CREATING BUZZ
Ahead of her visit to Australia, Bumble’s founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd reflects on the greater mission of her work and becoming more comfortable with herself. By Zara Wong.
Bumble’s founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd reflects on the greater mission of her work and becoming more comfortable with herself.
On a recent trip to China, Whitney Wolfe Herd found herself inadvertently off social media. “I had a full panic for the first 48 hours and I was almost going through a withdrawal, which is terrifying in itself,” she says, appalled, but laughing. “But after 48 hours, I didn’t want it anymore. I was so present, it was like my senses were re-activated.” She went into the sauna, swam for 30 minutes – “normally I wouldn’t do that, because you can’t have your phone with you” – and called her grandmother. “These are the simple things that we have completely replaced with scrolling and looking through social media.” Months later, Wolfe Herd would present a new feature on Bumble: Snooze. Much in the same way Wolfe Herd dialled down on social media, Snooze allows users to go offline very politely. “It leaves you with no stress or guilt, and it also sends a very peaceful message that you’re not being ignored!” said the Bumble founder and CEO over the phone. “This feature will really be the first feature of any app of our kind. So many platforms are so focused on being hyper-connected, and this will allow you to disconnect.”
But wait – an app that encourages its users to use it less? Although it is seemingly at odds with what most device and app designers want to do, which is to encourage us to use their creations more and more, to the point of addiction, Wolfe Herd is focussed on how this new feature aligns with the bigger goals of her company, as she has been with many of the choices she has made in her career. “A lot of big companies have stayed away from this, because they don’t want to cannibalise their business. It’s a very courageous move as a company, but we truly believe that it’s needed and necessary,” she says firmly. “If we don’t give these features to our users, then we are going to be part of the problem and not the solution.”
A common adage about entrepreneurialism has it that to make a business you need to find a solution to a problem. For Wolfe Herd, it came about through her experience at another dating company which resulted in her filing a sexual harassment lawsuit against a colleague. The suit was settled out of court – she is not allowed to discuss its terms. The criticism and backlash affected Wolfe Herd so much that she wanted her next project, a female-only social network called Merci, to embrace and promote empowerment and care. She was certain that she did not want to be working in the digital dating space, and only came around when encouraged by Andrey Andreev, founder and CEO of Russian dating company Badoo, who suggested that she can instil her mandates – that women have a safe space, and can make a first move – in a dating app. Andreev ultimately helped fund Bumble and provided technical help with the app.
Today, Bumble is the fastest growing dating app and Australia is one of its fastest growing markets, with its noted feature allowing only women to make the first move. Bumble will also be hosting a marquee during the Melbourne Cup Carnival and has naming rights to the first race on Lexus Melbourne Cup Day – the Bumble Stakes. Wolfe Herd and her husband are making the trip out to Australia for the first time for the event. “So many people doubted us in the beginning,
saying: ‘It’s a cute idea, but it’ll never be successful: that’s not how the world works,’” she remembers. “The thing I’m most proud of is that so many people doubted us in the beginning, and we’ve shown that we can build that future of business, and re-calibrate the way that people think about what it’s expected and to show up to the table with these real numbers.”
Bumble launched in 2014, before #MeToo and Time’s Up, making the app’s presence and its manoeuvres in the technology sphere all the more fascinating to watch. Bumble has banned images of guns on the app and has launched Bumble Fund, which will invest in female-owned start-ups, allowing Wolfe Herd to be involved with other entrepreneurs without being distracted from the core focus of her company. “We always look at where we’re needed the most and where we can add value based on our core fundamentals of empowerment, equality, kindness, growth and accountability – and how we can evolve and innovate around those values,” says Wolfe Herd. Although with its roots in dating, Bumble now encompasses business networking (with Bumble Bizz) and finding friends (Bumble BFF), with clear colour-coded options to ensure that a Bizz user doesn’t stumble on Bumble Honey (the dating component of the app).
Having launched Bumble when she was 25 years old, Wolfe Herd is thoughtful about turning 30 next year. “As I’m inching into my 30s I have really started to measure the quality of my relationships. Wanting everyone to like and approve of me is something I’ve wanted all my life, but if you take the approach of trying to make everyone happy, you’re going to end up making no-one happy, so it’s something I’ve really had to let go.” A firmer sense of self has also solidified her personal style – simple and elegant, especially when it comes to workrelated events, but mostly in yellow hues, to echo Bumble’s imagery.
While she has been named as one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people of the year, and is on Forbes’s 30 Under 30 and Fortune’s 40 Under 40 lists, there is still an every-girl approachability about Wolfe Herd as she articulates her own personal fears, working challenges and more. Her way of managing this at the moment is cutting down her use of social media, inspired by her trip to China, and she urges me to do the same. “It’s the best thing I’ve done in a while for my mental health. With Instagram, I would go down into a hole at 2am, deep into conspiracy theories and feeling left out of situations, and it’s so toxic. I felt myself living for Instagram, versus living for the moment,” she says. “When you’re busy and overwhelmed, you look for an escape, and social networks are great escapes. When you’ve got a tough meeting, it feels pretty good to open up Instagram and look through someone else’s vacation pictures, doesn’t it? Wishing you were somewhere else? And that’s not always healthy. The last few weeks I’ve re-taught myself to live for the moment and not for the post to share with the masses. It’s almost like we have to re-learn how to be human.”
Wolfe Herd herself has joined the board of Imagine Entertainment, which is helmed by Ron Howard and Brian Grazer, as its first female board member. “Brian and Ron are incredibly inspiring, visionary storytellers and I’m so honoured to be a part of their next chapter and to be bringing in a female perspective,” she says. But Wolfe Herd is transparent about the difficulties of running a business, from giving up on spending time with family for work trips, or the growing pains of a company. “I’m passionate and driven and I care deeply about what we’re doing and I have a personal attachment to why this company exists. So every single morning that I wake up and feel tired, or if I’m uninspired, I remember that this is so much bigger than myself and it’s really about rewriting the rules for the next generation.”
“I’ve re-taught myself to live for the moment and not for the post to share. It’s like we have to re-learn how to be human”