Transcript

Small changes with big impact w/Whitney Wolfe Herd of Bumble

The very best founders I know are brilliant at building systems. They connect teams, they remove bottlenecks, and they eliminate single points of failure. And yet When it comes to their own wealth. Most are running a disconnected stack. A tax accountant here and a state attorney there, a wealth manager who doesn't talk to either one of them.

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Hey folks, Jeff Berman here. I am thrilled to share some of the new names who will be joining us at this year's Masters of Scale summit. This may be our biggest stage yet. Reed Hastings, Meredith Whitaker, Van Jones, Amjad Masad, and more. Will be there with us October 20th through 22nd in San Francisco. If you're building something great, or you want to build something great, We want you there with us too.

Join us at masters of scale dot com slash apply twenty six. That's mastersofscom slash apply. Twenty six. You have friends that are beginning to become young adults and they want to go out to the club, and the only club in your area has one step in order to get into it and you're in a power wheelchair, that sort of doesn't go well together. I found video games to be that outlet where I could take my Super Nintendo into my friend's garage and we could hang out for hours.

We'd be playing our Street Fighters or Streets of Rage and that kind of fighting games with my pals that were super into beating each other's butts. That Butt beating. Virtual Street Fighter. Is Steven Spawn.

COO of a nonprofit. Able gamers. I felt the deeper I delved into the world of gaming, the more I felt like I was just like everyone else. We're all the same. We're all just gamers. Steve got into competitive gaming. Which requires quick reflexes and precision timing in order to win.

but he was facing a far greater challenge. So my disability is spinal muscular atrophy, which essentially means that over time my muscles get weaker and weaker. What happens is I lose abilities as we go along. At the same time that Steve's muscles were weakening, Video game controls were getting more complex. But Steve was determined.

To game on. My hands started getting weaker and I had to find a way to continue to do what I was doing. Without being able to do the same physical movements. And I'm a technology guy, so I knew there had to be technology out there somewhere that could bridge this gap between my abilities and my desire. During his research, Steve turned to able gamers.

At the time. It was a blog. Aimed at helping disabled gamers. Continue to play. There was an article that the founder, Mark Barley, had put up about you can't play World of Warcraft with only one arm.

And I knew that that was Malone even. So being the adolescent twenty year old that I was, I was like Ha ha Mark, you're wrong. This is why I'm right. And you suck. And instead of turning me away like the snot nose little kid that I was, he was like Oh yeah, you think you can write better? Write better. And I'm like, Oh yeah, well, I will. I'm gonna do better than you. Despite that adversarial beginning, Steven Mark soon hit it off. Mark and I got to work and we created a guide for developers to Be able to make their games as accessible as possible.

Many of these measures were simple tweaks that would have huge impacts on For millions. of disabled gamers. But the biggest stumbling block. Was the classic game controller.

Picture it. Small buttons clustered close together. Teeny twin joysticks. Position the fin under each thumb. It's a design aimed at amplifying

The smallest of movements. Into on screen glory. But for disabled players It can be a Frustrating.

Alienating. Obstacle. Not everyone's abilities include being able to grab a standard controller with both hands in order to play. One day. A giant of the gaming world.

Came calling. Microsoft. So Able Gamers got to work in secrecy with Xbox for over three and a half years. They basically said, you need to see the super cool thing that we're doing and we think you have some amazing advice for us. We went. Yeah, cool, this sounds awesome. That super cool thing was called the Xbox Adaptive Controller.

It was quite literally a game changer. for disabled players. These kinds of adaptive controllers allow you to capitalize on your abilities. Maybe you have only one arm. Or maybe you don't have the ability to rapid fire push your pointer finger. Our assistive technologies can take those controllers and change where the buttons are. We can take technology. We can change them just a little bit. And we can make'em better for everyone.

The adaptive controller. It's just one example. Of how small Can change everything.

I believe The smallest feature Can make it Or break your product.

You gotta have incredible talent at every position. It's like this huge push. There are fires burning when you're going out. Can we? And then you go back to this is totally gonna be amazing. There are so many easy ways. I have no idea what to do. Sorry, we made a mistake. But you have to time it right. Oops. Working out of a three-bedroom apartment. It just seems absolutely not all. Ten years later I'm like, well that's just how you do it. We have it made just how you do it. This is masters of scale. I'm Reed Hoffman.

Founder of LinkedIn. Partner Greylock. And your host. And I believe the smallest feature can make.

Or break. Your product. The challenge is recognizing the impact of that feature. And making sure. It's actually positive.

As a founder or a product manager, you should always be on the lookout. For small changes. that can have an outsized impact. While small changes typically lead to Incremental improvements.

Every so often. The impact. is exponential. I wanted to talk to Whitney Wolf Hurd about this. Because both of the product she's launched are known for a single

Distinguishing feature that set them on the course for massive growth. She was a co-founder. of the dating app Tinder. Famous.

Swipe right. On potential matches. After leaving Tinder. She founded another dating app. Bumble.

which has grown to fifty million users and two hundred million dollars in revenue. Bumble success. Also lies in the seemingly small tweak. Whitney made to the established dating app format. Like Tinder.

Users swipe through profiles of potential matches. If they like what they see. If not. The swipe left.

If two users swipe right on each other's profiles. They can message each other. But here's the key difference. On Bumble. Women.

Have to make the first move. This tweak. Doesn't just change. How dating apps work. It aims to change

How dating works. Period. It rewrites our cultural About how people connect. And connecting with people.

Understanding what makes them tick has always been Whitney's drive. I remember telling my father right before I went to college, I want to go into advertising, I want to go into marketing, I wanna connect with people. And I remember my dad saying, I don't know if that's advertising and marketing that you're saying that you're passionate about. I think you're passionate about something else. As it turned out, Her father was right.

So I show up at university and I try to apply to the advertising department. Well, I flung to the exam. Bomb it. I did not get accepted. And it was shocking to me because every question on that exam.

Lacked empathy and emotion. There was no human connectivity involved. It was all about eyeballs on the commercial that you played. It was clear. From the cold hard numbers staring out from that exam paper that Whitney wasn't cut out. for that type of marketing.

She wanted something. With more heart. And soul. I ended up going into humanities and studying global studies. So the classes I took were globalization. What's the impact of putting a smiling Ronald McDonald versus a frowning Ronald McDonald in different countries?

It changes the game. It's all about humans and emotions and connecting with the individual, wherever that individual is. It's hyper locality. And that's marketing. Whitney is remembering here a famous corporate case study. It turns out.

That certain cultures Mistrusted The broad smile. Of Ronald McDonald. When Ronald offered a more subdued expression

Customers poured in. This learning. For McDonald's of all places. Stuck with Whitney. And there's a lesson in it.

For all of us. If you recognize Both the universals. Of human nature. And the hyper local nature of human culture.

You can literally Turn a frown. Upside down. From millions. Of potential customers.

Whitney brought this ability to read a room And the market. with her to tender. It was twenty twelve, and Whitney was visiting college campuses to promote the app. Strangers connecting was not something that

that that group of people, millennials if you will, wanted to touch. I was really taking it and convincing my peers that it was great to connect with people you didn't have access to. Whitney visited dorm rooms and student unions, convincing people to give the app a try. Her persistence and persuasion pulled them in.

But what kept them using it was Tinder's secret weapon. The swipe. And it's fascinating to see that you can take a virtually similar product because let's be real with each other, Tinder was not the invention of dating apps. They've been on the market for a very long time.

and not just one or two. I mean there's a full app store of them. Okay. The famous tender swipe. That wasn't actually in the very first versions of Tinder. But the novel mechanism that required users to both like each other.

Was there. People tapped a green heart for yes and a red X for no. It was this tweak to the dating experience that set Tender apart from the other dating apps that filled the app store. And this small tweak? Soon.

had people swooning for it. Nowadays, you can swipe for just about anything. Shoes, apartments, tweets, dinner options, baby names. When you want to adopt a pet or even a child. The swipe has become as much a part of our shared user interface as the double click.

Or the desktop. Trash cab. The swipe made Tinder hugely popular. Within two years of launching, it was processing a billion swipes per day. But the swipe also contributed to a darker side of the Tinder experience.

It was a side. Whitney and her tender co founders had not foreseen. We had this product. And we were getting all of these people to basically get on it and then go free. Mat with each other, talk to one another.

You're on it now? Do as you want. But no one had really been able to Imagine. Just what could come. I don't think at that time we were thinking, well, people are going to get married and have babies, or this is gonna end in a really dangerous date.

Small changes to a service. can amplify behavior. For good or bad. And it's hard to rein in. Once this change

has caught imaginations А вот і Love about your product. Although these small tweaks

Can be the key. to hitting massive scale. They can also have Unintended consequences. beloved.

the new approach to finding matches. Like a pompous monarch. A simple flick of your finger. Could decide the fate of a person. You could select someone as a potential suitor or banish them from your life.

Forever. Many of those matches were based on nothing more than a profile picture. And a brief self introduction. There were worries, but That the casual flicking through hundreds of profiles

was desensitizing. It encouraged people to Other human beings. in milliseconds.

At worst It encouraged people. To be shallow. And insensitive. Predatory

And vain. And this affected How people viewed each other. And how they interacted.

Tinder. Soon became A buyword. For meaningless hookups. The platform.

was also rife. With reports. A misogyny. And harassment. No one was thinking of the consequences.

And I think what I learned from my time at Tinder was The minute you encourage someone to use a piece of technology, you're inherently responsible. And so I think that always lingered with me as I was there and then as I left. What are the consequences of this technology? And I think what we've seen with this explosion of tech dating or

tech meetups is there is a dark side to it. Whitney got firsthand experience. Of this dark side. When she left Tinder. following an acrimonious departure.

After leaving. She filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against the company. As part of the settlement. Whitney is very restricted and what she can say about that time. But she can talk about the aftermath.

And the very public attacks she was subjected to. I became under attack by strangers. And so I was on the other end of what it might feel like to be exposed on the internet.

to people. When I was being bullied online. I just couldn't understand why this was the place that young girls and women were meant to be all day long. And I think that was

really what started to shape. The next thing for me. It was a dark time for Whitney.

Her resolve. to try to make a change. To how people talk to each other. Online. I really started thinking, how can I approach this from a unique perspective and take my experience that I've had in building a brand

building a user base and then my understanding of data and technology at this point. How can I really rethink social media in the context of kindness? And I understood that. Just like bad behavior can become addictive and viral. Good behavior can also be contagious and kindness can also be contagious. This is proven psychological theory. Note how Whitney

Wasn't simply throwing up our hands and saying the technology itself was a problem. Rather The optimistic product creator in her believed there were good aspects To social networking. We just needed to tweak the technology.

In such a way it amplified the good while mitigating the toxic. But you could claim that altering the entire way discourse on social media was conducted was a lofty. And perhaps foolish. Goal.

Even if well intentioned. However Lofty goals. Do not necessarily fail. Because they are too ambitious.

Rather They can sometimes fall apart. Because the methods to make them happen. Are too forceful. Imagine the options of

For saving the earth. From an imminent asteroid impact. The most forceful. And spectacular. Who they launch a barrage of nuclear warheads and blow it out of the sky.

However While that might Solve? The problem The resulting debris cloud.

New things to worry about. Goodbye Satellite Network. Telecoms and GPS systems. Hello, Radioactive Rocks raining down upon us.

A safer approach. A carefully calculated. Amount of explosive. Do this close enough to the asteroid.

And we could tweak. Its orbital path. Nudging it off. It's collision course. With our planet.

And avoid. Blowing that asteroid to smotherines. Similarly. Whitney didn't want to explode the norms of online behavior. She wanted to nudge them.

In the right direction. Her idea was a social network. Name. Merci. That had one small

But impactful difference. to all the other social networks. that had gone before. The caveat was you couldn't just leave a random comment. No comments, only compliments. And this was in an effort to engineer and to create contagious digital behavior. Note.

How Whitney pictures that cascade effect That this Small tweak. Could have. Instead of just a simple like, it would be a like attached to a compliment. And those compliments were going to be very much focused on non-physical compliments. So instead of saying somebody looks thin or somebody looks beautiful, it's going to be, you know, you light up my day, or when you walk into a room, people feel happy.

it was going to be compliments that were very much focused on the antithesis of what society has really focused on, which is beauty and weight and a lot of these more superficial accolades, which I was trying to get away from. Whitney was caught up in this idea. She was certain That making the right tweaks

To the standard bluprint for social media. could change things for the better. She was also certain that Of one other thing. I never wanted to s hear the word dating again.

When something out of the blue happened and The dating world came knocking on my door. It was my now business partner who's been instrumental in Bumble. He is a pioneer of the dating space. Just

Not so much domestically, very much overseas. That partner is Andre Andreev. Founder of the dating network. Badu He was excited at the prospect of applying the Mercy model to online dating.

But at first Whitney wasn't interested. I said, No, Andre, I don't think you understand. It's not gonna happen. We basically spent days and days negotiating over how could I change the internet for women and girls and how could he be happy

By working with me. Andre and I got fortunate to run into each other. Because Had I sat in a room with

Any other entrepreneur particularly any other male entrepreneur. I just don't know if they would have seen what I was trying to say. And he understood so clearly because he'd been dealing with data. and insights of user behaviour for a decade.

And he knew firsthand that if you can't get women, you really have a lopsided experience. And so as he heard me really speaking passionately about This concept of making a safe digital ecosystem for girls and women, I think he had his own aha moment, which was Wait a second, this doesn't mean we need to go our own ways and we can't work together.

If I can convince her to do a dating app, maybe she can find a way to build this mission into dating. Whitney found herself back in the dating app game. It was the last place. She had expected.

Or wanted. to be after Tinder. She just had to hit on the feature that would set Bumble apart. Discovering this small tweak would reignite Whitney's passion. for an industry that had burnt her out.

And it just might change the entire way. Online dating worked. We'll hear all about Whitney's journey back into the dating app world. Right after the break. When you've built substantial wealth through your business, it's often tied up in a single equity position.

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Hey listeners, Bob here. If you listen to Rapid Response on Masters of Scale, you may be missing half the show. Because every Friday we release a second rapid response exclusively in the Rapid Response feed. The guests and topics are just as compelling and timely from Ford's CEO to NASA's administrator to the lessons from The Devil Wears Prada. It takes about 10 seconds to find, just search rapid response wherever you listen to podcasts and hit follow to make sure you never miss an episode. I hope to see you there. Humans will never be more intelligent than AI. There's gonna be two types of companies.

Those were great at AI and those that went out of business because they weren't. How do we build a future? That is human centered. I'm Rana El Chayubi. And on my podcast Pioneers of AI, we answer that question and so many more. As an AI scientist, entrepreneur, and investor, I know what it takes to build AI that works for everyone. Every week, I sit down with the pioneers shaping our future. And we take you behind the scenes of the AI that's transforming our lives.

Find pioneers of AI wherever you tune in. Before the break. Whitney took the unexpected leap. Back into the world online dating apps with their new business partner, Andrey Andreev. And they were determined to find a way to break

From the rampant toxicity that was becoming the norm. We were sitting around and Kind of banging our heads against the wall. And saying, Okay, what's this gonna do? What's this gonna do? And I was sitting there and I said All right, I need to understand dating. What's broken in dating? What's broken in dating? And all of a sudden I just had this

somewhat hurricane moment in my mind. And I said to him, Okay, I think I've got it. What if we take the standard dating platform? But there is a catch.

Once the match takes place, Only the woman can initiate conversation. So this is basically like a woman and a man locking eyes at a bar. But he has no way to contact her, and she understands that he's interested because that match or that lock eye has taken place. But it's on her.

The only way to have contact is that she has to unlock it. So I said women must make the first move. This is going to reduce harassment, this is going to reduce bad behavior, women are not going to be spammed, and women will be empowered and encouraged to actually be in the driver's seat. The more Whitney thought about it. The more she saw the potential to rewrite the rules of not just dating.

But social interaction. It was another small tweak, but They could have a massive effect. We essentially made very subtle design changes in the sense that the user flow was very familiar, right? We weren't trying to reinvent the wheel, we were just trying to reverse it. And so everyone was familiar and comfortable with the experience, yet There was that caveat.

of once that match was made, the woman had to speak first, which was so contradictory to what the expectation had been the past hundreds of years of dating, and then of course the past few years of digital dating. And so It truly was such a small product change, but with such an interesting Social Impact. But even

Such a simple concept. Explained in such a simple way. was hard for people to grasp. We have to really reshape behavior because

Women are taught not to make the first move. Women are taught not to speak first. They're taught never to send that first message, never to initiate. And men are taught to be very aggressive and really beat down that wall until she says yes. That's Disney. That's everything. And being the beast. Exactly. Cinderella. The carriage you know is gonna turn into a pumpkin at midnight. And I said those words, I said

You've twenty four hours to make the first move. Otherwise. Your carriage turns into a pumpkin. And we have to take such a

simplified notion of these gender dynamics, quite literally down to Cinderella. Trying to convince people Your way. is a problem familiar to anyone introducing a new product.

Or a new way of doing things. Especially as people might not even consciously know what it is they want. This is something Marissa Meyer came up against in the early days of working on Google search. We did a test where we did 10, 20, 25, and 30, because at the time Yahoo was serving twenty results per page and some people were serving as many as thirty results per page and we wanted to see what the optimal number of results per page was.

When Marissa and her team asked users how many results they wanted per page, There was a clear preference. I'd ask people in some of our early user studies how many results would you want? They'd be like, twenty, great, twenty five, even better. Thirty best of all. However. When Google tried serving different numbers of results per page

They found quite a different Answer. The answer was ten. It was fascinating actually because One of the key measurements was how many searches per user would be done, how many pages deep would they go, how many times they have to revise, things like that. We looked at like first page search results requested per user.

And Basically, it fell off dramatically between 10 and 20. Twenty-five was even worse. Thirty was worse of all. The results were really dramatic. It turned out

of having more results per page. was offset. By a different factor. One that was barely perceptible and Yet extremely important to users.

Even if They didn't realize it. Consciously. The thing that popped What

It actually took Google longer. To prepare more results. And so one of the things I've always talked about is that latency and time matters a lot more to people than they can usually articulate. Yes. Part of it was that people just didn't want to wait that extra split second. One of the big advantages of Google is it just was that fast, but waiting longer for more results was just something people generally didn't want to do, especially given that the first 10 results were generally good enough. Google didn't need to convince their users that fewer results were better. They could just serve up the optimum number. Ten.

Safe in the knowledge. That this is what people preferred. Despite what they might say. However Whitney face the challenge of trying to change the way people interact.

This is especially difficult when it's something as personal as dating. A lot of women that first heard the idea. Why am I gonna text for I'm not What do you mean? Why would you ever do that?

That doesn't make sense. Building the new system was the trivial part. The really important thing was working out how to make these new and unfamiliar ways of behaving become second nature.

The light. In the new approach. So how did you start building that new norm? Well, that was really hard. Yes, I that was really tricky. Uh, especially you have to understand where I was at that time.

Whitney was still dealing. With a radioactive fallout. Surrounding her tender departure. Getting people to follow you down an unfamiliar path. It's tough.

Even when you're not a pariah. I had a scarlet letter on me. No one wanted to talk to me. Nobody wanted to work with me. And nobody wanted to download anything I

was telling them to download. It was a trying time, and there was not a lot of supporters, and that's why. That early team that I gathered, you know, they're still with us today. And we had to

Push really, really hard. So what was the was it persistence? Was it techniques to surprise and delight? Was it addictive kindness? What were the set of things that start moving that norm? So back to the smiling Ronald McDonald or the frowning Ronald McDonald. It was all about the way you position this. So you could say to a group of guys, Hey, download this platform.

You have to behave if you are disrespectful, you're going to have consequences, and women are the bosses, they're in control, and you have no power. They might run for the house. in twenty fourteen. Or you could say Hey guys, aren't you tired of constantly being the one that has to reach out and just getting rejected time and time again? I mean

That has to be hard for you, right? That must be tiring to constantly have to put yourself out there and get turned down nine out of ten times. Well, there's this new product where When you mutually like somebody They come to you.

by reframing the bumble approach as being positive. For everyone. Whitney hoped. Everyone. would embrace it.

It is refreshing because it alleviates the rejection from men. But it does something really special. on the other side. The whole notion of bumble Is really

to recalibrate these norms, right? You think about pre-bumble connecting online or even connecting in general. The man starts with the power. The woman is meant to be, you know, damsel in distress.

And so that creates this And balance. It sets up a very dangerous toxic framework. The whole effort is to take some of that pressure and that aggressive nature away from the man and to infuse. Confidence.

Respect, empowerment, equality, accountability. And this lifts the woman up. And it really balances it out. The internet. can be seen as a distorting mirror that emphasizes and compounds

The uglier aspects of human interaction. However It can also be a prism. That refracts new ways of relating to each other. Back out into society.

So where you think about whether it's cat calling on the street or on a digital platform, men constantly trying to get someone's attention and being rejected at all times, this feels aggression, this feels abusive behavior, this creates toxic behavior. And I'm not saying bad behavior cannot happen on Bumble. Trust me. You know, we know everyone that has scaled a business to any extent, even to A thousand users. You can never control humans. But what you can do is try to point them in the right direction.

Unfortunately. We can't make a bumble like rule. for interaction in real life. Putting an end to the cycle of abusive behavior. will take more than a few nudges, a few tweaks,

a few new features, and it will need years to take effect. And this is part of the huge power of technology. We can build interaction on the terms we choose. We can also experiment with the rules of engagement. And in doing so

Maybe the norms we adopt. Will eventually filter out. Into wider society. But there is always the danger of unexpected consequences. Even in the controlled interactions,

Like those on Bumble. Initially. Bumble gay women. twenty four hours to send the initial message to men they had matched with. They didn't?

Then the chance was gone. However Men could take as long as they wanted to respond. They might take a day. That might take a week.

And so here we launch this product and you know we have the best intentions in mind, genuinely. Like we really have a northern star of how do we end misogynistic behavior in relationships. Okay, well let's start by empowering women, but not in an effort to destabilize men, but to invite them in Well, what we realized was by giving women this time restraint. But letting men respond at their own free will. This was actually going backwards.

anyone any favors. And so we needed to hold both parties accountable. Bumble added in a requirement for men to respond within twenty four hours. Or lose the chance. It was another example.

Made with the best intentions. Can have an unforeseen Negative impact. How do you avoid making these mistakes?

Or when you make them. How do you course correct? As rapidly as possible. For Whitney. The answer is through keen observation.

And a deep understanding. Of your users. The users Are what Give us

Every move we make. Except for the very first move, right? It started somewhere, but then they took it and they drove it. And so women came to us and they're like, Hey, listen We get why you're giving us a twenty four hour time restraint. We like it because Kinda makes us move, but I don't think it's fair that he doesn't have to respond to me. We heard it once.

Totally recognized it. Heard it twice. It was in development. We moved fast. And we personally apologize and thank them. Thanks for helping us tweak this.

Mm. This is an approach the Bumble Team has brought to Chapby, its dating product for gay men, which launched in 2016. When you think about gay dating apps, they've actually been incredibly

non inclusive to gay men. It's been very much engineered towards anonymity and Very hypersexualized behavior. But there's never really been a product that actually facilitates dating love. True relationships. Why would we offer that to the straight community?

And why are gay men alienated from that makes no sense. And so the true goal of Chappie is to be an inclusive platform that allows men to be more than just A Casual fling. How does Chappie aim to achieve this?

Another ingenious tweak, of course. The beauty of the new chappy is that we have this sliding mode that allows men to really get what they're looking for, whether that's something casual. With no commitment, or if that's something more serious in the romantic perspective, or in fact they might be looking for friendship in which we give you a dedicated mode for that. So it's really the first app

geared towards the gay community that allows gay men to really go after whatever connection they're seeking, not one that they feel has been imposed on them by the product. Chappie features a subtle yet highly impactful change that users loved. In the same way. that an original tweak.

Set Bumble apart. from the dating app pack. Transforming the norms. of online dating. For the better.

And for Whitney. Dating is just the start. She's expanding the bumble effect. Unexpected realms.

The Bumble Rule of Interaction. That only women could initiate contact. Appealed not just In finding dates. But in finding friends.

Our users started behaving differently. I started noticing and our team started noticing young women and men alike saying Not here for dating, husband just got a job somewhere, or looking for this new life thing, right? But it had nothing to do with dating. Whitney and her team were smart enough to follow where their users went. Our users were basically hijacking our product.

to use it in a different way. We were hearing success stories. We would meet people and they'd say, I just found my roommate on Bumble. I found your roommate on Bumble, and so we built Bumble BFF. And that was platonic friendships. But dating and friendship. Aren't the only areas

bumble users have become interested in. Including one. That's Particularly. Close to home for me.

In our discussion, this is particularly entertaining'cause I recall seeing a headline that goes Bumble CO takes aim at LinkedIn. In the LinkedIn office. Yes, exactly. And uh and so what was the decision to expand beyond and what was the theory of it? Okay. Well, for the record, never wanted to take aim, don't think we could. Love LinkedIn. Big fan. Just for the record, I feel exactly the same about Bumble. Though my dating days

are long behind me. Interestingly enough, lo and behold, the Inside BFF, they start networking with each other. They don't want roommates. They don't want friends. They don't want to go to yoga. They want to build a business. They want to meet someone that works in HR recruiting or whatever it was. We went, Aha, okay. Platonic friendships is not necessarily the appropriate place for business. Let's expand beyond this. And so it was really just.

Letting the users operate as they wanted. And going with them. Note. How Bumble's users latch on to that original small tweak.

and began using it in ways Whitney and her team Hadn't imagined. This is a gift. That every smart leader knows they should make the most of. Whitney has become a master.

Of understanding what her users want. and then making the small changes to bumble. that help them achieve their goals. And as Bumble expands internationally,

She is already on the lookout. That will allow Bumble. To scale in different cultures. Bumble is not some crazy new idea that shows up and changes everything.

It's just giving people something that they've already been within them. And so going into India a place where women now are more empowered than they've ever been. Their voices are finally being heard. They've always had their voice. Priyanka says that the best Priyanka Chapra is our partner in going to India. But now it's a moment where India is really listening to women. And it's been fascinating to see women gravitate to this product. We've only been live there for a couple of short months and I think in the first few weeks we had a million first moves.

A woman making a first move in India is so culturally unheard of. that this is really an interesting moment, not just for us, but to see how this can It'll be interesting to see how it works. the degree to which you can become a force by using These kind of

communities of communication of belonging, participation, a coordination, the dance, as you were. If you can improve gender relations In multiple cultures. That will be simply awesome.

It will be. Let's hope we can have some small role in that. I think it's absolutely the case that small, simple things Can change the entire dynamic. Of how interaction works. How we see ourselves.

And our place in society. And the importance. of mutual appreciation. We just need to open our eyes. To find these tweaks.

and open our minds. Where they might take us. I'm Reed Hoffman. Thank you for listening. Masters of Scale is a Wait What original.

The show is recorded on site in California and produced at the studio inside SY Partners in New York. Our executive producers are June Cohen and Darren Triff. Our producers are Chris McCloud, Adam Skuse, Jenny Cataldo, Jordan McCloud, and Ben Manilla. Our supervising producer is Jay Punjabi. Original music by Allison Leighton Brown.

Sound design, mixing and mastering. by Brian Pugh. Special thanks. To Chris Y Lisa Schreiber. David Sanford.

Saida Sabieva. Christina González and Sarah Sandman. Visit mastersofscale.com to find the transcript for this episode, and be sure to subscribe to our email newsletter.