In addition to Bumble, the dating app that requires women to make the first move, Whitney Wolfe Herd, the company’s founder and chief executive, oversees the following: an app for friends (Bumble BFF), an app for networking (Bumble Bizz), an app for gay men (Chappy), a print magazine (Bumble Mag), an investment fund (Bumble Fund), a film fund (Bumble Presents … The Female Film Force), a psychotherapeutic skin care line (Bumble Beauty), a restaurant concept (Bumble Brew), operations in nine countries, and a slew of celebrity investors and endorsers including Priyanka Chopra and Serena Williams.
It is, in her words, “a lot.”
Complicating things is Ms. Herd’s travel schedule, which included seven countries in the first three months of the year. She bounces frequently between her two Texas homes — one in Austin, where Bumble has its headquarters, and a second about 220 miles away in Tyler, where her husband, Michael Herd, works and owns a restaurant.
Since starting Bumble in 2014, Ms. Herd, 29, has defied just about every tech start-up convention. She avoided taking venture capital, and she was ahead of the curve in pushing a message of female entrepreneurial empowerment. She also leavens her image as a globe-trotting influencer — posting magazine-worthy Instagram photos of tropical vacations and celebrity weddings — with that of a girl-next-door Texan who gets Starbucks via drive-through and takes conference calls while fly-fishing. We corresponded for a week in late March.
Monday
1:30 p.m. I arrive at the Texas Capitol building to testify in support of Bill 2789, which would criminalize sending unsolicited lewd photos in the same way that indecent exposure in public is a crime. For over a year, I’ve been working behind the scenes on this bill. I am shocked at how nervous I am to testify — more so than any other public speaking I’ve done. This means a lot to me, and I know how much this can change how we treat one another online.
4:30 p.m. Before it was my turn to speak, we heard testimony from several women who were victimized by the sex trade, which was unbelievably moving and gut wrenching. They were there for a bill that would take the money seized in the sex trade and make it available for victims and survivors. It made me want to do more to raise awareness around this.
6:30 p.m. The entire day is surreal. I go for a quick cheers at our lobbyist’s headquarters with my husband and some Bumble employees.
7 p.m. My husband and I fly to Tyler and play with Duke, our 175-pound Great Dane.
Tuesday
5:30 a.m. I call Andrey Andreev, my founding partner and Bumble’s majority owner. He’s based in London and oversees our tech and product teams. We’re incredibly in sync and talk two to five times a day. He’s sick of hearing from me — I joke that he’s going to block my number. Daylight saving time has been great, though, because now we’re only five hours apart instead of six.
9 a.m. I finally make it out for a coffee — Starbucks drive-through — and spend the next few hours on back-to-back calls in my car. I’m driving around stores I need to stop in for errands but never actually find a moment to go in.
11:30 a.m. Call with Rachel Zoe, the fashion designer and businesswoman, from a parking lot. Our conversation is part business — talking about ways our companies could work together — and part friend catch-up. I don’t consider people to be “work acquaintances.” I treat networking the same way I treat my friends. You check in on people, see how their families are and take a real interest in them, and not because of what they can offer you.
12:30 p.m. Lunch with my husband and his grandfather. We eat at my husband’s restaurant, the Grove Kitchen and Gardens, which he opened in 2016. My husband’s grandfather is 90 and the smartest and sharpest person I know. He founded Herd Producing Company, where my husband is now president, in the 1960s. He is like our best friend and the rock of our family, so we spend a lot of time with him.
3 p.m. I catch up with the following people: a few friends via text, my mom to coordinate summer travel plans, my executive assistant on about two trillion things, my chief of staff, our chief operating officer and a few other Bumble employees. I also take a beat to Instagram my testimony and look over the rebranding for Chappy, our gay dating app. I try but fail to make it to the gym.
6 p.m. At home, Duke is so excited to see me. He is a kind animal but does not understand how big he is. At 175 pounds, he could quite literally kill me. I have to lock myself in the car while I wait for my husband to come home and get him away from me. These are my daily circumstances!
10 p.m. We fly back to Austin and have Chinese takeout with red wine for dinner. I play with my Lab, Jett, so he calms down, then try to wind myself down with a hot bath, a hot tea with magnesium, a chapter of “Educated” and 10 minutes of the Headspace app. I envy how my husband hits the pillow and goes to dreamland in less than 60 seconds.
Wednesday
7 a.m. Breakfast of homemade celery juice (if it works or not, who will ever know) and a bite of leftover Chinese takeout. After walking the dog, I once again attempt to work out, and once again get distracted by work. Andrey calls, and we talk through a coming safety feature, Private Detector, which identifies lewd images before they’re sent to our users and warns them.
8:30 a.m. I travel so much — seven different countries over the last three months or so — that I love the opportunity for in-person meetings with my bees (our internal term for Bumble employees). Today we’re working on our coming women’s investment summit; Serena Williams and I will be selecting the companies that participate. In another meeting, we debate the pros and cons of putting videos in Bumble’s user profiles. But after testing with users and focus groups, it turns out users don’t want it. So much goes into even the most minor launches.
Sometimes you make a product decision with the best intentions and then you put it through a pilot and find out it has a negative impact. Especially with international expansion — there are intricate differences in how different cultures view love, friendship, even the term “B.F.F.”
5 p.m. My husband and I take our founding crew out for some drinks and a quick boat ride on the lake to unwind.
Thursday
7 a.m. I finally get a workout in, then meet with contractors about remodeling our house. I use the drive to work to catch up with our U.K. office about European expansion.
9 a.m. Our monthly directors’ meeting is a no-nonsense session to discuss our plans and any brewing challenges. We look at our daily and monthly active users across regions and see where they’re strongest and weakest. The weeks go by really, really fast, and this is a chance for me to take a breath and hear what every group is working on.
2 p.m. Quarterly strategy with Bumble’s chief operating officer and chief of staff at a restaurant near our office. These are for making big decisions. Over four hours we discuss our new headquarters in Austin, which will have dynamic food and beverage options, a fitness center, and mental health and child care spaces. I’ll be spending a lot of time on the design. We also talk about costs and potential partners for our content project, Bumble Studios. It can be hard to find the right partners. We’ve had to pull out of several deals that would have been perfect after we found out the companies had done things that went against our values.
We also get updates on our newest international markets — India, Mexico and the Philippines. We’re adding around half a million users a week, which is positive, but that also brings pressure and more responsibility. It’s a lot.
8:30 p.m. Alex Williamson, my best friend and Bumble’s chief brand officer, comes to my house for a puppy play date and some quesadillas and margaritas.
Friday
11:30 a.m. I call Emma Watson to discuss a possible partnership with her book club, Our Shared Shelf. Emma and I have known each other for a couple of years, and she’s a huge inspiration to me and everyone at Bumble.
5 p.m. I’m on calls until 7:30 p.m., including with Imagine Entertainment, Ron Howard and Brian Grazer’s production company, where I’m on the board of directors, to discuss a few potential tie-ups.
8 p.m. A bunch of my high school friends are in town. They come over, and we cook an elaborate dinner of pasta vongole, with mussels and clams, and salad and watch “On the Basis of Sex,” the movie about Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Saturday
11 a.m. I go through around 300 emails. I like to respond thoughtfully and not just give quick scrappy, sloppy half-responses from my phone. (That’s how I wind up making mistakes, like when I accidentally sent a sensitive pitch deck to the wrong people this week.) So I end up going through my inbox on the weekends. I realize that my employees might feel anxious about a ton of emails from me on a Saturday, so I store them in drafts and hit send first thing Monday morning.
Interviews are conducted by email, text and phone, then condensed and edited.
