She Built Bumble to $13B...Then Walked Away. Here's Why.

0:00When it comes to my own company, I know what the hell I'm talking about. I mean, for two or three years, I knew the right answer and people would talk me into the wrong answer. I'm just a young girl. What do I know? But I always knew. I'm back.

0:17When you have heard, welcome to The Burnouts. Y 'all are the best. Thanks for having me. Do you remember how we all met? How did we meet? I think your team DM'd us and then you met her at a Stanford event. I met you at Stanford and then you told me about what you guys were starting and then we all started chatting. We were on a group chat. And that's when you told us we should have a FIA scale, which took us like a year to figure out. Thank God we're there now. But we should have listened to you very, very early on. We first met Whitney when we were at Stanford. And Whitney has been instrumental in us creating the company, advising us as we learned how to raise capital, how to build a product, how to hire people.

0:53And has honestly been there for us just from the beginning. So I'm 22. Sophia is what, 23. You started Bumble at 24. I was just turning 25. How did you decide to take that leap? Was there ever a moment where you were like, I have no idea what the hell I'm doing? I still don't know what I'm doing. But that's what being an entrepreneur is. I think, has any entrepreneur known what they were doing? No, truly. But that's what makes somebody a founder is you go into the unknown with conviction and belief in what you're trying to do and you figure it out along the way. That's exactly what being an entrepreneur is.

1:33And that's why it doesn't work for everybody, because so many people, in my opinion, need to know the manual. I'm much more of the type of person that says, give me a compass. Let me pick my direction and I'll navigate it. I'll just, I will follow my instincts and I will listen. I will listen to whoever I'm trying to serve as the member base. And then I will be guided. And I just think so many people need like A to Z instructions. And that's not how founders roll. And was there anything when you were first in college or like early entrepreneurial experience that helped define you? We were reading online that you did like you sold bamboo tote bags to benefit BP oil.

2:17Yeah, y 'all, I was always hustling something. Really? Wait, tell us more. I don't know. I was just like my sister used to tease me. My apartment was above an Ann Taylor. Do you all know what Ann Taylor is? Oh, yeah. It's like business lady suits. My sister, I would always be like taking calls. And we were in college and she wanted to go, I don't know, shopping or to the bar or whatever she wanted to do. We're like young college women. And she'd be like, do we need to go to Ann Taylor and get you a business suit? And I was like, I'm busy. I am running things. And so it was just this running joke that I always was like doing business lady things.

2:52I don't know. I've just always been inclined to want to build and create something. I think something we really struggle with was like first hires were not super technical. You're not a technical founder either. How did you figure out who to hire at first? Did you have that almost thinking that you needed to hire older people? Did you hire, you know, people similar to your age? How did you find like your first team? Okay, so this is controversial, but basically things started to fall apart when I hired all the smart older people. That was when the wheels started falling off during that chapter.

3:20it's because they're far away from the customer. Now there are specialized people that you do need so you certainly don't want to hire someone in their first year of finance experience to run your finance org but where I think founders get things wrong they assume that the chaos means they need to hire some quote-unquote adult in a suit to figure it out but really the people you need to report to or look to are your members and listen to them. So I think the further you get away from your core audience with these people that candidly don't understand the vision or understand what problem you're solving, that's where companies lose their way.

4:06So there have been times in my career where a leadership team under me, they looked at the company and saw it as like a business problem to solve for. They're like, okay, how do I take the revenue and multiply the revenue? But they would ignore the members. And I'm like, the members are the revenue. Do you think you'll end up like hiring less people in the future because of AI? Do you feel like we're there yet or we'll get there? We're getting there. I mean, you just said it yourself. None of us are going to be able to get on a computer and code an app by ourselves. But you know what you can do right now?

4:38I've already done it completely with zero technical skills. You can build an app overnight. Where it becomes complex is integrating it into existing data sets and plugging it into like trust and safety teams that are pre-existing. So it's not that you can't build new things quick, which is why y 'all are in a very opportunistic moment. I'm sitting on so much legacy infrastructure and legacy data, legacy platforms. It's very, very hard to take legacy systems and then just say, we're just going straight AI. Now, I can start to slowly rebuild off of modern infrastructure that is largely powered with and by AI, but y 'all can really launch yourselves this way.

5:28So, for example, we purchased a company called Geneva. It's a great tech business. It's going to be the kind of go-forward infrastructure support for BFF. So if you look at Geneva, they are using all of the latest and greatest tooling, like largely AI oriented as well. And the way this system works, the way it moves, it's just unbelievable. So I think this legacy framework of like old tech is gone. You don't need 7 ,000 tech people. There are these amazing companies that are doing like half a billion of revenue and they have like 30 team members. So my advice is less is more. Like the fewer, the better.

6:08I feel like this new trope is going founder mode or being like, I'm going to take over and make a decisive decision when it comes to the company. Like, have you had moments like that where you've been like, OK, people are telling me one thing, but I know in my gut this is the right decision? Oh, yeah. I mean, for two or three years, I knew the right answer and people would talk me into the wrong answer. And I did it because they would kind of do this thing where you're like, well, you're 32. Like, you're not a coder. Like, you've never been to Harvard. You know, all of this stuff. And I kind of took it.

6:38Like they depleted my confidence for a long time. And there was just a lot of this like, I'm just a young girl. Like what do I know? But I always knew. Like I do know. You were right about Fia two years ago. No, I have good instincts. I mean, I'm not right about everything. I'm wrong about a lot of things. But when it comes to my own company. I love it because they need you. I know what the hell I'm talking about. I love it so much. I'm back. And like now everyone has to kind of listen to me because I was kind of right. So I'm huge on brand marketing, as you guys know. I'm a big believer in Surprise and Delight, your members.

7:13So for years, I would get on the phone in like random towns and be Googling florists in like Nebraska because some woman would have had a bad experience on Bumble. And she was in Nebraska. And I got her address. And I'm like, flower shops in Nebraska. And I'm like sending flowers. And then, you know, the accountant starts looking at like how much we've spent on flowers. And then some operational person's like, you can't be sending gifts to members because what's the ROI? Like, where's the ROI? But what they failed to realize, I said, this is our growth. Treating our members with care, kindness, and unreasonable thoughtfulness.

7:53This is our growth. This is exactly why we are Bumble because time and time again, we have reached out. We've apologized when things have gone wrong. We've celebrated the things that have gone right. We have shown up in ways that make people's day. And then they go to dinner and they tell their friends. And then their friends tell somebody else and on it goes. And so here I was listening to some data-oriented assumption that there's no ROI when in reality that was exactly the magic. And so now it's like, okay, maybe that wasn't so wrong after all. Two questions. Have you ever done flowers for someone going through a breakup that they met the guy on Bumble?

8:38And have you ever done flowers for a Bumble wedding? Oh my God. Yeah, a million times. I love that. Tons of Bumble breakups that I will write letters I'll send. Like, I've sent so many self-help books that helped me in breakups. Lots of flowers. And then Bumble weddings. Oh, yeah, we go wild on Bumble weddings. Like, we've cleared registries. We've sent Bumble wedding cakes. We've done all sorts of stuff. It's like the do things that don't scale advice. I also know you had told us that when you were really early on in your career, you would do things like send people in crazy T-shirts into like college campuses.

9:14Like what were some of the early easy hacky marketing tricks that you used? We bought all these ridiculous bee Halloween costumes, these like huge inflatable bee looks. And we would just have people walk down the street and hand out flowers and compliments to people in a full bee outfit, like a huge inflatable bee outfit. But we had people handing out all sorts of little goodies in ridiculous like beekeeper slash bee vibe looks. We would order hundreds of yellow balloons and just like take over libraries, having people running through with balloons. I mean, we did so much random stuff. I mean, I probably could get in trouble for it now.

9:58But at the time, we were like nobody. I mean, I'd stand on the top of my car and hang up banners on trees and just leave them there for like a week. I mean, like a college campus. Yes. Like, this is how we grew. And it was just scrappy. It was surprise and delight. None of it was traditional. I mean, I never did like the old school ROI driven marketing. That's not how you capture people's attention. How do you capture people's attention now? Well, now it's all about how do I re-engineer this? And the number one thing I think we should be doing and could be doing, what I would recommend y 'all do too, is just talk to your members.

10:36Just like talk to the people that want to use your product and need your product and take them for what they have to say. Like don't run away from criticism. Lean into it. You know, when you screw up or you send them a product that isn't high quality or something goes wrong, like don't ignore them. You talk to them. You help them. You champion them. And I just think your members are your biggest marketing vehicle and they matter. They really they matter so much. How would you think about like FIA marketing stuff we've done? Like, you know, we've tried some influencer marketing stuff like we've tried some paid ads.

11:11Like, how do you think about like what actually like converts and what should we do differently? Community. Do do like really thoughtful gatherings where you bring together, you know, all of the people that you perceive as the ideal FIA customer. and bring them together and give them something special, like give them an interesting experience, do something out of the box. I do think that brand Revolve did a good job by really focusing on bringing people together and creating these moments. So I think you should come up with like, what would the Fia woman want to do? Like, does she want to, what does she want to do?

11:52Does she want to go thrifting? Like, where does she want to go? Like, where does she want to eat? What's her favorite cocktail? You know, what's her favorite coffee? And just bring people together, make it community oriented.

12:09Something I want to return to is also just the concept of making hard decisions. I know that Bumble was really a pioneer in this idea of women making the first move. How did you land on that concept and how have you thought about that over the last few years? I mean, it just felt really simple to me at the time. I felt like because I'd been at Tinder, I had seen how my girlfriends felt using the apps or like, this is not a good experience. Like, I'm getting harassed. I'm getting creepy, creepy behavior. and then I also looked at the parallels to dating before the dating apps and I realized, oh wow, women have been getting spammed pre-internet.

12:51Like you go to a bar, you get spammed, you walk down the street, someone says something spammy, like the equivalent of what spam would be online or harassment. I was like, man, this is so crazy. There's never been a barrier to enter, but there's also never been an excuse to go after what you want. Like, I don't know if you ever have felt this way. But I remember having a crush on a guy and I texted him and I told my girlfriends, oh, I just texted so-and-so. And they're like, you what? Oh my God. He's going to think you're a psycho. He's going to think you're desperate. You cannot. Don't ever text again.

13:24Don't ever do. And I was like, why? And I couldn't understand why I wasn't allowed to do that. And then they're like, well, now the ball's in his court. Like now he is, now he, now you've lost all your power. I was like, what are you talking about? But this was the mindset. So I was like, man, this is so crazy. So all of these things converged and the internet was treating women so poorly. It's like, there's something really broken here. There's something so wrong. We have to do something kinder, better, softer. So I was like, oh, okay. Women have to make the first move every single time. We're just going to basically say this is the new normal and that was the beginning and candidly we've outgrown it right because society has shifted and what a woman means to different people has changed so dramatically as well and you have to honor that and as all things go society evolves and shifts and your product has to evolve with it or even faster than it to be relevant and so now I think what we're really focused on is how do we preserve the spirit of what that did?

14:34But when you think about a woman sending a text first, that was really just a piece of the ethos, right? Like it was a mechanism to promote women being in control of their lives and taking charge, but it's not the only way. And so I think it's like, how do we bring that to life in other ways? I want to talk about like your future vision for Bumble and what you're thinking as you're going back. You've talked a lot about like it being more than a dating app and like your future vision for that. If you're comfortable speaking about that, I think that'd be really cool. Yeah, totally. I mean, listen, I think the thing that is lacking the most right now, and it's going to sound cheesy, but it's not, it's like everyone just wants love, whether it's with friends, love of things you like to go and do, love in your job, love in your romantic life.

15:20And love is lost right now. It's like everything is so angry. It's so divided. It's so mean. It's so snarky. It's like, where's the love? Like, let's bring the energy back. and I'm super bullish and excited about Bumble for Friends. I mean, the amount of women that I know that tell me I had no friends in the city when I got a new job. I met all my friends through BFF, my sweet nanny. She made all of her friends through BFF. She's from South Africa. And like these women that she's met while she's been working with my family, she didn't know anyone. I relocated her essentially. And she got on BFF and she's like, oh, I have a great group of girlfriends now.

16:01So the power of finding your people, it's transformational. And never have I ever heard of a product or technology where it can actually bring you closer to your people. I mean, dating apps are like, we know it, we get it, 10 years plus. But I think the future of Bumble is really meeting as friends first. And I also think it's the next iteration of dating. So I fundamentally believe that as we scale and ramp up Bumble for friends, I think what people are going to be shocked to realize is it's going to bring in the real spirit of how people have fallen in love originally. Like they meet in groups of friends.

16:43They come together naturally and they kind of say, oh, we were friends first. And so I think the power of friendship first, it can transcend just friendship. It can move into businesses. Look at this. You were friends first. Now you're business partners. It's like the foundation for a relationship. It's the foundation. And so I really believe the future of friendship, especially for your age group, you know, you're so isolated. Not the two of you, but your demographic. You went through COVID. You've gone through this like social media first life it's deeply isolating i'm i'm assuming how you integrate like in-person events too because i think a lot of that like connecting over instagram i have so many girls id i'm on instagram because i'm like hey i want to get your feedback on this like if you know you know i'm not afraid of a cold outreach but like the in-person element of like your girlfriends getting together like how do you incorporate that through bumble what we're doing is making sure that everybody is ID verified or verified in another capacity so that you know whoever's in this group or whoever's forming together is actually who they say they are because safety is paramount.

17:50It's the most important thing to us, making sure that people can trust us, feel that they're meeting authentic, real, trusted people. And so groups is really what it's all about. And forming groups through different interests, whether that's like I need someone to go to yoga with tonight or I want to go grab a cocktail. I want to go, you know, I'm now sober. I want to go and find the best mocktail in the city or ice cream, whatever it is people are dealing with in their life. It's like, how do you navigate these different touch points of your life together in community? And that's not an online chat forum.

18:25Our goal is not to keep you on the internet all day. It is to use the power of technology to matchmake you, even for friendship to be the most thoughtful, strategic matchmaker, to then get you offline, to go and do great things like this, like what the two of you are doing in the world. And what role does technology play in that? I'm not going to lie. I write all of my emails and all my texts now with chat GPT. I write something. I know with your fake assistant. With my fake assistant. Yeah. Oh, my God. That's so embarrassing for me. That is amazing. Oh, no, I'm sorry. You're fake chief of staff.

18:54What was its name again? kobe kobe kobe kobe got me through college but i think you guys need like a service agent on fia named kobe we literally had someone respond to an email because we did the assistant thing and then they were like oh like we know this we know this is chat and i was like oh no this actually is our inter like no this is a real person now when we have other people that we loop into an email everyone's like haha this person isn't real right it's kobe and then we're like oh god by the way that's kind of genius i would have never thought of that that's pretty smart honestly i all credit to my friend who told me um but i mean also actually this is a really good thing that i wanted to return to but something that really struck me when we met at stanford was just you literally sat there for like 20 minutes gave i had like our pitch deck out you were giving me advice like you were so easy and outgoing and i think it was really interesting you told me all these other young people that you knew you were like oh i know this other young founder like do You want to connect with them.

19:54Like, what has that meant for you? Like, as you've grown in your career, obviously you've accomplished so many things. Like, one of the only women to IPO a company. Like, how have you tried to try to give back and, like, to meet other young people and to foster and cultivate those kinds of, like, relationships? It seems like you're pretty tapped into, like, the talent that's young. Like, always. How do you do that? I'm actually, I feel like I'm not. But I appreciate that. That makes me feel like I am. So I'll take it as a win. You know, I was just thinking earlier how guilty I feel that I have not been giving more of myself in mentorship to people.

20:27But I've got to be frank with you. Like, this is kind of the way I see philanthropy, too. There is time to do that. There is a time to build. There is a time to mentor. There is a time to give back. There is a time to learn more. I do believe that we all cannot beat ourselves up for not being able to be everything to everyone all at once. And this thing I have actually gotten really good at is just saying, like, I have no bandwidth. Yep. Yeah. And not feeling guilty about it. Because what happened last time was I felt this tremendous guilt to, like, oh, well, this young woman, like, she's trying to start a company and she needs me because I know more about this thing than she does.

21:08And I have to be there for her. But what ended up happening was like I had nothing left. And so I had nothing left to give. And then when people asked me for advice, I was like, my brain's off. So now I'm just like, I'm really sorry. Like I can't right now. I promise there will be a time for me to mentor. I will come around to it. But right now I'm building. And like all of us have to have permission to be in a mode. Like there are times where I've been like exclusively in mom mode. There's times where I've been exclusively in like self-healing mode. It is okay to be selfish. But I think in my career over the last however many years, decade and a half-ish, no, like 12 years, there have been blocks of time that I've dedicated to other people.

21:52And those relationships have been beautiful and rewarding. And even if I gave one person like one little piece of feedback and it helped them, like I'll feel so, so grateful that they were able to get that because I don't feel like I got that when I was growing up in tech. Like, candidly, I don't think I really knew a lot of people in tech. And I was never, you know, I would say the person that's been the biggest mentor to me in the entire, you know, time I've been in tech has been Brian at Airbnb. be. But him and I have only been friends for a little over a year, but he has made so much time for me.

22:31And it has meant so much to me because he's so much further along in his journey. I actually credit him with so much of how I'm thinking about the second go round. And it's really powerful to be around someone who shows you how to give yourself permission to lead and not apologize for it. So I think that's my message to like pay it forward is don't ever apologize. You don't have to be everything to everyone. I do think women feel this particular need to like fulfill everyone's wishes at all times. And that's a really hard place to be.

23:11How the hell do you manage like your marriage while working too? Because this is something me and Sophia are talking about like we never see our boyfriends to be honest like we both have boyfriends which I think is great I think it you know helps us stay stable as we're building the company and like I love my boyfriend so much but I'm like you know sometimes I don't have a lot to give if we've been working till 1am and I'm also exhausted yeah and so like having him there as rock is great but like how do you figure that out you know you've been you know a CEO for for many many years how do you figure out how to like have a healthy relationship through that well I have the best husband.

23:44He's just like such a ray of light and breath of fresh air. I think what works with me in my marriage is my husband always takes the like steam away of the stress of things. Like if I'm super, super stressed, he'll pop his head into my office. I'll be like, it's a dating app. You're okay. He'll be like, it's just a dating app. And then he'll take his head out and he'll be like, do you want a coffee? And I'm like, okay, you're so, because the truth is like when I do think about your sister for example I mean that's life or death stuff okay that's real stuff yeah I do think all of us maybe not the two of you but I think all of us running our own things we do tend to get a little a little self-inflated on how critical and how life or death we perceive our things to be listen by the way this is 12 years later of reflection I've been with my husband for how did you guys meet almost 11 years maybe maybe 11 years we met when i was 24 years old we were in colorado crazy he was 26 we were babies so it was like y 'all's age um but i think in hindsight it's like just don't take everything so seriously like it's okay like Nothing's going to crash if you take a two-hour breather and go out to dinner and relax or shut the laptop.

25:12And I mean, I know this is the burnout and I am a recovering burnout. So I totally get it. But I've got to tell you, like, it's so much better not to be persistently burnt out. I think that that's honestly something really interesting for you to talk about in the sense that I know you also have said publicly now that you felt like, You had an ego death and now you feel like you're taking the reins in a new way. Like, how have you recovered from burnout? Why do you think you felt burnt out in the first place? I think I felt burnt out because I was trying to control everything. If something didn't go exactly the way I wanted it to go, I needed to get it done right now.

25:51I had to get it done right. It had to be now, now, now, now, now. And I think, you know, that old saying, like, stop and smell the roses. I don't think I did that for 10 years, metaphorically or literally. And what kind of life is that, right? And so here's the deal with burning out. There's a time and place for it. I do think when you're launching a company, hit it hard. You need to stay up till 1 in the morning every now and then, hey, knock your socks off. You're young. You can handle it. You don't have responsibilities outside of it, right? whereas burning yourself out where I am now it's an option for me yeah I burnt myself out with a one and a half year old at home when I was going public and it had serious consequences I mean took a real toll on my health took an extreme toll on my mental health it took a toll on my child like you can't be doing that that's irresponsible um and certainly not when you don't have to, right?

26:54If I had a job, I was a doctor or there was something that forced me to be in a building. But when you're doing it just to do it, it's a bit, it's like enough is enough. And here's the other thing. We're all running on a tank of energy, all of us, even at your age. And you can't do a good job if your energy goes away, right? And so I think also learning how at your age, and this is for all young people starting a job, like wake up in the morning and think about it as having like a watering bucket. And that watering bucket has energy in it. It's water. And you only have one of them a day. And everything you stop and pay attention to, you pour some of your water out.