3 Leadership Lessons We Can Learn from Bumble & Whitney Wolfe Herd
I’ve found that when I talk to people about Bumble I normally hear one of two reactions.
They say “Yea, I tried it or have friends that have tried it. It’s another dating app like Tinder, but women have to talk to the guys first. What’s the big deal?”
OR they say…
“I know! Can you believe that story?!” Basically it’s very clear, IFYKYK. (If you know, you know.)
If you don’t happen to know, Whitney Wolfe Herd, the founder & CEO of Bumble is having a great start to 2021. After founding Bumble and becoming the best revenge story in Tech, Whitney has gone on to become the youngest self made woman billionaire in the world (31). She took Bumble to its IPO in February of 2021.
She has been an inspiring woman to watch rise in the tech industry, and I couldn’t let Women’s Month go by without sharing 3 lessons we can learn from Whitney when it comes to Women in Tech Leadership.
1. She wants to be held responsible.
Unlike the laundry list of tech leaders who are looking to offload the responsibility of what happens on their apps, Bumble steps accountability for the things happening on the platform.
Here are just a few of the things that can get you immediately kicked off:
2. She puts her money where her mouth is
As a mother she recognized that traditional maternity and paternity benefits aren’t enough. Bumble already had an extensive paid leave program and bonus’s to offset childcare costs, but they have added flexible start/end times and reimburse fees for breast milk delivery services. She wasn’t going to just sit back and gripe about challenges of being a parent and full time CEO, she was going to make sure employees at every level were able to experience the same benefits or flexibility she felt she needed after becoming a mom.
3. She sees how work there still is to go creating safe spaces for women (not just in the dating world)
Just this week, on March 15 Bumble posted to their Glassdoor account announcing that they will ban #bodyshaming from the app to continue to make it a safe space. They use the same values to recruit like minded individuals which helps breed a culture of workers who have a passion for lifting others up and not bringing them down.
With Bumble’s user growth at >30% year over year, and being #2 in the dating app space, I think big things are still yet to come for this company. I am invested (now in 2021 both literally and figuratively!) in the future of Bumble. I am excited to see where Whitney steers this ship next.
What leaders in Tech inspire you? Drop me some more people to check out in the comments!
