It was Andrei Andrev, the head of Badoo and co-creator of Bumble. And after Bumble involved you faced another workplace scandal. In 2019, Forbes published a survey and was accused of creating a toxic, sexist work environment at Badoo's London headquarters. He denied these allegations, but soon after the article was published he ended up selling his majority stake. It is impressive that you had to deal with the second well-known case of suspicion of bad behavior by a man in your professional life. What do you do with that now? In other words, it's scary. Absolutely the worst scenario. I was clearly feeling unwell for anyone who felt the way they felt. And I didn't know about any of these allegations. That's for many people, “Whitney is a liar. Of course, she knows all this and she's hiding this guy.” The honest truth is that I was very bumbled as a standalone business in Austin. It was upsetting to me because I wasn't sitting in the office all day (Badou's London) and crossing with those people. I was speechless when Forbes called me and said this. I was shocked. It was really important for Andrei to be honest about my personal interactions with him. The honest truth is that I have never seen anything to that extent. But I never questioned women or others in their experiences, and I said that. And I believe these allegations had arisen several years ago. They were not active.
There have been various allegations from different eras. right. But I think most of this article covered the previous ones. I am not trying to reject myself from anything. That's not what I'm doing. If you watch the early 2010s, we've all seen the movie. WeWorks and Ubers. When you close your eyes and think about tech companies in 2012, you see all the men together with beer plunge. I don't think you'll close your eyes and look back at the progressive office space. What will you take away from now? I don't know. Maybe I just found myself in the only one situation, or was this painting a big theme of what was popular in the technological culture of the time?
Another thing about that period is that it is such a moment of technological optimism. All of these apps were announced and supported for uncomprehensible amounts. They promised to solve many of the world's problems. Did you believe that at the time? I did it. To have access to the app, you can see who is around you, connect with them immediately, and suddenly, if you didn't have this interface, you'd date someone you'd never met and feel really transformative. So I was able to order a black car from Uber. We were just this moment – well, if the people at Gen Z are listening to us now, they say, “These people, what? Did they live in the dark ages?” (laughs)
Hey, listen, I remember the time in front of my phone. So you know where I'm going with this. It was a huge leap in terms of efficiency and ease. I couldn't believe we were at this center. And it's really hard to do it twice, not say it in a self-promotional way at all. Over the years, so many people are totally unsure that people realize how difficult it is to get critical mass twice on the “Well, she's just lucky, she was wearing a lot of yellow, she's blonde.”
In the next Bumble era, you've grown a lot during the pandemic when everyone was stuck on their app. It was a huge moment. It was released in 2021, and it rings the bell, rings the baby on the hips, and the user's growth will begin to slow down the following year. What do you think was going on? In my opinion, I operated this company for the first few years as a quality approach to quantity. The phone provider came to us early. They said, “We love your brand. We want to pre-program apps on every phone. When people buy a phone, the apps will appear on their home screen and there are millions of free downloads.” “Thank you, thank you.” No one could understand what I was doing and said it was the wrong way to grow. This is not a social network, it is a two-sided market. One person needs to ride and see someone associated with them. If you flood your system endlessly – you are not going to walk on the streets of New York City and you want to meet everyone you pass by. Why do you think someone wants to do it on the app? This is more than just a content platform that scrolls and scrolls and scales the results. What happened was growth king throughout the pandemic and other chapters. It was welcomed because the end is everything.
