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20VC: Bumble's Whitney Wolfe Herd on How The Best Leaders Manage Intense Pressure, How To Think Through Risk vs Reward Frameworks & What it Truly Means to Listen so Your Teams Will Talk

Aug 26, 2022

Whitney Wolfe Herd, founder and CEO of Bumble, shares her inspiring journey from co-founding Tinder to building a dating app that empowers women. She discusses the pressures of leadership, revealing her highest-pressure moments and how they've shaped her decision-making. Transparency is a key theme, as Whitney highlights its benefits and pitfalls in effective leadership. She also emphasizes the importance of truly listening to teams and maintaining a balance between risk and reward, all while navigating her role as a mother and entrepreneur.

39:11

Creator website

Episode guests

Whitney Wolfe

Highlights

AI Chapters

Episode notes

Ask yourself: “What do you have to lose?” before big decisions

01:20

Every Moment Has Changed Me

01:49

Intro

3min

Bumble's Kind Revolution

10min

Navigating Leadership: Transparency, Pressure, and Parenthood

16min

Reflections on Film, Content, and Influential Literature

2min

Navigating Leadership: Strengths, Vulnerabilities, and Personal Values

3min

Building Kind Connections: The Future of Bumble

2min

Reflections on an Engaging Conversation and Sponsor Highlights

3min

Whitney Wolfe Herd is the Founder and CEO @ Bumble, changing the way people date, find friends, and the perception of meeting online, for the better. Women make the first move. Over an incredible 6 year journey, Whitney has scaled Bumble to a community of over 100 million across six continents. Bumble has facilitated an incredible 1.8 billion first moves as of 2021 and so many more by now. Prior to founding Bumble, Whitney was the Co-Founder and VP of Marketing @ Tinder.

In Todays Episode with Whitney Wolfe Herd We Discuss:

1.) Founding Bumble:

How Whitney made her way into the world of startups with her co-founding Tinder?
What happened when Whitney left Tinder in a very public way?
How did that and the scrutiny that came with it, impact her? How did she change?

2.) CEOship 101:

What does "High Performance" mean to Whitney?
What are the biggest benefits and biggest downside of transparency? What are the few things that as a leader, you cannot be transparent about them?
What does it mean to truly listen as a leader? What are the biggest mistakes leaders make when it comes to listening?

3.) Risk and Pressure in Leadership:

What is the single moment of highest pressure Whitney has been through in the Bumble journey?
How does Whitney deal with pressure as a leader today? How has that changed?
How does Whitney approach risk as a leader today? What is too risky?
How does Whitney think through her own decision-making framework?

4.) Whitney: The Mother and Wife

What does Whitney believe makes a truly successful marriage?
How does Whitney not lose an inch of performance as a public markets CEO and also be an amazing mother to two children under the age of 2?
What does Whitney know now that she wishes she had known when she started Bumble?
As a leader and mother, what gets easier with time, what gets harder?

Items Mentioned in Today's Episode with Whitney:

Whitney's Favourite Book: Shantaram

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