In her construction multimillionaire company, Whitney Wolfe Herd, founder and CEO of Bumble, was once inspired by another successful executive: Jeff Bezos.
Herd sometimes watched videos of Bezos talking, and in one, “he said something I will never forget and I agree with 1,000%,” she told CNBC Make It in 2019.
The main point was that “when humans can hide behind a screen, when they are essentially anonymous, they lose their goodness gene,” said Wolfe Herd.
In fact, an Amazon spokesman told The New York Times in 2001 that Bezos had said: “There is something in the email that turns off the politeness gene in people.”
The quote resonated with Wolfe Herd: “This has been a guide for me, because we always try to project responsibility in everything we do [at Bumble]. “
For example, in 2018, Bumble banned images of weapons on the platform.
“Ultimately, online behavior can both mirror and predict how people treat each other in the real world,” the company wrote on its website at the time. “Bumble has a responsibility to our community and an overarching goal of encouraging offline responsibility.”
Some argue that dating apps have problems in that area – in February, Slate reported “accountability and transparency issues” on several sites, including Bumble.
But when Bumble went public in February, Wolfe Herd reiterated the sentiment.
“People are building meaningful relationships digitally first, then the physical follows,” she told Reuters. “This is a truly phenomenal move towards more responsible engineering and experience engineering.”
In the company’s first quarterly report since going public on Wednesday, Bumble reported higher-than-expected revenue of $ 165.6 million. Although Bumble also reported a net loss of $ 26.1 million, the company had 2.7 million paying users in the fourth quarter, an increase of 32.5% over the fourth quarter of 2019. When asked about the growth of Bumble on CNBC’s “Squawk Box”, Wolfe Herd cited the company’s commitment to “safety and responsibility”.
“We have always been committed to … protecting the customer and really focusing on the needs of women,” Wolfe Herd told CNBC on Thursday. “This drives acquisition, user engagement and converts paying customers.”
Bumble did not immediately respond to CNBC Make It’s request for comment.
-Report of Sarah Berger
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