David Brown

She lets that question sit in the room for a moment.

The executives in the room acknowledge her point.

But I want to make sure we do too.

You know, there's a reason experienced operators obsess over inputs instead of outputs.

You know, revenue, users, growth, those outputs are lagging indicators.

They tell you what already happened.

Inputs like product quality, user trust, real engagement, those are the things that you have more control over and they determine what happens next.

When a company starts managing outputs, it can juice the numbers for a while, but eventually you discover you've borrowed from the future, and the bill comes due in the form of churn, distrust, and declining value per user.

Bumble managed to grow its revenue even as its stock slid, but any hope it might have had for driving revenue growth through growth acquisitions like Gen Z dating app Fruits in early 2022 and the relationship-focused app Official in May 2023, that's now gone.

Bumble has decided to shut down both of those apps.

Bumble also tried to push growth by adding more and more user profiles without carefully vetting them.

And more users for a time led to more revenue, but it hasn't always led to better matches.

And there are also plenty of real users who have what Wolf Hurd calls bad intentions.

Some of them even have fake identities.

In chasing revenue growth at all costs, Wolf Hurd explains, Bumble has lost sight of what really mattered.

Was the woman sitting alone on a Friday night scrolling through profiles on the Bumble app?

Was she getting any closer to finding what she came for?

For too many users, the answer has been no.

Wolf heard again glances at the Make the First Move poster.

It's a rallying cry, and it sounds unmistakably like the Whitney Wolf herd who launched Bumble in 2014.