From the Bumble blockbuster IPO at the height of the pandemic, investor outrage at the dating service has cooled. At the very least, Bumble’s stock is trading at about $11 a share right now, a far cry from the $76 it closed on its first day as a public company in February 2021.
Of course, investors are fickle, which is a challenge for almost any listed company. The biggest concern for Bumble is user fatigue. People aren’t downloading dating apps as enthusiastically as they once were, which means less subscription revenue. Young people in particular are drawn to other platforms to find love, including TikTok, Snapchat and more Discord.
Now, it’s Lidiane Jones’ job to reverse these trends. It’s a tall order, and one faced by many CEOs tasked with rescuing apparel from its post-pandemic slumber: Publicationin retail and to automotive industryamong other areas. The outcome is by no means certain, of course. But Jones, who was are recruited to Bumble in January from Slack — where he was also hired as CEO and left after just 10 months — has a game plan, as he explained recently over lunch at a San Francisco restaurant.
Part of it has to do with artificial intelligence, which Bumble’s rivals are also leaning in heavier. Part of it has to do with “margin expansion.” A big part of it, Jones told me, is simply restoring joy to an experience that’s no longer fun for almost Half of the participants. Much of that conversation follows, edited for length and clarity.
Like many CEOs right now, you ran into a situation where, almost immediately, you had to lay off people—in Bumble’s case, 30% of a staff of 1,200. It’s a lot to figure out quickly. How did you manage?
I had a little onboarding going on before I even started. [Bumble founder] Whitney [Wolfe Herd] i was incredibly engaged with my boarding which gave me a boost to learn the organization. She was really supportive. I think that made a huge difference. I’m also a firm believer that if you’re going to do a transformation, be really thorough and do it carefully so you don’t put the company through a long, multi-phase process.
You’re relaunching the Bumble app in the second quarter of this year. I read that you are revisiting women’s first movethat seems like a big change.
Our brand awareness is so high, it’s amazing. And if you ask anyone about Bumble, they’ll say it’s for women, and the core of that doesn’t change. We are a company that truly cares about empowering women.
But as we approach our 10-year anniversary, it’s a great time to reflect on how we best serve our mission. For us, it’s really about how we express female empowerment today and for the next 10 years. What we really want is to go from women making the first move to women deciding [who should make the first move]. We give women more control and flexibility based on what works for them.
Do you think that by inviting women to make the first move, Bumble has had an impact on who uses the platform? Friends have told me that men they’ve met on the platform tend to be more passive, sometimes to their surprise.
Historically, what we’ve seen is that a lot of men will come to Bumble who believe in empowering women. I have heard this feedback about the passive [men] sometimes but not that much. Certainly, our ultimate goal is to ensure that our customers have a great experience.
Other areas of focus for you are security and artificial intelligence. What can Bumble users expect to see with this reboot?
When you consider the evolution of this incredible dating technology, it’s only as good and secure as a company’s data and security practices. Our customers’ privacy and their trust has always been incredibly strong. we’ve always had a high bar for healthy connections.
Over the last 10 years, we’ve developed a lot of AI and a lot of technology that actually protects the behavior in the app, and we can tune the models to reflect our security values and guidelines. But we want to take it even further. A huge part of Bumble’s DNA is advocating for policies that will ensure women feel safe, and we want to be at the forefront of not only promoting great tech development but advocating for online safety policy.
Bumble has long done physical verification of its users to ensure that user profiles are not bots or scams, but does not conduct criminal background checks. Is this changing with the help of AI?
Background checks are one of those we are investigating. It is something we will definitely work with different [players]. But it is a priority for me. I think it’s an important next step for us.
What else should people know about the upcoming update?
It’s truly the beginning of a new pace of innovation for Bumble. It is the beginning of a new series of experiences. We’re updating the profile experience, we’re updating the visual language of the app, we want to feel more connected to our users and the tone of voice to be fun and happy. We’re looking at AI to help augment some of the particularly stressful turning points in people’s lives, like profiling, which can be really challenging. We really want dating to be fun again — that’s really the key.
User fatigue must be greatly combated. Is there a new user acquisition strategy to go with the new app?
Bumble has always been great at community-based marketing: hosting events and finding ambassadors who really want to represent the brand. This was disrupted a bit during the pandemic. we’re using this moment before our launch to rekindle a lot of community-based events because there are a lot of people who are excited to reconnect in person, and that’s the starting point.
Bumble has always been about more than dating, too. Dating is a huge part of it, but we’ve always believed that there’s a need for connection and friendships, which is why we’re expanding our investment in our friendship capability because we think a lot of people want to start with just hanging out with other people. From a friendship perspective, when it comes to local and safe interpersonal events, there are many opportunities and unmet needs.
Bumble for Friends has launched last year. Would we ever see you spin it off as a standalone entity?
We are still collecting customer feedback. I have heard passionate cases of both. We are still exploring it.
