What’s the Snark on Whitney Wolfe Herd?

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26:47She said it was going to be called Merci. C. She says, I was broken. And she was trying to give some purpose to the trauma she experienced. So she was like, how about a women only social network? No compliments on physical appearances, just compliments on who they are as a person. But she eventually got an unsolicited email from Andre Andreve, a Russian billionaire founder of Badoo, which is one of the biggest social dating, dating slash social platforms in Europe. And I had never heard of it, but it's huge in Europe and has been for a while. And he pointed out that he was like, I, I'm familiar with what went on with Tinder.

27:28And just so you know, there's not a non-compete in all of the Tinder documents that you would design. Rookie move by Tinder. Am I right? Yeah. Yeah. So he was like, I want to take all of the knowledge that you have from working at Tinder, there's not an on compete and turn that into something really new and exciting. He wanted to bring her on as CMO. So he did. At first she was like, eh, to his job offer, but then she pitched him on her idea. And he was like, okay, I like your idea, but how about we do dating? Because that's what you do really well. And this time you'll be in control and so will women.

28:10So that's kind of where the idea of Bumble came from. Did you ever like use Bumble, by the way? Oh my God. Of course. I feel like Hinge is certainly the app of choice in 2020 world. But I would say between 2015 to 2019, that's how I met a lot of people when I was dating in San Francisco. Everyone was using Bumble. Now it's, I think a lot of people just use Hinge. But what I will say about Bumble is I remember it being obviously the biggest differentiator between Bumble and Tinder, which we're about to get to in a moment, is Bumble is where the woman makes the move first. The men cannot initiate the message to the woman.

28:52It has to be the woman to the men. And also the match will disappear within 24 hours. So it makes you constantly have to check the app to see if you have any new matches. Otherwise, it'll disappear. I remember that being pretty controversial as the years went on. As women were getting tired of having to make the first move. They thought it, it kind of derailed like hetero normative gender roles, whereby women want to be courted. They want to feel like they're being chased. And I feel like I may be jumping a bit ahead, but I feel like that's kind of where I felt the demise of Bumble was that women were just getting tired of having to do everything.

29:30We raised families, we're cooking and cleaning, we're responsible for the kids schedule. And you want us to make the first move? Like, no, no, no, no, no, no. But I think at the time it was very much the preferred app between the period that I said, 2015, 2015. Yeah. I remember it being really popular in the early, I guess, mid 2010s, like early aughts when I first moved to the city, along with Tinder was still popular. Hinge was popular. I never really got into Bumble and I hate how backwards it sounds. I didn't like being the first move. I was like, it felt like a lot of work. And I was like, I, I want the guys to message me.

30:07I never really got into it. I met my husband on hinge and I met plenty of ex-boyfriends on Tinder. I never had any sort of relationship or anything come out of Bumble. And that's not to say that I know plenty of people that have gotten married meeting on Bumble. I just didn't like that aspect of it. And also the matches going away after 24 hours felt really stressful to me. And I just didn't like it, but a lot of people did. And she made sure that she was in control. She basically told Andre, She was like, I actually want to be CEO. And he was like, OK, he acquiesced to that. And she was allowed to be CEO, founder and a 20 percent owner, fully financed by Badoo and Badoo's infrastructure.

30:46She said one night over cocktails, she kind of thought about Bumble's special sauce. I always wanted to have a scenario where the guy didn't have my number, but I had his. What if women make the first move and send the first message? And if they don't, the match disappears after 24 hours, like in Cinderella, the pumpkin and the carriage. It'd be symbolic of a Sadie Hawkins dance going after it. Girls ask first. So love the idea. And I think that at the time, this was something that was missing. Like you said, like it was kind of like before the girl boss era, like women wanted to feel empowered.

31:21And this was a way that a lot of women felt empowered through dating. And so at just 25 years old, she was the founder and CEO of the new app Bumble. and it was called Bumble because there's a hive and it all revolves around the queen bee. So you're the queen bee in this scenario. She moves to Austin in 2014 to kind of set up the headquarters there. It works like, you know, any traditional dating app, two users of the opposite sex match by swiping right. But the woman, like we said, has to send her potential date a message first. Now that has changed, but this was how the app started. And it was the first of its kind.

31:58their headquarters in Austin reflected that girl boss aesthetic that was really starting to take off at this time I think Sophia Amoruso's girl boss book came out around this time that had like the neon signs and the mantras and the posters and you know it had like posters that said you're a queen bee be the CEO your parents always wanted you to marry make the first move etc etc that's such a like a millennial core aesthetic that Gen Z gives us so much shit for I feel like yeah yeah Yeah, the millennial aesthetic. Yeah, exactly. And the mantras, yeah. Yep. She ended up poaching a few people from Tinder, actually.

32:36And she ended up going live in December 2014 and got over 100 ,000 downloads in the first month. Within a year, she reached over 80 million matches and 15 million conversations. In 2016, she created Bumble BFF after some women put on their profiles that they were also looking for friends. In 2017, she started Bumble Biz, which was their version of LinkedIn. Bumble had 18 million users by 2017. Also that year, Match Group tried to acquire Bumble for$415 million, even though they were worth way more than that, according to any valuation. They were worth about a billion at this time. Yeah, reported to be valued around$1 billion.

33:21Also in 2017, she got in trouble. her first mini scandal because neighbors at the luxury apartment building that Bumble set up its headquarters at said that all of the employees were using the building as their personal playground. Wow. Wait, this is tea. I'd never lived in a high-rise apartment in my life, but I remember always thinking that would be so fabulous. Having pools, having gyms, beautiful, like common areas, amenities, pool tables, places where you can watch games with like everyone in the building. That's funny that they were basically using it as if they lived as if they were residents.

33:58Yes. So they had originally had a two bedroom apartment on the 31st floor that had repurposed into its startup office. But they started taking over all the amenities because the company had just ballooned. It had like swelled in size with all these employees. They were taking over the pool, the rooftop, all of the amenities like the gym, the common spaces, the parking lot, like everything. So it became this whole thing. Also in 2017, she married her husband, Michael Hurd, oil and gas air, and they met on a skiing trip in Aspen. And it's actually funny. Their wedding was featured in Vogue and their meet cute is like so obnoxious.

34:41They were like, I feel like they were both very she she he obviously was an oil and gas air but they're just kind of trying to like show off to each other their ski skills it's just so funny in Aspen nonetheless like one of the most coveted cities in yeah and it's also so funny in the movie her husband is depicted it's depicted differently how she meets her husband but it's also depicted like she made the first move but her husband in the movie is depicted as this really hot cowboy is he oh oh i'm looking at him michael hurd yeah i mean he's fine he's fine he's like literally a supermodel in the movie which i think is funny i wonder who like who would play me in head marina who would you want to play you i don't know people tell me on tiktok i look like oh my god what's her name from she's in killing eve what is her name jody comer i don't know what it is i don't see it but that is who i get sometimes and then henry who would like he's gotten paul rudd before so maybe jody comer i could see that but yeah so she married her husband that year and they had an extravagant like i said it was in vogue as an extravagant destination wedding in italy They have two sons born in 2019 and 2022.

35:59In 2018, the app had over 40 million users. And the revenue run rate climbed to$200 million per year. Yeah. So she is also on the cover of Fast Company and Wired that year. She's named Forbes 30 Under 30, Bloomberg's 50 Most Influential, etc., etc. That is also the year that match Tinder's parent company. sues Bumble over patents. Oh, they sued Bumble for patent infringement and misuse of intellectual property. They allege that Bumble copied Tinder's world-changing card swipe based mutual opt-in premise. The lawsuit also accuses Tinder turned Bumble employees. So the ones that Whitney poached from Tinder copying elements of the design.

36:49They said Bumble has released at least two features that its co-founders learned of and developed confidentially while at Tinder in violation of confidentiality agreements. There wasn't a non-compete, so. And honestly, I'm thinking about this, just having worked in tech, like basically my whole career, this happens all the time. Engineers get poached, they replicate certain like IP, like this is very, very common. I'm not saying it's necessarily right, but it's common in the tech space. And this is just funny. It seems more like a vendetta against Whitney than anything. Yep. So that's exactly right.

37:24People speculated that the lawsuit was Match Group's way of trying to force Bumble's hand for a deal to buy them. And it's not the first time this would happen. J-Date apparently did this with J-Swipe back in the day. Bumble actually responded later that year by suing Match Group for$400 million. And they accused Match Group of fraudulently obtaining trade secrets during acquisition talks. They alleged that Match used the pretense of a acquisition to gain access to confidential business information, which it then leveraged against them. They said the Match's lawsuit was a strategic maneuver to disparage the Bumble platform, poison it in the investment market, and discourage other potential investors or acquirers.

38:06And it said if they won this lawsuit, they would donate the proceeds to causes and investments supporting women. Yeah. And I feel like at this point in 2018, when Bumble basically countersuits match group yeah it this was at a time from my recollection tinder had a very bad reputation it felt more like a hookup app to your point it was founded by fratty dude and it seemed like kind of like a fratty app you weren't there to find a relationship you were there to have a one-night stand and i feel like they were kind of sticking it to the man like all right you're gonna sue us well you guys are disgusting and we're gonna like push us right back to you i I don't know that the culture between the two apps was fundamentally very different at this time.

38:49Yes, absolutely. They were polar opposites. And that's what kind of made Whitney this like folk hero. It's like you have this like fratty, like hookup culture that is Tinder. And then you have the feminist women make the first move Bumble. Yes. Eventually, they both ended up dropping their lawsuits later that year. But they remained engaged in ongoing intellectual property litigation. I'm not a lawyer. There was still stuff happening, but the major, major lawsuits were dropped. They ended up figuring it out, I guess. That's one way to put it. They figured it out. But still, you know, we're having disputes about other trade secrets and stuff like that.

39:30And it was widely viewed as a PR battle ahead of Bumble's eventual initial public offering, their IPO. And basically Match was trying to bully Bumble, was the impression, and interfere with their growth so they could buy Bumble for cheap. And during this period, Bumble took out a full page ad that said, we swipe left on you in response to Match's hostility. I remember this. Do you remember this happening? Gosh, I do not. But this is a very inviting letter to Match Group and Bumble. It's really long. And this was obviously public. Like we said, it was a full page ad. It said, dear Match Group, we swipe left on you.

40:08We swipe left on your multiple attempts to buy us, copy us, and now to intimidate us. We'll never be yours, no matter the price tag. We'll never compromise our values. We swipe left on your attempted scare tactics and on these endless games, et cetera, et cetera. Which, smart movie. It's so funny, actually. Sorry to interrupt. Now that you're talking about this, I actually worked with a CFO who was part of Match Group. Really nice guy. I'm like, he wasn't Friday at all. Yeah, but he, but I guess that was like much later, but I'm just like putting that together. But I guess the, I mean, maybe the culture.

40:40culture changed but yes so yeah I mean I worked in places that felt like a frat party before yeah oh 100 % like there are certain places I've worked I'm like yeah there was not everyone is not everyone is complicit yeah so in 2019 there is an expose in Forbes about Badoo and remember that is Bumble's parent company. Badu is ran by Andrei Andreev, the Russian. And they reported a sexist, sordid culture. They interviewed 13 former employees and they reported drug-fueled parties, software updates named after porn stars, inappropriate looks towards women made by Andrei. And a lot of the stories from the Forbes article took place before Bumble's creation.

41:30A lot of the time, Brim was in the early 2010s, but, you know, it still wasn't a good look for Whitney and Bumble. And she took a stand. According to the movie, it took some prodding for her to eventually speak out, but she did. She said, I'm saddened and sickened to hear that anyone of any gender would ever be made to feel marginalized or mistreated in any capacity at their workplace. As a woman who has been through dark times, please know that I am deeply sorry for anything that could have taken place that made anyone feel uncomfortable before my time building Bumble. Badu denied these accusations.

42:09They called the report reckless and said that the former employees were just bitter. But the allegations were really bad. There were reports of, like, blowjobs happening in the office. What? People naked doing lines of coke. Oh, my God. Sex workers at company parties, fat shaming, misogyny, like you fucking name it. So soon after this investigation. That shit always starts at the top too. It's always like CDC CEO that's creating in this culture that these things are appropriate to do in the workplace, like having sex in the sale world, doing lines of cocaine at your desk. Like this is a tone at the top thing.

42:53This is actually shocking because Whitney was, doing she was pushing so hard to like fight against that yeah pertain to tinder and the criticism that she gets and some of this is portrayed a little bit in the movie is that she wants to go against this frat culture but when it's working for her she's fine with it is kind of the criticism like at tinder she was okay with the frat culture while she was the only woman in the room and they were respecting her and then as soon as she was no longer respected than she was against it. So that is just criticism that she gets. Obviously, she has a very unique experience, not trying to discredit that.

43:34But yeah, some of the female employees at Tinder said that she didn't care when she was benefiting from it. So soon after this investigation, Andre Andreve sold his stake in Badu and then Blackstone bought out the parent company of Badu, Magic Lab, which also owned Bumble. And then Whitney took over as CEO when Blackstone acquired them. So they acquired a majority stake in the parent company, valuing it at about$3 billion. Andre Andreve exited the business. Like I said, Whitney was elevated as CEO of the newly renamed Bumble Inc. with roughly a 19 % ownership stake. And by this time, Bumble had an estimated 75 million users globally.

44:19Also in 2019, she championed the passage of a Texas House bill, 2789, which made the sending of unsolicited explicit images a punishable offense. So go Whitney for that. Yeah, in 2020, Bumble Inc., like we said, became the parent company. It replaced Magic Lab as the overarching parent company of both Bumble and Badu. As of 2020, they had over 100 million users worldwide. In 2020, the Match lawsuit that has been ongoing for patent infringement reaches a settlement. In June 2020, Match and Bumble jointly announced that they had finally reached the settlement to dismiss all of the litigation with no further details of the agreement being disclosed.

45:05And there was no final court ruling. We don't really know what happened or how valid any of the claims were or if anyone infringed on anyone's patent because they figured it out. I'm glad the girls decided to kiss and make up.

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49:592021 is when Bumble IPOs. I remember when Bumble went live. I mean, IPO'd in 2021, how big of an event that was. And I remember like a lot of people investing in the stock as well. It was a huge deal. But I think it was around this time that it started to fall off from relevancy. people started to transition away from using Bumble and more towards Hinge. I would actually be curious to know the statistics on users on Tinder versus Hinge versus Bumble. And now dating apps are so frequent. I heard that Bethany Frankel is even trying to start a more exclusive type of dating app. It's becoming just one of many.

50:39But at this time, this was like the first time a huge company like this IPO'd on its own, unlike Tinder, which was acquired by Match Group. So that's the thing is that it's not just Bumble that has struggled. I'm not going to say become irrelevant because a lot of people still use it, but it's struggled. And we'll obviously talk about that. It's every dating app. I think just dating apps are people we've talked about this, like people are fatigued, people are tired. They're just not as hot as they once were. But in 2021, everyone still felt good about the dating app landscape. So when Whitney leads Bumble's IPO, she is the youngest woman CEO at only 31 to ever take a company public.

51:24Her 18-month-old son was on her hip as she rang the NASDAQ bell. I remember that too. She then became the world's youngest female self-made billionaire with her 18 to 20 % stake. And the IPO was a huge success. stock opened 77 % above IPO price with a market cap of over$14 billion. Not bad. I mean, I don't know what really any of those numbers mean, but they sound pretty good. They sound impressive. There ends up being some backlash to the IPO within the company. So in 2022, meanwhile, Whitney Wolfhard is a billionaire at this point. But in 2022, Business Insider reported that early employees of Bumble were pissed because they were left out of this financial success.

52:17They didn't get the early grant stock options that are like the main reason that you would want to join a startup in its early stages. Wait, what? Yeah. Like I would be fucking pissed. Oh, my God. Yeah, that's really messy. And also, when you're signing on to a startup, you're just excited to start. You're not thinking that far ahead. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Oh, my gosh. So because Bumble was structured under the Bidu umbrella, apparently Whitney didn't have the power to grant stock options to certain early team members. So when Bumble went public and the stock skyrocketed, those early employees didn't benefit from it at all.

52:58One former employee said, I wanted to throw my phone into the water because I had so many people texting me, congratulations, this must be so exciting for you. You're about to get a life-changing amount of money. This person spent three years at Bumble from its beginnings housed in a cramped two-bedroom apartment in Austin, that one we were talking about, where some staff meetings were held in a closet. And the ex-employee, along with dozens of other early Bumble staffers, had helped create a wildly popular dating app that would go on to be used in 150 countries, but they had no equity in the company.

53:31Oh, my gosh. I cannot. I actually cannot even believe this. This is unheard of. So apparently they use something called shadow equity, which is not the norm in the startup world. And what that means is that they don't actually own a part of the company, but the owner is kind of like, like you're growing based off of someone's word. Like they're told, oh, you'll get a bonus once that equity sells. If you did have equity. Robbie McKay, the company's chief spokesperson at the time, told Insider that since the operating control of the company changed upon the acquisition of former shareholders equity in 2019, Whitney Wolf Heard and the current board of directors have ensured that every single employee over 800 people have been granted equity and have an active ownership stake in Bumble's success, but obviously missed out on the big IPO.

54:18So it's like, well, it doesn't really matter at this point. Yeah, no. So, yeah, Whitney Wolf Heard was a billionaire and thriving, but those early employees did not benefit. And she basically told everyone her hands were tied. It was not her fault. Early employees had said that they had been given vague assurances for years. again, the shadow equity thing, and that they would be granted Bumble stock at some point, but then they weren't. They felt like Whitney could have done something, but she says her hands were tied. And meanwhile, she's sitting on like a billion dollars. A billion dollars. She's so wealthy at this point.

54:50She could have given up even a little portion of her wealth to give it to her 70 OG employees. Exactly. And people thought this was ironic given how she was pushed out of the company that she helped start during its startup phase, Tinder. And so it's like you, you know, we're acting like you are all about people getting their credit and giving employees their credit for their hard work. But here you are raking in a billion dollars and those early employees are getting nothing. Right. In November, 2023, Whitney announced that she would enter the role of executive chair, stepping down in early 2024, stepping down from the CEO role with Lydiane Jones stepping into the position of CEO of Bumble.

55:36But after a year of transition, it was revealed about a year later that Whitney was going to return as CEO. And during this time, Bumble has been experimenting with AI features like AI matchmaking concierges, which again, And I think just speaks to how dire some of these dating apps feel these days. Now that AI is even getting involved, it's just, oh my God. Yeah. In 2024, just in general, like we said, dating apps start to flop. People are reporting bad experiences on them. Gen Z is going off of them. People are really fatigued. And all of these companies are starting to suffer, not just Bumble.

56:13But the stock price goes way down. Their stock price actually dropped by 86 % since their IPO. That does not surprise me in the slightest. It was the hottest stock at one point. And now, I mean, at least just from my sample population, no one's using this app. Yeah. And same with Match Group. Like Match Group, their stock price also went down a lot. So in 2024, Bumble decides to do a bit of a rebrand. And they ended up ditching the feature that let women message men first. Finally. Which is interesting because it's like that's kind of what made the app unique. And it's not for everyone. Like I said, like I didn't like that, but a lot of people did.

56:55So it's interesting that they ditched what made them unique to begin with. Right. They launched a new opening moves feature. And that means that while women can still initiate a conversation, they now have the option to set a prompt for their matches to respond to, which allows men to respond to that prompt and start the conversation. So it's like Hinge too. They have prompts. Hinge with the prompts. I feel like Hinge started prompts and then everyone like copied Hinge for that. Yeah. But it's a good I mean, it's a smart thing. It's like good conversation starter. But yeah, basically defeated the initial purpose of the app.

57:30Like that's literally like any other app when men can message you first. But apparently they had received feedback from women like me who found that making the first move was a lot of work or a burden. And Whitney began thinking about how to release the pressure and opening moves, she said, as a result of that process, a way to let women maintain control while not feeling the stress of initiating all of the conversations. So fair enough, I guess. As for 2025, some recent drama that happened with the layoffs that will accompany a company that is floundering. They end up doing large-scale layoffs in July of this year, mostly at Bumble's London office.

58:12And on a company-wide call, Whitney told everyone what was going to happen. So as someone who's been laid off before, there's no right way to lay people off, but somehow every company always gets it wrong. Like they always do the worst possible way of laying people off. What was your layoff story? My layoff story is I was working for a millennial media company that you have definitely heard of. And it was very girl boss feminism. This was 2017 when I got laid off. Yeah. And peak girl boss feminism. Peak girl boss. And I was out with my coworkers because we were celebrating. We were like doing a farewell party for one of my coworkers that was leaving.

58:53And then some of us got calendar invites. It was like 10 p.m. A few of us got calendar invites that said, meet on the HR floor. You have a meeting at 930 a.m. with HR on the 13th floor, which we knew was the HR floor. And only some of us got those invites. So we knew what was happening immediately now. And I was up all night. It was 10 PM the night before. So I didn't sleep, obviously. I knew what was happening. It was horrible. And I spent the entire night spiraling. Getting laid off is very traumatic. And there's no good way of doing it, but they always botch it somehow. Every story, every layoff story I hear is worse than the last.

59:28You know what's funny? So or 2022, I want to say, 2022, we had an all-hands meeting, and it was the entire company, and they basically disclosed, we're going to do layoffs. And all of a sudden, in this call, my internet, my VPN just gets cut. I had no idea what was happening. I had gone higher just five months prior, so I didn't even have anyone in my co-workers. This was all via remote work. I just had them on Teams, Microsoft Teams. So I couldn't even get a hold of them because I was cut from teams. And then I had to reach out to one of my directs on Instagram because I didn't have her number.

1:00:02And I'm like, can you give me my boss's number? And fortunately, the company made it right. Like I got a good package, fortunately, but it was so traumatic because I couldn't get a hold of anyone for almost an hour. It's awful. It's awful. It is like to your point, they had to send out this email. We're so sorry that we accidentally preemptively disconnected y 'all's access. I got laid off when it should have been done an hour later. It was a mess. mess. Oh my God. Such a fucking mess. Yeah. I heard recently about a layoff at somewhere where I used to work. And unfortunately I know people that got laid off.

1:00:37I mean, it's been a horrible year for the job market in general. I know sadly lots of people that have gotten laid off this year. It's just awful, but they basically had a company wide, like all hands. And they were like, okay, so some of you are going to get a calendar invite after this. And if you don't get one, you're safe. But if you do get one, you're unfortunately one of the people who we have to cut. So it's like, you're just sitting there like waiting. Yeah. It's like, no, it's yeah, no, I've had, I've been at a company after that did that exact same thing. I know it's very traumatizing.

1:01:08It's so traumatizing. Okay. So Whitney has to lay off about 30 % of the staff and that included 160 jobs in London specifically. So as part of a previous expansion, they had a big London office, but she was like, the center of gravity is changing. We are going to make sure that the U.S. is now our center of gravity and blah, blah, blah. She even said that, and this was on a call with the London office. She said that she was worried that Bumble might even collapse by next year if measures were not taken to safeguard the business. She shouldn't say that. Oh my God, that creates panic amongst the entire company.

1:01:51Oh my gosh. I feel like CEOs also love some, like it's like a tactic sometimes to create panic because they want people to leave instead of laying them off. Yeah. Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah. So apparently a person with knowledge of the move also said that staff globally had been offered voluntary redundancy. So I guess that's when it's like, oh, your job is redundant. You want to just like dip out, I guess. So she's on this call saying this news to the London office. Obviously, that is not good to hear if you are a London employee. And a lot of people responded with thumbs down emojis. She goes, I see a lot of freaking out emojis.

1:02:27Y 'all need to calm down. She said this on the call. This is being taken out of context. I like London and I think everyone is overreacting to this candidly. Everyone's going to have to be adults in dealing with this. She also suggested all staff take the rest of the week off following the call. It is so easy for you to say billionaire that these people that are about to lose their jobs and their livelihoods should calm down and act like adults. I would throw hands if my billionaire CEO said this to me. Right. So Bumble's market cap has shrunk 30 percent over the past year. It went from being valued at 13 billion dollars when it went public to now 700 million, which obviously concerns investors.

1:03:12And this incident did not help, especially considering that Bumble's brand is all about kindness and inclusivity. The film swiped about Whitney Wolf Heard's journey starring Lily James that I mentioned I had watched in preparation for this episode, released in September 2025, did not get very good reviews. Like I said, it's not very good. Don't watch it. Like I said, she was not able to participate in the film because of her NDA. So the movie was based on things like court documents, articles, interviews, all public information. Critics criticized the movie for feeling like it was a PR puff piece, which is how I felt.

1:03:51It felt like a glowing portrait of Whitney. So even though she wasn't involved, it was made by like super fans of hers because it makes her seem like she is just a really, really, really benevolent, which, you know, she started her career by wanting to match people with orphanages. So I think she definitely is a, there is a side of her that's very benevolent and really cares about charity and giving back. But there was no criticism at all of how she has handled certain situations. When the movie was announced, and this is according to Daily Mail and Page Six, so take it with a grain of salt. Former Tinder employees came out against Whitney and said that it was bullshit and that her role as co-founder of Tinder had been greatly exaggerated, that she never even came up with the name Tinder, et cetera, et cetera.

1:04:44Former colleagues, and this is from the Daily Mail, former colleagues of Bumble founder Whitney Wolf heard say she hit her boss, called one woman an anorexic bitch, and used the N-word. Oh my god. Some of these sources said she didn't add anything to meetings or to the business of Tinder, but she was always begging to be included in articles as co-founder. She'd say it was important for her career. It was all self-serving. Former brand manager Josh Metz, who joined Tinder in early 2013, told us he was flabbergasted by the film's trailer because, I don't think she was as serious about the success of Tinder as the movie trailers have led everyone to believe.

1:05:21she was never considered part of leadership. Former Tinder colleague said that she overstated her influence and role at the tech company, was violent toward her ex-boyfriend, Tinder co-founder Justin Mateen, and treated fellow female employees terribly, which she denied the allegations. In the piece, there is some speculation, again, reports that she had used the N-word in other slurs, but she had only done that to fit in with the male-centric frat bro culture of the tech company. Wow. So people that have worked with her do not think that the movie is accurate to how she actually is as a person.

1:06:01I mean, I walked away from the movie. Like I said, it was not a great movie, but I walked away from it having a lot of respect for her. And I still do like, I have a lot of respect for her. And I think that a lot of these female founders obviously get picked apart in a way that male founders don't like think about for all their flaws, You know, like Emily Weiss, very flawed person, the founder of Glossier, the founder of Away Luggage had an expose about her. Do you remember that? Her name was Stephanie. I can't remember her name. I vaguely remember that. I remember Rent the Runway having a lot of controversy about being a toxic workplace.

1:06:33Ty Haney, Outdoor Voices. Yes. Audrey Gelman, The Wing, who again, like very, very, very valid claims against her. Same with like Leandra Medina of Man Repeller. There are a lot of like valid claims against some of these female founders, but nothing they do seems to be worse than what their male counterparts have done. But there is never as much attention or scrutiny when it comes to male CEOs. It's always the women. so I think that Whitney Wolf heard and again like the n-word accusations that is all speculation that is in a Daily Mail article like who knows when it comes to the veracity of those claims and the veracity of these former tinder employees that are like she didn't do shit she clearly did because she ended up building Bumble so I think that she definitely has had her flaws.

1:07:29And I think, like I said, the biggest criticism that she gets is that she kind of is okay with misogyny and frat boy culture while it benefits her. And then when it doesn't, she is then against it and she pulls up the ladder so that other women can't climb up there with her is again, some of the criticism that she has gotten. Do I know that it's true? No. yeah and she obviously is extremely extremely smart hard-working talented by the way Steph Corey is the co-founder of away luggage who there was an expose about her do I think that she deserves some criticism definitely for some of the things that she has done overall I think that she is a pretty just run-of-the-mill success story and any founder is going to have some unsavory stories about them.

1:08:26And again, I feel like it's women who are torn down the most when they are founders and CEOs. What do you think? I think that in order to be an executive at any company, there is a level of callousness that you have to have to get to that top. You have to look at who on your team is not meeting the mark. You need to be comfortable with laying people off that you really like. And that's just being an executive or being high up at a company. It's another thing to found a company like what all of her did and turn it into this behemoth of a company that is like over, you know, multiple hundreds of millions of dollars worth.

1:09:04That's like a whole other thing where not only are you the leader of a company, but you actually founded this. This is literally your baby and you have a level of protection and ambition that you would do anything to maintain its success. I mean, the fact that she stepped down temporarily as CEO and was replaced by that woman only to come back like a year or so later or whatever it was shows that she genuinely wants to see it succeed she doesn't have to work any other day in her life but she wants to go back and contribute to the company contribute to its success but I think to what exactly you're saying if she were a man what she's doing is probably no different than any other male founder but the fact that she is a woman who has been so successful in such an early stage of like what dating app culture was once was like of course she's gonna have these candles I'm not necessarily saying it makes it right but we wouldn't even we would more likely than not wouldn't even be having an episode if this were a man because we wouldn't hear about it yeah all these puff pieces about her using the n slur like I bet you there's so many other male executives that do all this stuff and there are never any puff pieces on the daily mail written about them totally totally exactly it's just I I think that she is someone who, like you said, she could retire tomorrow.

1:10:18She doesn't need to work. She cares about her company. I have to respect that. Like there's just a lot of things about her that I'm like, whoa, you never gave up. I mean, what she went through with getting pushed out of Tinder sounds absolutely horrible and extremely traumatic. So for her to bounce back from that in such a big way was such a badass fuck you to them. Gotta respect it. But so, yeah, overall, I don't have any real negative feelings towards her. Obviously, again, like the N-word accusations and the criticism that she's gotten, the way that she spoke to her London employees while laying them off and the way that she didn't have any of her early employees benefit from the IPO and stuff like that is obviously nefarious.

1:11:04If it's all, in fact, true, the N-word stuff came from the Daily Mail. Take it with a grain of salt. Sure. They also framed it like, look at what Meghan Markle's friend did. So it might just be a take time because she's associated with Meghan Markle and they're the British press, obviously. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. They had to sprinkle it in that Meghan and Whit were besties. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But overall, it's like, go Whitwulf Hurd. In a world of like male billionaires, I can't hate it. Let us know, you guys, what are your thoughts on Whitney Wolf Hurd? Did you watch the movie Swiped? I hope you didn't waste your time watching it.

1:11:38But if you did, what'd you think of it? Well, knowing me, no, I did not. but I would love it. One. Christy's going to go watch it and she's going to be like, that needs an Oscar. Yeah. No, I'm going to say that an Oscar worthy film. It was so funny. Like the scene where she is breaking down after. And again, it's not like funny because it's a really serious thing that she was pushed out of Tinder and it was a sexual harassment situation and a retaliation situation. And she's like at rock bottom. She's like drinking from vodka bottles and she's crying. She's going. That's the acting for like an entire 10 minute sequence.

1:12:18I'm like, okay, like we get it. But again, I feel very sad for her that that happened to her. And she really came back from it and succeeded and was like ringing the freaking NASDAQ bell with like her toddler on her hip. Like. Come on. She's a girl boss. Dare I say. She is truly a girl boss. Yeah. like girl boss just the right amount to the sun. Yeah. Okay. That is about it on today's episode. You guys, thank you so much for listening and for being here. Don't forget to buy tickets for our live show. If you can make it to either LA, Chicago, or New York tickets are on x1entertainment.com slash snarkbait and follow us at snarkbait pod for all the updates always on Instagram.

1:13:08I'm at soap underscore Ross. Christy is at Christy Noel underscore underscore. Thank you to our amazing team, Jordan, Rachel, Olivia, and Kartik. Thank you, Baby Snarks, for listening. As always, leave us a five-star rating and review. If you like this episode, we are taking some time off for the holidays. Christy, can you speak to that? Because you have the calendar memorized more than I do. Yes. So we will not have any episodes on the main feed starting the 22nd of December. We're taking the last two weeks of December off. but we will still be uploading to Patreon. So if you guys are missing us and want more content during the holiday season, while you're traveling, while you're with family, while you need a break, go to patreon.com slash snarkbait pod.

1:13:49We will be there for you guys every Wednesday. So head on over there if you want more content. As always, thank you so much. And we'll see you guys on Patreon next week. Otherwise, see you on the new year. Bye. Love you guys. Bye.

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