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Hey, prime members. You can listen to how I built this early and ad free on Amazon music.
Download the app today. It's Guy Raz here on the wisdom from the top podcast. I talk to leadership
experts and some of the world's greatest business leaders about how they lead, innovate and
transform the people around them. If you're trying to make it in business or just want to think more
like a leader, this show's probably for you. Do. Listen now to the Wisdom from the Top podcast
from Luminary and NPR.

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I, quite frankly, thought I was at the very bottom of my barrel. I mean, there were days where I
didn't want to live. I mean, the Internet defined me, the article calling me the most ugly names in the
world, the people on Twitter saying the ugliest things. But through all of this pain and struggle, I still
had an itch to create. And so I kind of sat down and said, I can start something right now, and I can
change what I hate that I see in the world.

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NPR. It's How I Built this, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind
the movements they built. 3s I'm Guy Raz, and on today's show, how Whitney Wolf's painful exit
from Tinder inspired her to build Bumble, a kinder, gentler dating app where women make the first
move. 2s Dating.

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1:38

There was a time, believe it or not, when Internet dating meant you were desperate or awkward or
both, and it wasn't something you talked about openly. But today, it's the complete opposite, because
the Internet and dating apps have made it so much easier and more efficient to meet lots and lots of
people, and it's more less frictionless. There's no awkward phone calls or courtship rituals or face to
face rejection. There's something almost transactional about the whole thing. And it's no
exaggeration to say that even though they've only been around for, like, five years or so, dating apps
have pretty much transformed dating. And if you love them, you can thank Whitney Wolf, or you
can blame her if you hate them. Because Whitney was part of the dating app revolution. She was one
of the founders who helped create Tinder, which is now one of the biggest dating apps in the world.
Whitney left Tinder under difficult circumstances, circumstances she can't legally discuss. But as
you will hear, it was a time in her life where she came under intense online abuse, and that
experience would inspire her to build Bumble, which is a different kind of dating app. And today,
just three years since its launch, bumble is one of the top dating apps in the US. But the story of how
Whitney got into that world at all well,

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like many of our stories, it starts with a little bit of luck. Right after she graduated from college at
Southern Methodist University in Dallas,

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I was just kind of going day by day, exploring and being okay with that, right? So I think to my
family, 2s I don't think they were super proud of, like, oh, my daughter went on to do X, right? I was
in this weird place. So I kind of moved in with my mom in California, and I went to La. One
afternoon. 1s Ah, to visit a girlfriend of mine and ended up at a dinner where I met a couple people,
one of which went on to be the CEO of Tinder.

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3:49

This was Sean Rad. Yes.

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And he had told me how he was going to be the general manager of this incubator that would be
launching all sorts of apps, all sorts of different apps. And they were looking at the time, they were
focused on one app, which was a consumer loyalty app called Cardify. Kind of like a digital punch
card for your favorite coffee shop, for your favorite whatever it is.

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4:13

And he just told you about this at this dinner party?

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4:16

Yeah, we were just at a restaurant having dinner, just a few of us. And I said, well, that sounds
really interesting. And when he asked what I was doing, I said, you know, I'm really looking for a
job. I think I could probably help you market your app. And he said, well, why don't you call me
tomorrow and come in for an interview? So I called him at 08:00 a.m. The next day. I think he was
alarmed and surprised that I actually called him. And I ended up going in for an interview. It worked
out, started working from home right away and then I moved to La.

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4:43

For this incubator.

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 Yes. For cardify was the app. There had been really no talk of Tinder yet, and my job was very
much focused on Cardify, so I started working full time. And while we were getting Cardify off the
ground, I spent a lot of time going door to door to door in La. To different restaurants and 1s
boutiques and so on and so forth and trying to sign them up. And I struggled with it because there
was too many moving parts. Right.

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What kind of moving parts?

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5:14

I mean, you have to get the store on board and then once the store is on board, you have to hope that
the customer has the app. Right? Yeah.

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Were the stores interested when you came in? Were they like

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5:25

no, to be honest, very few people were interested. I think it was really how you positioned it. And I
learned a lot through that experience because one pitch would go one way and you'd say something a
little different the next time, it would go in a completely different way. And so I really realized that
it's not so much about the what, it's the how or the why you should do this. Right. Like, this is why
you need this instead of what you need. Right. And so it was really interesting crash course in
marketing and sales.

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5:59

But you were not a tech person necessarily. You were just really interested in tech, right?

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6:04

Yeah, I wasn't even interested in tech. I was just interested in the way it had reach, the way that tech
could expand beyond the walls. Right. I went through college with no instagram and so Instagram
really became huge right as I graduated. And then you saw it sell for a billion dollars, and I think
everyone kind of went, whoa. Yeah. And this was kind of like an eye opening moment for my peers.

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And so did it. I mean, was there like, a sense of excitement that you guys were onto something big?
Or did you know pretty soon after you joined that this thing was not going to work?

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6:42

No, I think everyone was really excited and very hopeful, and it was a beautiful app. I think
everyone really wanted it to happen. And I remember we were all sitting around like, we're going to
be the next big thing. And then shortly thereafter, I think we started getting excited about this side
project, Matchbox, which is what became Tinder, but at the time, it was Matchbox,

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which was supposed to be a dating app.

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7:04

Yeah, it was like a flirting app. It was like connecting people to flirt. Right. And after we were
really unable to get cardified to gain significant traction, I think we all, the first few of us, were kind
of like, maybe we need to shift gears. And I was 22 years old. I had just come out of college. I was
thinking very much like a college student still. And I was like, this will work. And I think I was so
excited about the fact that there was something that I and my friends would use versus Cardify,
which was something I personally would have never used. And again, it was not a new idea. You
have to think about what existed already. Dozens of dating apps, flirting apps, connecting apps. I
mean, there was already the Behemoth, which was Match.com. Right? Yeah. And we sat on the
same floor as Match.com in L. A.

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7:54

Wow. So was building Tinder, like, part of an idea to build more of these dating type products or
apps?

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8:02

So Tinder was not my idea. I've never said it was my idea, ever. I became a co founder of Tinder via
my marketing contributions and my early involvement in getting it launched and getting it out there.
So I've heard about 30 conflicting stories of what their original idea was, and who really cares at this
point? I mean, it is what it is, and it was to connect people around you. If you see someone that you
want to talk to across the room, how do you talk to them without 1s feeling awkward? I think where
we went in a very unique direction was marketing it to millennials, and I just don't think that had
ever been done in a successful way.

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8:42
And what was the actual product? What was the app? What did it look like at that point?

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8:46

It was very similar to what it looks like now. It's just a very early version of it, so you would just
swipe left or right on people. And actually, when I first saw it, there was no swiping. It was like a
tapping, like a card game, originally.

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8:58

And was it called Tinder by that

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9:00

point? No, it was not. We played with so many different names. I mean, it was maybe going to be
flirt and then it was maybe going to be I mean, there were so many different things that it was going
to be and Tinder ended up

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sticking. So you're thinking, this thing has legs. And so what did you do? How did you

U2
9:17

test it? Yeah, I remember thinking to myself that it would work at SMU. And I remember I took the
guys into a meeting and I gave them my little sorority fraternity rollout pitch and said, I'm going to
show up on Monday, I'm going to go to all the chapter meetings. I'm going to run from the sororities,
the fraternities, I'm going to get everybody on it, and then it's just going to take off. At SMU? Yes, at
SMU. And so I got the green light to go do this. And we had. 1s Very minimal marketing materials.
I think I had three or four T shirts that we took that had Tinder on it. And then I had to get really
crafty. So when I landed in SMU it's funny, I was talking to my girlfriend about this the other day,
my good girlfriend who now does the weather in La. She was a year younger than me, so she hadn't
graduated yet. And I took a picture of her, and then I took a picture of one of my guy friends on
campus, and I dropped them into the Match screen, like the Tinder screens, and I wrote a big thing
on top of it saying, find out who likes you on campus. And I saved the file, and I took it to the FedEx
across the street from SMU, and we printed, I think, 1000 copies. And I offered a bunch of people
around campus $20 bills to help me put them everywhere. I mean, on people's windshields, under
dorms, everywhere, everywhere. Everywhere. And then Monday night, I rallied all of my friends
that were still in school, because, again, I just graduated. I had a lot of friends that were younger.
And we'd made our rounds. We went to the sorority houses and gave a pitch, got up on chairs and
told all the girls, you have to download this app because college is all about meeting people, and
right now, you only have access to the people that you hang out with every weekend, and it's a really
close minded experience. And you guys need to meet all these great people on campus, and there's
all these really cute guys waiting for you on the app. So we rushed and got all of these women to
download the app. And then we ran as fast as we could to the fraternity row and went into the frat
houses and said a different pitch and said, hey, guys, I bet you have no other way to access hundreds
of sorority girls right now. Download the app, because they're all waiting for you. They've all just
downloaded this app, and they're waiting for you to like them. 1s Yeah, I know. It's ridiculous. It's
embarrassing at this

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point, but you had to pitch it. You had

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to listen to what you got to do. You were hustling this thing. Yes, I think that would be an accurate
representation. And so the next day, I remember. 1s We looked at the download numbers and
hundreds of people had downloaded overnight. And hundreds was bigger than the downloads we had
gotten on cardify over months. And so I'm looking at hundreds of downloads and I'm like, we made
it. We're in the next Facebook, right? Just being super, 1s a little disconnected from reality,
probably.

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12:11

Well, but not that distant, as we would eventually discover. So you go back to La. But like, what's
the next step?

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12:18

I can't remember if I went straight back to La. Or if I went straight to Utah, because I went and did
the same thing at University of

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12:24

Utah, which seems weird. That would tinder.

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12:28

I knew people there. And it's funny, I called this a long time ago. I said to everyone on the team, I
said, guys, watch. BYU will be one of our biggest markets one day. Because in the BYU it's an LDS
college in Provo, Utah. Mormon. And they're all expected to get married by the end of college. That
is the expectation. And so I said, I promise. I think BYU will be one of our biggest markets. And I
think half of Utah will end up getting married because of Tinder. Wow. And tinder became massive
in Utah on the BYU campus. Oh, yeah. Massive. Wow.
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I mean, in that period, 2013, was there a feeling like, this is just so amazing. This is so exciting.

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13:10

Are you kidding? Yes. I mean, I lived, breathed, dreamed. I was engulfed. My friends didn't want to
talk to me anymore. They're like, oh gosh, she's going to call and talk about Tinder again. No, it was
such an exciting time. And again, it's worth noting, Tinder was group effort. Right? It was not just
me. It was not just one of the guys. It was not just one of the other guys. This was really teamwork.

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13:39

So I'm going to do something, Whitney, that we don't often do on the show, which is, I am going to
skip over a few years when Tinder was growing and becoming this massive dating app with millions
and millions of users, okay? Because there are legal reasons why you can't talk about certain things.
And I'm just going to say I am going to explain this briefly, Whitney, which is that you left Tinder in
2014 under pretty difficult circumstances. You had been in a relationship with one of the other co
founders that broke down, and so you left, and there was a sexual harassment lawsuit, and that was
settled. And you can't talk about that, but all of a sudden, you were all over the tech press because
people caught wind of this lawsuit, and there were text messages that were sent to you that were
abusive, and they were published in blogs. And all of a sudden, you were in the public eye and you
were, I guess, like 24. What? 24, 25? At the time,

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14:35

it was 24. I turned 25 just a few days later.

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14:39

And you were the main target of a lot of the attention surrounding that story.

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14:45

So real quick, I'm going to jump in and just say I have absolutely no comment on anything from the
lawsuit, and I have no comment on any of the allegations or anything. But the way the people online
spoke about me, the way both reporters and complete strangers, internet, 2s Twitter, and the
comment section, 3s it jolted me in such a way, it completely robbed me of every last ounce of
confidence that I may have ever had. Listen, I was not a famous person in my life. I come from Salt
Lake City. I don't have famous parents. I'm, quite frankly, just a normal professional, right? That's
just who I was. And to have The New York Times calling extended relatives and to have The Daily
Mail knocking on the back window at your apartment when you're not even there, and to have your
personal 1s emotions being turned into caricatures on tech blogs and mainstream media TMZ, I
mean, it was really, truly traumatic.

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16:05

How did you just get through the day? 1s I i, quite frankly, thought I was at the very bottom of my
barrel. I mean, there were days where I didn't want to live. I didn't want to get out of bed. I felt like it
was stamped across my forehead. And when I say it was stamped across my forehead, that was 50
different things. That was the article calling me the most ugly names in the world. That was the
people on Twitter saying the ugliest things. I mean, the Internet defined me for a moment in time,
and 2s I wanted to die, 1s yet I had to 1s make this bigger than myself, right? Like, this was bigger
than me. Meaning I have people in my life that I have to be there for. I have parents, I have friends. I
need to continue my career. I'm 24, about to be 25. I am not going to just call it a day at 25. I mean,
am I? There was a lot of that. And after I was able to pick myself off the bath mat crying. 3s I was
able to, through the fog, see the real problem. And the problem was not me or the media or the story
or what happened. The problem was the lack of online accountability that human beings are exposed
to every single day. And what it made me realize was 1s whatever I felt was going on online, this is
what goes on on a 13 year old's phone all day, every day. Yeah.

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17:52

And it scared me.

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17:53

Was it impossible to ignore that stuff? I mean, could you have just shut that out?

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17:57

No, it was impossible. It just became this obsession, and it really messed with my psyche. I mean, it
it made me really not right for a while. I mean, I didn't really socialize. I kind of became a hermit for
two years. And what I did during those two years was I worked my tail off. I mean, I worked so
hard, and what I had realized was, you can't kill ambition, you can kill confidence, but you can't kill
drive. Through all of this pain and struggle, I still had an itch inside of me to create, and I missed the
feeling of creating all day and building and seeing something grow and engineering it to grow right.
Marketing it. And so I kind of sat down and said, I can start something right now, and I can have an
impact, and I can change what I hate that I see in the world.

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When we come back, how Whitney took that idea and turned it into bumble. I'm Guy Raz, and
you're listening to how I built this from NPR. 7s Celebrity feuds

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are high stakes. You never

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know if you're just going to end up on Page Six or Dumois or in court. I'm

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19:24

Matt Bellisi. And I'm Sydney Battle. And we're the hosts of Wondery's new podcast, Dis and Tell,
where each episode, we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud from the buildup, why it happened
and the repercussions. What does our obsession with these feuds say about us? The first season is
packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama, but none as drawn out and personal as Brittany
and Jamie Lynn Spears. When Britney's fans formed the free Britney movement dedicated to freeing
her from the infamous conservatorship

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19:52

jamie Lynn's lack

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19:53

of public support, it angered some fans, a lot of them. It's a story of two young women who had
their choices

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taken away from them by their controlling

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parents, but took their anger out on each other her. And it's about a movement to save a superstar
which set its sights upon anyone who failed to fight for Brittany. Follow Disentel wherever you get
your podcast. You can listen ad free on Amazon Music or the Wondery app. 4s You.

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Hey, welcome back to How I Built this from NPR. I'm guy raz. So by the time she was 24 years old,
whitney Wolf had already helped launch one of the world's biggest dating apps, Tinder. But after she
left the company and everything that went with it, the online bullying and the severe depression,
whitney wanted to get away from all that. She wanted to get away from dating apps and build
something new, something thing a little more kind.

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20:48

So I started working on this concept called Marcia, and what it was going to be was a female only
social network where women could only use compliments. They would no longer be able to 1s
comment on appearance or hurt each other's feelings or use social media to bully. Right? So it was
the antidote to what I felt I experienced online. And I started working on this and had my marketing
plan mapped out. And I was thinking about doing that, and I was approached by my now business
partner, Andre. Andreev. And he is an incredible talented entrepreneur based out of London. He has
built a lot of very successful companies, and his current very successful company is called Badoo,
and it is the world's largest dating platform. It is massive overseas. I mean, we're talking I think they
have something like 320,000,000 registrations or something. They're part of that club of only
LinkedIn and Facebook and Instagram, like those big, big, crazy numbers. And he said, sorry to
connect this summer. I know that's probably not the best time for you, but I'd really love to hear
what you're up to next. And so his initial intent was to hire me as their CMO, their chief marketing
officer at Badoo. And I said, I'm flattered. That's great. However, I'm essentially not for hire. I'm
going to start my own business, and I want it to be mission driven, and I don't want to work in
dating. Like, that's just not going to be my future. And he said, okay, so tell me about this vision of
yours, and what are you going to do and how are you going to build this into a huge social platform?
And I told him my vision

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for this new app, Mercy.

U2
22:40

Yes. And he could hear and feel my passion for this platform. And he said, you know what? You
need to build this, but you need to do it in dating.

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22:52

I'm not doing dating.

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22:53

Yeah. And I said, I don't think you understood me. I'm not going back into dating. That's not
happening. 1s And he said, no, this has to happen. What you're trying to do needs to be done in
dating. And I thought to myself, you know what? Maybe he's got a point. Maybe dating is broken,
right? Like, maybe connecting is broken beyond just being a young woman talking to a young
woman in junior high. Maybe this is something that affects us at all ages. And so we kind of did a
handshake deal and said, okay, we're going to build a company. And we formed an incredible
partnership where I was founder and CEO. I could build my own team, my own vision, my own
brand, but we would have access to his resources beyond just money. And that was something that
was never going to happen twice.

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23:42

And you didn't know at this point, you didn't know what that was going to be?

U2
23:45

No. And so it really wasn't until a couple of weeks later when we brought on 1s I called Chris
Kolzinski and Sarah Mick, who had worked with that Tinder. They're really talented designers, and
in order to build a great brand and product, you have to have a great team of designers. And so I
brought them on board, and they had their own app at the time, so they wanted to come on as
consultants. And so once we were all kind of together, I think there was, like, ten of us in the room
or something. We were sitting outside, and Andre said, okay, so what is this product going to be?
And I said. 1s I think I have it. And I said, I always wanted to text the guy first. I always wanted to
go after what I wanted in terms of if I saw a cute guy in class, I always wanted to talk to a guy, but I
was never allowed to because society and my friends said no. So I said, we're going to reverse
engineer this, and this is how the product is going to work. You're going to mutually match with
each other. But women have to send the first message. They have 24 hours to do it because it will
give them a kind of incentive. And if they don't, the match disappears forever. And this will change
the dynamics of how we connect. This will put the ball in her court. For any same sex matches, you
follow the same rules, minus women making the first move, right? So if two women match, either
woman can reach out. If two men match, either man can reach out. However, they do still have to
follow the you go first in 24 hours, and then you follow within 24 hours.

U1
25:22

So this was completely different from anything else that was out there at the time.

U2
25:27

Completely different and didn't exist. Because

U1
25:29

dating apps, I think, I imagine are most mostly guys are signing up for dating apps, right?

U2
25:38
 Well, my theory at that time was they hadn't built been built for women yet. Let's just look at this
from the basics. Men are raised from very early age to be the go getter in a heterosexual relationship.
Go get her. Go make the move, right? And women, on the flip side, are trained to play hard to get.
So here you're telling men to be overtly aggressive, and here you're telling women to be the inverse
of that. And so now you're training two human beings to act in opposite directions of each other.
And so what you do when you do that is you set both up for failure. You set the men up to be
constantly rejected, and you set the women up to be at risk of aggression and abuse, right? And so
here we have this world that behaves this way. Now add another element, which is a profile, right? A
digital 1s shield where you can hide behind a username or a profile photo, and you don't have to be
accountable. And so 1s when you put women in control, you completely reverse the roles. So she
now has the confidence to go after she's interested in. And the man on the other end doesn't feel
rejected. He feels flattered. And then all of a sudden, you've balanced the behavior.

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27:02

So where did the name Bumble come

U2
27:04

from? The name Bumble is actually really funny. So a woman who was really, actually a great
mentor to me for the first couple of years of Bumble, her name is Michelle Kennedy. She named it
on a whim one day because it was such a struggle. I wanted Bumble to be moxie. M-O-X-I-E like
you've got moxie. You've got courage, right? Because you'd have moxie. You made the first move
MOX. See? And unfortunately, there's a really powerful company that exists somewhere in America
that has trademarked every format of the word. So we couldn't get that. And then we were sitting
there for weeks. Oh, my gosh, it was a disaster. We had probably 1000 words in the running. And
then one morning, she said, you know, I think she had funny enough, I think she had called her
husband a Bumbling idiot. She's got this really adorable British accent. She said, what about
Bumble? And I said, no way. That's like, fumble. That's like Bumble and Bumble the hair product. I
hate it. And then Andre was like, Bumble, bumble. I love bumble. And he checked the domain, and
we could get the domain. It was a miracle. Like, in what world could we get Bumble? But we
couldn't get moxie. We couldn't get all these other words. And so after that, I was talking to who?
She ended up becoming one of my she was my third hire. Her her and her family are really close
friends of mine. And I was talking to her mom in the kitchen. I was like, hey, what do you think
about Bumble for an app? And she was like, oh, like, be the queen bee of Bumble. Find your honey
on bumble. And she started throwing out all these really cute slogans, and I was like, Done. I was
like, done. Perfect branding opportunity hives and bees and building your high and queen. Be the
women, make the first move. It was perfect, actually. So Andre contacts you in July of 2014. If my
timing is right, you launched

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28:53

Bumble by the end of that

U2
28:55

year. 1s Correct. We worked really, really hard.

U1
28:59

When you first launched it, were most of the people signing up men initially,

U2
29:03

no, 1s even split. How did

U1
29:07

you get people to sign up? How did you get the word out about it? Because there's lots of
competition in this space. There's tons and tons of dating apps. How were you able to tell people
about it and get them to know what to do?

U2
29:18

Well, I kind of had a little bit of a playbook. I had maybe done it once before. So I went right back
to SMU, this time decked out in yellow, and I went back into all those sororities, and I spoke from
the heart. Listen, I have lived through the pain points of male dominated relationships. I have felt it.
I know what it feels like. And guess what? Every other woman in that sorority house, chances are
she's felt it too. So I'm speaking from the heart, and I'm speaking to them about how they can be
empowered and they make the first move, and they go after what they want. And me and my early
team members I mean, the girls are at my office right now. They're still with us. We went in there
and we took pizza boxes with stickers on it and offered a piece of pizza to the fraternity boys that
would get on it. We wrapped cookies in Bumble stickers. We took all sorts of goodies, and we kind
of growth hacked our way to success.

U1
30:18

Let me just jump out of the story for a SEC because I want to ask you about this idea that dating
apps, even Bumble, with a mission or purpose to empower women, even an app like Bumble, 1s
does it contribute to just kind of like a culture of hookups?

U2
30:36

Well, so here's what's interesting. If the hookup is taking place and the woman is empowered and
feels comfortable and confident in that, then I say more power to that. I don't care what you do on
Bumble. If you want to spend the rest of your life with someone you meet on Bumble, phenomenal.
If you want to hang out with them for only a night, but you're going to wake up the next day and
you're not going to feel terrible about yourself. That's what this is all about. It's about reverse
engineering the dynamics of how men and women feel. And Bumble is not just a hookup app. I
mean, I can't tell you how many emails I get a day about Bumble weddings, Bumble babies, Bumble
engagements. Now we're launching Bumble biz. We have hundreds and hundreds of thousands, if
not in the millions at this point, of active BFF users, which are, you know, young women matching
with other young women, kind of in that Mayor C capacity I spoke about earlier. They're finding
roommates. They're going on trips together. They're building social circles in new cities. It's really
not a dating app anymore.

U1
31:40

I read that 1s there's zero tolerance for sexism on Bumble. But if two people are communicating on
Bumble, how do you police that? How do you enforce that?

U2
31:51

So that's a great question, and it's actually a very tricky one. So we have zero tolerance for bad
behavior, but it requires a little bit of work from our users because we also want to respect your
privacy. Right. However, if somebody is in a conversation and someone says something
inappropriate, we have very easy reporting tools. And once something is reported, we do review it.
And if there was bad behavior, that user is banned for life. There are no second chances. We really
take it seriously. If you need us, we're one click

U1
32:27

away. Do you ever run into any backlash from people who say 1s who are offended in some ways
that this empowers women? Does it make some people angry?

U2
32:40

Yes. Bumble gets a lot of that. Just last week, we became under attack from this website called The
Daily Stormer. It's a neo Nazi site, and we had upwards of 100 men sending us threats. We actually
had to have police at our office all week. Wow. They were emailing my employees, calling my
employees, calling me, leaving the most vulgar messages.

U1
33:02

Because you're self proclaimed feminist organization.

U2
33:05

Yeah. Female empowerment is not something that they believe in, unfortunately. So we get this too,
the bullying. Now, that doesn't hurt my feelings anymore because I know these people are just
atrocious, but it fuels me. The anger fuels me to try harder at work and try and change this
misogynistic mindset that exists. And so now we're putting such an emphasis to get all these people
off of our app, if there are any. We're hoping there's not. We now have a whole new set of
moderators looking for hate symbols and hate speech on our platform. We're really just trying our
best to build a clean, safe community. Yeah. It's been two and a half years since you launched this
company, I think. Correct.

U1
33:50

And you have how many active users now?

U2
33:53

20 million. Registrations? Nearly.

U1
33:55

That's mean. That's pretty amazing. 20 million downloads of the app since you launched. Yeah. And
when will you know that you have really. 2s Created this hugely powerful thing when you've got
100 million, a billion,

U2
34:12

I'll never feel like we've made it. We got to just keep going. It's funny. I used to say to myself, oh,
when we have 1 million, when we have 5 million, when we have 10 million. Oh, imagine if we had
20 million. And now we're here, and I'm like, you know what? We always need to evolve and be
better and try harder and have bigger reach and better reach. And once we have that reach, we need
to start over and do it in a different vertical. How

U1
34:33

much of 1s your story, through Tinder and Bumble now is luck? And how much of it was because
of your skill and talent and

U2
34:44

hard work? 2s Luck is a funny word. I don't know if I'd call any of this lucky, because I don't feel 2s
I think luck is probably a certain element. But if people think I just was at the right place at the right
time and just snapped my fingers and twirled a couple of times and here's Bumble, I mean, they're
really wrong. 1s We're talking all day, every day. Ups, downs, highs, lows and laser focus.

U1
35:17
 So you guys are still a really young company. Me do you stay up at night worrying about a
competitor or somebody else coming in and just 1s totally replacing.

U2
35:31

We really, truly aren't super worried about competition for one reason. I really believe anybody can
copy a product. Anyone. I'm at the UT campus speaking to you right now. I could go to the
engineering school, probably find five really talented young engineers, and they could build Bumble.
With the right support, somebody could rebuild any piece of technology. It's engineering. How?
However, you cannot just copy someone's brand and become them. There has to be authenticity
when you build a brand, and there has to be true purpose. And so, yes, you're right. Anybody could
go and build a competitor version of Bumble, but where I don't think they can just come in and
sweep us off our feet is I don't know if there's another group of people with the exact same story or
the exact same mission and motive. And that goes back to what I lived through that summer of 2014
and what landed on my phone every morning. And it was I almost built my remedy to the hardships
that I personally was going through. And Bumble saved me.

U1
36:47

Whitney Wolf. She founded the dating app Bumble. By the way, according to Forbes magazine,
bumble turned down an acquisition offer of $450,000,000 this past August from the Match Group.
Match. As in Match, which also owns OkCupid and Tinder. Now, for the record, Bumble has never
confirmed that report, but if true now, not bad for a company that's only been around for three years.
And as for Whitney, she recently got married. And guess how she met her husband. Through? Nope,
not through Bumble. They met through friends on a ski trip. 11s And please stick around, because in
just a moment, we're going to hear from you about the things you're building. 3s Hey, thanks for
sticking around, because it's time now for how you built that. And today's story comes from
Michelle Innis of San Diego. And the problem she set out to solve starts with her husband Jack, who
likes to go sport fishing on weekends. He comes

U2
38:00

back so stinky, you'd be in your house in the evening watching a movie, and I'd say, Just don't touch

U1
38:07

me, don't touch me. Because Jack's hands always smell like stinky

U2
38:11

fish. And nothing he

U1
38:13
 used, not soap, not lemon or baking soda, nothing would get rid of that smell. So Michelle decided
to tinker around in the kitchen and make her own soap to try and kill that fish smell. And

U2
38:26

getting the formula right took months and months.

U1
38:31

Michelle did come up with a formula, which, of course, is a secret. But we do know that one key
ingredient is star anis, the stuff that smells like licorice. It neutralizes the fish smell. It's magic. And
so my husband was fillaying fish and I said, try washing up afterwards with this. And when he did,
he goes, oh, my God, oh,

U2
38:53

my God, it works, it works.

U1
38:55

And so pretty soon after, Michelle started selling her soap, which she called the Fishing soap at
local fishing stores and getting really good feedback. I have

U2
39:04

people come up to me still that say, you saved our relationship.

U1
39:08

Michelle ran her small business mainly from the kitchen for about ten years. But four years ago,
when a family member got sick, she decided to sell it. We had calls from all kinds of people, and I'd
go, I don't like them, I don't want to sell it to them because it was my baby. But finally, when I met
Nate and David, they were the right people. My name

U2
39:31

is David Leon. I'm based in Carlsbad,

U1
39:34
 California. So David and his business partner Nate are both into fishing. And back when Michelle
was advertising on Craigslist to sell her business, the two of them had just quit their day jobs to start
something new, and they weren't really sure what. But then they saw Michelle's ad and they were
like, this is it. This looks really interesting. So they drove down to San Diego to meet her. We

U2
39:56

were excited from the business perspective, but I think we were a bit intimidated by the actual
making of the soap. And initially we're looking at this and we're like, we're going to have to learn

U1
40:07

how to make this. But once they agreed to buy the business, michelle gave them the step by step
instructions on how to make the soap in their kitchen. And she gave them all her equipment, too. We
loaded

U2
40:17

all these things up in a Nate's truck and we go and back it into our place and we start unloading it.
And these are like big industrial plastic drums beakers. Weighted cylinders. And I remember telling
Nate, I'm like, our neighbors are going to think that we're opening a

U1
40:34

meth lab. Thankfully, nobody reported them to the cops. And David and Nate started to grow the
business, first by selling the soap online and then by pitching it to national retailers. And they
actually flew down to Bentonville, Arkansas to meet with a buyer. This

U2
40:49

buyer at Walmart manages over half a billion dollars in spend. And we went in there with some
canned salmon and we said, you got to dig your hands into this and we'll wash you up.

U1
41:01

And the buyer was impressed, or maybe just really relieved to get the smell of canned salmon off of
his hands. And anyway, now Defishing Soap is selling at 1200 Walmarts across the country. Davis
says the business is now at Ramen profitability, which means that they're not rolling in cash, but
they are making enough money to feed themselves Ramen. And the original soap lady, Michelle,
she's still cheering them

U2
41:26
on. It's just like my kids. I'm so proud of what they've done. You

U1
41:31

can find out more about Defishing Soap on our Facebook page. And of course, if you want to tell us
your story, go to build NPR O-R-G. And thanks for listening to the show this week. If you want to
find out more or hear previous episodes, you can go to how IBuilt this npr.org. Please also download
our podcast at apple podcasts. Or however you get your podcasts, you can write us that's hi.
Bt@npr.org, you can also send us a tweet. It's at how I built this. Our show is produced this week by
Rachel Faulkner with original music by Ramtin Arabloue. Thanks also to Neva Grant, Sanas, Mesh
Kanpur, Claire Breen and Jeff Rogers. Our intern is Diana Mustak. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been
listening to how I Built this from NPR.