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Podcast Summary: How I Built This with Guy Raz - Love’s Next Chapter with Whitney Wolfe Herd of Bumble
Episode Overview In this episode, Guy Raz interviews Whitney Wolfe Herd, CEO of Bumble, discussing her journey through the pandemic, the challenges of motherhood, and her views on innovation in technology for relationships. Whitney shares insights into Bumble's evolution, the impact of social media on loneliness, and her passion for using artificial intelligence (AI) in the realm of love and connections.
Key Themes
- Navigating Challenges During the Pandemic
- Existential Crisis: Whitney reflects on the early days of COVID-19, detailing the fear that Bumble's business model, reliant on in-person meetings, could collapse.
- Innovation in Crisis: Instead of succumbing to these fears, Bumble quickly pivoted to promote features that had previously seen little use, such as video calls and virtual dating experiences.
- The Evolution of Bumble
- Product Adaptation: Whitney explains how Bumble adapted its product and marketing strategies during the pandemic to encourage virtual connections, including celebrity-led virtual dates.
- Transition to In-Person Meetings: As lockdowns eased, Bumble developed campaigns to encourage safe, socially distanced meetups, showing how human desire for connection persisted despite challenges.
- The Role of Technology in Relationships
- AI as a Tool for Connection: Whitney discusses her vision for integrating AI into Bumble to enhance the dating experience, helping individuals increase their self-esteem and emotional intelligence.
- Addressing Loneliness: There’s a focus on using technology not just to facilitate dating but also to combat loneliness by encouraging genuine connections.
- Bumble's Core Values
- Safety and Kindness: Whitney emphasizes Bumble's mission to create a safe, inclusive platform where all users can find relationships without fear of harassment or abuse.
- Public Stance on Issues: Whitney discusses Bumble's policy on social issues, notably its support for women's rights, and how this aligns with the company's mission to foster healthy relationships.
- Future of Dating
- Trends and Predictions: The conversation turns to what the future of dating might look like, with Whitney suggesting a return to meeting in real life while still utilizing technology as a facilitator.
- AI's Potential: Whitney expresses her belief that AI could help users understand themselves better, potentially leading to healthier relationships.
- Challenges of Public Leadership
- Being a Public Company: Whitney reflects on her experiences as the youngest female founder to take a company public, discussing the balance between long-term thinking and short-term market pressures.
- Growth Through Experience: She shares personal reflections on her growth as a leader amid the challenges of motherhood and managing a public company.
Key Takeaways
- Resilience in Innovation: The ability to adapt quickly to crisis situations, as demonstrated by Bumble during the pandemic, can lead to unexpected growth and new opportunities.
- Human Connection is Essential: Despite technological advancements, the core of relationships remains human connection, and technology must enhance rather than replace this element.
- Inclusivity and Kindness are Fundamental: Bumble's commitment to safety, kindness, and inclusivity is integral to its brand identity and user experience.
Conclusion The episode with Whitney Wolfe Herd illustrates the challenges and triumphs of leading Bumble through unprecedented times. It emphasizes the importance of innovation, empathy, and ethical responsibility in technology while envisioning a future where AI can positively impact human relationships.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to How I Built This Early Early and Ad Free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcast. I love traveling with my family. We did an awesome trip this summer. And one of the things that made the trip so special were the Airbnb experiences we did. Immersive tours, cooking classes, a chance to get coffee with a world-class barista. I had so much fun on those experiences that I decided to host my own Airbnb original experience in San Francisco, designed to help you think about how to unlock your next big move in your career or even in your life.
0:41To learn more about my Airbnb original experience, head to Airbnb.com slash Guy. Listening on Audible helps your imagination soar. And no matter what you like, Audible's romance collection has something to make you swoon. Here's your invitation to have it all. Find a book boyfriend in the city and another on the hockey field. Or if nothing on this earth touches your heart, you can always find love in another realm. Hear modern rom-coms from authors like Lily Chu and Allie Hazelwood, the latest romantic-y series from Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yaros, and Regency favorites like Bridgerton and Outlander.
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2:42Get 20 % off your next order by entering promo code BUILT at checkout. Hello and welcome to How I Built This Lab. This is our weekly look at companies trying to build world-changing technology, and it's also a place where we bring back previous guests from our Monday episode for an update. We first told the story of the dating app Bumble back in 2017, and if you haven't heard it, go back and check it out. it's a pretty crazy story of how Whitney Wolf Heard started one of the most successful dating apps out there. And since that time, Bumble has become a publicly traded company with a market cap of more than two and a half billion dollars.
3:25Recently, Whitney has been focusing a lot on artificial intelligence and how it will change everything about dating and love, which you'll find out about in a moment. It's both amazing and maybe a bit scary. Anyway, I first asked Whitney to take us back to the spring of 2020 in the early days of the pandemic when Whitney needed to figure out how Bumble would survive. You can imagine the terror, the existential crisis that I went through when putting pen to paper, I realized, oh my God, our entire business model is based on people meeting in person. And I remember thinking, oh, my God, not only is the world ending, but Bumble's dead.
4:12This is the end. Wow. There was a moment in time, really, maybe, you know, however brief it was, that I really said, wow, this could be devastating. But what became phenomenal very quickly was that you cannot kill human desire for relationships and for community. And where we were so quick to innovate was taking these features that we had otherwise considered duds, if you will, right? Voice calling, FaceTime calling. Videos. Videos, like these features that nobody wanted to use. You had them available, but people weren't using them. They were like the lowest on the interest poll because, candidly, pre-COVID, what did they serve, right?
4:58This is before Zoom took off. People were not using them. They were not just saying, hey, let's just talk on video before we meet up. It just was very rare before COVID. Extremely rare. I mean, it wasn't even something we were really marketing, right? When we launched it, we were excited about it. So, of course, we put some marketing behind it, but just kind of was a womp, womp, womp. It didn't really land. So what was absolutely fascinating was pivoting not just the product strategy, but even the marketing strategy. So, you know, getting creative with influencers and celebrities and having them do their first date virtually.
5:30So we would have, you know, food dropped off to them and they would literally have a first date via Bumble on video. They'd light the candles at their respective homes. They'd sit and have their meal. They would have questions to ask each other. And so we just pivoted. We just reimagined what does life look like if you're not allowed to be in person. And through that process, we became a real technology business. Yeah, it's so interesting because I remember we talked to Sal Khan and they just saw like, you know, 600 % growth, you know, month over month, you know, from kids going to Khan Academy around the world.
6:10And obviously, Zoom was a company that just had a massive explosion in users. When did you start to see people use the video feature? Like pretty much right away when we were told, like, don't leave your house? Yeah, it clicked in pretty immediately. But I remember it was fascinating to watch the general public almost hack their way into using this product to build relationships virtually. Right. So these video features and these things that had been stagnant all of a sudden were being used at rates we had never seen before. Yeah. So at what point do you remember people going back to meeting in person, like connecting on Bumble and then saying, you know what?
6:56Tell this. Let's just go. Let's go have a drink. Yeah. You know, it was the park dates. Oh, yeah. Yeah. We started getting wind of these people saying, well, we can go for a walk six feet apart in the park. And I'll never forget. It'll stay with me for the rest of my life. I was in the gym, which was something you didn't do. It was like the very first time we went back to a gym. And there was a couple in the gym. And the gentleman was in his 70s and the woman, she was in her early 60s. And I could tell they were together and they were kind of keeping their distance. And they kept looking at me and looking at me and watching me in the gym.
7:33I was like, what is going on? Do I have something on my face? I had a Bumble shirt on. And they said, I'm so sorry. What's with the Bumble shirt? And I said, oh, you know, I explained my role in Bumble. And they just both almost started crying. And I said, what? What's going on? And he said, you know, I lost my wife less than a year ago. And I was in utter depression and isolation. And she had just gone through a very, very tough loss and I believe divorce. And he said, we both had on our Bumble profile that we were open to a social distance date. and we met in the park and we had a six foot distance picnic and it hit me like, oh my God, this is what we have to do.
8:16So the team went out and took out these ads that said your park were mine. And we did billboards and digital billboards and slowly, but surely people started to inch their way back into these social distance meetups. And then we had, you know, have you been tested? Have you been vaccinated? So we really started building the mechanisms of safe meetups into the product itself so that people could get back in the real world together. So you basically figured out how to create a marketing campaign that played on these kinds of things that people were doing. Absolutely. socially distant. I had many of those, not dating.
8:56I've been married for a long time, but meeting up with friends at parks. And I remember you'd walk like eight feet away from them and you would just be worried that you'd be breathing in their air. It was such a weird time. But I mean, at this point now, is this how the majority of relationships begin through through dating apps? Or is that your sense? So unfortunately, for those of us that love data, majority is somewhat of a subjective number here, depending on the data source that you look at in the survey. But there is no argument that dating apps have become the front runner in how people between a certain age group meet.
9:41And that number is only expected to grow because of a few things. Thing one, we are digital first generations at this point, right? Even the ones that are not native to digital, i.e. my parents, they are now digital first. They spend most of their lives operating through their phone. And so using our phones as tools to get us from point A to B or to have our food delivered or to order our groceries or to now look for the one, this is normal. and that's only becoming more normalized. And when you think about how hard it is to meet people in real life, even post pandemic, where we can go back to the bars and the restaurants, you know, you have to really hope and wish to be at the right place at the exact right time to meet that special someone.
10:33And so when you think about the power of technology, how it essentially lets you bypass fate and hack it, you can wield the power of meeting who you want to meet. You can filter people. You can layer your search criteria in ways that you just cannot do in the real world. This is really powerful. Yeah. Whitney, when we first had you on the show, I mean, man, you were just a baby pup founder. And now, you know, many years later, you're an experienced operator, you took your company public in 2021. I think you're the youngest female founder to do so. How has being the CEO of a public company changed you as a leader?
11:17Has it made you more cautious? Has it made you more, you know, because now, obviously, when you say things, it can move stock price, it can, you know, affect shareholder sentiment. Has it changed how you operate? You know, I think every single day, public company or not a public company, we're all learning and we're all growing and we're all being challenged on different levels. And if you look at the past, call it four years of my life, I've gone through the most dramatic personal changes and most dramatic professional changes in my entire existence, all in the same kind of chapter. I had my first child, took Blackstone on as a shareholder all within the same few weeks.
12:09Pandemic hit. I became the group level CEO with a whole new slew of responsibilities. And then we took our company public in February of 2021 when I had a 16-month-old. And I was still dealing with a lot of personal struggles, postpartum depression. I was having major health issues. I almost had a near fatal birth complication with my first child. So that was a whole undertone in and of itself. And I had to really rapidly go through a crash course of what it means to be a very serious, very responsible, very deliberate technology executive. In this case, a publicly traded CEO. I am at my core an entrepreneur.
12:59I am a founder. I am a creative, I think a million miles a minute, and I see multiple years into the future. And when you're a publicly traded company, you need to see 90 days ahead at the same time. So using your brain to look 10 years ahead and 90 days ahead all in the same breath while you're cleaning baby drool and trying to deal with a myriad of new responsibilities that come with being publicly traded. Yeah, it's a lot. But I have to say, I'm so incredibly grateful. And I feel really humbled by the entire experience. I feel like I've learned more in the last few years than I could have learned in 10 different business schools combined.
13:49And that to me is invaluable. And the way I look at life, and I think to answer the question, I've taken a very spiritual approach to life through this because, candidly, it's heavy stuff. And in order to survive, you have to zoom out. You have to turn yourself into just a tiny little speck on a map on a globe out floating in the universe to really kind of laugh it off on a heavy day. And what I've come to realize is we're all here to learn. That is our job, to be here on planet Earth. We're here to learn and we're here to grow and we are here to evolve and to be better the next day than we were the day before.
14:28And if you want that, go and become a publicly traded company in the midst of some crazy times because, man, you'll learn a lot. We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, more from Whitney on what she's learned about leadership. Stay with us. I'm Guy Roz and you're listening to How I Built This Lab.
14:52If you've been listening to the show these last couple of episodes, you've probably heard me mention the Airbnb original experience that I'm hosting. And I'm so excited to have a chance to connect with listeners in a completely new way. It's called the Reinvention Lab, and it's designed to help you think about how to unlock your next big move in your career or even in your life. I'll help you discover your own story in ways I do on this show with my guests. and attendees will get a chance to take a deeper dive with me on so many lessons I've learned from this show. Lessons that have transformed how I work and think about the future.
15:31All proceeds from the event will go to support the Ronald McDonald houses that helps families stay near their children who are being treated at nearby hospitals. It's going to be really fun and I can't wait to meet you. So come join me in San Francisco and take your idea to the next level. To grab your spot, visit airbnb.com slash guy. It's going to be great. This episode is brought to you by Klaviyo, the only CRM built for B2C and the key to making Black Friday and Cyber Monday your biggest wins yet. When the holidays hit, your competition only gets louder. That's why the most successful brands use Klaviyo to cut through the noise and build personalized relationships that drive more revenue.
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20:04Episodes they might not have heard or might want to hear again. So here's what I want you to do. Grab your smartphone and record a short memo, short, like less than 30 seconds, and tell us your name, where you live, and which episode is your favorite and why you loved it. So, for example, I might say, hey, it's Guy Raz here in San Francisco, and my favorite episode of the show is the one about Hamdi Ulukaya and Chobani, because I learned so much about how to just push through when nothing seems to be working out. And it gave me a whole new perspective on being resilient. So that's it. Something like that, you know.
20:39And by the way, that's not my favorite episode. I love them all equally. Anyway, once you're done with the recording, email or message it to us at hibt at id.wondery.com. And we'll share your favorites right here in the ad breaks in future episodes. Thanks so much. You guys are the best.
21:06Welcome back to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. My guest today is Whitney Wolf Hurd, who over the past few years has led Bumble through a pandemic that totally upended online dating. One of the things I'm curious about, Whitney, is how as a business you have handled trying to sort of be everything to everyone or maybe not. So, for example, I'm a Gen X or I think you're a millennial. When I was sort of teenager and younger, our society was just a lot less progressive around gender, sexuality. Young people are just much more open to different views on sexuality and gender. Many people have sort of different approaches to having romantic relationships.
21:51So how do you be everything to everybody or maybe you don't? I think we've kind of taken the approach that irrespective of gender, irrespective of sexual preference, safety, kindness, accountability, honesty, really leaning in with the foundational values of the business is what supercharges anyone being able to find anyone. So we've really tried to steer away from being a product that is known just for this or just for that. Now, that might sound contradictory to some degree because we've always kind of been known as the app where women make the first move. But the message there is not about prioritizing one gender over another.
22:45it's about creating an ecosystem that is safe and welcoming and prioritizes kindness and does not tolerate abuse, does not tolerate bad behavior. You know, we don't have settings that force you to look for only this one gender. We have spent a lot of time and energy over the last several years trying to become more inclusive across the gender and sexuality spectrum, but we are not the app just for fluid daters. We are not the app just for the gay community. We are not the app only for heterosexual relationships. We are the app that really stands for prioritizing safety and kindness. And, you know, there are too many studies out there to count that if you start degrading the equality of women, you degrade all minority communities.
23:32And so by focusing on women's equality is really to pave a path for more equality for all. So I'm curious from a business decision-making perspective, right? Like if you go to a bar and some bars are just bars, you just people go and get drinks. And then there are some bars where traditionally gay men hung out or gay women hung out or different communities of people hang out. And I wonder whether from a business perspective, it makes sense to be a bar for everyone or to be a place that just targets certain communities. You know, obviously there's like there's J-Date and there's Christian dating and there's, you know, Muslim dating and black singles and things like that.
24:17And I wonder, I mean, like if you're, let's say, a non-binary person, you know, I don't know how Bumble handles this, but is it better for Bumble to be a place where somebody like that could go and sign up and be a customer? Think about this more like Starbucks. Starbucks is within a mile of you, no matter where you are. Yeah. It is a safe, clean place to grab a trusted cup of coffee. Yeah. You'll be treated with a certain level of dignity and respect. And so I would reframe this as Bumble always set out, and I was very, very adamant about this along the way from inception to today, never be a bar for this or a bar for that.
25:03And in fact, don't be a bar. We're not a bar because we're more like Starbucks. You can come in here for a business connection. You can come in here for a friend meetup. You can come in here for book club. You can come in here on your worst day ever. And the only thing that can possibly make you feel a moment of peace is being here for two seconds. That's what Starbucks can feel like to someone, right? There's Starbucks in hospitals, there's Starbucks everywhere. And so this was always more about focus on a kind, safe, welcoming space. And anybody can come in. Anybody can come in. And that's the extensibility of this platform.
25:43And what my long-term vision is for this platform is this in the coming years should not be a platform that people say is a dating app that you compare to this or you compare to that app over there. My long-term goal for Bumble is to be the digital coffee shop where anyone is welcome and anyone can come for a trusted, reliable connection. Feel included, feel safe, feel seen, they'll get good customer service. And that's always been very, very important to me. A lot of leaders, and you included, I'm sure, have had to grapple with how much do you weigh in around political or things that are perceived to be political issues.
26:28Today, almost everything is perceived to be political. And it's hard, right? It's hard to sort of avoid it. So how do you reckon with what you say publicly, where you come out on issues, and at the same time balancing, not alienating any potential customers? Yeah, no, it's a great question. And it's a very simple answer for us. Our mission is to create a world where relationships are healthy and equitable through kind connections. If something, even if political, is in threat of that, is in violation of that, then we just simply cannot be silent. So when you look at empowering women's relationships, yet our country is saying that women don't even have a right to their own bodies, how could I possibly sit back and be silent on that?
27:28And so that's really the way we think about being vocal on certain topics that are otherwise seen as political. Obviously, you're referring to a choice on abortion. And so there are issues that you say you're comfortable taking stance on because you feel like, you know, even if it might alienate some people, it's still worth taking that stance that you find to be principled. 100%. 100%. And I would feel in violation of our mission of what we have promised to not only ourselves, but to consumers over the years that we stand with women and that we support healthy and equitable relationships. If something is in violation of that, you have to be vocal, irrespective of someone considering you taking a political stance or none.
28:21And same thing stands for our support of Planned Parenthood over the years. And, you know, I'm sure people even internally have maybe have different religious beliefs or whatever they have. But at the end of the day, like that's the mission and we serve the mission. And so I think as it pertains to political topics that are not directly correlated to the mission, you'll see us be sometimes uninvolved, right? We don't stand up and wave posters for every single issue that arises. We really are quite particular about how we use our public voice and our public platform to advocate for things that we feel really push our mission forward.
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29:06And so clearly there are issues that you will take a public position on because you feel that that is part of your core mission. But what about other issues that might matter to your employees, for example, like racial justice or wealth inequality? I'm just throwing some issues out there. I mean, when do you decide, you know, we're going to take a stance, we're going to make a public statement on this, and then on this one, we're just going to remain as neutral as possible? Yeah, no, it's a great question. And, you know, we can look back historically at the way we've celebrated the diversity of our employees and our customers.
29:44And we are quite vocal when it comes to racial justice. We are quite vocal when it comes to being an advocate for diversity. diversity. And I see a direct correlation to advocating for racial justice and equality because that is a huge factor in healthy relationships globally around the world. And so for me, that's a direct tie back. I can see that very clearly. Something that might be less of a direct tie back could be a cause I'm very passionate about and I advocate for in my personal life is maternal health, for example, right? So the inequity and disparity and how women are treated also based on race when it comes to, you know, maternal health globally, this is something I personally as Whitney am very passionate about, but you don't, and you won't see me going and taking a hugely public stance on behalf of Bumble with this, because it's a bit too far of a departure from healthy and equitable relationships.
30:50Now, you could argue otherwise because babies are a, you know, kind of a byproduct of relationships most of the time. It still feels too personal for me. And I can't see that complete direct parallel unless we were to have some new product initiative that was about babies and family, right? Like if we launched Bumble Families, I'm just making this up on the fly as far as the fake product scenario. But then you could drive that real clear correlation. So for me, it's always where is the very clear through line? Because we have to be able to explain not to just ourselves internally, but to our customers and our shareholders why we are taking stances on certain topics.
31:34You know, obviously, stock price is just one metric, but it's a very visible and public metric, right? And it's often how people evaluate a company who may not know all of the fundamentals. But, you know, your stock price is bad, but it's close to its 52-week low. What can you as a CEO practically do to change that, if anything? So you can delete it off your phone. It's the wrong metric to focus on. Instead, you're much better off reading the App Store reviews. You're much better off reading the feedback from your customer because the stock market is the wrong voting machine to be listening to.
32:18I think you get a little distracted by that in the first few quarters because you've got a lot of really intelligent investors expecting a lot of different things from you. And at the end of the day, they invested in you because you knew your customer and you knew your business and you had a compelling view on the world and a way to solve a really important problem. And the way to turn a stock price around is to deliver, right? That's the only way out is through. And so it's ultimately about putting your head down and putting your blinders on and listening to your customers, talking to your customers and building a really good experience.
32:58And then separate from that, it's really how do we continue to invest in our brand? Because I do believe that Bumble's brand is such a distinguishing factor for us. It's something that people feel emotionally attached to. And it's really now about innovation and execution and candidly delivering for our boss, which is our customer. We're going to take another quick break. But when we come back, why meeting your soulmate in the future may start to look a lot more like what it did in the past. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This Lab.
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36:10Welcome back to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. Here's more from my conversation with Bumble founder and CEO, Whitney Wolfe Hurd. All right. Let's talk about innovation now. You know, I met my wife at a barbecue, right, like 23 years ago. And then, you know, I remember there was like in the 80s when I was a little kid, I remember like there's matchmaking, right? And then internet dating really starts in the 90s. And then apps is how young people are connecting today. What's like the next version of this? How are people going to be connecting in 10 years from now? So the next version of this, this is going to catch you off guard, but it's meeting at the barbecue, but via Bumble.
36:54Okay. So I think the next horizon is going online to get offline. So in the near future, it will not be unimaginable to get on Bumble. and instead of swiping yes and no on a bunch of people, you might be swiping yes or no on things that sound compelling to you in the coming days. Maybe you're in the mood to go to a barbecue that has certain music playing at it on Friday night. And we know that there's 35 other people going and you can see that half of them have some level of compatibility to you, but we don't disclose who they are until you get there. And we let serendipity and fate kind of do a little bit of its own old-fashioned work once you arrive.
37:41So I think that is one piece of this. I think the other piece of this is, and I cannot emphasize this enough, it's where I'm spending 80 % of my free time right now. AI is how we are going to meet people. It's how we're going to meet people. Yes. Right now, when you get onto a dating platform, you are basically sifting through a thousand options to walk out with a few, right? And then of the few, you might have real compatibility and chemistry with a couple. And of the couple, maybe one will work out, right? So it's a lot of work. It's a lot of energy. It's a lot of time. It's a lot of letdown.
38:23Yeah. And the issue is that in kind of old era dating apps, which I would say anything before generative AI, it was very hard to capture signals and dynamic qualities in a person beyond just their surface level interest. Right. I like to go running. I like to eat this. I like to listen to live music. I like to do this. This is my religion. I want kids, whatever these different kind of filters are. But how can we really find out if someone is loyal? How can we find out if someone is kind? How can we find out if someone is funny? These are signals that technology really mutes, right? And so I think the future is leveraging these machine learning capabilities to actually bring photos to life, bring people to life on the screen.
39:20And my dream, Guy, is 10 years from now, we will be able to prevent breakups before they ever happen. We will be able to prevent bad relationships from ever having a potential of happening. And more importantly, my big dream is we will help people love themselves so that they can love others. And I think that is our biggest issue in this country right now when it comes to connection is self-hatred, low confidence. So if we can reverse engineer that, we're on to something really special. I absolutely love your optimism around this. I love your energy. I love your passion. But I want to throw some skepticism because I worry about a future where I don't know.
40:06I mean, I've got all these things go through my head. Minority Report, you know, just where we're served the perfect menu of five to seven people that have been chosen for us based on machine learning. when we know that humans change. You know, I'm a different person today than I was 23 years ago when I met my wife. We've grown and changed together. You know, I remember my grandmother telling me before she died about how when she was a child, most marriages around her in her village were arranged. And that oftentimes they did not love each other, but they grew to love each other over time. And those marriages work.
40:43I'm not saying I support arranged marriage. I'm just saying that it still feels to me like there's so many factors, so many just intangible things about being human and about love that I worry can't fully be captured by a machine. And I'm an optimist about AI. Do you know what I mean? Do you understand some of that concern? I do. I do understand that concern. And I think what we're focused on is making sure that we don't build products that hurt us. that as we implement AI further into our business, which I expect our business to be a real AI business, I'm very anchored on it and I believe in it, I want to make sure it's done ethically.
41:28I want to make sure it's done with real human connection at the helm. And I think, you know, my concerns with AI are that there are a lot of people out there that are building products to get people to actually replace humans with AI. And I think as it pertains to love, my big focus is to never, ever, ever replace a real human dynamic emotion, want, or need with a computer, with a system, with a model, with a bot, right? And so what I would like to do is help humans connect better. So what's really fascinating, Guy, is a huge chunk of survey respondents of people that are single and want to be in a relationship but don't use a dating app yet.
42:19They don't do it because they think they'll be bad at it. They think that they don't know how to date. They think that they're not capable of it. That, to me, is remarkable opportunity to create goodness in the world by using AI to inspire confidence. So we have been hard at work exploring ways to have coaches or matchmakers or friends in your pocket, whatever you want to call it. Basically be that wing woman, wing man, wing person in your pocket to really show you that You've got this. And to have your back, give you positive affirmations, and to kind of guide you along the dating journey. So if they are scared to chat, right?
43:05Like they're scared to start a dating chat, for example. They would then chat with their coach first. And their coach, which is AI, would coach them through it, give them feedback. I see. Would help them feel ready and prepared for the game. So how can we actually help people show up as better versions of themselves? And I think it's interesting. We've seen the very first iteration of self-help tech, call it the head spaces of the world and the calm. I would say those are very 1.0 versions. They're not dynamic in the moment when it comes to connecting with others, right? These are things you do kind of on your own, meditations, breathings.
43:39How can you do these things in real time as you're on the quest for friendship or love? So essentially, it sounds like what you're saying is if AI is used in the right way in this context for love, there is somebody for everybody in theory. There is somebody for everybody in theory. You know, obviously, I can't make that promise. But what I believe is you rarely attract a relationship healthier than your self-esteem. instead of us just saying, here's a person and here's a person and here's a person. Why don't we actually focus on self-love first? How can we help you build your self-esteem? AI can be a great catalyst to this through different mechanisms and tools.
44:24I mean, you've seen people learn languages through Duolingo. Why can't you learn the language of self-esteem and love, right? And so I think we can be a really powerful tool in helping people feel better about themselves at the get-go and then, guys, something amazing happens here. If you have a user base and a supply of people feeling better about themselves with higher levels of self-esteem, what do you get less of? Abuse, harassment, toxicity, ghosting, all the icky stuff that comes with dating will subsequently decline. I'm wondering what you think about, I mean, there are infinite ways to connect to meet today, more so than ever.
45:10I mean, you can do it from your bedroom, right? And yet, there is an epidemic of loneliness in the United States and even in other countries. Given the fact that there are so many more ways you can connect today than ever, what, why do you think that is? What explains that? So the pandemic did not help. It completely exacerbated the issue. But here's the thing. You started this by saying you can meet people from anywhere now. We're all online. We're all super connected. The reality is we're all very connected and disconnected at the same time. When you are on social media, you are technically, by definition, connected, but you are emotionally disconnected.
45:53So friendship has moved online and it has actually killed friendship. Chatting with your buddies on TikTok and Instagram does not count as relationship. That is not a soulful, real relationship. And candidly, it creates more of a voyeuristic fear of missing out dynamic than it does a real safe connected environment. So what you've seen us do with Bumble for Friends, our new standalone friendship app, is we've said let's use tech to connect, not tech to disconnect. And there's a real, real gap here. And there are not enough products in the world that are actually technically engineered to get you online to then go offline.
46:40In fact, the monetization models on the majority of social media is dependent on you being on your phone as much as possible because they're ad businesses. We are not an advertising business. Sure, we have some advertisement, but we are a subscription model because we don't care if you sit and use our product for two hours or two minutes. In fact, everything we are working on from a product prioritization standpoint right now is to shorten the duration that you're using our product on any given time because we want you to go online, get offline. Yeah. You know, I'm curious about the AI model, though.
47:19If you are, I mean, to some extent, your business depends on customers coming back again and again and again. People going on hundreds of dates, right, because they're paying subscribers. But if this AI model works like better than you expect and all of a sudden like you're matching people perfectly and like they're going on the first date and boom, they're engaged, they're done as Bumble customers. I mean, what are the implications of that? You know, you make the algorithm better and then you actually have fewer repeat visitors. Every single Saturday, and I mean it, it's like clockwork. I get at least one text message from someone in my network that they're at a Bumble wedding.
48:00and that Bumble was just mentioned either in the vows, in a groomsman speech, in a bridesmaid speech, or it was on the menu, or it was in the photo booth, and it had been integrated some way somehow. Why do I mention this? A success story is worth more than 200 failed dates. Let's just say we have 50 forever relationships. Those 50 forever relationships have now left Bumble app, the dating app, but they have throughout their dinners and lunches and gym and professional lives, they have told countless people. They have pollinated the product. They have been brand ambassadors for us in such a way that those 50 success stories become a flywheel of growth.
48:49So 50 success stories is worth more than thousands of failed dates because those failed dates turn into the reverse flywheel of negative feedback. And so we're actually absolutely aligned with the customer finding success because their success is our success. And we're in this to help them find healthy and equitable relationships. You know, I was thinking about what you're saying about using AI, like to coach people. And I think that's very real. It's going to be happening more and more. And I wonder, I mean, the logical, potentially logical extension of that is, Could it solve loneliness? And I'm not saying this is a good thing, but, you know, there's that movie Her many years ago, a few years ago.
49:30It was a beautiful film and Scarlett Johansson was a voice inside of Joaquin Phoenix's ear. And that was he was in love with her. He was in love with an AI voice. And it was very plausible. It seemed very real. It's not implausible to imagine that with where AI is going. I mean, obviously humans, you know, we believe we need human connection. But is there a world where, you know, Bumble has a product that is basically a virtual romance? No, not under my leadership, at least. Listen, that's not what we are here to do. We are definitely not in the business of trying to wipe out humanity and trying to get people to fall in love with, you know, fake iterations of humans.
50:17I don't want to use AI that way. I think. I mean, it will be used that way. You know that. Yeah, but you know what? It will be. Like, if that's really what happens, then we've got bigger problems than the future of Bumble. Unfortunately, it's what happens to the future of humanity, right? If we kill love human to human and we replace it with human to AI, we only have another generation left, right? It'll all be over if that's really the case. So for me, it's how do we actually use AI to make relationships human to human, I mean, better, stronger, healthier, more respectful, more equal, more empowering, more inspiring.
51:01how do we actually help end loneliness through getting people to really form and forge real friendships with one another instead of stay locked away on their phones in their bedrooms or on wherever they are for the rest of their lives. How do we get people to look each other in the eyes and not just through a screen? And so that's really what we're focused on. And the Her movies, you know, five years ago seemed really sci-fi. But you're right. I'm sure some people will be doing that. But my job will be to convince them to meet a real person. So Whitney, you've been at this for a long time now, but you're still just young.
51:46I mean, you have a lot of life ahead of you. What do you see yourself doing in 10 years from now? Do you see yourself running Bumble? I mean, who knows? It's a public company. Your board can always throw you out if they want to. But I mean, what's your sort of vision of where you'll be? So I think I will always be focused on the core mission of Bumble. I think it is my life calling. It is my purpose, which is to help the world have healthier relationships. Some people dedicate their lives to the research of rare diseases when it's claimed to the life of a loved one, some people dedicate their lives to solving problems that have directly impacted them, right?
52:31That is, I believe that problems and pain and devastation happens to inspire a body of people to go and fix those problems for others. And so it's my sincere belief that I will be working towards healthier love, healthier relationships, and helping people love themselves. That's the why. I think the how will manifest, but I am absolutely focused on Bumble for as long as I can see out. There's no road in front of me that is excluding Bumble from my life. I do believe that my time will be better used in thinking three, five, 10 years ahead versus just two quarters ahead. But that'll manifest as it's meant to.
53:21And I will say that I am absolutely fascinated, committed to, and on the track of integrating AI into love and connection and friendship and relationships. That is my obsession at the moment. And it is going to be until I really land the plane on it. And I really want us to be part of positive AI. I really want to make sure that we course correct from the mistakes that were made with the explosion of the quote-unquote old internet by leaving women out of the equation, by not thinking of the ethical options. And so I really hope that we can be a part of the more ethical path forward. Whitney, thanks so much.
54:06Thank you so much. That's Whitney Wolf Hurd, founder and CEO of Bumble. thanks so much for listening to the show this week please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show and as always it's totally free this episode was produced by Sam Paulson with music composed by Ramtin Arablui it was edited by John Isabella with research help from Sam Paulson our audio engineer was Neil Rauch our production team at How I Built This also includes Alex Chung Carla Estevez, Casey Herman Chris Massini, J.C. Howard, Kerry Thompson, Malia Agudelo, Neva Grant, and Rommel Wood.
54:47I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This Lab.
54:58If you like How I Built This, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music, Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.
From the publisher
The past few years have challenged Whitney Wolfe Herd like never before. The Bumble CEO kept the company afloat as the pandemic halted in-person meetups, then became the youngest female founder ever to take a company public...all while in the throes of first-time motherhood!
This week on How I Built This Lab, Whitney offers perspective on leading and learning in extraordinary times. Plus, how social media may be fueling a loneliness epidemic and Whitney’s current obsession: harnessing the power of artificial intelligence in the name of love.
And check out Bumble’s origin story told in October 2017.
This episode was produced by Sam Paulson with music by Ramtin Arablouei.
It was edited by John Isabella with research by Sam Paulson. Our audio engineer was Neal Rauch.
You can follow HIBT on X & Instagram, and email us at hibt@id.wondery.com.
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