Sharing the 2023 HIBT Lab Highlight Reel

A special look back at some of our favorite How I Built This Lab episodes of 2023. Hear how Pinky Cole built the vegan fast food chain Slutty Vegan after a devastating fire destroyed her first restaurant. Then, Nuseir Yassin turns a 1000-day social media travelog into a multi-dimensional business called The Nas Company. And finally, Whitney Wolfe Herd, the founder of Bumble, returns to the show to talk with Guy about the future of dating. Stay tuned for fresh episodes in 2024. Happy New Year! This episode was produced by Chris Maccini with music by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by John Isabella. You can follow HIBT on X https://twitter.com/HowIBuiltThis?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor & Instagram https://www.instagram.com/howibuiltthis/?hl=en, and email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Guy Raz?

  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 a.m. 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? 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,

• 0:46Guy Raz?

  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. We get support from U.S. 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.

• 1:32Guy Raz?

  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. 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

• 2:16Guy Raz?

  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 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. If you travel often, you'll want to hear about this unprecedented offer. For the first time ever,

• 3:00Guy Raz?

  new Delta SkyMiles Reserve American Express Card members can earn two Delta Comfort Round Trip flights for travel within the 48 contiguous US states, Puerto Rico, or the US Virgin Islands. Plus, you can earn 50,000 bonus miles towards your next getaway. And who doesn't appreciate an elevated airport experience? Delta SkyMiles Reserve Card members get access to the Delta Sky Club, your pre-flight oasis to recharge, with 15 visits and four one-time guest passes each medallion year when flying Delta together. That's up to $950 in annual value. Value estimate based on $50 per visit rate to purchase additional visits

• 3:45Guy Raz?

  or bring a guest to the Delta Sky Club. Make every trip feel more rewarding with the car that upgrades your travel. Apply today at delta.com/cardsocial. Offer ends November 4, 2026. Minimum spending requirements and terms apply. Flights are fulfilled as flight certificates valid for Delta Comfort or Delta Maine to select domestic destinations. Book 21-plus days in advance. Up to $80 per person and taxes and fees apply. Other restrictions apply. When I pull up to a gas pump to fill my car, I'm not thinking about chemistry or engineering. I'm thinking about getting in, filling up, and getting on with my day. And it reminds me a little bit of the founders I talk to on this show, because the best

• 4:27Guy Raz?

  ones obsess over things their customers will never see. Tiny details, invisible improvements, relentless iteration. And not because anyone's watching, but because it makes the product better. That's what the mobile brand does. It engineers fuel the same way great founders engineer their products. Mobile Supreme Plus Premium Gas helps keep engines three times cleaner, which can mean better performance and improved gas mileage. It's for people who care about what's under the hood, even if they never see it. Three times cleaner compared to mobile regular gas in port fuel-injected engines. Actual results may vary. Visit mobilefuels.com for details.

• 5:11Guy Raz?

  Hello and welcome to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. So 2023 was our first full year of How I Built This Lab, our weekly highlight of some of the most innovative and inspiring companies and the leaders behind them. This week, we're sharing excerpts from a few of our favorite lab episodes from this past year. And if you want to hear the full stories, just scroll back in your podcast feed to find the full episodes. These are great stories well worth listening to. First up, Pinky Cole. She's the founder of a chain of vegan fast food restaurants called, yes, Slutty Vegan. Pinky's story is a reminder that an innovative idea doesn't have to be super technical or scientific.

• 5:53Guy Raz?

  And Slutty Vegan wasn't Pinky's first attempt in the restaurant business. In 2014, she opened up Pinky's Jamaican in Harlem. But just two years later, that restaurant was destroyed in a fire, and Pinky had no choice but to start over. So Pinky, you pour your heart and soul into this restaurant, Pinky's Jamaican, for two years. And then, in an instant, it literally all goes up in flames. I can't even imagine how horrible that must have been. But of course, you are the owner of this restaurant. You can't like, close your eyes and make it all go away. So what happened once that fire was out? What did you do?

• 6:35Speaker 01

  So there were things at the front that were salvageable, but majority of the items in there, the roof had came in. Like, it was not salvageable. So I'm like, OK, cool. Like, fire insurance is going to take care of this. So I called my insurance agent and they were like, "No, you don't have fire insurance." And I'm like, "What? Like, you just have regular, basic business insurance. And if you want to be able to, you know, get the things that you got back, like, we aren't responsible. Like, we don't have a policy for that."

• 7:05Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  So that's literally blood, sweat and tears down the drain. And I don't wish that on my worst enemy.

• 7:13Guy Raz?

  You lost everything.

• 7:15Speaker 01

  I lost everything. And I make a joke about it, like, I almost lost my mind, but I really almost lost my mind. You got to imagine what I've told you so far is, I used to throw parties. I was the it girl on campus. I got this job working in TV. Like, everything that I've done have always been successful. Right? Like, anything I touched turned to gold. Pinky Cole got the Midas touch. But I didn't have the Midas touch on this one. And I felt like the biggest failure at the time. It didn't feel good to me at all because my pride and my ego wouldn't allow me to be that vulnerable. So when it happened, it really humbled me in a way that it's never happened in my life. But I needed that level of humility, Guy.

• 7:59Guy Raz?

  Yeah. I mean, going into the, as you know, going into the restaurant business is so complicated and the margins are so thin. And it's so challenging because, I mean, it's a crash course in running a really complicated business, which, you know, I've never done it, but I've just seen people do it.

• 8:17Speaker 01

  It's hard.

• 8:18Guy Raz?

  Yeah. Tell me about what you learned doing that.

• 8:23Speaker 01

  I wish I could come here and like, tell you, like, it's all rainbows and lilies and like, but it's not. Like, it's really not. I walked in so blind. And when I say blind, I didn't have anybody that has done it before to ask those kind of questions.

• 8:39Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  So I was in the lake all by myself. But being in a lake, like, I really stuck myself out there to, like, do the research. So I'd be on Google all night. I'd be on YouTube. Like, I would, I would go to different restaurants and just look around and like, it was a lot of trial and error.

• 8:55Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  Hell, it still is trial and error.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  Um, but when I, what I realized is that creating it the way that it was created gave me the opportunity to learn every side of the business.

• 9:08Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  Like, I'd had no choice but to learn accountant. I had no choice but to learn how to, like, cook burgers and fries. And I didn't grow up eating burgers and fries. Like, I had no choice but to be customer service.

• 9:22Guy Raz?

  So you've lost your restaurant, so that's like, not, not a good place to be. Um, I can imagine you were depressed. I can, I mean, uh, what else can you be? I mean,

• 9:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:34Guy Raz?

  Right? I mean, but within a week or so, you get this call. I think it was from a show that's on the Oprah Network, right? OWN?

• 9:41Speaker 01

  Yep, mhm.

• 9:42Guy Raz?

  And, and they offered you a job and you went and you took that job.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I took that job. And I don't know why I'm having all these revelations while I'm talking to you, guy. But you, you ever been in a situation where you're like, okay, it's time to move on? Okay, this is not working.

• 9:58Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  Has that ever happened to you before?

• 10:00Guy Raz?

  Yeah, totally.

• 10:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that was the moment that I was in when I had the restaurant right before the fire. And it was so many things happening at that time. And when it happened, I didn't understand it then, but then I got the opportunity to go on a show. And I'm like, I don't got nothing to lose at this point. Like, I might as well go and be great and fly and start over, because one thing about me is I was never afraid to start over. And when I got to LA to work on the show, it was the best thing that could have happened to me. Because it was actually like a healing therapy show. I'm like, go figure. Healing therapy, like, I'm coming from a depressed space, like, great. But I needed it.

• 10:42Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  Because it allowed me the opportunity to get the therapy that I needed to heal.

• 10:46Guy Raz?

  Yeah, the show's called Fix My Life, and it was conversations about. Struggles and challenges, right?

• 10:51Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 10:52Guy Raz?

  And in this show, they would kind of try to resolve these challenges or just talk through them.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:59Guy Raz?

  It was like a therapy show.

• 11:00Speaker 01

  It was like a therapy show. But what I liked about the show is that I got the opportunity to connect with people who were also going through it.

• 11:08Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 11:10Guy Raz?

  So you're working for the show in LA, back in LA, right?

• 11:13Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. Yeah.

• 11:15Guy Raz?

  And while you are working on the show, you decide, because you are a little bit of a masochist, that you want to go back into the restaurant business.

• 11:26Speaker 01

  Because I'm crazy. That's why.

• 11:28Guy Raz?

  And you come up with this idea for like a vegan fast food place. Tell me about how you came up with this concept at first.

• 11:38Speaker 01

  So again, I told you that like, I got a couple of screws loose, but it's okay. So right before I started Slutty Vegan, something just went over me. I don't know what it is. But now that I look at like the holistic picture, I'm like, it happened on purpose. So when we were on hiatus, you know, when you have hiatus on a show, you got to find ways to supplement your income.

• 11:59Guy Raz?

  Right, because usually there's a season, you work like four to six months and then you've got four or five months off.

• 12:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, so like you can have a whole lot of money and then you could be trying to figure out like how you're going to pay the next bill.

• 12:09Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 12:10Speaker 01

  Like, that's how it works. Nobody really talks about that world, but it's the truth.

• 12:12Guy Raz?

  Right, because TV work is project based. It's not like a salary. You get paid for the project and you're done.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then you got to figure it out while you're done until it comes back. So I'm like, okay, all right, let me do DoorDash. So while I was doing DoorDash, I'm like, all right, let me start working out. Let me start reading a book every day. And I did that. I read a book every day. I was raw vegan. I did DoorDash. And I ran five miles a day consistently. Like, I did that because I was practicing discipline.

• 12:39Guy Raz?

  This, can I just pause for a moment? This is just five and a half years ago we're talking about, that you were doing this.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  It's coming up on five years.

• 12:47Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I mean, and because we're going to talk about where you are today, which is incredible. This is five years ago. You're like, okay, I'm going to figure out, I'm just going to, there was no end goal. You were just like, I just want to be disciplined. I want to run every day and read a book. It wasn't like, and then that will lead me to this. It was just, I'm going to do this because it's going to focus me.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  Well, you know what my thought process was now that I think about it? I'm going to do this because discipline breeds rewards.

• 13:16Guy Raz?

  Mm hmm. Yep.

• 13:17Speaker 01

  I know that if I'm disciplined on something, there will be like a cosmic effect that happens when I display that level of discipline. And I did that. And now that I'm thinking about it, I did it all of my life. There were certain levels of discipline and some of it probably was a little bit more extreme than others.

• 13:35Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  But that level of discipline really like opened up my mindset to be able to receive what it is that the assignment was. And the assignment was to open up Slutty Vegan and build a multimillion dollar brand.

• 13:47Guy Raz?

  By the way, I hope my mom is listening to this interview because you sound exactly like my mom.

• 13:52Speaker 01

  I hope that's a good thing.

• 13:53Guy Raz?

  She used to say to me when I was a kid about discipline and the connection between discipline and rewards. And my mom always used to say, the busier you are, the more time you have because you have to be efficient. All right. So you are being disciplined. And how does this, this idea of a vegan, fast food, like comfort food, kind of, you know, fast casual restaurant comes to your mind?

• 14:16Speaker 01

  Okay, so when I was the casting director, because I had gotten promoted within that time.

• 14:22Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 14:22Speaker 01

  They asked me to move to Atlanta temporarily to do the show. So while I was living in Atlanta, I was in my two bedroom apartment. And God, I can only be transparent. So I'm gonna tell you the honest truth. I don't smoke, right? I'm not, I'm not a weed smoker. But on this night, I smoked. And after I smoked, Slutty Vegan literally like hit me like a light bulb. And I gotta be transparent about that story because literally, I don't know if I was super relaxed, if my conscience was open. I'm still trying to figure it out. But when I, when I came up with Slutty Vegan, it was literally like the universe just put it in my hand. Like, okay, run, fly and be free.

• 15:02Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  And I called up my best friends and I asked them, like, what y'all think about this idea? And they're like, oh, Pinky, that's good. Like, you need to do that. I'm like, all right, cool.

• 15:09Guy Raz?

  You had the idea and the name all in that night.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  Yes, all, all in that time, literally.

• 15:15Guy Raz?

  It was going to be called Slutty Vegan, which is, I mean, it's, it's not, it's not Pinky's Vegan.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  No.

• 15:22Guy Raz?

  It's not vegan, fast food, or, you know, vegan burgers. It was, I mean, you picked a provocative name.

• 15:29Speaker 01

  Listen, because slutty and vegan ain't supposed to go together, right? Like, right? When you think, that's like how peanut butter and jelly goes together. Like slutty and vegan don't go together. But what it did is it really was the biggest oxymoron. So I'm like, if I, we all know veganism to be like very rich and wealthy and like clean and like the person who's vegan works out all the time. No, this ain't that. But it literally, really like took all the politics out of what being vegan was. So came up with the name, literally started to do the work. Like I got all my permits, I did everything that I could, all on my own. And I got the shared kitchen and I asked them, I said, hey, can I, I, I, I saw something

• 16:13Speaker 01

  in LA when I was working for DoorDash and basically it's a cloud kitchen. So can I do a cloud kitchen here? This was before cloud kitchens got popular, Guy.

• 16:21Guy Raz?

  Yeah, this was one of those like, right, these, a lot of people who have like farmer's market stands, they'll use these, they're commercial kitchens, they're shared kitchens.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 16:30Guy Raz?

  And, and that, that's what it was. You rented space in, in one of these kitchens.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  Yep, and so they allowed me to do it. So I hired two employees and we were making burgers and fries. And I came up with the recipe for the sauce. It's like a, similar to like a, what a McDonald's sauce would be, but not.

• 16:49Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 16:49Speaker 01

  Right, so.

• 16:50Guy Raz?

  But vegan, so no egg in the mayonnaise and.

• 16:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:53Guy Raz?

  Right?

• 16:54Speaker 01

  So, mind you, I'm not a chef guy. So I came up with a recipe, like I was just tasting and putting my finger in like, okay, this is good.

• 17:00Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  And came up with that, came up with the fry seasoning and I was just like doing as I go and like everything was tasting really good. So we started selling it.

• 17:10Guy Raz?

  How?

• 17:10Speaker 01

  Online through DoorDash, Postmates, Grubhub and Uber Eats.

• 17:17Guy Raz?

  You started a, literally a ghost kitchen called Slutty Vegan?

• 17:21Speaker 01

  Yes, Slutty Vegan was a ghost kitchen before it was anything else.

• 17:25Guy Raz?

  Wow, yeah. This is, this is so interesting. There's this famous book by Seth Godin where he talks about the purple cow. The purple cow theory is like, if you're gonna start a business. You want to think about a purple cow business. Because like if you're driving through, you know, the countryside and you just see a cow in a field, you're just gonna keep driving. But if it was a purple cow in the field, you would jump out of your car and hop in front of that cow and take a selfie with that cow and then put on Instagram and say, "Look, I found a purple cow." That was slutty vegan.

• 17:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 17:54Guy Raz?

  It was a purple cow. Because people are gonna say, "What a weird name. I have to know more about this thing. It's so weird."

• 18:01Speaker 01

  Yes. And guess what it did? I love the purple cow theory, by the way. Purple is my favorite color, so it just works all the way around. I gotta grab that book. But what I realized is this concept came at a time where people wanted something new. And in wanting something new, if I could make them uncomfortable and ask questions at the same time.

• 18:23Guy Raz?

  Or laugh.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  Or laugh or chuckle or be surprised.

• 18:26Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  Then I know that I have their attention. And when I have their attention, I can teach and educate them on whatever it is that I want to. So I took the approach to educate people on how veganism can be cool and be fun and not be stuffy and uptight, but you can have a good time and we'll meet you where you are.

• 18:44Guy Raz?

  Yeah. So when you started out, right, in a ghost kitchen, which is true. Like if you go to DoorDash or Uber Eats today, like a lot of the, and I do it all the time. I'll order up and like, "Oh, this looks pretty good." I don't even know if it's a restaurant. I just, I'm ordering it. I don't know where it's coming from. And it is often coming from one of these ghost kitchens. You were doing this in 2018. And were you just buying like garden burgers and buns just off the shelf initially at the beginning? Just from the grocery store?

• 19:11Speaker 01

  Nope. You know what I did? There was like a procurement director. And she was showing me some new products that they had. Like there's this newer company called Impossible. And I'm like, "Oh, let me taste it."

• 19:25Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 19:25Speaker 01

  And I tasted it and I'm like, "Oh, this is good." And I'm like, "I want it." So she got me a delivery of the Impossible patty and I started from there. And I added my little razzle to the already dazzle.

• 19:38Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 19:39Speaker 01

  And I started growing and building.

• 19:41Guy Raz?

  Those were hard to get. I mean, restaurants could get them. But now, of course, Impossible meat is available everywhere. But you were basically turning those into patties and getting vegan cheese again.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:52Guy Raz?

  And basically packaging them up. And then some driver would pick them up and then that was it?

• 19:59Speaker 01

  Well, that's how it started. How it ended is that I got kicked out of the facility. And I appreciate them for that because they pushed me to get uncomfortable.

• 20:09Guy Raz?

  Why?

• 20:10Speaker 01

  Because I had too many people coming. Like, people started talking about the brand so much that customers started Instagramming us, sending us private messages, saying, hey, can I order the one night stand with the fries, ketchup on the side? And I'm like, OK, I'm not going to not take the order. So I would take the order from Instagram while taking orders from these online platforms.

• 20:31Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  And it got out of hand, Guy. When I tell you, like, people from everywhere were coming. Literally, it was like 300 people standing outside to get their food.

• 20:40Guy Raz?

  From, I mean, you're on DoorDash, but if you type in vegan, it'll show you a bunch of restaurants. And usually, you know, they're, you know, I live in the Bay Area, so I'm not, I mean, there's some great ones, but nothing called slutty vegan.

• 20:51Speaker 01

  No.

• 20:51Guy Raz?

  If you see that, you're going to be like, what is this?

• 20:54Speaker 01

  Yes. But people didn't come for the food. The food was good. That was like the cherry on top.

• 20:58Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  But to say that you were a part of this experience that felt cryptic and you could only get it at a certain time, people love the art of scarcity.

• 21:06Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 21:07Speaker 01

  You know, like, the art of scarcity makes you want it more. So I would only open up for like three hours at a time. And once I closed the block, that's it. Nobody else can order. So like, I put people on a timeframe on when you can get the food. And they complied. And I'm like, wow, people really want to be a part of this movement just to say that they got it. And when I got put out, they told me that I could use the parking lot. Like, hey, you should get a food truck and you could do it out in the parking lot, but you can't do it in here because it's disrupting the other tenants.

• 21:35Guy Raz?

  Because people were, so many delivery drivers were coming to pick up orders there.

• 21:39Speaker 01

  Yes. And it was disrupting the business of the other tenants.

• 21:43Guy Raz?

  And everybody was like, what's she doing that I'm doing wrong? How is she getting all this business?

• 21:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it was crazy, man. Listen, when I got that food truck. I went to this place called Mr. V's in Atlanta. So I went inside and they told me that the food truck would be $45,000.

• 22:02Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  So I'm like, all right, well, I'm making a lot of money, but like, I don't have $45,000 like in my hand right now. But what I could do is I can pay you $10,000 a week for the next four weeks or so. It was, it was like 10,000, I think.

• 22:15Guy Raz?

  And this was the cash flow from your business?

• 22:18Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 22:18Guy Raz?

  And maybe also some savings you had from that, that TV show?

• 22:21Speaker 01

  I never had to tap into my savings.

• 22:23Guy Raz?

  Wow. This was just the cash flow from the Ghost Kitchen business?

• 22:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 22:28Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 22:29Speaker 01

  So when I got the food truck, the owner allowed me to pay every single week. And I would go on the east side and the west side. And I would post up three hours before and say, hey, the slutty vegan food truck will be here from four to seven. Those were my hours, like four to seven or four to nine, I would post on Instagram.

• 22:46Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 22:46Speaker 01

  And every time I post on Instagram, I literally had between three to 500 people that would stand outside.

• 22:52Guy Raz?

  Waiting.

• 22:53Speaker 01

  Yes. Yes.

• 22:54Guy Raz?

  Waiting for a burger. Wow.

• 22:56Speaker 01

  And I realized, but it wasn't about the food. People wanted to be a part of the experience.

• 23:01Guy Raz?

  You're like, you're like McDonald's in Moscow in 1989. Just like lines, thousands of people.

• 23:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:08Guy Raz?

  So, so you have this food truck and obviously you're, I mean, you started this. I read that within six months of starting the Ghost Kitchen, your revenue was $4 million. It's incredible. I mean, and, and, and this was based on burgers and fries?

• 23:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, burgers and fries. And literally, hold on, let me, not even just burgers and fries. I didn't sell drinks. I, I literally only sold burgers and fries. I didn't sell desserts. So you were literally coming for some french fries and a sandwich. But guess what, what else you got? You got the cultural capital of being able to have the currency of food and take a picture with it. And people get excited because they want to hear about your experience.

• 23:53Guy Raz?

  It's a brand.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  It's a brand.

• 23:55Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 23:55Speaker 01

  And do you know my business is almost five years old and I still got lines down the block?

• 24:01Guy Raz?

  It's incredible.

• 24:02Speaker 01

  People still come and support me. But I realized I am the slutty vegan. I'm raw in the tongue, plus I'm educated. You know, I move with intention and I'm intellectual. Plus, I like to have a good time and I'm real and like I meet you where you are. And I'm just a vibe. Slutty Vegan is a vibe. And as long as that happens, my business will continue to be successful.

• 24:28Guy Raz?

  That was an excerpt from my conversation with Pinky Cole, founder of Slutty Vegan. To find out how Pinky won over her skeptical neighbors and how she grew the brand in places beyond Atlanta, check out the full episode of the show.

• 24:47Guy 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.

• 25:29Guy 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.

• 26:14Guy 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.

• 26:59Guy 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.

• 27:18Speaker 02

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• 28:03Speaker 03

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• 28:24Guy Raz?

  Welcome back to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. This is our best of end of year show. And last year, I also had a chance to speak with Nasir Yassin. He's a content creator, probably best known for creating a brand called Nas Daily. Back in 2016, Nasir quit his job as a software engineer and began traveling around the world. And for 1,000 straight days, he produced a daily one-minute video documenting his trip. Today, Nas Daily has around 40 million followers across its social channels. And Nasir has turned his social media platform into a multi-dimensional media business that helps other people become content creators.

• 29:09Guy Raz?

  Okay, so you make it through 1,000 days of Nas Daily. And at that point, you decide to start a company with a mission of bringing people together. But I want to talk specifics. What are the products and services, right? Because you've got to sell something.

• 29:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, so first of all, media brings people together. So we decided to build a production house that creates stories and tells stories. This production house helps nonprofits, helps governments, helps big corporations to create content that brings people together. Not Coca-Cola ads, but like deep storytelling. And I felt there's money in that. We could charge 50K to 100K for every video or every campaign. That's a lot of money.

• 29:52Guy Raz?

  You could do like a brand studio with a mission.

• 29:54Speaker 04

  Exactly. And for me, scale is really important. Hundreds of millions of views are important because the more people that use your product, the better the world is. And that's what we believe. So now we need to figure out what scales, right? Technology brings people together, and it scales. That's why we decided to build a technology company over the last two years and go back to my engineering roots and build Nasio, which is a community management software. It's basically the infrastructure for communities. It allows you to start a community on the internet and monetize it and run it very, very easy. It's everything I've been doing for the last seven years, all the meetups and the communities I've built over the last seven years.

• 30:38Speaker 04

  I built the software to enable it. And we think technology and media both can scale and bring people together. And that could be a thing for the next 30 years.

• 30:50Guy Raz?

  So that was this thing that you built, Nasio, which was sort of like Salesforce for people who want to build a social media community, like a customer relationship management tool.

• 30:59Speaker 04

  Exactly. So we've built monetization features to help you monetize your community. And we take a 10% cut from, from anything you, you do in the community. Simple.

• 31:10Guy Raz?

  And did you bootstrap that? Did you just use the money that you had from, from Nas Daily? Or did you raise money to build that?

• 31:16Speaker 04

  So at the beginning, it was self-funded. So receipt funding was done by myself, but then I decided that, okay, this is going to get really expensive. I need investor money. So one year in, we went and raised $23 million total to achieve this vision.

• 31:33Guy Raz?

  Got it. Okay. So you've got that business. Meantime, there's another part of the business called Nas Academy.

• 31:40Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 31:40Guy Raz?

  Which is like a, we will train you to do what we do. We will teach you everything, soup to nuts, about how to make viral videos.

• 31:49Speaker 04

  Yeah. So, so Nas Academy is, is the same business as Nasio. It's just two products. Nas Academy is basically cohort-based education of how to become a creator. It runs all on top of the Nasio software and it's five months long. And basically from when you join until five months, we teach you everything that we know. Right? Me and 10 other teachers. Every person teaches you their specialty. They're all creators. And then you graduate and then, you know, you, you go on to get a job in the media space or to become a creator yourself. And what we think is going to happen is that there is going to be a need for digital universities to complement traditional universities, to teach engineering, content creation, and, you know, maybe entrepreneurship.

• 32:34Speaker 04

  Those are the only three things we want to teach. So it is an education arm. It's a profitable business unit, but it's still community-driven. It brings people together.

• 32:42Guy Raz?

  And, and having these different arms of the business, can you just kind of break down where your revenue comes from?

• 32:49Speaker 04

  So last year's revenue for all of Nas Company is eleven million dollars. Seven million dollars was for the production, the Nas Daily. Then the four million, uh, uh, the majority of it comes from Nas Academy. And then now Nas Ayo is the newest one. It's two months old. So it's still starting, right? But I think by the end of the year, it'll be like a major revenue driver. And the reason why I like Nas Ayo is it's a scalable model. It's something that could get ten X bigger in a month, which is very different from Nas Daily and Nas Academy.

• 33:21Guy Raz?

  All right, let me, let me ask you about where you draw the line. Traditional media organizations have very strict rules about how they cover things. And, and you're right, I think you open up the daily paper and a lot of the news is negative and a lot of the spin is negative for sure. And you were trying to do something different. But when you're working with a government, for example, where do you draw the line? I mean, you look at a country like Russia, for example, okay?

• 33:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 33:50Guy Raz?

  And Russia has invaded Ukraine and it, it, it imprisons dissidents. But it also like has a thriving art and fashion scene and an incredible culinary scene. You know, so if, if the Russian government came to you and they said, you know, hey, we don't want people to think about us as like the invaders of Ukraine. We want us, we want people to think about us as like this incredible vibrant culture where we have great food and fashion and art. Can you make a video for us or help us make a video that does that? What would you do?

• 34:22Speaker 04

  To be clear, we've had people from China, CCTV, tell us to go to Xinjiang and talk about the culture and the food.

• 34:29Guy Raz?

  And not to talk about the people who are imprisoned, the Muslim Uyghurs?

• 34:33Speaker 04

  Yes. For me, that was a step too far. So I said, I said, no. But we was also had people from the State Department tell us, hey, why don't you make videos about China and how bad it is? In my opinion, first of all, we have one rule, which is we don't really discuss politics. We promote tourism, we promote nations, and we promote things that are a little bit not like geopolitical in nature. Second of all, with Russia, it's a little bit tricky. Don't forget that I'm from Israel. And for at least a billion people on the planet, working with Israel is like a big no-no. So, and we've never worked with Israeli government, to be clear. But one thing I've realized is that this whole what's taboo and what's not is very relative. For you, Russia is a big no-no.

• 35:18Speaker 04

  But for people in Saudi Arabia, they're like, Russia is our friend. Or people in Syria, Russia is our friend. And so for a creator in Syria, they're much more willing to work with Russia. It's all relative to what you think is a no-no and what you think is a acceptable thing. So I have to make my own little sort of compass. What's acceptable and what's not. My compass is very different from an American perspective compass. And that's what many Americans need to realize is that the world does not center around America and American interests. And then my compass, I just follow that.

• 35:55Guy Raz?

  In, in general, I'm wondering how you, you know, you say you've got your compass. And I believe that you have a strong compass, but there's still, it's tricky. I guess, and again, I'm not, I'm not knocking you or criticizing you. I'm trying to, I'm trying to kind of break it down because I think it's really interesting. And I think it's, look, as somebody who was a journalist my whole career, you deal with all kinds of dilemmas as a reporter.

• 36:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:18Guy Raz?

  But I wonder what, whether it is necessary to work with governments. In other words, let's say you didn't, you decided, I'm not going to work with governments. But if a Russian tech company or a Russian or a Saudi business wants me to work with them, great, happy to do it, especially if what they're doing is innovative and interesting. And there you're dealing with a company that might be from a country that is in the middle of a geopolitical conflict. But you're not focused on the government of that country. You're focused on the business in that country and what they're doing. I mean, wouldn't that be a cleaner kind of approach?

• 36:53Speaker 04

  Yeah. So that is, that is an amazing American dream in which private sector and public sector are separate entities.

• 37:02Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 37:03Speaker 04

  But that doesn't exist in Singapore, in the UAE. They're so intertwined. Like you, I have a business in Singapore. We all love Singapore, right? But the government knows everything about every business and works with every business, right? And so like, Yes, you can do that separation in America, but you really can't do that separation in many countries around the world.

• 37:23Guy Raz?

  Because they're just so intertwined.

• 37:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, that business in Saudi Arabia is, half of it is state-owned. Now, what do you do? Do you work with it or not?

• 37:31Guy Raz?

  Let me, let me ask you about this world of content creators. I mean, obviously, today, it's, it seems like everybody is a content creator. And you have this academy that really helps people build out their brands and their platforms and to monetize it. But can we have a world where everybody is a content creator? And that, and for that world to be productive and harmonious and sustainable? I mean, part of me is like, I, I kind of worry that so many people want to become YouTubers. So many young people, my kids, you know, their friends. And again, I might just be like, have the worst, stupidest perspective about this. I concede, but a part of me is like, I don't, I'm not sure that's sustainable,

• 38:16Guy Raz?

  that we can all become content creators.

• 38:19Speaker 04

  So first of all, we are at 1% of the way there with how many content creators we need, similar to how many software engineers we need. We are at 1% of the way there because monetizing videos has been very, very new. So we're just at the beginning, okay? We're not at the end. Second of all, when you say content creator, you think a guy with a model on a beach saying, "Hey, guys, I'm here. Come to visit this beach with my girlfriend." That is not what a content creator is. For every content creator can be in front of the camera, but there's 10 people that can be behind the camera. A video editor is a content creator, a scriptwriter, a researcher, a producer, right? A Discord community manager, a NasIO community manager. Why shouldn't we create those jobs? The world needs those jobs.

• 39:05Guy Raz?

  I mean, when you say it's not somebody on a beach saying, "Hey, come check out this awesome beach and my hot girlfriend," right? That, that, that's not what you're, you're hoping to build. But what do you want those content creators to do? Do you want them to do videos like you did at Nas Daily?

• 39:19Speaker 04

  Right, so when it comes to content creators, I mean, The average person has eleven or ten different hobbies, right? You can create content about swimming and how much you love swimming. You can make educational content about running, how much you love running, painting. You know, your country, you can make travel. I mean, here's the thing, for the majority of the internet, media has been created in Los Angeles and consumed globally. But there is no Nas Daily in Libya. There is no Nas Daily in Morocco. There's no Mr. Beast in Egypt. There's no Mr. Beast in Denmark. So these are all opportunities for local content to be created. In the future, there is a room for one hundred and ninety-five more Hollywoods to be created.

• 40:02Speaker 04

  The days in which the whole world is watching Will Smith on TV and Tom Cruise for the fifty-fifth movie are done.

• 40:11Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 40:11Speaker 04

  That's why we need content creators.

• 40:13Guy Raz?

  That makes sense to me, but I'm not totally convinced that hundreds and maybe billions more people can create sustainable livelihoods as walking billboards, right? Like, if essentially what you're saying, hey, I'm really into running in Libya and I'm gonna have a running channel in Libya, and then like there can be fifty thousand people who do that in Libya, like, is there enough advertising to support all of those people? And do we really wanna be inundated with that?

• 40:43Speaker 04

  No, there isn't enough advertising. And advertising-based content creation is a flawed model. And I would dare say it's a fraudulent model. This is the model that has been working, but it will not work in the future. So I'm a runner. I start a community for a hundred people. I create content for a hundred people and each one of them gives me ten bucks. I'm already making a thousand bucks a month. So you can create new jobs. And that's where the future is heading, in my opinion.

• 41:10Guy Raz?

  I'm trying to cut all my subscriptions back. I got Spotify, Netflix, Hulu, Disney.

• 41:16Guy Raz?

  What else do I have? Peacock, I'm up to my ears in subscriptions. That's just like the fraction of them. Now you want me to pay my friend who's a runner for to join his Discord?

• 41:26Speaker 04

  But guy, these are not communities. These are streaming content software. But are you part of a, let's say, tech community in San Francisco?

• 41:34Guy Raz?

  I hear you. I hear you. Right. There are clubs. You join them. You pay a fee. And so the idea is that you have these self-sustaining communities of people who are building content that's valuable.

• 41:45Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 41:46Guy Raz?

  Okay. So I know you're about to do another Nas Daily series. You're gonna go to a bunch of other countries. I mean, people are still coming for you. So are you still in front of the camera in five, 10, 15 years?

• 42:02Speaker 04

  No. So I'm getting hosts. So now I have different hosts that get in the videos. I'm taking myself out of the video slowly but surely. My personal ambition is very simple. I want to do things that are life and death. That's it. I don't want to be selling Coca-Cola. I don't want to be creating furniture. I want to do things life and death when I'm 50, 60 years old. So what is life and death when you're 50 and 60 years old? Healthcare, right? Hospitals, doctors, medicine, government, politics. That's it. In my opinion, nothing else is important. So the way I see my life is the next 15, 20 years, I'll be in the private sector. Great. Then I will have no meaning from the private

• 42:46Speaker 04

  sector. I'll have somebody to run it. Then I'd like to go and join a government, any government, and try to actually create life and death solutions. I think that's amazing. There's a lot of power in that. There's a lot of influence in that. And that's much better than any YouTube video you can make.

• 43:04Guy Raz?

  Right, right. So then tell me about the future vision for the Nas universe, right? I mean, you've got the CRM, you've got the Academy, you're still doing brand and government partnerships, and you now have over 100 employees.

• 43:17Guy Raz?

  You brought in some investment, right? And your revenue is growing and you have a vision clearly to turn this into a multi-billion dollar brand, I think, because you're ambitious and smart. Where does it go in 10 or 15 years?

• 43:30Speaker 04

  So I'm going to give you a bit of observation. I found out that the American way of building companies is very different than the Asian way of building companies. The American way of building companies tells you, build one product, make that product really big, go on IPO and just like continue working on that product for the next 10, 20 years, like Slack. Slack is a one product company until it got acquired. Perfect, right? That never made sense to me. So I'm much more inspired by the Asian way of building it, which is build an ecosystem. Build 20 different companies that all complement and help each other. That's my vision. I think there's an opportunity for the next Virgin Group.

• 44:14Speaker 04

  Because Richard Branson built an incredible ecosystem of, I'm going to take a boring business and I'm going to make it fun. And it's like physical stuff. My ambition is to build similar to Virgin, but I'm going to build products that bring people together in technology, media, travel. So the way I envision the next 10 years is Nas Daily, Nas Hotel, Nas IO, Nas Summits, you know, Nas Foods, Nas Venture, Nas whatever. I want to build the Nas ecosystem where every business line helps the other. That's my 30-year vision. We're not building something to be acquired and put it on the LinkedIn. I'm building something that I, I believe has the capacity to live beyond my life.

• 45:00Guy Raz?

  That's Nasir Yasin, founder of The Nas Company. You've just heard an excerpt of our conversation and to hear more about Nasir's journey from software engineer to social media influencer to tech entrepreneur, listen to the full episode in our podcast feed. You can find it by searching Nas Daily and How I Built This.

• 45:23Speaker 05

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• 46:29Guy Raz?

  Welcome back to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. So for years, listeners have asked us for updates from past guests. So this year, we started doing it. And in 2024, we will hear from lots more, including Jim Cook, the creator of Sam Adams Beer, who was on the show for the first time back in the first season of the show. But earlier this year, I caught up with Whitney Wolfe Herd. She's the founder of Bumble. Whitney was first on the show in 2017. And if you haven't heard that episode, definitely go listen. It's in our podcast queue, and it's a great story. Anyway, Whitney came back onto the show a few months ago, just before stepping down as Bumble CEO.

• 47:11Guy Raz?

  And one of the main things I wanted to ask her about was what she thinks the future of dating might look like.

• 47:19Guy Raz?

  You know, I met my wife at a barbecue, right? Like 23 years ago. And then, you know, I remember there was like in the in the 80s, I was a little kid. I remember like there's matchmaking, right? And then internet dating really starts in the 90s. And then apps is how young people are connecting today. What's like the next version of this? How are people going to be connecting in 10 years from now?

• 47:44Speaker 07

  So the next version of this, this is going to catch you off guard, but it's meeting at the barbecue. But via Bumble, okay? So I think the next horizon is going online to get offline. So in the near future, it will not be unimaginable to get on Bumble. And instead of, you know, swiping yes and no on a bunch of people, you might be swiping yes or no on things that sound compelling to you in the coming days. You know, maybe you're in the mood to go to a barbecue that has certain music playing at it on Friday night. And we know that there's 35 other people going.

• 48:26Speaker 07

  And you can see that half of them have some level of compatibility to you. But we don't disclose who they are until you get there. And we let serendipity and fate kind of do a little bit of its own old fashioned work once you arrive. So I think that is one piece of this. I think the other piece of this is, and I cannot emphasize this enough. It's where I'm spending 80% of my free time right now. AI is how we are going to meet people.

• 48:55Guy Raz?

  It's how we're going to meet people.

• 48:56Speaker 07

  Yes, right now, when you get onto a dating platform, you are basically sifting through 1,000 options to walk out with a few, right? And then of the few, you might have real compatibility and chemistry with a couple. And of the couple, maybe one will work out, right? So it's a lot of work. It's a lot of energy. It's a lot of time. It's a lot of letdown.

• 49:22Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 49:23Speaker 07

  And The issue is that in kind of old era dating apps, which I would say anything before generative AI, it was very hard to capture signals and dynamic qualities in a person beyond just their surface level interests, right? I like to go running, I like to eat this, I like to listen to live music, I like to do this, this is my religion, I want kids, whatever these these different kind of filters are. But how can we really find out if someone is loyal? How can we find out if someone is kind? How can we find out if someone is funny?

• 50:04Speaker 07

  These are signals that technology really mutes, right? And so I think the future is leveraging these machine learning capabilities to actually bring photos to life, bring people to life on the screen. And my dream, Guy, is 10 years from now, we will be able to prevent breakups before they ever happen. We will be able to prevent bad relationships from ever having a potential of happening. And more importantly, my big dream is we will help people love themselves so that they can love others. And I think that is our biggest issue in this country right now when it comes to connection is self hatred,

• 50:45Speaker 07

  low confidence. So if we can reverse engineer that, we're on to something really special.

• 50:51Guy Raz?

  I absolutely love your optimism around this. I love your energy. I love your passion, but I am going to throw some skepticism because I worry about a future where, I don't know, I mean, I've got all these things go through my head, Minority Report, you know, just we're served the perfect menu of five to seven people that have been chosen for us based on machine learning.

• 51:18Guy Raz?

  When we know that humans change, you know, I'm a different person today than I was 23 years ago when I met my wife. We've grown and changed together. You know, I remember my grandmother telling me before she died about how when she was a child, most marriages around her in her village were arranged and that oftentimes they did not love each other, but they grew to love each other over time and those marriages worked. I'm not saying I support arranged marriage. I'm just saying that it still feels to me like there's so many factors, so many just intangible things about being human and about love that I worry can't fully be captured by a machine. And I'm an optimist about AI. Do

• 52:01Guy Raz?

  you know what I mean? Do you understand some of that concern?

• 52:04Speaker 07

  I do. I do understand that concern. And I think what we're focused on is making sure that we don't build products that hurt us. That as we implement AI further into our business, which I expect our business to be a real AI business, I'm very anchored on it and I believe in it. I want to make sure it's unethical. I want to make sure it's done with real human connection at the helm. And I think, you know, my concerns with AI are that there are a lot of people out there that are building products to get people to actually replace humans with AI. And I think as it pertains to love, my big focus

• 52:46Speaker 07

  is to never, ever, ever replace a real human dynamic emotion, want or need with a computer, with a system, with a model, with a bot, right? And so what I would like to do is help humans connect better. So what's really fascinating, Guy, is a huge chunk of survey respondents of people that are single and want to be in a relationship but don't use a dating app yet. They don't do it because they think they'll be bad at it. They think that they don't know how to date. They think that they're not capable of it.

• 53:26Speaker 07

  That to me is remarkable opportunity to create goodness in the world by using AI to inspire confidence.

• 53:35Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 53:35Speaker 07

  So we have been hard at work exploring ways to have coaches or matchmakers or friends in your pocket, whatever you want to call it, you know, basically be that wing woman, wing man, wing person in your pocket to really show you that you've got this and to to have your back, give you positive affirmations and to kind of guide you along the dating journey. So if they are scared to chat, right, like they're scared to start a dating chat, for example, they would then chat with their coach first and their coach, which is AI, would coach them through it, give them feedback, would help them feel ready and prepared for the game.

• 54:17Speaker 07

  So how can we actually help people show up as better versions of themselves? And I think it's interesting, we've seen the very first iteration of self-help tech, call it the headspaces of the world in the calm. I would say those are very 1.0 versions. They're they're not dynamic in the moment when it comes to connecting with others, right? These are things you do kind of on your own, meditations, breathings. How can you do these things in real time as you're on the quest for friendship or love?

• 54:43Guy Raz?

  So essentially, it sounds like what you're saying is if AI is used in the right way, in this context for love, there is somebody for everybody in theory.

• 54:53Speaker 07

  There is somebody for everybody in theory. You know, obviously, I can't make that promise. But what I believe is you rarely attract a relationship healthier than your self-esteem. Instead of us just saying, here's a person and here's a person and here's a person, why don't we actually focus on self-love first? How can we help you build your self-esteem? AI can be a great catalyst to this through different mechanisms and tools. I mean, you've seen people learn languages through Duolingo. Why can't you learn the language of of self-esteem and love, right? And so I think we can be a really powerful tool in helping people feel better about themselves at the get-go. And then, guys, something amazing happens here.

• 55:39Speaker 07

  If you have a user base and a supply of people feeling better about themselves with higher levels of self-esteem. What do you get less of? Abuse? Harassment? Toxicity? Ghosting? All the icky stuff that comes with dating will subsequently decline.

• 56:00Guy Raz?

  I'm wondering what you think about, I mean, there are infinite ways to connect and meet today, more so than ever. I mean, you can do it from your bedroom, right? And yet, there is an epidemic of loneliness in the United States and even in other countries. Given the fact that there are so many more ways you can connect today than ever, what? Why do you think that is? What explains that?

• 56:24Speaker 07

  So, the pandemic did not help. It completely exacerbated the issue. But here's the thing. You started this by saying you can meet people from anywhere now. You're, we're all online, we're all super connected. The reality is, we're all very connected and disconnected at the same time. When you are on social media, you are technically, by definition, connected, but you are emotionally disconnected. So friendship has moved online, and it has actually killed friendship. Chatting with your buddies on TikTok and Instagram does not count as relationship. That is not a soulful, real relationship.

• 57:08Speaker 07

  And candidly, it creates more of a voyeuristic, fear of missing out dynamic than it does a real, safe, connected environment. So what you've seen us do with Bumble for Friends, our new standalone friendship app, is we've said, let's use tech to connect, not tech to disconnect. And there's a real, real gap here. And there are not enough products in the world that are actually technically engineered to get you online to then go offline. In fact, the monetization models on the majority of social media. Is dependent on you being on your phone as much as possible because they're ad businesses.

• 57:51Speaker 07

  We are not an advertising business. Sure, we have some advertisement, but we are a subscription model because we don't care if you sit and use our product for two hours or two minutes. In fact, everything we are working on from a product prioritization standpoint right now is to shorten the duration that you're using our product on any given time because we want you to go online to get offline.

• 58:13Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I, you know, I'm curious about the AI model, though. If you are, I mean, to some extent, your business depends on customers coming back again and again and again, people going on hundreds of dates, right? Because they're paying subscribers. But if this AI model works like better than you expect, and all of a sudden, like, you're matching people perfectly, and like, they're going on the first date and boom, they're engaged, they're done as Bumble customers. I mean, what are the implications of that? You know, you make the algorithm better, and then you actually have fewer repeat visitors.

• 58:50Speaker 07

  Every single Saturday, and I mean it, it's like clockwork, I get at least one text message from someone in my network that they're at a Bumble wedding, and that Bumble was just mentioned either in the vows, in a groomsmen's speech, in a bridesmaid's speech, or it was on the menu, or it was in the photo booth, and it had been integrated some way somehow. Why do I mention this? A success story is worth more than 200 failed dates. Let's just say we have 50 forever relationships. Those 50 forever relationships have now left Bumble app, the dating app, but they have throughout their dinners and lunches and gym and professional

• 59:33Speaker 07

  lives, they have told countless people, they have pollinated the product, they have been brand ambassadors for us in such a way that those 50 success stories become a flywheel of growth. So 50 success stories is worth more than thousands of failed dates. Because those failed dates turn into the reverse flywheel of negative feedback. And so we're actually absolutely aligned with the customer finding success. Because their success is our success. And we're in this to help them find healthy and equitable relationships.

• 1:00:12Guy Raz?

  You know, I was thinking about what you're saying about using AI like to coach people. And I think that's very real. It's going to be happening more and more. And I wonder, I mean, the logical, potentially logical extension of that is, could it solve loneliness? And I'm not saying this is a good thing, but you know, there's that movie Her many years, a few years ago. It was a beautiful film and Scarlett Johansson was a voice inside of Joaquin Phoenix's ear. And that was, he was in love with her. He was in love with an AI voice. And it was very plausible. It was, it seemed very real. It's not implausible to imagine that with where AI is going. I mean, obviously, humans, you know, we believe we need human connection.

• 1:00:50Guy Raz?

  But is there a world where, you know, Bumble has a product that is basically a virtual romance?

• 1:00:58Speaker 07

  No, not under my leadership, at least. Listen, that's, that's not what we are here to do. We are definitely not in the business of trying to wipe out humanity and trying to get people to fall in love with, you know, fake iterations of, of humans. I don't want to use AI that way. I think.

• 1:01:20Guy Raz?

  I mean, it will be used that way. You know that.

• 1:01:22Speaker 07

  Yeah, but, but you know what? Like, if, if that's really what happens, then we've got bigger problems than the future of Bumble. Unfortunately, it's what, what, what happens to the future of humanity, right? If we, if we kill love, human to human, and we replace it with human to AI, we only have another generation left, right? It'll all be over if that's really the case. So for me, it's how do we actually use AI to make relationships, human to human? I mean, better, stronger, healthier.

• 1:01:56Speaker 07

  More respectful, more equal, more empowering, more inspiring. How do we actually help end loneliness through getting people to really form and forge real friendships with one another instead of stay locked away on their phones in their bedrooms or on wherever they are for the rest of their lives? How do we get people to look each other in the eyes and not just through a screen? And so that's, that's really what we're focused on. The horror movies, you know, five years ago seemed really sci-fi, but you're right. I'm, I'm sure some people will be doing that, but my job will be to convince them to meet a real person.

• 1:02:38Guy Raz?

  Yeah. So when you, you've been at this for a long time now, but you're all still just young. I mean, um, you have a lot of life ahead of you. What do you see yourself doing in 10 years from now? Do you, do you see yourself running Bumble? I mean, who knows? You're a public company, your board can always throw you out if they want to. But I, I mean, what is your, what's your sort of vision of where you'll be?

• 1:03:02Speaker 07

  So I think I will always be focused on the core mission of Bumble. I think it is my life calling. It is my purpose, which is to help the world have healthier relationships. Some people dedicate their lives to the research of, of rare diseases when it's claimed to the life of a loved one. Some people dedicate their lives to solving problems that have directly impacted them. Right? That is, I believe that problems and pain and devastation happens to inspire a body of people to go and fix those problems for others. And so it's my sincere belief that I will be working towards healthier love, healthier

• 1:03:47Speaker 07

  relationships and helping people love themselves. That's the why. I think the how will manifest, but I am absolutely focused on Bumble for the, you know. For as long as I can see out, there is no road in front of me that is excluding Bumble from my life. I do believe that my time will be better used in thinking three, five, 10 years ahead versus just two quarters ahead. But that'll manifest as it's meant to. And I will say that I am absolutely fascinated, committed to, and on the track of integrating AI into love and connection and friendship and relationships.

• 1:04:32Speaker 07

  That is my obsession at the moment, and it is going to be until I really land the plane on it. And I really want us to be part of Positive AI. I really want to make sure that we course correct from the mistakes that were made with the explosion of the quote unquote "old internet" by leaving women out of the equation, by not thinking of the ethical options. And so I really hope that we can be a part of the more ethical path forward.

• 1:05:03Guy Raz?

  That was an excerpt from my conversation with Whitney Wolfe Herd, the founder of Bumble. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. There were so many amazing guests on How I Built This this year. And if you liked this episode, I hope you'll go back and listen to the full interviews or maybe listen to another episode you might have missed. And from everyone here on the How I Built This team, we hope you have a great holiday and Happy New Year. This episode was produced by Chris Messine with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by John Isabella. Our production staff also includes Alex Chung, Carla Estevez, Casey Herman, Jacey Howard, Catherine Seifer, Kerry Thompson, Malia Agudelo, Niva Grant, and Sam Paulson. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This Lab.