#316: Whitney Wolfe Herd — Founder and CEO of Bumble

Whitney Wolfe Herd (@whitwolfeherd https://www.instagram.com/whitwolfeherd/) is the founder and CEO of Bumble https://bumble.com, 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 http://thebeehive.bumble.com/bumble-bff/ in 2016 as a friend-finding feature and Bumble Bizz http://thebeehive.bumble.com/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 https://www.fastcompany.com/person/whitney-wolfe, but also Forbes https://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2017/11/14/billion-dollar-bumble-how-whitney-wolfe-herd-built-americas-fastest-growing-dating-app/#47907c36248b and Wired http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/october-2017. Please enjoy! 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• 0:01Tim Ferriss?

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Speaker 02

  Now would be an appropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 0:24Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:04Tim Ferriss?

  subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out, go to drinkag1.com/tim. That's drink A G one, the number one, drinkag1.com/tim. Last time, drinkag1.com/tim. Check it out.

• 1:24Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls, damas y caballeros. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show, where it's 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 Herd. On Instagram, you can say hello, at Wit Wolfe Herd, 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, is the only

• 2:10Tim Ferriss?

  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. Wolf Heard 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 Wolf Heard.

• 2:54Tim Ferriss?

  Whitney, welcome to the show.

• 2:55Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me.

• 2:57Tim Ferriss?

  A local.

• 2:58Speaker 02

  A local.

• 2:59Tim Ferriss?

  Here we are, Austin, Texas.

• 3:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:01Tim Ferriss?

  So I wanted to start at the beginning. And for those people who aren't familiar with the, a bit of the genesis story and also the name itself. So how did Bumble come to be? Why did it come to be?

• 3:15Speaker 02

  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 of different things in life and then 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.

• 3:55Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, no, I've been on the receiving end of plenty of that, yeah.

• 3:57Speaker 02

  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, you know, I was a perfect example of how dangerous it could be. And if I, at 24, who had already had somewhat, you know, 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.

• 4:40Speaker 02

  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, you know, just do nothing at 25 after being part of this really high-growth startup and having this, you know, 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.

• 5:22Tim Ferriss?

  What was it going to be called?

• 5:23Speaker 02

  Merci.

• 5:24Tim Ferriss?

  Merci?

• 5:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. Thank you. 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 on Bumble, who's been a huge force in, you know, Bumble coming to life and 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 South America.

• 5:54Tim Ferriss?

  What's his name?

• 5:54Speaker 02

  His name's Andrei Andreev.

• 5:56Tim Ferriss?

  Best name ever?

• 5:57Speaker 02

  Ever, right? So James Bond. Yeah, he's pretty awesome. But he wanted me to go run marketing at his dating company, and I thought he had lost his mind. And so I told him what I was going to do. I'm going to start this new age 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've 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,

• 6:42Speaker 02

  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 that was really the beginning of Bumble.

• 6:58Tim Ferriss?

  What was it, what was the first name of a Bumble?

• 7:01Speaker 02

  Moxie.

• 7:02Tim Ferriss?

  Moxie.

• 7:03Speaker 02

  Yes, it was, I really wanted it to be Moxie. So, you know, for anyone that's familiar with that word, it, you know, 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, the tale is old of 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.

• 7:37Tim Ferriss?

  Why couldn't you trademark it?

• 7:38Speaker 02

  There, somebody else had totally trademarked every corner of it. It's actually a soda somewhere.

• 7:45Tim Ferriss?

  Ah, alright.

• 7:45Speaker 02

  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.

• 7:51Tim Ferriss?

  So how did you land on Bumble then?

• 7:53Speaker 02

  I actually hated the name Bumble at first. I thought Bumble...

• 7:56Tim Ferriss?

  How did it occur to you?

• 7:58Speaker 02

  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. And she was like, you know, what about Bumble? Because we'd all been searching the internet, we're literally putting random letters together to come up with words. I mean, anything.

• 8:16Tim Ferriss?

  What were, what were the other top contenders?

• 8:18Speaker 02

  Um, oh goodness.

• 8:19Tim Ferriss?

  Cause I've come up with...

• 8:20Speaker 02

  Leap.

• 8:21Tim Ferriss?

  Leap.

• 8:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, because women were gonna 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, you know, we played with Sadie for like Sadie Hawkins Dance. We played with several names.

• 8:38Tim Ferriss?

  What is Sadie Hawkins Dance?

• 8:38Speaker 02

  You don't know what the Sadie Hawkins Dance is?

• 8:40Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I'm getting a lot of ugly looks. Or a surprise look.

• 8:43Speaker 02

  Okay, this is awesome.

• 8:44Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 8:44Speaker 02

  So the Sadie Hawkins dance started in the 1930s and it was based off of a cartoon by Al Cap where these women during leap year would make the first move essentially they'd ask them in to marry them. And this got consolidated into a dance that US school systems started putting into place. And it became so popular. You know the Sadie Hawkins dance?

• 9:07Tim Ferriss?

  I don't.

• 9:08Speaker 02

  They'd wear the poodle skirts and the black and white shoes.

• 9:10Tim Ferriss?

  I've learned nothing about this.

• 9:11Speaker 02

  Okay, you're gonna have to look into this, but...

• 9:12Tim Ferriss?

  Now, is it a dance? It's not an actual dance. It's not like a mating ritual dance.

• 9:17Speaker 02

  It, no, it's like a school dance. So you have the prom, right? And then you had the Sadie Hawkins dance.

• 9:23Tim Ferriss?

  Alright.

• 9:23Speaker 02

  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.

• 10:08Tim Ferriss?

  Huh. So you did or did not like Bumble then, when it came up?

• 10:14Speaker 02

  I did not like it at first, and I'll tell you why. Bumble sounded like fumble. You know, you were 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 started being, you know, coming up. People on our team and friends when, you know, were asking, "What do you think about this name?" Or "This name?" Or "This name?" And all of a sudden, these catchphrases were coming up like, you know, "Be the queen bee of Bumble." "Find your honey on Bumble."

• 10:48Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 10:49Speaker 02

  And it was in that moment that... We said, okay, this is it. This is brandability. This is how you brand something. And that was, that was it. Off to the races we went.

• 11:00Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, if it sticks, it sticks. One of the, 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?

• 11:23Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 11:23Tim Ferriss?

  And I'll see what, and I'll see what the first few things are that come to mind.

• 11:26Speaker 02

  That's really interesting. All right. I gotta keep that in mind.

• 11:29Tim Ferriss?

  It tells you a lot about top of mind. Like, yeah, don't think about it too hard.

• 11:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, just read it and then see what sticks.

• 11:35Tim Ferriss?

  And if it takes too long, it's like, all right, I need to rework the entire chapter.

• 11:37Speaker 02

  No, I, I think that's really interesting advice.

• 11:40Tim Ferriss?

  Now, how many people roughly at this point use, use Bumble? I know there are many different, many, many different metrics and ways you could go about it, but...

• 11:48Speaker 02

  We, 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.

• 12:01Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's a lot of people.

• 12:02Speaker 02

  That's, that's a few people. Yeah.

• 12:05Tim Ferriss?

  So I, I saw the, part of the beauty of the, of the approach, I mean, 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, very early on. I mean, sort of, 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 for 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, the signal to noise ratio is so unfavorable

• 12:50Tim Ferriss?

  that as a guy, you could put out 100 messages and get zero responses. And it, it just cuts out that first leg of wasted work completely. So, thank you for that.

• 13:02Speaker 02

  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 the boys are supposed to chase the girls. And then that turns into the men chasing the women 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, it does allow for better and more genuine connections.

• 13:48Tim Ferriss?

  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 out back.

• 14:00Speaker 02

  I don't know about that.

• 14:01Tim Ferriss?

  But you mentioned when we got started, 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 paraphrased, but I think it's somewhat accurate based on checking with you beforehand. But I don't know the elaborations. So the quote here, it's from Refinery 29, 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."

• 14:46Tim Ferriss?

  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.

• 14:56Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 14:57Tim Ferriss?

  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?

• 15:06Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 15:07Tim Ferriss?

  And it doesn't have to be depressive.

• 15:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, of course.

• 15:09Tim Ferriss?

  It could be anxiety, it could be anything else.

• 15:10Speaker 02

  Well, you know, and I still have days like that. And I think that's healthy for listeners or watchers to understand that.

• 15:16Speaker 02

  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 experiencing 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 this been this recurring theme. And, you know, when I was under so much scrutiny

• 15:59Speaker 02

  from the internet, from strangers, and I was allowing these random strangers to define me and to dictate my day.

• 16:06Tim Ferriss?

  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. Is, can you think of one where you're like, oh, God, that day?

• 16:20Speaker 02

  So it was, 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 hadn't, 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

• 16:45Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, there be dragons. Got to be careful.

• 16:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, you know, the story came out one morning, one afternoon. My dad sent it to me.

• 16:53Tim Ferriss?

  Oh.

• 16:54Speaker 02

  And it was disgusting. It was talking about, you know, basically, the piece painted me as this, you know,

• 17:06Speaker 02

  Like 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.

• 17:27Tim Ferriss?

  What was your, what was your dad's commentary like?

• 17:30Speaker 02

  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? What, how, how irresponsible can journalism be that no one asked me for comment on that? You know, no one asked if those allegations were true. And to be this young woman, feeling like I was part of this like mean girl club and, you know, the, the girl that was, you know, being pointed at and laughed at by a group of people. I mean, it was awful.

• 18:06Tim Ferriss?

  What was the, what did the rest of your day look like?

• 18:08Speaker 02

  I, I was devastated. I, I actually became physically ill. So my hu, he's now my husband and thank God for him. He, I was having 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. My sight 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, to physically calm me down.

• 18:49Speaker 02

  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, it was awful.

• 19:00Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's not a great feeling at all. And it's even wor, I mean, 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, but it's.

• 19:09Speaker 02

  Talking about very misogynistic things that really only apply to women and that's what made it worse, you know? Making insinuations about who I was as a woman and my intentions as a woman, not, it wasn't even about business, if that makes sense, you know? It was very, it was very.

• 19:25Tim Ferriss?

  All that stuff is really. Salacious and exciting compared to the business stuff.

• 19:29Speaker 02

  Apparently so.

• 19:30Tim Ferriss?

  People like to paint the picture they want to paint.

• 19:32Speaker 02

  Well, I hope they got some clicks.

• 19:33Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, no, one thing I'd love to chat about, because 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, 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.

• 20:01Speaker 02

  Oh, I'm on the high-high-plus.

• 20:04Tim Ferriss?

  So I've heard, you know, at points, tell me if this, 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.

• 20:17Speaker 02

  I did that for years.

• 20:18Tim Ferriss?

  You did that for years.

• 20:19Speaker 02

  Actually, that has just now started to slow down. And I still do it sometimes.

• 20:24Tim Ferriss?

  Have you always been anxious? Has that been a sort of an emotional home of sorts?

• 20:27Speaker 02

  You know, 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 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 gonna have to block my cellphone number at some point. But, you know, it's scary. If you don't deal with anxiety, it will take advantage, it will take control over your life.

• 21:10Tim Ferriss?

  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 of your life?

• 21:23Speaker 02

  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, um, my doctor said something really interesting to me. And it's something that's 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, you know, recalibrate the way you feel. And when I thought through that and I was like, you know what? When I can just, if I can channel this energy and this, this anxiety and channel it into doing good work, meaning work that affects others in a positive way, it genuinely works. It actually.

• 22:08Tim Ferriss?

  If you shift your focus.

• 22:09Speaker 02

  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, the self doubt thing on repeat?

• 22:32Tim Ferriss?

  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's starting to spiral, I mean, do you have pattern interrupts that you can use?

• 22:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, I try to get outside and take a walk and leave my phone. And I've 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, 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.

• 23:09Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. One thing that I've also observed, so, and I think these are actually very closely related in some people, but that at least in the, 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, you know, sleeping from 2:00 AM, if you're, let's say, self-employed and have this ability or unemployed, from, to sleep from, say, 2:00 to 10 is not the same caliber of sleep that you're going to get from 11:00 to 8:00 or 11:00 to whatever it might be.

• 23:41Speaker 02

  Completely agree.

• 23:43Tim Ferriss?

  So I'm going to flash back to.

• 23:47Tim Ferriss?

  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?

• 24:28Speaker 02

  So, like we were saying earlier, internet time is like different time zone from every other, you know, measure of time. When we were doing that, we were a team of something like six or seven.

• 24:39Tim Ferriss?

  I got you.

• 24:40Speaker 02

  We were really a tiny team. We were still in our apartment, and our conference room was in a bathtub, and, you know, 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, 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?

• 25:25Speaker 02

  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.

• 25:35Tim Ferriss?

  The book club.

• 25:36Speaker 02

  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.

• 25:48Tim Ferriss?

  Sure.

• 25:49Speaker 02

  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, um, you know, as you grow, we're now, we're approaching a hundred employees here soon. It's very hard to do a, a check on, you know, how you're feeling every day. You can't really

• 26:16Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 26:17Speaker 02

  go around the room with, you know, so many people and it's really hard to get everybody together for a book club when things are just going so fast.

• 26:25Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Are there any books personally that you've gifted often to other people or reread a lot yourself?

• 26:33Speaker 02

  Yes, I have. Um, 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?

• 26:46Tim Ferriss?

  Uh huh.

• 26:47Speaker 02

  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 um, the point is I loved Shantaram and I loved that it took you into this different element of, you know, 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 with the ROI on some billboard, right? Um, 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

• 27:30Speaker 02

  that I've, I've gifted frequently and I love.

• 27:33Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Fascinating story. Also, the author has a really good, effectively, 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. He's made this public proclamation, which I thought was very inspiring.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  Really?

• 27:48Tim Ferriss?

  Since I fantasize about that all the time. Uh, but

• 27:50Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 27:51Tim Ferriss?

  This, this book, uh, yeah, a very powerful story that catches people, um, very often catches people at the right time.

• 27:58Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 27:59Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, what's the second book?

• 28:01Speaker 02

  So back to the right time.

• 28:03Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah.

• 28:03Speaker 02

  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 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 orphanages in northern Thailand, in Cambodia, 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're 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

• 28:46Speaker 02

  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?

• 29:09Tim Ferriss?

  No.

• 29:09Speaker 02

  Oh, this, this will destroy your life in a good way. But 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, 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.

• 29:33Tim Ferriss?

  How has it changed your behavior or?

• 29:36Speaker 02

  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.

• 29:53Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 29:53Speaker 02

  Actually, I became almost a hermit. I became very reclusive and I just wanted to be with my boyfriend, who became fiance, 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

• 30:23Speaker 02

  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, because I think it's important to have that type of balance.

• 30:43Tim Ferriss?

  Has it changed your diet or anything like that?

• 30:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, it actually has. It scares you about, you know, what you're putting in your body. So it just makes you think.

• 30:50Tim Ferriss?

  So what is your, what might a default breakfast or lunch or dinner look like for you now?

• 30:54Speaker 02

  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, you know, 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, it's interesting and it's important to understand, you know, the effects on the planet and, you know, that's a conversation for another time.

• 31:27Tim Ferriss?

  All right, cool. I'll check it out. Yeah, the, 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 said the plant paradox and plants are bad for you, there are a lot of plants that really don't want you to eat them.

• 31:43Speaker 02

  Exactly. That's what this is all about.

• 31:45Tim Ferriss?

  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. Does not eat any vegetables whatsoever, and he's been doing that for years.

• 32:03Speaker 02

  See, because a lot of the plants have defense mechanisms and they will poison you.

• 32:07Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, there are.

• 32:09Speaker 02

  According to the believers.

• 32:10Tim Ferriss?

  There are a lot of plants, I mean, since they, since they are fixed in their mobility, they can't run away from predators. They develop all sorts of very, very, very clever defense mechanisms.

• 32:19Speaker 02

  Like apparently beans are toxic for you.

• 32:22Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, beans, this, we don't have time to get into the bean rabbit hole. The 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

• 32:40Speaker 02

  bit. I was like, oh my god.

• 32:41Tim Ferriss?

  They're like, if you eat beans, it is like swallowing

• 32:45Speaker 02

  Poison.

• 32:45Tim Ferriss?

  Broken glass.

• 32:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:48Tim Ferriss?

  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, that can actually do a fair amount of damage. But.

• 33:18Speaker 02

  We should title this episode Bumble and Beans.

• 33:21Tim Ferriss?

  Bumble and Beans.

• 33:25Speaker 02

  Sounds like a bad band.

• 33:27Tim Ferriss?

  Bumble and Beans, or Bar in Austin.

• 33:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's good, too.

• 33:32Tim Ferriss?

  Right next to Mean Eyed Cat. All right.

• 33:36Tim Ferriss?

  Next question is, what purchase of a hundred dollars 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?

• 33:50Tim Ferriss?

  Could be a few years ago, could be.

• 33:51Speaker 02

  That's a great question. Coconut oil.

• 33:55Tim Ferriss?

  Coconut oil?

• 33:56Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 33:57Tim Ferriss?

  What do you use for?

• 33:57Speaker 02

  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. I think coconut oil is a cheap miracle buy.

• 34:12Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Has some really fascinating, like anti-fungal, antibiotic properties as well, or antimicrobial, I should say.

• 34:22Speaker 02

  Even if you get a cut, they say you can put coconut oil on it and it helps heal it.

• 34:27Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, coconut oil is, is really fascinating on, on many different levels. Useful for a bunch of diets, maybe that are contained in Plant Paradox.

• 34:36Speaker 02

  Probably.

• 34:36Tim Ferriss?

  Just because of the concentration of MCT oil effectively, but the.

• 34:40Speaker 02

  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.

• 34:54Tim Ferriss?

  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. So like a smoking point's around 350 Fahrenheit.

• 35:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it can be, I think it can go a little higher than olive oil. Apparently olive oil's bad for you. Okay, I don't want to go down this rabbit hole.

• 35:12Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, for cooking purposes, yeah. All right, so olive oil varies greatly. Your mileage may vary with your olive oil purchase, says Tim Ferriss. Brought to you by...

• 35:23Speaker 02

  Bumble.

• 35:24Tim Ferriss?

  Brought to you by Bumble.

• 35:27Tim Ferriss?

  Good, good answer. Yeah, coconut oil also keeps forever. It's very useful to have around.

• 35:35Speaker 02

  Also, little Smithson journals.

• 35:40Tim Ferriss?

  Smithson.

• 35:41Speaker 02

  The little mini ones, they come in yellow with a B. I like to gift those to people on my team and just they're 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.

• 36:22Speaker 02

  It's fascinating to see how much the human mind actually just disposes of

• 36:27Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, sure.

• 36:28Speaker 02

  in terms of memory. And so I think it's, that's a great little gift.

• 36:31Tim Ferriss?

  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.

• 36:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, same.

• 36:47Tim Ferriss?

  So I can't, but, but if I

• 36:49Speaker 02

  I feel like this is my productivity yellow pad.

• 36:51Tim Ferriss?

  If I use it as morning pages, then it serves the same function.

• 36:54Speaker 02

  I'm with you.

• 36:54Tim Ferriss?

  Really? And you have that chronicle on. It's, it's true that we really think we are going to remember forever the things that we will very soon forget.

• 37:03Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 37:03Tim Ferriss?

  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.

• 37:14Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 37:14Tim Ferriss?

  Totally changed my life, lived with Japanese.

• 37:15Speaker 02

  Where were you?

• 37:16Tim Ferriss?

  In Tokyo.

• 37:17Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 37:18Tim Ferriss?

  I was the only, I was, I ended up the only American in a Japanese school, 5,000 Japanese kids.

• 37:23Speaker 02

  How amazing is that?

• 37:23Tim Ferriss?

  So if you want to talk about Where's Waldo, school uniform, the whole nine yards.

• 37:26Speaker 02

  That must have been incredible.

• 37:27Tim Ferriss?

  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.

• 37:39Speaker 02

  So that she could remember to tell you about it.

• 37:40Tim Ferriss?

  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.

• 37:46Speaker 02

  How cool.

• 37:47Tim Ferriss?

  I mean, now, now I do as a cue, but if she hadn't done that, all of those incredible experiences just would have been gone.

• 37:53Speaker 02

  Wow, that's fantastic. That's really interesting.

• 37:57Tim Ferriss?

  When is the last time you cried tears of joy?

• 38:00Speaker 02

  Yesterday.

• 38:01Tim Ferriss?

  Yesterday.

• 38:02Speaker 02

  Hmm, got some big news, can't tell you about it unfortunately.

• 38:05Tim Ferriss?

  Perfector.

• 38:06Speaker 02

  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 or something, 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, um, actually cried tears of joy. It's just, it's awesome. When, 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

• 38:48Speaker 02

  hard to get there, um, 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, 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

• 39:28Speaker 02

  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, 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 that day.

• 40:03Tim Ferriss?

  Where were you born and raised?

• 40:04Speaker 02

  Salt Lake City, Utah.

• 40:05Tim Ferriss?

  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.

• 40:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:26Tim Ferriss?

  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 helpful?

• 40:34Speaker 02

  You know, I do try to tap into whatever the higher power is, right? I'm not a religious person. 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 gonna happen 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

• 41:18Speaker 02

  got to get home. I just don't feel good about this. And he was like, chill out. Like, I'm gonna 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, 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,

• 41:59Speaker 02

  decipher, why did I, why am I feeling those things? So my, my message in that, not to ramble, is that I genuinely believe of 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, you know, listening to your gut when you can. And um, 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.

• 42:35Tim Ferriss?

  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, but I've

• 42:42Speaker 02

  People probably think I'm psycho.

• 42:43Tim Ferriss?

  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, she never barks, she really rarely barks at anyone. And if she barks or growls at any journalist, any member of the media, when I've

• 43:27Tim Ferriss?

  ignored it, it is, it has, within 24 hours.

• 43:32Tim Ferriss?

  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 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.

• 43:58Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 43:58Tim Ferriss?

  And so if you have a funny feeling.

• 44:00Speaker 02

  You gotta listen to it.

• 44:01Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's worth exploring that.

• 44:03Speaker 02

  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.

• 44:16Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 44:16Speaker 02

  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.

• 44:54Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. And I mean, for people who are wondering, well, how does that actually apply? How do you listen to it? 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, from like 2007 to 2017. And a lot of those were passive. At any given time, there were no more than like four or five active needing my help. So it wasn't, it was in waves certainly, but and not all of them make it, as you know.

• 45:21Speaker 02

  How do you keep track of all of that?

• 45:23Tim Ferriss?

  That's a whole, we could talk about it. The whole separate conversation.

• 45:26Speaker 02

  Lots of notebooks.

• 45:27Tim Ferriss?

  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 kered 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.

• 45:44Speaker 02

  Got it.

• 45:45Tim Ferriss?

  Or that has some type of knowledge that can be transferred to other divisions.

• 45:50Speaker 02

  Sure, shared resources.

• 45:51Tim Ferriss?

  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?

• 46:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, is in the portfolio. It's a very smart way to look at it.

• 46:02Tim Ferriss?

  And that decreases the, it increases the efficiency for everyone, but also decreases the actual, so 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 can 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.

• 46:34Speaker 02

  I could not agree more.

• 46:35Tim Ferriss?

  And, right, so because every, 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.

• 46:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:45Tim Ferriss?

  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're, they should be.

• 46:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:51Tim Ferriss?

  So it's, it's very easy to drink the Kool-Aid, even if you think you're immune to their charismatic effects.

• 46:57Speaker 02

  Completely agree.

• 46:58Tim Ferriss?

  So if I feel good about it, it's like, alright, trust but verify.

• 47:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, let's get some documentation now.

• 47:02Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, let's look at the documentation. Let's actually look under the hood.

• 47:05Speaker 02

  One bad feeling, run.

• 47:06Tim Ferriss?

  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, we have all these amazing investors, we're closing in 48 hours, we're oversubscribed, we can fill you, all that FOMO shit.

• 47:17Speaker 02

  Hmm, scare tactics.

• 47:19Tim Ferriss?

  And then I invest, and I'm like, I fucking knew it.

• 47:22Speaker 02

  I knew it.

• 47:22Tim Ferriss?

  I knew it within the, not even the first hour, like, I knew within the first five minutes I didn't feel right with that person.

• 47:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 47:29Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, so that's enough.

• 47:31Speaker 02

  No, that's really interesting, though.

• 47:32Tim Ferriss?

  Enough of my mumbo jumbo, but yeah.

• 47:34Speaker 02

  Actually, good advice to people.

• 47:35Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 47:36Speaker 02

  Seriously, pay attention to that stuff.

• 47:37Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, 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.

• 48:12Speaker 02

  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 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? 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.

• 48:58Speaker 02

  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.

• 49:10Tim Ferriss?

  What are some ways that you do that concretely?

• 49:15Tim Ferriss?

  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?

• 49:24Speaker 02

  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, you know, 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.

• 50:09Speaker 02

  And so, you know, in the early days, we're talking weekends, like I would do whatever I could to make experiences for my key early hires so that they felt They felt like family, but in a non-boundary crossing way, right? You know, we still had boundaries where they still had their own lives and we were trying to keep things healthy.

• 50:29Tim Ferriss?

  What would be an example of?

• 50:30Speaker 02

  So, you know, 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 has served me very well.

• 51:15Speaker 02

  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 many 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, there are every, 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.

• 51:41Tim Ferriss?

  What are some of the, the rules, or better perhaps is the 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, 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?

• 52:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've, 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 gonna do this my way and your advice is nice and your advice was great, but I'm gonna trust my gut and I'm gonna 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 gonna sound silly, but the best piece of advice I've ever received was from my

• 52:50Speaker 02

  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 gonna 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

• 53:35Speaker 02

  served me pretty well over the years is to not write off people with experience.

• 53:39Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, this, 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, uh, it can be, it can feel very isolating as a CEO. And I remember chatting with Amanda Palmer, the musician, much more than musician, uh, certainly she's done a lot. Uh, 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.

• 54:14Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 54:15Tim Ferriss?

  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.

• 54:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm right there with you.

• 54:25Tim Ferriss?

  And then punish myself or feel upset when I don't figure it all out.

• 54:28Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 54:29Tim Ferriss?

  And instead, it's like, no.

• 54:32Tim Ferriss?

  Your friends want to help you, like, give them the gift of allowing them to help you.

• 54:36Speaker 02

  Even not your friends.

• 54:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, they don't have to be your friends.

• 54:41Speaker 02

  Even people that I, you know, along the journey, I'm, I kind of have this syndrome where I, I'm always impressed by everyone and I don't feel impressive ever. It's just, it's something I've, I've suffered with my whole life and, you know, I've just, I've, 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, 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 gonna think I'm annoying, or they're gonna think that I'm needy, or they're gonna think that,

• 55:25Speaker 02

  you know what I mean? And so I've almost dug myself into this hole of not asking enough people for help.

• 55:31Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 55:32Speaker 02

  In fear of them feeling invaded or imposed on.

• 55:36Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 55:37Speaker 02

  Not because I didn't care about what they had to say. So that's a really interesting perspective.

• 55:41Tim Ferriss?

  And let me give just a couple of thoughts for people who are like, okay, I'm gonna ask Tim for advice, uh, or ask you for advice, or whatever it might be. If you're, if you wanna 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?

• 55:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, so no one has time for lunch.

• 56:01Tim Ferriss?

  Don't do the brain picking. It sounds awful and nobody wants to do it because it's really nebulous.

• 56:07Speaker 02

  It is, it is, you're right.

• 56:08Tim Ferriss?

  I'm gonna go out, it's not gonna be 15 minutes, it's gonna be an hour of them trying to figure out what they want to say.

• 56:13Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 56:13Tim Ferriss?

  And it's not gonna be a good use of time. So you can, if you could say, A, I know you have, I get a thousand email, if you don't have time to respond, I totally understand, but I, 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, right? This is,

• 56:33Speaker 02

  No, this is how I've already troubled you with it.

• 56:35Tim Ferriss?

  I've actually used Google.

• 56:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:37Tim Ferriss?

  Right?

• 56:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've actually looked into this.

• 56:39Tim Ferriss?

  I actually looked into it, I've tried to figure out this and this, this is where I am.

• 56:43Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 56:43Tim Ferriss?

  Super specific question, and again, if you're too busy, totally get it, no problem. And if easier, here's my cellphone.

• 56:49Speaker 02

  I like that.

• 56:49Tim Ferriss?

  That, giving them an out, recognizing they are busier than hell, which they probably are.

• 56:56Tim Ferriss?

  And having a really soft delivery, but showing that you've put in some work.

• 57:01Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 57:01Tim Ferriss?

  That you're not outsourcing, you're like a mechanical Turk stuff to them.

• 57:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:06Tim Ferriss?

  Do, put in some effort and show that you've done it.

• 57:08Speaker 02

  No, I agree. A follow up 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 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.

• 57:23Tim Ferriss?

  Exact, yes, absolutely.

• 57:25Speaker 02

  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.

• 57:45Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 57:45Speaker 02

  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, you know, the other side of the fire. How do we get out of here? What's the exit strategy?

• 57:57Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 57:58Speaker 02

  Not just, oh, we're in a fire.

• 57:59Tim Ferriss?

  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, 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.

• 58:44Tim Ferriss?

  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.

• 58:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:59Tim Ferriss?

  You can give me your top three or four. I also want to know which one do you think we should do and why?

• 59:04Speaker 02

  Which one is the best and why have you gotten to that?

• 59:07Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, 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.

• 59:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:16Tim Ferriss?

  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, co-founder of LinkedIn, among many other things. I mean, the guy is an incredible investor, incredible guy.

• 59:37Speaker 02

  He really is. He seems amazing.

• 59:39Tim Ferriss?

  And I'll add this, I mean, I've had him on this podcast, so people can look it up, but he's also a, 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 use as icons.

• 59:56Speaker 02

  So many people try to get out there and become successful as a coping, or you know, this is gonna make me happier, this is gonna 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.

• 1:00:06Tim Ferriss?

  Reid's amazing, yeah. And, and he, I mean, he taught Wittgenstein classes at Oxford also, like in his spare time. The dude is, he's done a lot. And he was the fire, he was called, he was referred to as the firefighter in chief.

• 1:00:19Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:00:19Tim Ferriss?

  By Peter Thiel. And Reid 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 aide-de-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% footfall rate. Footfall is just a tennis or a 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.

• 1:01:02Speaker 02

  That's your margin of error.

• 1:01:03Tim Ferriss?

  And when you tell people that in advance, it, it also

• 1:01:06Speaker 02

  Manages expectations.

• 1:01:09Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, manage 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 gonna be punished for making every mistake or slight error, then I'm gonna 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.

• 1:01:31Speaker 02

  That's really interesting.

• 1:01:32Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, it reads a stud. So just, 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, you know, I take a screenshot anytime my phone says 555 because I finished

• 1:01:52Speaker 02

  That's my lucky number, 555.

• 1:01:53Tim Ferriss?

  Are you serious?

• 1:01:54Speaker 02

  I screenshot at 555.

• 1:01:55Tim Ferriss?

  Are you serious?

• 1:01:56Speaker 02

  I swear to God, ask my husband. I screenshot if anything is 555. I'm, 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.

• 1:02:07Tim Ferriss?

  That's crazy.

• 1:02:08Speaker 02

  I'm not kidding. I promise you.

• 1:02:10Tim Ferriss?

  First time I've ever run into anyone else.

• 1:02:11Speaker 02

  I have a freak thing with fives.

• 1:02:13Tim Ferriss?

  All right, well, we've, the universe has brought us here.

• 1:02:16Speaker 02

  Look at that. All right, keep going. I didn't mean to interrupt.

• 1:02:19Tim Ferriss?

  No, all right, so that's one. Then you have someone like, say 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 and so on.

• 1:02:36Speaker 02

  I get that.

• 1:02:37Tim Ferriss?

  Right? But it's understandable. It's still pretty weird. So besides your screen shotting, what other odd habits or absurd things do you do or love?

• 1:02:47Speaker 02

  Well, people think this is absurd. I just think it's sweet, but I guess I'm, I'm different. I cannot sleep at night unless I text my mom, "Goodnight," and say, "I love you."

• 1:02:56Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, that's sweet.

• 1:02:57Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:03:14Tim Ferriss?

  I think all people-

• 1:03:15Speaker 02

  I'm 28 years old.

• 1:03:16Tim Ferriss?

  You know-

• 1:03:16Speaker 02

  I just, 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.

• 1:03:26Tim Ferriss?

  I think that's a great practice, and you could argue it's even more important the older you get.

• 1:03:30Speaker 02

  It is, yeah.

• 1:03:31Tim Ferriss?

  And I would recommend everybody, people, people who've listened to this for a long time, a podcaster, gonna be sick of hearing this, but "Read the Tail End" by Tim Urban, please. It, it really paints an incredible picture and a sense of urgency as it relates to interacting with your parents.

• 1:03:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, with your family.

• 1:03:46Tim Ferriss?

  And I think the number, something like, by the time you graduate from, it may even be high school, I don't even think it's college.

• 1:03:51Speaker 02

  You have like 300 days or something?

• 1:03:52Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you've spent 80-plus percent of the time you'll ever spend with your parents before they die. Something like that.

• 1:03:57Speaker 02

  Makes me like, get emotional.

• 1:03:59Tim Ferriss?

  So yeah, I think more people should do that.

• 1:04:01Speaker 02

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

• 1:04:18Tim Ferriss?

  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.

• 1:04:34Tim Ferriss?

  In the last few years, 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, right? Not the company, not your employees, but you. Is there any new habit or belief?

• 1:04:58Tim Ferriss?

  Breakthrough, breakdown, anything that has ultimately ended up having a very strong, positive impact on your life?

• 1:05:06Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:05:30Tim Ferriss?

  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?

• 1:05:48Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:06:28Tim Ferriss?

  Whitney, thank you so much.

• 1:06:30Speaker 02

  Thank you so much.

• 1:06:31Tim Ferriss?

  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?

• 1:06:38Speaker 02

  As long as you're gonna be nice on the internet, come to Instagram. But no, everybody...

• 1:06:43Tim Ferriss?

  What is your handle on Instagram?

• 1:06:45Speaker 02

  It's Whit Wolf Herd. 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.

• 1:06:56Tim Ferriss?

  And for everybody listening, I will link to everything in the show notes as per usual. You can find it tim.blog/podcast. And until next time, thank you for listening and watching. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday? That provides a little morsel of fun before 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

• 1:07:39Tim Ferriss?

  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 fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.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 have been broken so many times over the years that I usually have bodywork done at least once a week. I have a very, very high bar for this type of thing.

• 1:08:24Tim Ferriss?

  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.

• 1:09:09Tim Ferriss?

  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.

• 1:09:51Tim Ferriss?

  The service is available from 8 a.m. 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 two five. Again, download the Soothe app and use the code TIM25 for your $25 discount. This episode is brought to you by FreshBooks. Man, oh, man, do a lot of listeners of this podcast and readers of mine love FreshBooks to the extent that I ended up meeting with the CEO not very long ago.

• 1:10:36Tim Ferriss?

  Why are they so popular? 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 FreshBooks in the right category, so on and so forth. Makes taxes easy, makes invoices easy, makes your life easier. And also, in fact, I'd 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, subtitle, How to Unlock Your True Earning Potential.

• 1:11:20Tim Ferriss?

  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 ebook, it's PDF, is the short answer. It's really, really good. So I think you should also check that out. So Breaking the Time Bear, check it out. But also, why not test out FreshBooks? Claim your 30-day unrestricted free trial at freshbooks.com/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/tim and try it out because it is a very good product and I think you will find it simplifies your life. Enjoy.