The Tim Ferriss Show - #316: Whitney Wolfe Herd — Founder and CEO of Bumble

Episode Date: May 25, 2018

Whitney Wolfe Herd (@whitwolfeherd) is the founder and CEO of Bumble, one of the fastest-growing social networking apps in the world. She launched Bumble in 2014 as the only dating platform where women make the first move, and in three years, her vision has led to Bumble's growth to more than 28 million users worldwide in 144 countries.Bumble launched Bumble BFF in 2016 as a friend-finding feature and Bumble Bizz for professional networking in 2017. Whitney was named to Forbes' "30 Under 30" list and has recently been on the covers of not just Fast Company, but also Forbes and Wired.Please enjoy!This podcast is brought to you by Soothe.com, the world's largest on-demand massage service. Because I've been broken so many times, I have body work done at least twice a week — so I have a high bar for this stuff. I do not accept mediocrity, and I wouldn't expect you to, either.After much personal testing, I can affirm that Soothe delivers a hand-selected, licensed, and experienced massage therapist to you in the comfort of your own home, hotel, or office in as little as an hour. I was amazed at the quality of service and convenience. Think of it as Uber for massages, available in fifty cities worldwide. Download the app at Soothe.com and use code TIM25 to get $25 off your first massage.This podcast is also brought to you by FreshBooks. FreshBooks is the #1 cloud bookkeeping software, which is used by a ton of the start-ups I advise and many of the contractors I work with. It is the easiest way to send invoices, get paid, track your time, and track your clients.FreshBooks tells you when your clients have viewed your invoices, helps you customize your invoices, track your hours, automatically organize your receipts, have late payment reminders sent automatically and much more.Right now you can get a free month of complete and unrestricted use. You do not need a credit card for the trial. To claim your free month and see how the brand new FreshBooks can change your business, go to FreshBooks.com/Tim and enter "Tim Ferriss" in the "how did you hear about us" section.Bonus: People constantly ask me "How can I get a four-hour workweek with a service business?" I tell them to download and read Breaking the Time Barrier by FreshBooks — it's free.***If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Please fill out the form at tim.blog/sponsor.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I do get asked a lot what I would take if I could only take one supplement. And the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road. So what is AG1? AG1? AG1 is a science-driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole food sourced nutrients. In a single scoop, AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut, and immune system. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free

AG1 travel packs with your first subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out. Go to drinkag1.com slash Tim. That's drinkag1, the number one, drinkag1.com slash Tim. Last time, drinkag1.com slash Tim. Check it out. This episode is brought to you by Five Bullet Friday, my very own email newsletter. It's become one of the most popular email newsletters in the world with millions of subscribers. And it's super, super simple. It does not clog up your inbox. Every Friday, I send out five bullet points, super short, of the coolest things I've found that week, which sometimes includes apps, books, documentaries, supplements, gadgets,

new self-experiments, hacks, tricks, and all sorts of weird stuff that I dig up from around the world. You guys, podcast listeners and book readers, have asked me for something short and action-packed for a very long time, because after all, the podcast, the books, they can be quite long. And that's why I created Five Bullet Friday. It's become one of my favorite things I do every week. It's free. It's always going to be free. And you can learn more at Tim.blog forward slash Friday. That's Tim.blog forward slash Friday. I get asked a lot how I meet guests for the podcast, some of the most amazing people I've ever interacted with. And little known fact, I've met probably 25% of them because they first

subscribed to Five Bullet Friday. So you'll be in good company. It's a lot of fun. Five Bullet Friday is only available if you subscribe via email. I do not publish the content on the blog or anywhere else. Also, if I'm doing small in-person meetups, offering early access to startups, beta testing, special deals, or anything else that's very limited, I share it first with Five Bullet Friday subscribers. So check it out, tim.blog forward slash Friday. If you listen to this podcast, it's very likely that you'd dig it a lot and you can, of course, easily subscribe any time. So easy peasy. Again, that's tim.blog forward slash Friday. And thanks for checking it out, if the spirit moves you. Hello, boys and girls, damas y caballeros. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers

of all different types, from philosophy, chess, business, entertainment, you name it, academia, research, to tease out the habits, routines, favorite books, favorite cereals, morning routines, whatever it might be that I think is tactical, practical that you can apply to your own life. And my guest today is Whitney Wolfe Hurd. On Instagram, you can say hello at WhitWolfeHurd, W-H-I-T-W-O-L-F-E-H-E-R-D. She is the founder and CEO of Bumble, one of the fastest growing social networking apps in the world. She launched Bumble in 2014 as the only dating platform where women make the first move. And in three years, counted out 36 months, her vision has led to

Bumble's growth to more than 28 million users worldwide in 144 countries. Bumble launched Bumble BFF, that's Best Friends Forever, Bumble BFF in 2016 as a friend-finding feature and launched Bumble Biz Tuesdays for professional networking in 2017. Wolfherd was named to Forbes 30 Under 30 list for 2018 and has recently been on the covers of not just Fast Company, but also Forbes and Wired magazines. Without further ado, please enjoy this conversation with Whitney Wolfe Hurd. Whitney, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me.

A local. A local. Here we are, Austin, Texas. Yeah. So I wanted to start at the beginning. And for those people who aren't familiar with a bit of the Genesis story and also the name itself. So how did Bumble come to be? Why did it come to be? So Bumble is somewhat of a unique story in the sense that it wasn't just a singular aha moment somewhere. It was really a response to a couple different things in life. And then, um, there was a little bit of serendipity involved. I had just started becoming the, you know, kind of the center of this attacking, you know, violent internet abuse and all sorts of strangers and random people online

were just ripping me apart all day long in the media and in the comment sections and on Twitter. And it sounds silly to think that that could affect you. Um, Oh no, I've been on the receiving end of plenty of that. Yeah. But it devastated me and it made me just, it just made me so depressed. And I started to realize that there was something wrong with the internet. I started to realize that the lack of accountability on these social networks, that was a real thing. And there was a real risk to that. And I was, I was on, you know, I was a perfect example of how dangerous it could be. And if I, at 24, who had already had a somewhat successful career and had great friends and family around me,

and I still could barely get out of bed and I could barely see straight, I mean, it just depleted every ounce of confidence that I've ever, ever had. It scared me for what it would mean for a 13-year-old or a 14-year-old or a 15-year-old who was in junior high going through this, right? And so I started to really understand the danger of the internet. And it was around that time that I started thinking, what am I going to do next? Because obviously I'm not going to just do nothing at 25 after being part of this really high-growth startup and having this awesome exposure to so many different areas of the tech industry. And so I was going to start a female-only social network where you could only be kind to one another.

So you could only share complimentary behavior. And the thought process behind it was compliments are contagious, just like hatred is contagious. What was it going to be called? Merci. Merci. Yeah. Thank you. Right?

So it was supposed to be a kind social network, which had never been done. And it was around that time that things kind of parlayed into where we are now. My now business partner in Bumble, who's been a huge force in, you know, Bumble coming to life and, and the, the course of Bumble, he tried to hire me as his CMO at his dating company. He has this huge dating company. That's the match of Europe and, and South America. His name is Andre Andreev and best name ever, ever. Right. So James Bond. Um, yeah, he's, he's pretty awesome, but he, he wanted me to go run marketing at his dating company and I thought he had lost his mind. Um, and so I told him what I was going to do. I'm going to start this new way, you know, this new age of, of social media.

And he was like, no, you're not, you're going to do that in dating with me. And I was like, you lost your mind. But we actually ended up talking through it. And the more thought I gave to this new concept of a dating app that could be engineered for women by women, then the need became more apparent. And so that's how I shifted from this concept of Merci into what is now Bumble, which was, you know, very much similar concept. If you think about it, you know, creating a brand rooted in kindness, a product rooted in good behavior, and really putting women in charge of that, creating the female internet. And, uh, that was really the beginning of Bumble. What was it? What was the first name of a Bumbler? Moxie. Moxie. Yes. I really wanted it to be Moxie.

So for anyone that's familiar with that word, it insinuates that someone has gall or guts and is brave. And because Bumble was going to be this platform turning society on its head where women were going to make the first move, which according to society, that's not something women should do. Definitely not in dating, right? I mean, it's a tale as old as time. Men do that. Men need to go first. Or so society said and says. And so Moxie was going to be the name, but I couldn't trademark it. Why couldn't you trademark it? Somebody else had totally trademarked every corner of it.

It's actually a soda somewhere. Ah, right. And then there's some big PR firm or some consulting agency that's trademarked the heck out of it, and I couldn't do it. So how did you land on Bumble then? I actually hated the name Bumble at first. I thought Bumble— How did it occur to you? I did not think of the name Bumble.

Actually, someone on our early team did, and she had actually called her husband a bumbling idiot, and she's got this British accent. She was like, you know, what about Bumble? Because we'd all been searching the internet, literally putting random letters together to come up with words. I mean, anything. What were the other top contenders? Oh, goodness. Because I've come up with leap. Yeah, because women were going to take the leap and make the first move. And actually, Leap Year is a very interesting story. So in Leap Year,

folklore says that women would propose to men during Leap Year. And so we thought Leap, and then we played with Sadie for Sadie Hawkins Dance. What is Sadie Hawkins Dance? You don't know what the Sadie Hawkins Dance is? Oh, I'm getting a lot of ugly looks. Or surprised looks. Okay, this is awesome. Yeah. So the Sadie Hawkins Dance? You don't know what the Sadie Hawkins Dance is? Oh, I'm getting a lot of ugly looks or surprised looks. Okay, this is awesome. Yeah. So the Sadie

Hawkins Dance started in the 1930s and it was based off of a cartoon by Al Capp where these women during leap year would make the first move. Essentially, they'd ask the men to marry them. And this got consolidated into a dance that U.S. school systems started putting into place. And it became so popular. You know the Sadie Hawkins dance. I do. They'd wear the poodle skirts and the black and white shoes. I know nothing about this.

Okay, you're going to have to look into this. Now, is it a dance? It's not an actual dance. It's not like a mating ritual dance. No, it's like a school dance. So you have the prom, right? Yeah. And then you had the Sadie Hawkins dance.

And the Sadie Hawkins dance was different from the prom because boys asked girls to the prom. Girls asked boys to the Sadie Hawkins dance. They asked the boy to the dance. Something really interesting took place when the Sadie Hawkins dance went into effect. It became so popular, they made it a national holiday. And it became so popular because parents felt that it was a safer option because the way the boys behaved when the girls asked to the dance was much less aggressive.

Girls were not crying, feeling left out. So it recalibrated these gender norms around flirting and dating and courting. And so that was a big inspiration behind Bumble. You know, when we were thinking about women making the first move, it was almost the digital rendition of that. Did you, you did or did not like Bumble then when it came up? I did not like it at first. And I'll tell you why. Bumble sounded like fumble. You know, you were, you're fumbling through a dating experience and we wanted this to be an app that was empowering for women where they felt confident and in control. And it was not until all of these really cute catchphrases start started being, you know,

coming, coming up people on our team and friends when, you know, we're asking, what do you think about this name or this name or this name? And all of a sudden, um, these catchphrases were coming up, like, you know, be the queen bee of Bumble, find your honey on Bumble. Right. And it was in that moment that we said, okay, this is it. This is brand ability. This is how you brand something. And that was, that was it off to the races. We went, yeah, if it sticks, it sticks. One of the first things I ask proofreaders, who are typically friends of mine who are writers or lawyers, because they're really good at spotting sloppy language or words that don't need to be there or things that are confusing.

In any case, one of the first questions I ask after they've read a chapter is I will give it some time, say like a half hour, have a cup of coffee, and I'll say, okay, what do you remember? Interesting. And I'll see what the first few things are that come to mind. That's really interesting. All right, I've got to keep that in mind. It tells you a lot about top of mind.

Like, yeah, don't think about it too hard. Yeah, just read it and then see what sticks. And if it takes too long, it's like, all right, I need to rework the entire chapter. No, I think that's really interesting advice. Now, how many people roughly at this point use Bumble? I know there are many, many different metrics and ways that you can go about it. We look at kind of overall user base in terms of registrations.

How many times has somebody downloaded our platform? How many people have registered for our app? We've had over 29 million registrations now in just over three years. Yeah, that's a lot of people. That's a few people, yeah. Part of the beauty of the approach, and I know that there's a lot of complexity hidden behind a very simple interface, believe me, with the amount of time that I've spent with startups,

I started using Bumble very early on. I'm not going to call it alpha or beta, but very early on. And what I realized very quickly is that by having the woman make the first move, you also remove one of the biggest pain points. And you know this from men, which is women receiving 500,000 unwanted messages. And even if Prince Charming is hiding in there, even if you are the one she would pick, it's too much noise. The signal to noise ratio is so unfavorable

that as a guy, you could put out 100 messages and get zero responses. And it just cuts out that first leg of wasted work completely. So thank you for that. Well, that's awesome feedback. Thanks. It's interesting that you highlight that, that just plays into these gender dynamics. You know, women from the time they start thinking about who they like or having crushes, it's that it's going to be inbound, right? That we're

trained to think that's going to come to us, that, that the boys are supposed to chase the girls. And, and then that turns into the men chasing the women and, and that we're supposed to essentially play hard to get and not give in. Right. And so when the good guy does show up, you oftentimes miss that given those, you know, those broken dynamics. And so, yeah, when you do flip the switch, it does allow for better and more genuine connections. So people might be listening or watching, and they've read a bit about your story, and you're on top of the world, right? In so many ways, stepping up to the plate, hitting home runs every time. I don't know about that. But you mentioned when we got started this,

this depressive period, this dark period. So I wanted to read something that I found in the course of doing some research and it may be, uh, paraphrase, but I think it's, it's somewhat accurate based on checking with you beforehand, but I don't know the elaboration. So the quote here, it's from Refinery29, and it talks about how you wanted to build a company that encourages empowerment, confidence, and respect, because when you have self-respect, it's really hard to get you down. This is the part I wanted to dig into for a second. I've been in a place in my life where I've had no confidence, no self-respect, zero self-worth, and it was really easy to hurt my feelings. Anything would trigger me to be sad. Then when you rebuild some of that, you become stronger.

So I was hoping you could describe for us whether it's that episode, that period that you talked about or another, like just one of the darker, harder times and what a day looked like during that time. And then the things you did or the things that helped you get out of that depressive state. And it doesn't have to be depressive. Could be anxiety, could be anything else. Um, well, you know, and I still have days like that. And I think that's healthy for listeners or watchers to understand that just because something's going well or what, you know, what people perceive to be going well, doesn't mean every day is perfect. And I think the hard times in my life have really shaped the good times in my life.

And I think many people can agree with that. So, you know, the inspiration behind Bumble was really driven from self, you know, self-experience and what I've gone through in my life. Basically, there's been a common theme with every tough time I've ever gone through, and that always comes down to mental abuse. And that has been not just in romantic endeavors, that could be friendships, toxic friendships. And so there's been this recurring theme. And when I was under so much scrutiny from the internet, from strangers, and I was allowing these random strangers to define me and to dictate my day. Can you think of any particular example?

I personally can certainly think of certain examples. I'm like, oh my God, that one year when that thing came out on my birthday and it was a hatchet job piece. Can you think of one where you're like, oh God, that day? So it was actually right after my birthday. Funny you say that. It was the summer of 2014, and all of these articles were running. And I wasn't speaking to anyone.

I wasn't commenting on any articles. I knew nothing about the media at that time, nothing. And I could not have been more naive when it came to PR and press at that, at that time. And yeah, there'll be dragons got to be careful. Yeah. And, uh, you know, this story came out one morning, one afternoon, my dad sent it to me and it was disgusting. It was talking about, you know, basically the, the piece painted me as this, um, you know, like at the gone girl of tech, you know, she was a seductress and da da da da da and all of these awful, you know, insinuations. And it was talking about ridiculous things, like really personal

details that were completely inaccurate. And it was really gross and ugly. And it just made me feel undressed. What was your dad's commentary? Well, and that was what was so devastating. My dad was just like, you know, having your father send you an article and be like, is this true? Like, of course, no. But what, you know, how do you have to justify that at 24 just turning 25 years old to your father? How irresponsible can journalism be that no one asked me for comment on that? No one asked if those allegations were true.

And to be this young woman feeling like I was part of this mean girl club was, you know, being pointed at and laughed at by a group of people. I mean, it was awful. What was the, what did the rest of your day look like? I was devastated. I actually became physically ill. So my, he's now my husband and thank God for him. He, I was having such a mental breakdown. I was actually having what they call a clinical panic attack. I was hyperventilating. I was dist such a mental breakdown. I was actually having a, what they call a clinical panic attack.

I was hyperventilating. I was distraught. I couldn't breathe at my site was not right. And he had to take me to his primary doctor, like his family doctor. And the doctor literally had to prescribe me one to two days worth of some, what? I don't know.

I don't take any medicine. I'm scared of even Advil, but I think it was like Valium or something to physically calm me down. I was having a mental breakdown because I had no way to defend myself and I just felt helpless and I felt literally undressed on a huge stage and it was awful. Yeah, it's not a great feeling at all. And it's even worse for women. It's bad for men, but it gets even worse, I think, for women. It can be terrible for men, don't get me wrong. It was talking about very misogynistic things

that really only apply to women, and that's what made it worse. Making insinuations about who I was as a woman and my intentions as a woman. It wasn't even about business, if that makes sense. You know, it was, it was very, it was very stuff is really, uh, salacious and exciting compared to the business stuff. So people like to paint the picture. I got some clicks. Uh, no, one thing I'd love to chat about, cause it came up in a number of places when I was doing homework for this. And this is certainly not uncommon among founders I know. People think, oh, well, when the times are going well, you're doing well. When the

times are going poorly, you're doing poorly. But a lot of founders, even when their startups are doing really well, have a certain baseline of low-grade or high-grade anxiety. I'm on the high, high plus grade side of that. I've heard at points, tell me if it's the internet, so who knows if this is true or not, but at some points you're waking up every two hours to check your email, or you'd wake up at 4.30, check your email, then go back to sleep and wake up again at 6.30. I did that for years.

You did that for years. Actually, that has just now started to slow down. And I still do it sometimes. Have you always been anxious? Has that been a sort of an emotional home of sorts? I think it's anxiety paired with drive and ambition and passion. I'm so dedicated to what I'm doing. I can't explain it to you.

I mean, it's just part of my blood at this point. And it's almost like it's built part of my blood at this point. And it's almost like a, it's built into my system. So yeah, that anxiety has been really scary over the years. And there's days where, you know, I couldn't feel my fingers for hours, or I didn't think I could breathe. I mean, this started manifesting into physical ailments and God bless my doctor. He's really going to have to block my cell phone number at some point, but you know, it's, it's scary if, if you don't deal with anxiety, it will take advantage, it will take control over your life. How have you dealt with it? What are the habits

or routines or self-talk, anything that has helped you to keep it from going from a fuel to a handicap and something that really takes control. It definitely has become a handicap at points, but I would say 85% of the time it's a fuel. And actually back to the doctor talk, my doctor said something really interesting to me and it's something that stuck with me. I said to him one day, I was like, I don't know if I can deal with this anymore. My anxiety is just so extreme. It's paralyzing me at certain points. Do I need to get on a medicine? Do I need to be medicated for this? And he responded, just keep doing good work. It will, it will let, you know, recalibrate the way you feel. And when I thought through that and I was like, you know what,

if I can channel this energy and this anxiety and channel it into doing good work, meaning work that affects others in a positive way, it genuinely works. It actually, if you shift your focus, you have to shift it and you have to, you've got to harness it and control it. And my husband's great about this too. You know, he's just like, what are your thoughts? Let's get your thoughts under control, you know, and how do we harness this and just, you know, focus on what's causing this and then how do we shift it into something that's positive versus you, you know, doing the self-doubt thing on repeat. Now, do you do that with any type of help like journaling or is it just a conversation with your husband? Are there any, when you feel it starting to spiral, I mean, do you have pattern interrupts that you can use?

Yeah, you know, I try to get outside and take a walk and leave my phone. And I found that that's really helpful. And also sleep. Nothing is more nourishing to your mind, body, and soul than a good night's sleep. And I think if you can have uninterrupted sleep for even if you're a person that's like,

oh, I only need five or six hours of sleep. If you can try to have a good seven, eight, nine hour sleep, it really changes the game. Yeah. One thing that I've also observed, and I think these are actually very closely related in some people, but that at least for people with depressive symptoms, going to bed before or by say 11 o'clock makes a very big difference in the quality of sleep. In other words, sleeping from 2 a.m., if you're, let's say, self-employed and have disability or unemployed,

to sleep from, say, 2 to 10 is not the same caliber of sleep that you're going to get from 11 to 8 or 11 to whatever it might be. I completely agree. So I'm going to flash back to books specifically. And I had read at one point, A, I don't think we're going to spend a ton of time on this right now, but you ask about your team's mood every day, which I thought was very interesting

and have them rank it. But what I caught at the end of this, I was curious about. So it says, a box in the corner contains copies of originals, subtitle, How Nonconformists Moved the World by Adam Grant. And Wolf tells everyone to take one home

so they can have a group discussion. Why did you choose to do that with this book? And do you do it with other books? Are there other books that you've also used for employees in the company or leaders, whatever it might be? So like we were saying earlier, internet time is like different time zone from every other measure of time. When we were doing that, we were a team of something like six or seven. I got you. We were really a tiny team. We were still in our apartment and our conference room was in a bathtub and we were really just trying to keep

the wheels turning. And I felt that a good mechanism of kind of keeping everyone as fast and as crazy as it was all going, keeping everyone on some form of a thread of commonality, you know, where there'd be something everyone could talk about together that wasn't Bumble, right? So how could we have interesting conversation together as a small team that wasn't just like, okay, what are we going to do with our downloads? Or what new product are we going to do? How could we focus on kind of interesting insights from someone else? And so we did kind of a poll early on. What book should we read together? Let's try to do a book club together.

And this was at one of those pivotal moments of growth. And so it did not last very long. The book club. The book club did not last. But the intentions were good. The intentions were good. And everyone really liked the idea of trying to turn off. Another purpose of that was I was trying to encourage the team to turn off a little bit at night. And instead of, you know, getting deep into your emails after you've come home from dinner,

open a book, you know, read, detach, do something that is going to challenge your mind in a way that you're not being challenged all day long. And so that was the premise of it all. And as you grow, we're now approaching 100 employees here soon. It's very hard to do a check on how you're feeling every day. You can't really go around the room with so many people. And it's really hard to get everybody together for book club when things are just going so fast.

Yeah. Are there any books personally that you've gifted often to other people or reread a lot yourself? Yes, I have. Several different books, but two that we can talk about. Something I've always gifted and just kind of held close over the years is the book Shantaram. Have you read Shantaram? Okay.

I became obsessed with Shantaram. Like I tried to join a Shantaram fan club online, like a book club. It got weird for a second. But the point is I loved Shantaram and I loved that it took you into this different element of human understanding. And I wanted my team to read it because I think it's actually a great marketing example, how to build a product based on human behavior and how to understand people around you and what makes people tick, not just what's the ROI on some billboard, right? And so I don't know what it is about that book. I can't summarize

it in one sentence, but it just gives you a peek into the soul of humanity, if that makes sense. And so that's a book that I've, I've gifted frequently and I love. Yeah. Fascinating story. Also, the author has a really good, effectively, uh, goodbye public world. You're not going to hear from me for a while. I'm going to continue to do my work, but I'm not going to appear anywhere. I'm not going to do anything. And he made this public proclamation, which I thought was very inspiring, since I fantasize about that all the time. But this book, a very powerful story that catches people,

very often catches people at the right time. What's the second book? So Back to the Right Time, when it catches people at the right time. I actually the second book? So back to the right time when it catches people at the right time. I actually read that book. I, when I graduated from college, I went and got a backpack at REI and went to Asia for a couple to a few months. I have no concept of years or time anymore. And while I was over there, I spent time in Singapore and throughout several cities, but I also spent time solo at, um, orphanages in Northern Thailand, in Cambodia, um, and then did a lot of travel through that area. And that was the book I read on that trip. And so I think as you are sitting

on this bus that breaks down with a bunch of local Cambodians eating crickets, reading Shantaram, you're almost taking yourself out of everything you've ever known to be true and understanding how big and vast and how great the world is around you and really how small one is, right? You know, it just gives you so much perspective. So that's one book. Another book that I've been gifting, and he should probably make me an ambassador, so if he listens to this,

this book called The Plant Paradox. Have you heard of it? No. Oh, this will destroy your life in a good way. So it's basically telling you that everything you've ever heard about health and wellness is completely false. So he tells you plants are bad for you, essentially. And I don't know what it is about this book, but it might be a little bit of hocus pocus, but I've, I'm a full

believer. And so I think I've sent that book to like a hundred people at this point. How has it changed your behavior or? Well, a big thing for me as I've been working so much, I'm also starting to understand how health catches up. So for the first few years of Bumble, I mean, I was drinking every night, not at a club. I mean, I have not gone out. I've not been social like a normal 20-something-year-old since I started Bumble. Actually, I became almost a hermit. I became very reclusive, and I just wanted to be with my boyfriend who became fiancé, now husband.

And I just wanted to be with people that I really knew and trusted. And I didn't want to go anywhere because I was so paranoid that everyone hated me or assumed these awful things about me that I genuinely just went to work, went home, maybe cooked dinner, maybe cried a little bit, maybe drank some wine, and that was it. And so this health thing has become a bit more important now, you know, here you go to work and you can create as much success as you're able to, but you have nothing without your health. You have nothing without your mental health. You have nothing without your physical health. And so that's why I'm kind of getting, you know, into these, these, these books. Um, because I think it's important to have that type of balance. Has it changed your diet or anything like that?

Yeah, it actually has. It scares you about what you're putting in your body. So it just makes you think. So what might a default breakfast or lunch or dinner look like for you now? Oh, gosh. That's a crazy question. There is no default. It's whatever I can find generally.

But now I'm trying to be more thoughtful. So the rules, according to this guy, are that everything you put in your body is essentially your health, right? And you are what you eat. And so even getting a piece of organic chicken, what you used to maybe think was good for you, well, what is that chicken eating, right? And so it's just this awful rabbit hole that you go down. But it's interesting, and it's important to understand the effects on the planet, and that's a conversation for another time. All right, cool. I'll check it out. Everything you put in your mouth, on your body, is a drug.

If it has a biochemical effect, so you have to think of it that way. When you say the plant paradox and plants are bad for you, there are a lot of plants that really don't want you to eat them. Exactly. That's what this is all about. There are a lot of them. And it made me think briefly, I'm not going to get into it, of Zuko, who is the creator slash co-creator, I'm not sure which, of Zcash cryptocurrency. Really smart guy who eats only meat. He does not eat any vegetables whatsoever. And he's been doing that for years. See, because a lot of the plants have defense mechanisms,

and they will poison you. Yeah. According to the believers. There are a lot of plants. I mean, since they are fixed in their mobility, they can't run away from predators, so they develop all sorts of very, very, very clever defense mechanisms. Apparently beans are toxic for you.

Yeah, beans. We don't have time Like apparently beans are toxic for you. Yeah. Beans this, we don't have time to get into the bean rabbit hole, but beans. Yes, this is beans. This comes up a lot. I'm not, well, I'll digress for a second just because you have very strict, like militant paleo, which is like, if you eat beans, your GI tract will explode while you're walking down the street. Like you have to be, I'm exaggerating a little bit, but like, they're like, if you eat beans, it is like swallowing broken glass. I tend to, I tend to be more moderate in my views of beans. I find them somewhat helpful

also given their fiber content and so on for a lot of things, including weight loss. But if you look at certainly many different plants that have something as seemingly innocuous as say oxalic acid which is why you get that certain feeling in your mouth when you eat a lot of say raw spinach which is can be somewhat innocuous down to saponins and other things that can they can actually do a fair amount of damage but we should title this um episode bumble and beans bumble and beans We should title this episode Bumble and Beans. Bumble and Beans. Sounds like a bad band. Bumble and Beans.

Or Bar in Austin. Yeah, that's good too. Right next to Mean-Eyed Cat. All right. Next question is, what purchase of $100 or less, it doesn't have to be exactly that, but what purchase that is not something exceptionally expensive has positively impacted your life in recent memory? Could be a few years ago, could be. That's a great question.

Coconut oil. Coconut oil. Yes. What do you use it for? Everything. You can take a bath with it. You can put it in a smoothie. You can cook vegetables with it. You can actually put it for? Everything. You can take a bath with it. You can put it in a smoothie. You can

cook vegetables with it. You can actually put it on your skin. Um, I think coconut oil is a cheap miracle buy. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. It has some really fascinating, uh, uh, like anti-fungal antibiotic properties as well. Antimicrobial, I should say. Even if you get a cut, they say you can put coconut oil on it and it helps heal it. Yeah. Coconut oil is, uh, is really fascinating on, on many different levels. Useful for a bunch of diets maybe that are contained in the plant paradox just because of the concentration of MCT oil effectively. But the... I think it's a cheap thing you should always have around. You know, you keep one in your bathtub, like next to your bathtub. You can put a big scoop of coconut oil in a hot bath,

and it just nourishes your skin. And it's actually calming and relaxing. And then you keep one in the kitchen and do everything with it. Yeah, coconut oil. Almost used to cook the other day, but the burning point is not high, not low. It's around the same. I believe it's around the same as olive oil something like smoking points around 350 yeah i think it can

be i think it can go a little higher than olive oil apparently olive oil is bad for you okay i don't want to go yeah yeah for cooking purposes yeah all right so olive oil varies greatly uh your mileage may vary with your olive oil purchase, says Tim Ferriss. Brought to you by Bumble. Good. Good answer. Yeah, coconut oil also keeps forever. This is very useful to have around. Also little Smithson journals. The little mini ones, they come in yellow with a B. I like to gift those to

people on my team and just their low price point. I think they're like $60 for actually a pretty big one. And you can actually have it monogrammed. Yeah. And it's just a nice little leather notebook. And I just think taking notes actually is really, really therapeutic. And it's also incredibly productive. I mean, you'd be so shocked, and I know that you know this, but I was so shocked when I started just writing things down as they came up. And the stuff I was going back to that I had written down, I would have never in a thousand years remembered had I not written it down. It's fascinating to see how much the human mind actually just disposes of in terms of memory. And so I think that's a great little gift. Yeah. It's really powerful. And I mean, you're kind of preaching to the converted since I have so many notebooks. But I think as a guy, especially, there's this mental hurdle with thinking of a journal as a diary

that I just can't leap over. Same. But if I use it as morning pages, then it serves the same function, really. I'm with you. And you have that chronicle. And it's true that we really think we are going to remember forever the things that we will very soon forget.

And that was made so clear to me. Actually, when I was 15, my first time abroad with any real time was as an exchange student in Japan for a year. Wow. Totally changed my life. Where were you? In Tokyo. Wow. I was the only, I ended up the only American in a Japanese school, 5,000 Japanese kids.

So if you want to talk about where's Waldo school uniform, the whole nine yards, that must've been incredible. Every class in Japanese. Yeah, it was wild. And I had these phone calls with my mom catching up with my parents and she would take copious notes every time after we had spoken so that,

so that she could give it to me later. And I look back at those notes and I don't remember 98% of it. I mean, now I do as a cue, but if she hadn't done that, all of those incredible experiences just would have been gone. Wow, that's fantastic.

That's really interesting. When is the last time you cried tears of joy? Yesterday. Yesterday? Got some big news. Can't tell you about it, unfortunately. Perfect. But I got some big news, and I got the news in my office with two of my, you know, kind of closest allies and very, very early employees and key members of the team.

And we all kind of freaked out, And we were screaming in my office. And HR came over and was like, what's wrong? Everyone's worried. What's going on in there? And I'm like, no, everything's great. Can't tell you what it is. You'll see in a month. But I actually cried tears of joy.

It's just, it's awesome. When certain things come up that you felt were so far away in terms of them being obtainable or actually happening, but you've worked really, really, really, really, really hard to get there. When those two pieces collide into actual reality, it's just like such an emotional thing. I also cried tears of joy about a week ago. So my husband broke us back in an awful car accident a year ago, exactly a year ago. And he had, you know, they thought he was going to be a quadriplegic. They thought he was maybe going to die in surgery.

Who knew what was going to happen? He was in critical condition for almost a week. And that hospital, I mean, I just didn't leave it. I stayed in that ICU with him the whole time. And this year, a year later, he was fortunate enough. Obviously, he's walking, thank God, and he's healthy and he's well. And we went back to the hospital exactly a year later. And he very generously with his family had donated the new intensive care center at the exact hospital and all of his nurses that took care of him for that week who were literally you know, literally holding me as

I sobbed and was terrified that they came to the ceremony. And that was just the craziest feeling to go from being in the darkest, darkest, darkest possible situation in a certain building to coming back and being in the best possible situation. That's just like a really emotional situation. So I definitely cried tears of joy that day. Where were you born and raised? Salt Lake City, Utah. That's what I thought. So when you're going through this experience with your husband, you're at the hospital, whether you're on the way there at the hospital during that period, were there any mantras or quotes or prayers or anything that you relied on to help or reminded yourself of? It doesn't have to be during that period. Uh, but I mean, or questions you asked yourself, I'm just wondering

if there's, if there's anything that you go to in moments like that, that you find, you know, I do try to tap into whatever the higher power is, right. I'm, I'm not a religious person. Um, I do feel that I'm somewhat spiritual and spirituality comes out in moments of darkness, you know, or in moments of fear. And it's interesting. You almost feel this sense of security when you feel the least secure possible. I don't know how to explain that, but it's really spooky. So actually the night before his accident, I actually had a dream, something awful was going to happen to him. And I called him that morning and I said, I feel sick. I was like six to him. And I called him that morning and I said, I feel sick.

It was like six in the morning. I woke him up early and I said, I feel sick. I had this awful dream. I need to come home. Because he was actually not in Austin at the time. And he was in Tyler where his business is. And so home is kind of, we kind of commute. I said, I need to come home.

I can't go to LA today. I've got to get home. I just don't feel good about this. And he was like, chill out. Like, I'm going to go walk the dogs. You go downstairs, like have some coffee, call me on your way to work. And I just had this sick feeling and this really bad feeling, like something's not right. Something's not right. And I called him on the way to work and he didn't answer. And I just started sobbing in the car and I had to kind of slap myself and roll

the window down and be like, you're having a panic attack. Like this is so, you had too much coffee and I just couldn't calm myself down. And lo and behold, five minutes later, you know, I got the phone call back from his, um, chief operations officer who was following an ambulance. And so that really stuck with me through the whole week. And I was trying to wrap my head around that. I was trying to, you know, decipher why did I, why am I feeling those things? So my, my message in that not to ramble is that I genuinely believe every person on this planet has a sense of intuition and it's learning how to separate that from fear or anxiety or panic and really listen to your gut. And, um, I really think that that that's what has gotten me to where I am today is that listening to your gut when you can. So, yeah, that was my only really mantra

was just to kind of listen to what was going on and try to keep it under control. So I won't go too far into this because the people who don't already think I'm crazy will definitely think I'm crazy. Oh, people probably think I'm psycho psycho i've been systematically reducing my caffeine consumption so that there's less noise in order that i can better listen to those feelings because i have found when i kind of raise the level of volume and static with adrenaline and other stress hormones.

It drowns out some of the signal. And my dog is also, and this is not that uncommon, I mean, babies and dogs, I think, also. But my dog is very much, every time, she never barks. She really rarely barks at anyone and if she barks or growls at any journalist any member of the media you know when i've ignored it it is it has within 24 hours uh ended up that i should have heeded that warning so i've used that as one of my many checkboxes of course i'm using using some more left brain as well, but I'm valuing more highly the less obvious, less perhaps structured thinking because the vast majority of our

evolution is not prefrontal cortex. Let's sit down with the spreadsheet. And so if you have a funny feeling, you got to listen to it. Yeah. It's worth, it's worth exploring that. It's so interesting. You say that because every time I'm like, damn, why did I not do that? Or why did I do that? If I think back to when I made the decision against or for something, I always had the right answer. If that makes sense. Yeah. But then you go in the other way for whatever reason. And you're kind of like, I should have listened to myself. And for anybody out there, like even in business, I think that's such a good way to have the answers because a lot of entrepreneurs,

we don't have the answers, you know, even though I've had this amazing business partner who has a lot of answers and I've been able to tap into his knowledge, there's still so many days where I have no idea what to do and you're left with one thing and that's your gut and that's it. And you have to try to listen, but I'm with you on the coffee thing. Like I've tried to have only one sip because I will literally start spinning out of control. So I'm with you on the toning it down. Yeah. And, uh, I mean, for, for people who

are wondering, well, how does that actually apply? How do you listen to it? I mean, in my case, one of the clearest examples, if I look back at the 70 to 90 startups that I've invested in over a 10 year period, right? So from like 2007 to 2017, uh, and a lot of those were passive at any given time, there are no more than like four or five active needing my help. So it wasn't, uh, it was in waves certainly, but, and not all of them make it as you know, how do you keep track of all of that? That's a whole set. We could talk about it. The whole separate conversation.

Lots of notebooks. Well, I'll give you one, one, one thing that I borrowed from Japan, actually, this is getting a little off topic, but, so there's something called the K-dits in Japan where if you look at the conglomerates, very often they will buy a company that can be a supplier or a customer for another company within their portfolio. Got it. Or that has some type of knowledge that can be transferred to other divisions.

Sure, shared resources. So every time I looked at a portfolio company, one of the ideal boxes to check was how much can they be helped by and help another company in the portfolio. Yeah, that is in the portfolio. Yeah. It's a very smart way to look at it. And that decreases the, it increases the efficiency for everyone, but also decreases the actual sort of heavy lifting that I have to do as a

solo operator. But when I look at all of those companies and there's the good, the bad and the ugly within that, as you would imagine. The gut feeling, feeling good about a company or feeling good about a founder isn't enough for me to invest. But feeling off about a founder is enough for me not to invest. I could not agree more. Right?

Because a lot of really good founders are going to have maybe not a Jobsian level reality distortion field, but they're going to be very good at selling. And they're going to be very good at persuading. And if they're not, well, guess what? That tells you something, too, because they should be. So it's very easy to drink the Kool-Aid, even if you think you're immune to their charismatic effects. So if I feel good about it, it's like, all right, trust but verify. Let's get some documentation now. Let's look at the documentation. Let's actually look at the feeling run. But yeah, exactly. And whenever I've violated that, which I did in some of the early cases where it's like, well, we have this, this lead, we have all these amazing investors. We're closing in 48 hours.

We're over subscribed, but we can fill you down and all that FOMO shit. And then I invest on it. And I'm like, I fucking knew it. I knew knew it I knew it within not even the first hour like I knew within the first five minutes I didn't feel right with that person okay so that's enough. No that's really interesting though enough mumbo jumbo but yeah actually good advice to people

seriously pay attention to that stuff there's a book for people who are thinking about how this might apply more broadly called The Gift of Fear by Gavin DeBecker, which talks about this and how people get themselves into very, very awful situations. Women especially often by not paying attention to that feeling, that nagging feeling. It's really important to pay attention to. What is one of the best or most worthwhile investments you've ever made? And that doesn't have to be money.

It could be money, but it could be time. It could be energy. Anything that you've invested into that gave you a tremendously high ROI? The best thing I've ever invested into is time and dedication into my team at Bumble. That's 100% the best thing I've ever invested in. And, you know, it's been such a, um, dedicated effort over the last three and a half years, but really investing that extra, that extra hour or that extra day or that extra thought or that extra get to know someone, right? Um, that's the stuff that counts the most because when you do that, you instill more than just a job opportunity. You know, you give more than just an opening at a company. You really

leave them with the same values and the mission becomes ingrained in them and they're able to do their job in a way that is almost immune to competition because they're so on the same page with why you started the company to begin with. What are some ways that you do that concretely, whether it's in the onboarding process or ongoing or otherwise, like anything you do on a monthly or weekly or quarterly or whatever basis? Can you give an example? Yeah. So I think that your first 10 hires are what defines the future of your business because no singular human can scale culture. It's impossible. There's no way to have the time or the bandwidth or the actual physical ability to go and instill your vision and your values in hundreds of employees as things grow, if you're so fortunate. So those

first 10 people, they are your culture warriors. And if you can invest everything you've got into those people, those people will then invest everything they've got into the people that work under them or, you know, beside them. And that's how you scale culture. And, um, so, you know, in the early days we're talking weekends, like I would do whatever I could to make experiences for my, my key early hires so that they felt, they felt like family, but in a non-boundary crossing way, right? We still had boundaries where they still had their own lives and we were trying to keep things healthy. What would be an example of? So having everyone over to my house on a Saturday and making sure that they had a great day,

but really explaining to them my pain points that I'd lived through in my life and why this company is going to make a difference and, you know, share with them how we can actually have real impact on the world, not just a paycheck or the potential to be a big, you know, valuation one day, right? How do we actually change the world through what we're doing? And changing the world doesn't necessarily mean, you know, on the main scale, you can change the world by affecting one person, right? That is putting good energy out there. And so investing that mantra and kind of putting that time and, and really finessing that, that ethos, um, has served me very well. And I'm so proud of them

because they're all now leaders in their own right. I'm, I want them to feel like mini CEOs of their own in their own way. And you know, I, if I'm not in the office for two weeks, I don't want it to be like, Oh, the boss is out because no, they're every, there's so many bosses in that office and they're amazing and they're passionate and they're inspiring and they're just as impactful as I am right to this company. And that's how I've wanted it to be. What are some of the rules, or better perhaps as a question is, what advice have you been given by mentors or others that has really helped you in the early stages of building a company? It doesn't have to be specifically hiring, but it could.

And if that's too tough or just maybe not an interesting question, just advice that you've received from mentors or key lessons you've taken away from any particular mentors. Yeah, I've received a lot of interesting advice. And I think that the more you listen and the more you absorb, the better you are. As much as I've tried to say, you know, I'm going to do this my way and your advice is nice and your advice was great, but I'm going to trust my gut and I'm going to build the company that I want it to be. I have gotten great, um, great pieces of advice from so many people. And I think that my business partner, like I said, he had been in the dating industry for almost a decade before me.

And so there were times I would call upon him and say, Hey, I'm thinking about doing this. And he'd say, well, I think you should think about it in a different way because he had been through it. And so I know this is going to sound silly, but the best piece of advice I've ever received was from my husband's grandfather. And he said, the most expensive currency in the world is experience. There's nothing better than experience. You cannot buy it. You cannot pay for it. You cannot go out and get it overnight. So tapping into people with experience and actually trusting them when you feel that they're off base, but really trusting them. That's been such good advice that served me so well because you've probably been here too. You know, here I am this like, you know, 20 something year old, a couple of years ago, I'm still 20 something year old, but

going out and doing things my own way and saying, oh, well, you just don't understand, or I want to do it my way or no, trust me, it's going to be like this. Tapping into someone who's done it before. And even if you disagree with them really thinking twice before you shut them down. And so I just think that's served me pretty well over the years is to not write off people with experience. Yeah, this, and, and furthermore, even if you feel like you're strong enough to figure it out, I mean, certainly looking at a lot of founders I know,

it can feel very isolating as a CEO. And I remember chatting with Amanda Palmer, the musician, much more than musician, certainly she's done a lot. But if people search Amanda Palmer asking for help or how to ask for help, it's extremely helpful. She's given talks on this as well, but I found it very empowering to realize at times when I have artificially isolated myself to be like, I don't want to burden other people with my shit. Like,

let me just figure this out and sit down with my notepad and get stuck in my head and chase my own tail and self-flagellate and make this all worse and then punish myself or feel upset when I don't figure it all out. And instead it's like, no, your friends want to help you. Like give them the gift of allowing them to help you. Even not your friends. Yeah. They don't have to be your friends. It's shocking. Even people that I, you know, along the journey, I kind of have this syndrome where I'm always impressed by everyone and I don't feel impressive ever. It's just something I've suffered with my whole life. And, you know, I've just, no matter who it is in front of me, it literally could be someone that, you know, career-wise isn't even on the same, you know, kind of contribution level or whatever

it is, but I'm just always impressed by people because I think it's so, it's important to really appreciate everybody else's, you know, kind of story and where they've come from and what they're doing. And so I've always been the last few years scared. Like you said, I've always been like, well, I can't ask that person for advice because they're so important and they're so impressive and they're going to think I'm annoying or they're going to think that I'm needy or they're going to think that, you know what I mean? And so I've almost dug myself into this hole of not asking enough people for help in fear of them feeling invaded or imposed on, not because I didn't care about what they had to say. So that's a really interesting perspective. And let me give just a couple of thoughts for people who are like, okay, I'm going to ask Tim for advice, uh, or ask you for advice or whatever it might be. If you're, if you want to ask anyone

for advice who you perceive is very busy, one recommendation I would make is do not say, can I take you out to lunch and pick your brain? one has time for lunch don't do the brain picking sounds awful and nobody wants to do it because it's really nebulous so the concern is I'm going to go out it's not going to be 15 minutes it's going to be an hour of them trying to figure out what they want to say and it's not going to be a good use of time so if you can say

A I know you get a thousand email if you don't have time to respond, I totally understand. But I couldn't think of a better person to reach out to. Just one thing I'm really struggling with. Here's the situation. Here's what I've tried to do or figure out already. This is how I've actually used Google.

Yeah. Right? I actually looked into it. I've tried to figure out this and this. This is where I am. Super specific question. And again, if you're too I actually looked into it. I've tried to figure out this and this, this is where I am. Super specific question. And again, if you're too busy,

totally get it. No problem. And if easier, here's my cell phone. I like that. That giving them an out, recognizing they are busier than hell, which they probably are.

And having a really soft delivery, but showing that you've put in some work that you're not outsourcing. You're like mechanical Turk stuff to them. Like do you put in some effort and show that you've done a followup to that? We actually do that in the office. So what I've told the team and what the team has really learned and they're, they do it on their own, which is amazing. If you have a problem, please don't come talk to me about it unless you have a suggested solution. Yes, absolutely. I can't just listen to problems. Come with two potential solutions.

Like, hey, Whitney, we've got a huge issue. This situation has completely crumbled and we're committed to this or whatever happened. My suggested solution is either A, we do X, Y, and Z. Or B, we could do this. And here are the consequences of both. And this is what is going to happen in each scenario. And then we can talk through that. And it goes to show that someone has actually thought through the other side of the fire. How do we get out of here? What's the exit strategy? Not just, oh, we're in a fire yeah this is so important and if you think of problem solving as an algorithm or software in a way if you add headcount to say a really inefficient

software development project it's just going to make things take longer right so the more people you have in a way you could argue this is really important, especially when you have a tiny team. But the amount of bloat and wasted money that can really cause problems doesn't increase in a linear fashion when you then have 100, 200, 500 people. If you have 500 people who haven't been coached on how to do this, it gets even more expensive. And one thing I'd add to that is, yeah, this is so important. So when I hire people, part-time, contract, full-time, whatever it might be, they learn really quickly, do not come to me, A, with a problem without a proposed solution. And if you come with a proposed solution, don't give me a 12 item multiple choice question.

You can give me your top three or four. I also want to know which one do you think we should do and why? Which one is the best and why have you gotten to that? And I might disagree with it, but it's like, put them, I want your top four options or whatever it might be three in ranked order and for you to explain why you think number one is the best. And then it's a yes, no, right. Or now let me take a closer look, but it saves so much time. And I think what's important to pair that with, and I remember Reid Hoffman, so the co-founder of LinkedIn, among many other things. I mean, the guy is an incredible investor, incredible guy. He really is. He seems amazing.

And I'll add this. I mean, I've had him on this podcast. People can look it up. But he's also, from what I've experienced of him and many people have experienced, a genuinely happy guy. It's hard to overstate how rare that is among a lot of these folks you would view as icons. So many people try to get out there and become successful as a coping. Or, you know, this is going to make me happier. This is going to make me happy. And then they get to the next level, and they're still not happy,

and then they want to go to the next level. So that's really impressive. Reed's amazing, yeah. And he taught Wittgenstein classes at Oxford also, like in his spare time. Yeah, he's like amazing. He's done a lot. And he was the fire,

he was referred to as the firefighter-in-chief by Peter Thiel. And so Reed hired a, a young guy named Ben Casanova to be his chief of staff and to handle anything and everything. It's kind of like an aid to camp position. If anyone from military is listening in any case, what he told Ben really early on was, and I'm paraphrasing here, but you can have something like a 10 to 20% football rate.

Football is just a tennis or sports analogy. Like you can have a 10 to 20% error rate for the sake of speed. Like I want you to move quickly. I want you to figure things out on your own. And like you're allowed to make mistakes. I expect you to make like 10 to 20% mistakes and just try to not make them. That's your margin of error. Which I get.

And when you tell people that in advance, it also… Manages expectations. It helps. It manages expectations and it helps to encourage them to do what both of us are suggesting. Because otherwise they're like, well, if I'm afraid that I'm going to be punished for making every mistake or slight error, then I'm going to come to you with, to try to get your opinion on everything because I don't want to get that negative, suffer that negative consequence. That's really interesting. Yeah. Yeah. It reads a stud. So just a few more. What is an unusual habit or absurd thing that you love? And I'll buy you a little bit of time.

Because when I say absurd or weird, I really do mean weird or absurd. So, for instance, I take a screenshot anytime my phone says 555 because I finished it. That's my lucky number, 555. Are you serious? I screenshot at 555. Are you serious? I swear to God, I asked my husband. I screenshot.

If anything is 555, I'm a weirdo with the number five. If I see a door that is like 555, I do the same thing. I swear to you. That's crazy. I'm not kidding. I promise you. First time I've ever run into anyone else. I have a freak thing with fives.

All right. Well, the universe has brought us here. Look at that. That's crazy. All right, keep going. I didn't mean to interrupt. That freaks me out. All right, so that's one.

Then you have someone like, say like Cheryl Strayed who wrote Wild and a hugely impressive woman has written a lot more than that she'll rearrange sandwiches because she wants every bite to contain every layer of said sandwich she doesn't want there to be a clump of avocado on one half I get that

but it's understandable, it's still pretty weird so besides your screenshotting what other odd habits or absurd things do you do or love? Well, people think this is absurd. I just think it's sweet. But I guess I'm different. I cannot sleep at night unless I text my mom goodnight and say I love you. Oh, that's sweet.

I've been doing it since I left home. I cannot sleep at night. I have to. Like last night, I was so exhausted. I'd been doing South by stuff all day. And literally, I had to roll over and get my phone and say, goodnight, mommy. I love you.

I just can't go to sleep without doing it. I know it sounds kind of crazy. I'm literally a grown woman. I'm 28 years old. I just would never be able to live with myself if the next day came and you don't get to see your mom again for whatever reason. And I just have to say goodnight and tell her I love her. I think that's a great practice. And you could argue it's even more important the older you get.

It is, yeah. And I would recommend everybody, people who've listened to this for a long time, a podcaster going to be sick of hearing this, but read The Tail End by Tim Urban, please. It really paints an incredible picture and a sense of urgency as it relates to interacting with your parents. And I think the number is something like by the time you graduate from, it may even be high school.

I don't even think it's college. You have like 300 days or something. Yeah, you've spent 80 plus percent of the time you'll ever spend with your parents before they die. Something like that. It makes me get emotional. So yeah, I think more people should do that.

So yeah, I guess you could call that absurd because you don't hear of a lot of adults doing that. So it's probably classified as absurd. But I do think that it's important. And no matter how busy you get or no matter where you are in the world, what's more important than your family? Nothing.

Yes. Yeah. I've had a lot of close friends pass away this past 12 months and it's, and almost all of them are entirely unexpected. So you just don't know. Yeah. You just don't know when your time is up or someone else's. So don't save,

don't save that stuff. Uh, in the last few years, it could be five years, two years, doesn't really matter. But what new belief, habit,

behavior, tool, anything has most positively impacted your life personally? Not the company, not your employees, but you. Is there any new habit or belief, breakthrough, breakdown, anything that has ultimately ended up having a very strong positive impact on your life? That's a really good question. You know what? Turning my phone off from time to time. Genuinely, that's helped me a lot. I think I've formed this insane tech addiction over the last few years. Just Bumble is on my phone. I mean, literally everything goes through my phone. I'm communicating with people all day, every day, and it's nonstop. And so turning it off,

putting it in a drawer for 30 minutes is actually really helpful. All right. So last or second to last question is if you could put, can't be an advertisement, but a word, a phrase, a quote, question, anything on a billboard? So metaphorically getting this out to millions or billions of people. What might you put? Well, we did it. We put be the CEO your parents always wanted you to marry. And we put that on a bunch of billboards everywhere. We actually asked that exact question in the office.

If we could share one message with the world and we had a budget to do it, what would we put up there? And that was really the sentiment that our team landed on. It just speaks to everything we're trying to do with Bumble. We want to encourage women to be equals and to be seen as equal and in any courtship through friendship or business or love, whatever that is, to really feel empowered and confident and to get out there and be whatever they want to be, not go and try to find that in someone else. You can find that in someone else, but try to do it within also. Whitney, thank you so much. Thank you so much. For taking the time. Where can people say hello to you? Best places to wave a hand on the internet, check out what you're up to.

As long as you're going to be nice on the internet, come to Instagram. But no, everybody. What is your handle on Instagram? It's WhitWolfHerd. And I would encourage everybody to check out Bumble. We've added friend finding, business connections and everything. So I think that would be a great thing for people to go check out. And for everybody listening, I will link to everything in the show notes as per usual. You can find it at Tim.blog forward slash podcast. And until next time, thank you for listening and watching. email from me. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little

morsel of fun for the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to 4hourworkweek.com. That's 4hourworkweek.com all spelled out and just

drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by soothe.com, the world's largest on-demand massage service. I've been broken so many times over the years that I usually have body work done at least once a week. I have a very, very high bar for this type of thing. And I was very skeptical of Soothe until I tested them, not once, but I would say at least a dozen times around the country in different cities. I do not accept anything less than excellent for any type of soft tissue treatment and would not suggest that you accept anything less than

excellent. So I can affirm personally that Soothe delivers a licensed, experienced, and above all effective, in my book, massage therapist in the comfort of your own home, hotel, or office in as little as an hour. So you can think of it as Uber for massages available in 55 cities worldwide at this point across the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. So you can relax just about anytime, anywhere. And I've tried many different types of massage that they offer. And the process is super, super simple. Download the Soothe app. That's S-O-O-T-H-E or go to soothe.com. Choose the kind of massage you want. You can select Swedish, sports, deep tissue, or even couples massage. I usually do deep tissue myself, or I'll do couples massage and then tell both of the therapists that I'm actually intending to get a four-handed massage instead of having two

people get two-handed massages, if that makes sense. Then you set the length of your massage, whether 60, 90, or 120 minutes. If you're looking to get fixed, I usually do 90 or ideally 120. You select the gender of your therapist and then boom, you're done. And you will see who picks up the call. The service is available from 8am to midnight and Soothe brings everything that you need to create a spa experience in your home. And the therapist handles all of this, the massage table, linens, oils, music, the whole nine yards. So try it out. Download Soothe. And as a listener of this show,

you'll get $25 off of your first massage when you enter the code TIM25. All caps, T-I-M-2-5. Again, download the Soothe app and use the code TIM25 for your $25 discount. Well, they are the number one cloud accounting software designed exclusively for self-employed professionals. That's many of you and used by more than 10 million people. You can send invoices, track your time and get paid very, very quickly, which suits the needs of a lot of freelancers, a lot of entrepreneurs and beyond. You can take pictures of receipts. You can link your credit

card and debit card. So all the things you buy automatically appear in your fresh books in the right category. So on and so forth. Makes taxes easy. Makes invoices easy. Makes your life easier. And also, in fact, I would recommend a PDF. They didn't ask me to read this part, by the way. They put together a PDF a while back called Breaking the Time Barrier, subtitled How to Unlock Your True Earning Potential.

So you can search for Breaking the Time Barrier, subtitle, How to Unlock Your True Earning Potential. So you can search for Breaking the Time Barrier. A lot of people ask me, how can I get a four-hour work week with a service business? And the story in that e-book, it's a PDF, is the short answer. It's really, really good. So I think you should also check that out. So Breaking the Time Barrier, check it out. But also, why not test out FreshBooks? Claim your 30-day unrestricted free trial at freshbooks.com forward slash Tim and enter Tim Ferriss, two R's and two S's in the how did you hear about us section. That sounds

like we're going to get very little tracking. That's a lot of work. But just go to freshbooks.com forward slash Tim and try it out because it is a very good product and I think you will find it simplifies your life. Enjoy.