Pod Insights How I Built This with Guy Raz How I Built Resilience: Whitney Wolfe Herd of Bumble About this episode Last year, the dating app Bumble launched a video chat feature that was initially slow to take off. But that changed after the pandemic hit. Founder Whitney Wolfe Herd tells Guy that many Bumble users are getting to know each other on video before meeting in person—a trend that could change dating for the better. These conversations are excerpts from our How I Built Resilience series, where Guy talks online with founders and entrepreneurs about how they're navigating turbulent times.
Order the How I Built This book at:
https://smarturl.it/HowIBuiltThisSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Guy Raz? We get support from US Bank. A question I love asking founders. What's the one decision you almost didn't make? The one that changed everything? Because it's never the obvious stuff. It's never, I decided to start a company. It's the small, boring, Tuesday afternoon decision you barely remember making until you realize it's the reason everything after it either worked or didn't. Say you're 18 months in. Business is growing. You've got expenses coming from six directions. Gas for the van, office supplies, your phone bill, team lunches that are actually client meetings, and you're putting it all on whatever card you grabbed in year one. You're not thinking about it. Why would you? You've got bigger problems.
0:45 Guy Raz? But here's the thing. Path A, you keep going like that. End of the year, you're sorting through statements, trying to figure out what went where. You've left hundreds, maybe thousands, on the table in rewards you never earned. Money that could have gone back into the business. Path B, you pause and get the US Bank Triple Cash Rewards Visa Business Card. Now, you're earning 3% cash back on gas and EV charging, office supply stores, cellphone service, and restaurants. You pick up an extra $750 cash back as a bonus. And you've got a low APR on purchases and balance transfers for 12 months while you're scaling. Same business, same expenses, two completely different outcomes
1:30 Guy Raz? based on one small decision. Visit usbank.com/business to learn more. The creditor and issuer of this card is US Bank National Association, pursuant to a license from Visa USA, Inc. Some restrictions apply. Our presenting sponsor today is Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Every founder on this show started with a hard question. Not the marketing plan, the 2:00 AM kind. Is this idea any good? Am I the one to build it? Should I quit my job? Anthropic got built the same way. A public benefit corporation founded on one Hard question. How do we make sure AI goes well for people?
2:14 Guy Raz? So they asked over 100,000 people their hopes and their fears and are publishing what they find, even the uncomfortable parts. Me? I've got my own hard question about AI. Here it is. If everyone has access to something that can help them write the business plan, build the prototype, analyze the market, maybe even come up with the idea. What separates the people who actually build something from everyone else? I don't have a clean answer yet, so I've been sitting with it with Claude. There's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claude.ai/hibt.
2:54 Guy Raz? Does your team want a website that looks and feels handcrafted but is still fast to ship? Well, Framer is built exactly for that. With Framer, you design on a visual canvas with responsive layouts, hosting and a CMS built in, so the work is production ready from day one. And you can get it done with help from Framer's AI agents. Framer is the AI website builder that helps creators, teams and businesses ship production-ready sites faster than ever while getting every detail right. Prompt, inspect, edit and publish in one place at a whole new pace. AI agents and humans work together.
3:36 Guy Raz? The agents bring speed and scale and people bring taste, judgment and control. Learn how you can get more out of your site from a Framer specialist or get started building for free today at framer.com/built for 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's framer.com/built. Rules and restrictions may apply. AI isn't just opening new business opportunities, it's changing the way businesses get work done. The questions they ask, the decisions they make, the routine tasks they can hand off. That's the idea behind NetSuite Next, the next generation of NetSuite with AI woven into the tools your business already relies on.
4:21 Guy Raz? NetSuite Next surfaces insights exactly when you need them, puts agents to work on routine tasks and problems, and lets you ask complex questions in plain language, like talking to a knowledgeable colleague. But technology is only part of the story. AI is also reshaping how people and teams work together, and that shift is already underway. That's why NetSuite wants to put a new, expert-created business guide in your hands today. It's called Aligning for the Agentic Era: How AI is Changing Everyday Work. And right now, it's yours, absolutely free. Inside, you'll discover how AI could reshape work across your entire organization, and how to position your business to prosper from it.
5:06 Guy Raz? If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, get NetSuite's free business guide, Aligning for the Agentic Era: How AI is Changing Everyday Work, at netsuite.com/built. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com/built. netsuite.com/built. Hey, it's Guy here. So have you ever thought about starting a business? And if so, what would it be? How do you come up with an idea? How do you find the money to start? How do you get the word out about your product or service? What do you do if your idea isn't working? And how do you pivot? Well, to answer those questions, I've written a book. It's called, what else? How I Built This. And it's full of inspiring stories
5:51 Guy Raz? from some of the greatest leaders and entrepreneurs in the world, who've been through the trenches, made big mistakes, and lived to tell the tale. If you're looking to start something or just want to be inspired by those who have built incredible things, pick up How I Built This now, wherever you buy your books, or by visiting guyraz.com. And thanks.
6:16 Guy Raz? Hey everyone and welcome to How I Built This Resilience Edition. On these episodes, we're talking with entrepreneurs and other business leaders about how they're meeting today's challenges with new and exciting ideas. And today, we're going to hear from Whitney Wolfe-Herd, the founder of the dating app Bumble. We first told Whitney's story on the podcast about three years ago, and you should definitely check out that episode if you haven't heard it yet. Anyway, as you may know, Bumble works a little differently than most dating apps. And last year, it released a video chat feature that didn't really take off until the lockdown began in March. Oh, and one more thing. Shortly before the lockdown began, Whitney became a mom. Her baby was born last December. First of all, how are you holding up?
7:01 Guy Raz? How are you coping with the craziness?
7:03 Speaker 01 Listen, I mean, I think you have the opportunity to control very few things in life right now. And so all I've got is my attitude every day. And so I'm trying to see the bright side of all of this. And I think the bright side with the new baby is, as a working woman and as a CEO of a growing business, how would I have ever seen my child as a baby when I went back to work? And so there's absolutely silver lining in this. Even if it's stressful, even if it's overwhelming, you know, completely nerve wracking at times, I get to be with my baby. And so I think there's a huge opportunity in that as well.
7:40 Guy Raz? I totally agree with you. I was just talking to the team about just how difficult of a time it is, you know, with the pandemic and the economic crisis and the unrest in the country and a lot of anger. And of course, now in the West Coast, you've got wildfires and you've got a hurricane in the South. It's a crazy time. And you're right, the only thing you can do is just work really hard to have a positive attitude. It's really hard.
8:03 Speaker 01 It's really hard. But you know what? The other thing that I find comforting is that, for the first time maybe ever, the entire world is in something together. All of us suffer from struggles on either an individual level or a community-wide level or a town-wide level, and sometimes a statewide or nationwide. Wide level, but it's very rare that we have a collective struggle that is so similar around the globe. And so I think there's something about this togetherness, even in a time that's so isolating.
8:36 Guy Raz? Yeah, it's a little bit like Independence Day. Where's Jeff Goldblum?
8:39 Speaker 01 I'm waiting. I don't know.
8:41 Guy Raz? We all need to come together and fight the aliens. I mean, it's the pandemic, it's climate change.
8:46 Speaker 01 Or Armageddon. I mean, it's one of the two.
8:48 Guy Raz? Yeah, I don't remember which one Jeff Goldblum was in. All right, let's let's get to Bumble. Whitney, for the small number of people who are not familiar with your dating app, Bumble, can you please just just explain how it works?
9:00 Speaker 01 Absolutely. So first and foremost, we started as a dating app, but we are really now a broad connections platform. What's fantastic is that as we launched a dating app back in 2014, where women had to initiate the conversation. So let me give you the the very basics. You download the product. If you're looking for a heterosexual relationship and of course, we're inclusive to all orientations, no matter what you're seeking. But when you are looking for a heterosexual relationship, once a woman and a man match, only the woman can initiate the conversation. And what this has done has really turned things on its head in a positive direction in the sense that they're in control. We, as the women, we have an extra kind of
9:44 Speaker 01 encouragement of of confidence in this mechanism to say hello and make that first move. And we've always been about putting the power into the women's hand, not to make women above men, but to equalize this kind of broken system. We felt that women were historically a bit below men in this like totem pole of relationships and who should go first and who has the power. So by having the woman make the first move, you essentially just bring her up and then you stabilize it for everyone. Anyway, since then, we saw this huge desire for women to be able to connect platonically as well. And because there was this barrier to entry, women were really feeling safe and encouraged to use it to friend find or to business network.
10:27 Speaker 01 And so now we're facilitating connections across the board, but under the guise in this like strong foundation of safety, empowerment, kindness, and accountability.
10:38 Guy Raz? All right, I have a million questions for you about love in the time of COVID. And I checked a couple of weeks ago, and I saw that love in the time of cholera was rising on the Amazon chart. So. Once COVID really became a reality in March, when tech companies and the NBA and then people really started shutting down their businesses and starting remote work, what did you initially see? I mean, what were the trends that you were seeing with Bumble?
11:03 Speaker 01 Yeah, so you know, I think this was a troubling time for everyone across the globe. But quite remarkably, our theory that no matter what happens in the world, the need for human connection and love and friendship and overall connectivity, that doesn't go away. In fact, it just becomes more important and more critical. And so we saw this fascinating event take place, which was a huge surge in activity. We had very fortunately been ahead of the curve with in-app video chatting. That was a feature that historically had moderate to low use. And we always wondered, why are people not using this more?
11:47 Speaker 01 This is a great mechanism to get to know somebody. Imagine if you could avoid that first date in public because you figured out that person wasn't for you by video. Or you could go ahead and skip the awkward, crowded coffee shop because you're nervous about meeting a stranger and you could go straight to that dinner you wanted to have or that walk in the park. Or maybe through a video chat, you recognize that you had a lot of shared interests and you want to go for a bike ride, whatever. So all of a sudden, we're all sitting on the edge of our seats, like, what's going to happen to our business? This is so crazy. People aren't allowed to date. Is this going to wipe us out? It was a very concerning and confusing time. But remarkably, the usage just went through the roof.
12:31 Speaker 01 And so we really just saw people using our product in such a deeper, more meaningful way.
12:36 Guy Raz? So basically, what happened was, once this COVID thing really became a reality, you started to see a spike in people connecting digitally, but not a spike in people meeting up face to face, which to me... I would think that actual physical meetings has probably declined across the board for all dating. I would imagine that people were just scared to meet. So is that a trend you've also been seeing?
13:00 Speaker 01 So we're seeing a decrease in this casual culture of dating where you might go out with someone for a night and then you don't see them again. That has decreased significantly, but remarkably, more meaningful relationships are coming out of this. So you're getting people and they're spending days, if not weeks, video chatting. We've heard of these really incredible stories of people ordering from the same restaurant in and having a dinner party with each other through the screen. They're watching movies or reading books together, or they're doing projects. They started gardening, or whatever people started doing, all this banana bread stuff. And it's been really incredible. So the amount of success stories we have heard and seen come out of this. And when I say success
13:44 Speaker 01 stories, I mean, we are exclusive together type of love. We have heard of countless stories of this because of not having this transactional, you know, see each other for a moment in real life, forget about them the next day. Not only that, but the friendship success stories, those are the ones that have really struck me as fascinating because people can't see their friends right now. And so many of us have to travel to see our friends anyway, and that's been wiped out for, you know, the time being. And so seeing people check in on their community through Bumble has been amazing.
14:18 Guy Raz? I have so much admiration for you and what you've created. But I'm going to throw some skepticism here, Whitney. I'm just, I get it, you know, and I understand people connecting digitally, but I don't buy this idea that people are building more meaningful, deeper relationships digitally without actually meeting up physically. I mean, are you saying that people are-
14:38 Speaker 01 No, no, back up, back up. What I'm saying is, instead of matching on Bumble, exchanging a hey, what's up, let's meet at the coffee shop, see you tomorrow type of thing, they're doing a lot of the foundational groundwork on the product first. And then they're meeting once it's safe. So there are folks that said- Hey, you know what? We've really hit it off on this video chat. Let's self-quarantine now for two weeks, or whatever the guidelines are, and then we'll meet in person. And so why I'm saying they're more meaningful is if we're a little more thoughtful and spend a little more time getting to know the individual behind the screen before we go meet in person, the success rate is so much higher.
15:17 Guy Raz? But are you noticing like, I mean, and this is a kind of a tricky question for me to ask because it's NPR and nobody wants to hear me talk about intimacy, especially me. I don't want to hear me talk about intimacy. But I mean, are people, from what you know, are people nervous about that? I mean, yes, you're getting to know somebody in a video chat, but then presumably they're going on a date and that tends to lead to intimacy. Are people nervous about that, given that COVID is out there?
15:48 Speaker 01 Yes, people are nervous. They are nervous and rightfully so. We should be nervous. But if you follow the guidelines and you get access to testing or you take precautions to ensure that you and that other party are safe, then it becomes a lot less risky. And so I think what is awesome here is, for me and my friends in particular, I think a lot of my personal disdain and a lot of my girlfriends' disdain for this transactional dating culture that has kind of come because of the early dawn of dating apps and so on and so forth. You know, there has been some romance lost over the years. And I think what is so special and the silver lining in this love in the time of COVID
16:31 Speaker 01 is that we are taking more time to know one another before we are meeting a stranger in real life. And when you think about this, go back 10 years ago, before the explosion of the industry that I'm in. If I had told you, you get to exchange two or three messages with a stranger. You've seen two or three photos. Now go meet them in public. That's a daunting, dangerous suggestion. Yet that has become so normalized. That is what millions of individuals around the world are doing. I personally believe and our team believes that the added safety, security, and success rate, if you will. Is going to be amplified because of this forced moment of social distancing.
17:13 Guy Raz? When we come back in just a moment, Whitney answers some questions from our audience and talks about the business of Bumble. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This, Resilience Edition from NPR.
17:29 Guy Raz? Stripe is built for whatever comes next because the pace of change has never been faster than it is right now. New business models, new currencies, and new expectations for speed, reliability, and scale. Stripe builds financial infrastructure that helps businesses start, grow, and operate globally. From payments and billing to fraud protection and cross-border payouts, Stripe is built to support the new pace of commerce. They're trusted by the companies building at the frontier, from 86% of the Forbes AI 50 to global leaders like Salesforce
18:07 Guy Raz? and OpenAI. In fact, more than 1.6% of global GDP flows through Stripe, with Stripe's users processing a combined $1.9 trillion last year. So if you're already thinking about what's next for your business, see what's possible at stripe.com.
18:32 Guy Raz? Hey, welcome back to How I Built This, Resilience Edition. And here's more from my conversation with Whitney Wolfherd, founder of the dating app Bumble. Here's a question from Clarissa Fries. Clarissa asks, what precautions does Bumble take to make online dating safer?
18:47 Speaker 01 Thank you for asking that because this is a huge, huge focus of ours. So first and foremost, we have this incredible feature called photo verification. And what's so interesting to us is photo verification had really only existed for credit cards or for your finances. But why would we treat your finances as more secure than the people you're meeting? I mean, there's nothing more important than your own personal security as a human being. And so photo verification is this incredible feature where you take a photo of your Yourself in real time and it compares it to your profile photo and within thirty seconds to one minute it will analyze are you who you say you are and if you are who you say you are then you get a check mark and you are verified and so that way you know you're not getting catfish
19:32 Speaker 01 you know you're not talking to somebody pretending to be someone else so that's just a first step we have incredible block and reporting features so if something makes you uncomfortable or you feel like somebody might be a risk to you or to others you can block and report and we take that very seriously we have a huge team that looks into all of this and so those are just two examples of how we really try to create a accountable ecosystem.
19:57 Guy Raz? Let's talk a little bit about business what is what is the I mean have you seen your business increase your revenue increase has it been flat have you been careful with your cash balances to steel yourself for a possible further downturn tell us a little bit about some of the things that have been happening in your strategies.
20:15 Speaker 01 So I can't comment on revenue as a direct metric but what I can say is that we have been an incredibly durable business across the board but I think that there is no business in the world that has not had to at least tweak their ways and so all of us have had to make concessions all of us have had to make changes but what I will say is that we have been on the side that would be least impacted because we've been such a digital business I'm watching all these local businesses around me all of a sudden they're modernizing you know you're ordering from the phone they're bringing it to the car and it's this really modern thing and I'm sitting here scratching my head going oh my goodness how did it take a global pandemic to actually modernize
20:57 Speaker 01 these businesses that are perceived as quite current and hip and we have not had to do that and so because we haven't had to go and rewrite our model and another example is so much of our workforce was already remote we have offices all over the world because our business affords us the luxury to be remote we haven't had to adapt to the same degree that so many individuals have had to do and so you know we have been very fortunate and I think that this has proven a theory that we were trying to enforce for Years before this hit, which was connect digitally first. It's safer, it's more meaningful. And then what becomes really interesting is how do we connect groups? Right? So lots of these events have gone out the window for now.
21:41 Speaker 01 So what you used to be able to do and go to a concert, you used to be able to go to a dinner party. You used to be able to go to an event where you had this connection with more than just one individual. So what we're really focused on right now is how do we connect you to more than just one person? How can we bring you together on shared interests? For example, how do we build the digital dinner party? And the equivalent of that so that you don't lose access to building your network. It's not just about one to one, it's about many to many and one to many. And so I think that's a huge focus as we go forward.
22:14 Guy Raz? Whitney, just very briefly, have you have you hired during this period of time? Have you actually scaled up to meet demand of new people onboarding and setting up profiles?
22:24 Speaker 01 You know, it's not so much to meet demand because we have a really well-staffed team. But this is an opportunity to hire in a way that we never thought about before. Usually where we're just hiring at our two main locations or three main locations. Now that things are moving remote, we're opening up our talent pool opportunities.
22:42 Guy Raz? Right.
22:42 Speaker 01 So we're just thinking more broadly and differently. And of course, this has posed new demands, right? Like we need to lean into social growth more. And so you hire for that or we need to double down here, you hire for that. And so we're definitely actively hiring right now and we're very fortunate to be able to do that.
22:58 Guy Raz? So just from a leadership perspective, I mean, you are running this company and you're running it remotely. I mean, how are you doing that? How are you able to kind of maintain the culture, maintain morale? And and let's be honest, it's not, I'm just telling you from my perspective, it's not always possible. Some days you can't motivate everybody. Some days people are just down and they're just frustrated, but.
23:18 Speaker 01 Oh, by the way, some days I'm motivated, right? Like this is affecting all of us. Truly what keeps us going is the need to connect people, right? We understand when we go to our job and we show up and we're on these Zooms. The work we are doing is helping connect people. It's helping people find love, start families. Find fun, find an escape, find a friend, find a business partner. That's meaningful and that's motivation in and of itself, but I have to give a lot of credit to my team. And then of course to Blackstone. So you know, we did a majority acquisition of my former shareholder last year. And then just a couple of months later, this pandemic hits. And so their support and their infrastructure and and all of the opportunities they've granted us has been remarkable.
24:03 Speaker 01 And then our leadership team and our user base. So I would say that's kind of the the thing that keeps us going every day.
24:10 Guy Raz? Before we let you go, Whitney, this is a question from Mitchell Slater. He asks, what's your favorite love in the time of COVID success story that you've heard through Bumble?
24:19 Speaker 01 I think my favorite story was actually a woman and a gentleman I actually met. He was in his, I want to say seventies and she was in probably her late fifties. And if she's listening, I'm sorry if you're younger than that. You look amazing. But you know, she had lost her husband tragically. And she heard about Sharon Stone joining Bumble. And so she joined Bumble during COVID. And they talked and they talked and they talked and they video chatted. And he said, well, you know, all the restaurants are closed. What about a parking lot picnic? So they agreed to a parking lot picnic, you know, six feet apart. And when she arrived, there was a white tablecloth parking lot picnic at some obscure shopping mall somewhere in Florida.
25:03 Speaker 01 And they had a lovely, lovely, romantic parking lot picnic, very socially distant. And they really hit it off and they have now been together ever since. And I ran into them in Colorado and they're a lovely couple. And had it not been for his son encouraging him to get on Bumble. And for Sharon Stone, talking about her Bumble experience, they would never have found each other. And so that was just one example of of a really charming and lovely story that I had firsthand interaction with. And there's many, many more to that.
25:35 Guy Raz? Love it. Whitney Wolf, thank you so much for joining us.
25:37 Speaker 01 Thank you so much. You're always such a joy to speak with and thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
25:42 Guy Raz? That's an excerpt from my conversation with Whitney Wolf-Herd, the founder of Bumble. Our full interview, you can go to facebook.com/HowIBuiltThis. And if you want to see all of our past live interviews, you can find them there or at youtube.com/NPR. And if you want to find out more about the How I Built This Resilience Series or other virtual NPR events, you can go to nprpresents.org. This episode was produced by Candace Lim with help from Will Mitchell, Matt Adams, Elle Mannion, Gianna Cappadona, John Isabella, Julia Carney, Neva Grant, and Jeff Rogers. Thanks for listening. Stay safe, and I'll see you in a few days. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.
Previous How I Built Resilience: Bert and John Jacobs of Life is Good Next Khan Academy: Sal Khan Page updated October 26, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
