‘The interview’: Can Whitney Wolfe Herd ensure that we love dating apps again?

That was Andrey Andreev, who was the head of Badoo and was a co-maker of Bumble. And then you stood in front of another workplace scandal after Bumble started, with him. Forbes published an investigation in 2019 and was accused of creating a poisonous and sexist working environment at Badoo headquarters in London. He denied these allegations, but ultimately sold his majority stake not long after the article was published. It is striking that you were dealing with a second controversial matter of alleged male bad behavior in your professional life, while at the same time you built a company whose brand was about empowering women. What do you think of that now? I mean, terrible. Definitely the worst-case scenario. I clearly felt sick for everyone who felt the way they felt, and I knew nothing about these allegations, who for many people they are: “Whitney is a liar. Of course she knew all these things, and she covers this man.” The Frank Truth is that I ran a lot in Austin like a self -contained company. It’s not like I’m in it [Badoo’s London] Office all day and cross with those people, and so it was set for me. When Forbes called me and told me this, I was speechless. I was shocked. It was really important for Andrey that I am honest about my personal interactions with him, what, the candid truth, is that I had never seen anything to that extent. However, I would never question a woman or another person in their experience, and I said that. And I believe that those allegations came from a few years earlier. They were not active.

There was a series of allegations from different times. Right. But I think most of the article covered things that had used to be. I try not to recover myself. That’s not what I do. I try to say that if you look at the early years 2010, we have all seen the films. The WeWorks and the Ubers. When you close your eyes and think of a technology company in 2012, you see Beer Pong and all men together. I don’t think you close your eyes and think back of a progressive office space. What do you take away from this? Don’t know. Perhaps I was just in two of the few situations, or was this painting a larger theme of what was omnipresent in technical culture at the time?

The other thing about that period is that it is such a moment of technical optimism. All these apps came out, they were supported by incomprehensible amounts of money. They promised to solve so many problems of the world. Did you believe that then? I did it. To get to an app, see who is around you, make immediate contact with them and suddenly end up with a date with someone you would never have met if it hadn’t been for this interface, who really felt transformational. That was also able to order a black car in Uber. We were just right now – God, if people now listen to us, they will be like: “These people, what? They lived in the dark centuries?” [Laughs]

Hey, listen, I remember the time for mobile phones. So you know what I’m going with. That was a huge leap in the field of efficiency and convenience. I could not believe that we were in the middle of this, and then and I say this at all in a self-promotional way it is really difficult to do it twice. So many people over the years are: “Gosh, she is just lucky, she wore a lot of yellow, she is blonde.” I am not entirely sure that people realize how difficult it is to get critical mass on an app twice.

The next era of Bumble, you had a lot of growth during the pandemic when everyone was tied to their apps. It was a huge moment. You go publicly in 2021, call the bell, baby on your hip and the Allerus for user growth starts to slow down user growth. What do you think happened? Mine opinion Is that I ran this company in the first few years as a quality of quantity approach. A telephone provider came to us early. They said: “We love your brand, we want to place your app pre -programmed on all our phones and when people buy our phones, your app is on the home screen and you get millions of free downloads.” I said, “Thank you very much, but no thank you.” Nobody could understand what I was doing in the world, and I said it is the wrong way to grow. This is not a social network, this is a double -sided marketplace. One person goes on and they have to see someone who is relevant to them. If you simply flood the system endlessly – you will not walk through the streets of New York City and you want to meet every person you pass. Why would you assume that someone would like to do that on an app? This is not a content platform where you can simply scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scales. What happened was, in the pandemic and in other chapters, growth was king. It was praised because the end was everything.