#having my boyfriend in VC the whole time made the experience into more of a comedy than a horror-based one

[sincerely-sofie]

Sofie Plays KinitoPet: Comic Edition

KinitoPet wasn't a game I was really able to liveblog like Slay the Princess, but I made some goofy sketches of the experience! There's oodles of additional comics under the Read More!

(The camera app genuinely bugged out and wouldn't show anything at this part--- my tech incompetence seems to be bleeding out into how KinitoPet.EXE is able to run on my computer)

[slasherscream]

poly billy and stu celebrating holidays with their s/o?? from birthdays (theirs) valentine's day, christmas, etc love your blog sm!! it's my favourite 🤩🤩

A/N: anon this is such a cute idea thank you for sending it in. 

     billy loomis x reader x stu macher

                                                     ——————– 

Let’s start with the top’s birthday. So Billy? He is an iconic mix of bitch and bastard. Meaning that he is absolutely pretending to hate his birthday. Or at least is exaggerating on the point of how much he wants “everyone” to forget about it. Because … and I mean this ….god help you if Stu and you ever forget or listen to him when he says “don’t do anything”. It would be a fucking nightmare of which you would never wake if you both did this. 

Luckily Stu already made this mistake one year before y'all were all together and he knows. The first year you’re together Billy is going through his regular shtick of bullshit. You pull Stu aside privately later and ask, “so are we doing anything for his birthday or are we listening to Billy.”

Stu gets….the most distant far-off look in his eyes. Like he’s a man that’s come back from war and just got drafted again. He’s never grabbed your shoulders harsher, “We have to do something he’s lying.“ 

So you do something. The good part about Billy’s birthday is he’s actually not hard to please. Start the day off right with an acknowledgement. So you do a movie night the day before. This way when midnight hits you can pause Halloween and he will almost start yelling at you before you guys whip out obnoxious colored party-horns and start trying to blow them to the beat of Happy Birthday. He is rolling his eyes but deeply pleased as he was already contemplating ….revenge of some sort at 11:55 (please god make Billy chill out for one day). 

He is not lying about not wanting anything big though. He really only wants to celebrate with you and Stu. Don’t throw him a party. He won’t be mad per-say but he won’t be like pumped or anything. Will end the party early or will make you and Stu sneak off with him. This is #His Day and the focus will be #On Him. 

His Mom used to make him a cake every year and Stu, as his life-long best friend (and now boyfriend), totally remembers the tradition. He's just not capable of baking or cooking. But he tells you and hopes you can do it and you can (if you're bad at baking too let's just imagine with you and Stu both working hard you can...achieve....something). Surprising Billy with the cake would make him feel #Soft.

Honestly he's spending the whole day acting tough and pretending he barely wants to do anything but?? He loves it and loves that you're both 100% focused on him and making him happy. He's just a brat. But ignore him while he's scoffing about you guys both kissing his cheeks at the same time he's having the time of his life. He just wants to cuddle and watch movies and for no one to go anywhere. 

If you want to go Big for Him one year or something the best thing you could do is put Rich Boy Stu's money to good use and get him autographed shit from Horror Icons. Or original props from movies. He'll lose his fuCKING MIND. Finally breaks his lame "cool guy" act for 0.5 seconds. 

Stu doesn't play hard to get and he doesn't play mind-games (with you and Billy, that is). Y'all know damn well he wants a big fuss made about his special day. He also wants a big party. It's super easy to make him happy on his birthday if you just remember that unlike Billy he wants this to be as over the top as fucking possible.  

Wake him up with breakfast in bed screaming happy birthday at the top of your lungs and he jumps up like a kid on Christmas Morning. Yes....this is #His Day....pay attention to HIM. 

Give him lots of presents! He's easy to buy for! New clothes. Stupid jewelry. Horror shit. New voice changer box. He just likes receiving gifts. They don't have to be expensive ...just have him open a lot of packages and he'll love it.

Do a surprise birthday party. It's not a surprise in any way at all but watching his face light up when he walks into his fucking house at the end of the day and half the highschool pops out like "surprise!!" is so fucking worth all the hassle that you and Billy have to smile at each other. 

Billy has thrown him parties before but they're more of just...huge get-together’s. Like highschool(TM) parties where you're too cool to decorate. You? Not a pussy. You deck out the whole house and Stu loses his fucking mind. Knows you are the cause of this and kisses the shit out of you. Dips you and everything. Billy is protesting because, "Hey I blew up half these fucking balloons" ...don't be a piss baby it'll be your turn in like thirty seconds. 

Fourth of July?? Stu has the most illegal fireworks he could get his hands on so they’re. …. pretty illegal. They’re the asshole neighbors that set them off like weeks before the 4th and if you weren't fucking them you'd want their heads on a platter. As is? Eh.....you're fucking them so I guess this is the neighbor's problems- They always forgive because Stu's family throws the greatest fucking barbecues day of.

St. Patrick's Day? Time to get fucking WASTED. You are wearing green aggressively because the one year you didn't Stu pinched your ass all day long. Even Billy joined in when he saw how feisty and annoyed it was making you. Stu is still doing it but you...tried at least, RIP. It's the tradition now. 

Valentine's Day?? billy vc: love is a neurochemical con job. But don't worry Stu will not allow him to be a bastard about the day because he's affectionate and loving. Stu knows how to celebrate the day perfectly. This is his time to shine! The Most Obnoxious Boyfriend. Everyone else is jealous. Flowers? Delivered in the middle of class. Huge chocolate box that is also #Expensive? Have fun putting that in your locker (he's sweet so he's actually gonna put it in his car for you once you've had a few)! Would pay the Band Kids to Follow Billy and s/o around MOSTLY to annoy Billy but also to be cute. They're playing the fucking .... they're playing this. Billy is so angry but..... like.... his inner possessive loves being made a fuss over publicly so whatever. Maybe he won't kill the band kids for this. You're not an ungrateful cretin so you clap and laugh. 

Billy does get Stu a gift ...something not really...Valentine's Day-esque but something he'll like. Like a horror-themed bong (i'm so sorry y'all this man obviously is smoking weed). You wrap it in pink, heart themed paper for him which he didn't know you were going to do and he is going to get you for that ...later...in the bedroom. But Stu loved it so whatever. 

You? At the exact same time you and Stu present each other teddy bears. His teddy for you? Cute and fucking...Huge. Yours?? Fucking horror themed.. made to be gore-y and bloody looking. He gasps, obviously touched, "Babe!". Gonna get made out with so hard.... How are you so cute and funny? He loves you!! It sits proudly on his dresser. 

What do you get Billy?? He really does dislike the Holiday because he thinks people who use this as the day to show they half-ass care about their s/o one day a year deserve death and despair. He will give them that death and despair. So what to give him then?

Stu pretended to be too busy planning for Valentine's Day to plan any murders with him which pissed Billy off even more the week prior. He was busy planning Valentine's Day. He was planning the Normal one they'd have with you and the more private, bloody one they'd have later that night killing couples together. Icing on cake? You pitched in by helping Stu plan it and by picking out new knives for them to use during. They're #Pink in a way that is obnoxious but the quality is amazing and you say, "it's your Valentine's Day knives!!! Just to use on Valentine's every year. Do you like them?"       billy choked up: it's fucking .... alright 

Got em'! The only way you can make the night better is letting Stu and Billy have sex with you when they get home. They're high off the kill rush and Billy is pleasantly-surprised that Stu did a really good job of planning everything alone. They're covered in blood and feeling love-dovey. Let's all do heavy eye-contact missionary tonight

April Fools is a mess and it leaves all of y'all mad at each other for a solid fucking week. Everybody gets got. Nobody can trust one another. Nobody should.

Thanksgiving is not a happy time for Billy. He doesn't like spending it with his Dad because while he's ...so good at misdirecting or #Avoiding Things He Doesn't Want To Deal With it gets very hard at this time of year to not get mad at his Dad. He's for some reason never going to hurt his Dad who he could easily blame for his Mom leaving?? But he won't. Though he's very angry during this time of the year. His Dad will try to do anything and he just shuts himself in his room. Doesn't even wanna go to Stu's house or your house. It would just make him feel .... weird, upset, like he's intruding... jealous, even. It's kinda sad. He won't even pick up your calls that day. You and Stu don't even have to sneak into the house. Billy's Dad quietly let's you in and you go upstairs and just hold him together. It's a solemn holiday because it's like the start of reminding Billy about his Mother abandoning him. 

Christmas goes kinda the same way tbh but he's ....trying to make an effort to not be as big of a bummer since Christmas is a little more significant than Thanksgiving. He knows you and Stu actually enjoy the holiday season. He tries to distance himself in general during this time because he just doesn't know how to be anything else. It's actually kinda sad because most of Billy's emotions if they're negative wind up manifesting as anger but he's genuinely depressed as shit. 

Things are different when you all move in together because now he's also not trying to spend the holidays with the literal reminder of why his life sucks (his cheating ass daddy). Plus you and Stu are determined to give him new Holiday experiences to replace the ones that make him feel so shitty with nostalgia. He's grumpy the first Christmas you guys spend together after you're living alone but not angry the way he's been at Christmas times' past. Improvement.  

The Christmas after that? Doesn't cringe once seasonal music starts playing in stores. Ghostface killings get a little less violent and frequent (he's not using them to cope as soon as it gets cold). Getting better. The Christmas after that?? You can get him to help you decorate. He helps you and Stu with the tree. He makes cookies with you. You watch horror themed Christmas movies and some regular ones (you cannot be a movie tyrant during the holidays, billy-). Christmas after that? You all send out a "family" Christmas card. You and Stu are in ridiculous sweaters and Billy is in one of solid red but he's wearing a Santa hat. His arms are crossed but there's the slightest smile on his face. You each have an arm around him. You all look happy together.

Now ..... for the big one: Halloween. Thought I skipped it? Hah! Best for last. This is their happiest time of year. They are so ready for this shit you have no idea. It's disgusting how ready they are. It turns October and Stu drops this video in your three person chat. Billy replies with a devil emoji. Disgusting?? You know you're in for a chore of keeping them in line for a whole fucking month. They will be doing MISCHIEF. They will be doing SHENANIGANS. Both MURDER and OTHERWISE. They're teepeeing houses. Cars. They're stealing candy from kids like dicks probably. Or laughing at people who are doing this. They keep the kills to Halloween night though. A whole month of just planning so they can do something big and terrible. You have to be looking after them extra during this time because they're so excited they are ...not ...doing that. you: you guys please drink some water i haven't seen you move in hours billy and stu: billy: holy shit it's been- stu: babe please make us something to eat we haven't had anything since yesterday :(((( 

Fucking dumb idiot disease. If you're living together?? God help you, you used to only have to see them get hype as fuck. Now? You must experience it 24/7. Halloween prep starts emotionally? Once summer ends. They want to deck out the house to the nines and you’re just gonna have to piss now staring at/being aware of the over-sized plastic spider Stu put on the back of the toilet. 

Everything is spooky. Cobwebs everywhere. Black! Orange! Pumpkins! Outside decorations that are actually scary as shit. They're the haunted house on the street that gets #Talked About. They're gonna go murder the shit outta people later but early in the night?? The kids that manage to walk up to the house?? Get fucking...the Mother-load of all candy. The brave little bastard dressed as a ballerina-fairy-princess?? Fist-bump. Billy does not much like kids but all the kids who get to his door? You deserve this. Full-sized chocolate bars and bags of candy. Maybe even a dollar or two. Stu is actually great with kids and is the nice one who guesses all of their costumes. Somehow can guess the weird ones accurately? 

Once that part of the night is over they go out and just wreak total fucking havoc. Halloween in Woodsboro is a nightmare. They're having fun at least! This is their Christmas and they love it. Babe         babe don't wait up. They tell you as if you couldn't fucking guess?? They're not home till the wee hours of the morning and they're dead-exhausted but they had the time of their lives. 

                                                     ——————–

[moondriftingold]

some kh3 Hot Takes, saïx/isa edition!

i will admit that i don’t hate the subject x thing as much as i did yesterday, but i still like... hate it. it’s just, like. unnecessary to isa and lea’s journey and their story, in my opinion? i won’t be completely casting it out of my canon, because the idea that isa and lea came across something so disturbing and horrid (in this case, a live, human prisoner) that it would motivate them to continue their search into the castle beyond just curiosity is something i’ve had in mind for a very long time and has been part of my portrayal for years, and this can fit that category. but, this mysterious girl being the motivation for isa and lea to become apprentices? for it to be the sole/largest factor in isa becoming saïx? for saïx/isa to have apparently been so obsessed and concerned for this “friend” that he only mention her now, at the end of this journey, and in his dying speech of all things? absolutely fucking not. as per my canon, that isn’t a thing. he absolutely still cares for this girl and wished to help her, and i can buy them becoming guards to give them time at the castle without suspicion to try and free her, but at the end of the day, x was not saïx’s sole fucking motivation for everything he did.

i am really, really fond of isa’s ending. i was spoiled for it basically the second week of the game’s release (thnx guys), but i didn’t know the entire circumstances over how he was saved. and i am. just. God. Fuck Me Up Fam i am So Happy. roxas and xion finally seeing saïx be vulnerable kicked my entire ass dude!!! all they’ve seen of him so far is this horrible beast of a man that doesn’t reflect isa at all, so it was really nice for them to get to see him in a weaker, quiet moment where he was more... who he was meant to be. i was also spoiled for the end clocktower scene a week or so ago, which really fucking sucked, but watching it play out was such an experience. i think i screamed? i think i screamed. i really truly adore that isa has been accepted into the sea salt trio because that’s some shit i’ve been dreaming about for ages, but it did feel rushed. as much as i want isa to be an important and positive figure in their lives from here on out, it’s also highly unrealistic for them to just accept him back into their lives the way he is, after all that saïx had done to them. it’s true that saïx ≠ isa, but isa also isn’t exempt from the consequences that saïx’s actions leave him with. i do think that for them to get to the level that was shown, deep connections need to be made. they really need to talk about what happened between them and move past it in a healthy manner, or unsettled, toxic feelings will still remain buried underneath. my isa will likely still be wary around roxas and xion, feeling a guilt and frustration around them that he hates and feels terrible for, and also hates that he even feels terrible for. from his perspective, whatever he did, he did to survive, and he shouldn’t have to apologize for taking actions that he had virtually no choice in taking if he wanted to simply live --- but the fact of the matter is that he did have a choice in many of the things he did to roxas and xion. and that, he knows he must atone for.

i really love the big implication that saïx was the one who formulated a plan with vexen to use the replica bodies against the organization??!??! I LOVE IT DUDE IVE BEEN LIVING FOR AN ANTI-ORG SAÏX REVOLT FOR FOREVER?? it isn’t the most ic thing he could’ve done, and also isn’t confirmed canonly (ive seen some people predicting ansem sod as well? which is equally as dope imo), but i do adore the idea of saïx silently sticking it to the org. me vc are ya winning son

isa playing frisbee with lea and ven in the epilogue made me cry. like. he looked so happy. he was so carefree. he was finally having fun and around people that aren’t fucking terrible, and he’s the closest thing to being at peace for the first time in over a decade. i love him so much. i lov ehim. os mcu h. oh mh.y . god. tTATTOO THAT SCENE ON MY FACE

i h8 the fanon implication that isa now lives in twilight town with the sea salt trio bc ive always wanted him to go home to radiant garden and make peace with his time there, but him also choosing to make a sacrifice in his life to show his loyalty and love for lea is something that i absolutely do not hate, so. his whereabouts post-kh3 r up in the air ig? i want him to have a sweet little cottage in radiant garden but moving to twilight town and living in a lofty studio apartment to be closer to lea/xion/roxas is also sweet even though he probably wouldn’t enjoy it much there. i. sigh

on another note like... i really think isa wants to see more of the worlds? he didn’t really travel around much as saïx, as he was most often needed at the castle to attend to briefings and missions and meetings, and whenever he left the castle on his own, he knew he was being watched (important vessel! recusant’s sigil! yikes!), so he couldn’t really enjoy it. as much as he needs to settle somewhere and anchor himself to a place he can finally call home, he wants to have adventures of his own, too.

i am... disappointed in the lack of overall backstory to him, though. ya i understand he’s not main cast and that there was a LOT going on in this game, but we still don’t know what the early years of the org were like? how baby akusai formed their plan? no further details on how active saïx was in the org and how determined he was to get moving on things (lea saying “i couldn’t keep up with you!” in their first clocktower scene)? nothing on when saïx was chosen as a vessel, when his eyes first turned gold? when he got that giant X-SCAR ON HIS FACE? NOTHING?? THANKS NOMURA AT LEAST I CAN WRITE MY OWN CANON

if yall want me to talk about isalea im gonna have to make a whole ass separate post for them bc this post is already so long and i am already full of tears please have mercy i will cry specifically about them later at an unknown date. but i can, for now, absolutely, say they are boyfriends. bye

[takeseffort-a]

okay all my love aside (and you know i love all of your portrayals) there is one thing that tends to throw me off when we write together. i've always preferred third person past tense. i guess because that's how i was taught. but you tend to write third person present tense and it throws me off all the time. xD it's not a bad thing? it's different and something i definitely notice each and every time we write together.

i love your portrayal. once again you’ve taken a side character and breathed in life, you’ve given him depth and brought him off the page unlike anyone else. you’ve made him more than just jace’s parabatai and magnus’ boyfriend. you’ve made him human. you’ve given him faults, you allow him to fuck up (or down ;) ) and you’ve allowed him to grow. you’ve found ways to put him into different universes and my only complaint is how does someone pick a single verse to play in? they are all amazing. (½)

is that an actual bit of constructive criticism I see oh my god thank you. I’ve actually been hoping someone would comment on this because I know it’s a weird quirk, & I’ve been doing it for literal years but for some reason it’s just flown under the radar. there’s actually a reason for it though! I love 3rd person past tense. it’s probably the most easily read & written tense as a whole. I’m just an arbitrary person & I wanted to challenge myself, among other things so that’s part of it. 

the first other thing is probably the best foundation I can start with: I didn’t start writing novels. I didn’t start writing short stories, or long form fictional content. I started the bulk of my writing experience writing out screenplays. plays, & scripts, have always been some of my favorite things because they forced me to see the action instead of having it told to me. I can’t really do that with RP replies, so I’ve had to become much, much more descriptive & sometimes I feel like I overcompensate by being entirely too fucking focused on description & trivial details because I’m used to not having or writing them. it’s something I struggle with every time I reply in terms of finding that perfect balance. 

I actually change my style slightly depending on what or who I’m writing. my most active muses right now, I do use largely 3rd person present because for me, the most basic thing about it is it’s easiest for me, but also it conveys more of a sense of immediacy than past tense does. I’m not recording a thing Alec did in the past, I’m flinging him onto the dash with what he is doing, if that makes sense. the reason I do this is because Alec is a very immediate person. also, present tense tends to contribute a little more directly to the characterization of whoever you’re writing just in the nature of itself.

borrowing a line from Joyce Cary (regarding why he picked it for Mister Johnson, specifically), it helps a reader be “carried unreflecting on the stream of events.” (the rest of the quote: “As Johnson swims gaily on the surface of life, so I wanted the reader to swim, as all of us swim, with more or less courage and skill, for our lives.”) I use reflection & introspection a lot, I need a writing style that doesn’t really… add more. 

For example, when I was writing James as the Winter Soldier, & back ages ago, when I wrote Steve himself, I used 3rd person past tense. I found it was more fitting for them but that didn’t really carry over to my last few blogs. 

it’s also very largely influenced by the fact that I actually dictate most of my replies verbally while listening to either music or having some sort of source material on with headphones, that way I can very much immerse myself in whatever I’m crafting - so when you’re getting replies, they’re essentially from my point of view from “observing” a thread. this is pretty much why it’s both impossible for me to satisfactorily write while on a call/VC, & also why I’m so fucking slow. playing back the dictation also helps me catch a lot of mistakes, but I’ll usually end up making them all over again when I go to edit without dictation but hey, an attempt was made ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. 

another reason I do it is because I want to convey more thematic elements, not just a point of view. one of my favorite quotes of all time actually captures it – it’s from Charles Baxter’s Feast of Love.

“In February, the overcast sky isn’t gloomy so much as neutral and vague. It’s a significant factor in the common experience of depression among the locals. The snow crunches under your boots and clings to your trousers, to the cuffs, and once you’re inside, the snow clings to you psyche, and eventually you have to go to the doctor. The past soaks into you in this weather because the present is missing almost entirely.”

tl; dr: the author has taken the viewpoint the past is eternally present as a memory.

lastly, third person present comes to me very, very easily. MANY of the books & authors I enjoy employ it (The Hunger Games, John Updike, The Handmaid’s Tale).

further tl; dr: when I toss him on the dash, I want to very strongly convey that these are actions I see him doing RIGHT NOW. so the tense shift really helps me do that, but I understand it can be really weird for any of my partners not used to it so if it becomes an issue, please let me know & I’ll see what I can do. I only really have a hard time reading is anything first or second person because to me, it’s hard for me personally to immerse myself in a reply written that way & I end up processing it as very… self-inserting, which can get to me after a while. but I am also always down for a challenge so hit me, lets go.

       ↳ no-holds-barred portrayal concrit // accepting                   @cxpt

[whatdoesseostandfor]

My Last Day at Moz. My First Day at SparkToro.

17 years ago, I dropped out of college to work with my mom, Gillian, on the business that became Moz. For 7 years (from 2007-2014), I was that company’s CEO. For the last 4, I’ve been in a variety of individual contributor roles. And today, for me, that journey ends.

On a scale of 0-10, where 0 is “fired and escorted out of the building by security” and 10 is “left entirely of his own accord on wonderful terms,” my departure is around a 4. That makes today a hard one, cognitively and emotionally. I have a lot of sadness, a heap of regrets, and a smattering of resentment too. But I am, deeply, deeply thankful to all the people who supported me and Moz over the last two decades. The experience of building a company like this, of helping to change and mature an industry, of learning so much about entrepreneurship, marketing, and myself has been an honor and a privilege.

What’s Next?

Three things:

A new software company! I’ve got a bit of a chip on my shoulder, and a lot to prove — mostly to myself. That’s always been a superb motivator for me (even if it’s not the most emotionally healthy reason to take on the crazy risk that is startup-building). SparkToro is in a different field of marketing: influencer and audience intelligence. I’m hoping we can solve the thorny, painful problem of discovering where a given audience spends time, who and what they listen to, and where they engage. Some folks call this “influencer marketing” but I’ve found that terminology to be too limiting. It’s often exclusively associated with paying Instagram and YouTube celebrities to post about a product, and that’s not where this product/company is going. In the next year, I hope to have a product I can show you

A book! I’ve spent the last 18 months writing and polishing Lost and Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World with a terrifically talented team at Penguin/Random House’s Portfolio imprint. The book’s central tenet is this: A ton of traditional Silicon Valley startup “wisdom” biases companies and founders to do a lot of dumb stuff. This book will help you avoid those pitfalls. It’s told through stories from Moz’s years of growth and struggles, paired with advice and hard-won experience that’s helped us. If you’re a contrarian, or a skeptic of valley startup culture, you’ll probably love it. And if you’re an entrepreneur, marketer, or technologist who believes all the hype, maybe it can at least help you know what to watch for.

A non-profit project to help makes conferences and events safer. It is un-fucking-believable what women (and some men) have had to put up with at events in the marketing and tech worlds. This is a hard arena in which to make a dent, but I’ve been working with a pro bono legal team from Davis Wright Tremaine on a structure that can hopefully help give codes of conduct more teeth and bad behavior more consequence. More to come on this in the months ahead.

Of course, I’ll also be speaking at a number of events, blogging a lot more, and spending a lot of quality time on phone calls with state tax offices (because startup life is glamorous, yo!).

Are You Totally Done With Moz?

No, not entirely. You’ll still see me on Whiteboard Friday (I filmed a good dozen episodes before departing and will likely be back in the office to shoot some more). I’m still working with one internal team on a big product release that didn’t get finished before my departure (a project I’m really proud of and excited about, with a team of people I love). And I’m still on Moz’s board of directors as the chairperson, and still the single largest shareholder (Geraldine and I own ~24% of the outstanding shares).

Thus, I still have a lot of reasons to cheer for, support, and keep my fingers crossed for Moz. I have high hopes that in the years ahead, the product will once again be the leader in its field and the best solution out there for many in the SEO world.

No Vacation?

This seems to be the first question I get when folks hear I’m leaving Moz, so I’ll address it here. Slight spoiler for the book, but it turns out being a startup founder, even if your company has tens of millions in revenue, doesn’t necessarily mean a lot of liquidity. Dollars are at a premium, my severance will only last so long, and thus I need to get this next business off the ground as fast as possible. Perhaps someday Moz will have a liquidity event and I’ll take a few months to relax and unwind. Or maybe this next project will go so well that I’ll have the flexibility to do that (although, knowing myself, I suspect a few weeks > a few months).

Geraldine and I do have a short trip to Portugal planned with our dear friends, Wil and Nora, in late April. Maybe that kinda counts

A Massive Thank You to Nicci Herron

If you’ve worked to schedule something with me in the last 5 years, or visited the Moz office, you know that I’ve been supported by an incredible EA, Nicci Herron. Every week, Nicci does an immense load of work to help not just me, but people all across the Moz organization. She’s so detail-oriented that across thousands of days and no fewer than 20,000 unique events, meetings, and calls, I think she’s made fewer than 5 mistakes total (and most of those were probably her just apologizing for someone else).

When she heard the news that Moz and I would be parting ways, she elected not to stay with the company. Her words to me were “if you’re not here, I don’t want to be either.” I have thought about that loyalty and kindness hundreds of times over the last year when feeling down.

Nicci doesn’t yet know what she’s planning to do next, which means there’s a tiny, brief window where a very lucky organization might snap her up. If you have need of someone with her extraordinary skills, please drop her a line via LinkedIn (or ping me directly and I can connect you).

Five Tidbits of Advice

Not many people stay with one job or one company for such a huge percent of their lives, especially not in the technology world. To some degree, this has almost certainly had a myopic impact on what I can see and perceive of a professional career, but it’s also a unique position to be in. I suspect that, with time and distance, I’ll be able to see the experience of Moz more clearly, but some things I can take away now (that aren’t already covered in Lost and Founder) include:

The best skill I’ve developed and the one that’s served me best as a founder, a CEO, and a marketer is empathy. Being able to put myself in the shoes of other people and imagine their pain, their problems, their workflows and speed bumps has been invaluable both on the product side and in creating content. Side note: this does not come naturally (or at least, doesn’t *only* come naturally). Spending lots of time with people I want to learn about, getting to know them personally, and asking questions, listening, and watching has been huge, too.

My number one tip for marketers seeking to grow their career opportunities is this: specialize. Specialize deeply. I don’t mean “SEO” or “Email marketing,” I mean specialization like “I’m the best link-focused SEO for the mobile gaming world.” Expanding from a specialization (if you so choose) is vastly easier, in my experience, than becoming known for a broad practice. This is equally true for companies as for individuals.

Video served as a dramatic accelerant for my personal brand, vastly more than I ever expected. Whiteboard Friday begat more conference invitations and interviews and awareness than even my most successful blog posts. I think the branding and stickiness value of video means that every viewer is worth (in the marketing sense) 10X more than a reader of text content (maybe more).

At Moz, weighting powerful, important, high-profile people’s opinions higher than our customers opinions inevitably led to doom. That was usually me putting more stock in what a handful of VCs who turned me down for investment thought over what hundreds of customers and potential customers were telling me they wanted. Granted, when you’re a VC-backed company, paying attention to investors matters because your next round is crucial (unless you’re profitable, in which case you don’t necessarily need to raise more, even though the startup culture will convince you it’s the only way). But, I also over-indexed on what highly influential authors and bloggers thought, and what I heard from a few folks I hoped might be potential acquirers. Dumb. When building a company, customers (and potential customers) > almost everyone else.

Tricks, hacks, and individual point solutions never made a big impact for us (and honestly, they’ve never made a big impact for any other company I’ve worked with or advised, either). Coming from the SEO world (and being bombarded by the emergent culture of “growth hacking”), this hit hard. For years I thought that the one right move would accelerate growth or the one right feature would make everyone love our product. But in fact, it’s when the whole became better than the sum of its parts that magic happened. That proved true in marketing, in product, in internal culture, even in recruiting. Crafting holistic, consistent, high quality experiences always beat out that “one magic trick” for improving… whatever. I think this is equally applicable in one’s personal life. The house, the car, the boyfriend, the vacation — none can, alone, produce the “and now I’m finally happy!” result.

Thank you again to everyone who’s been so kind to me and to Moz. I hope that I can continue to return those favors and to help many more people do better marketing.

p.s. Moz is shutting off my old email address there; if you’d like to reach me in the future, drop a line to rand at sparktoro.com.

The post My Last Day at Moz. My First Day at SparkToro. appeared first on SparkToro.

More articles on my blog: http://ift.tt/1ar6xOc from Blogger http://ift.tt/2Fcpw1G

[technicalsolutions88]

It’s 4:55pm Central Time on a Tuesday at Bumble headquarters in Austin, Texas. Whitney Wolfe Herd, the 28-year-old founder and CEO of the woman-led dating app is showing me around the nearly four-year-old startup’s office before we sit down to talk.

Our first stop is the standard startup watering hole, with a few twists. The fridges are stocked with Topo Chico instead of La Croix and the built-in taps are purely for decoration. Maybe one day they’ll be filled with Kombucha or iced coffee, a team member tells me. But no mention of beer. We’re not in Silicon Valley anymore.

As Wolfe Herd pours two glasses of white wine and plops in a few ice cubes, she briefly pauses to ask if I’m okay with the drink selection. Her question quickly caused my mind to wander back to my 21st birthday when a waiter told me men aren’t supposed to drink white wine with ice cubes.

There was perhaps no better way to begin my time with Wolfe Herd than a reminder that no matter how many hundreds of millions of woman-initiated matches have been made on Bumble, the company still exists in a world so ingrained with gender stereotypes that we couldn’t get through pouring a drink before the first one reared its head.

Luckily for me and my unsophisticated palate, I’d soon learn that Whitney Wolfe Herd doesn’t particularly care what people think that she or Bumble are supposed to do, let alone what we should be drinking.

‘I’m not building a dating app’

Bumble isn’t Wolfe Herd’s first exposure to the world of digital dating and connections. She moved to Los Angeles in 2012 and became an early co-founder of Tinder, but eventually left the company amid allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination against another one of the company’s co-founders. The lawsuit was settled, and while the past is the past, the history does help set the stage for the idea that would eventually turn into Bumble.

“I was just poof, gone, ceased to exist. It was like leaving behind an abandoned life, fleeing from the storm or whatever it was,” explained Wolfe Herd when talking about leaving Los Angeles after her time at Tinder. “I was experiencing all this, and then the Twitterverse and the Instagram world and the online sphere started attacking me. And I had never really understood online bullying. I didn’t even know what that meant or what it felt like. It made me really depressed.”

As successful entrepreneurs are known to do, Wolfe Herd soon began figuring out a way to leverage these closely held personal experiences into a new product. Her solution was Merci, a female-only social network “rooted in compliments and kindness and good behavior.”

Original mockup of Bumble, then known as Merci

While she was building out the idea, Andrey Andreev, founder and CEO of Badoo, the largest dating platform in the world, contacted her. Little did Wolfe Herd know, but Andreev saw her departure from Tinder as an opportunity, inviting her to meet the Badoo team in London where it had been based for more than 10 years. After some reluctance on Wolfe Herd’s part, she decided to go for it. After all, she was looking for feedback on her Merci idea, and worst-case she’d at least leave with a better idea of what she wanted to build next.

But Andreev had other plans. During their first meeting he frankly asked Wolfe Herd to become the chief marketing officer of Badoo.

She didn’t even consider the offer. First, it would have required her to move to London and, more importantly she was adamant about never working in the dating world again. With the CMO offer in the meeting’s rearview mirror, Wolfe Herd shifted the conversation to Merci, and gave Andreev a deep dive into her idea for a woman-only social network grounded in compliments and positive feedback.

“I love it,” Andreev said. “We’re going to name the dating app Merci.”

She was aghast, even in her retelling of the story.

“The what? What are you talking about? Did you hear what I said? I’m not building a dating app. Merci is the name of my female-only social network.”  

Andreev clarified: “I love your vision for a female-first platform, but you need to do this in dating.”

He essentially offered her the funding she needed to get the app off the ground, and, perhaps more importantly, full access to Badoo’s technical team to build and ship it. Plus, full creative control and decision-making ability regarding the direction of the new company.

From L-R: Whitney Wolfe Herd, Andrey Andreev and Sarah Jones Simmer, Bumble’s COO

But Wolfe Herd had no interest in building such an app, and Andreev had no interest in getting involved with a new social network. So she headed home, all the more determined to make Merci the next big thing. But the offer from Andreev was still lingering in the back of her mind.

“My husband, boyfriend, whatever you want to call him — Michael, we’ll just call him Michael,” Wolfe Herd told me. “Michael was like, ‘Whit, this opportunity doesn’t strike twice. You’re going to try and raise money right now? You’re literally a scorned seductress, according to the VC community right now. Good luck to you. I know you don’t have the backbone right now,’ because I had been so depleted and I was so low on myself.”

With the encouragement of her then-boyfriend (now husband) Michael Herd, she decided that Andreev’s offer was too good to pass up, and headed back to London, where she essentially made a handshake deal with him to build this new woman-first dating app.

Bumble was born

The company would exist as a new entity with 20 percent ownership belonging to Wolfe Herd, 79 percent to Badoo and 1 percent divided between Christopher Gulczynski and Sarah Mick, two early consultants who went on to join full-time after the company was up and running. Briefly named Moxie, the group settled on Bumble after a trademark search turned up conflicts.

Bumble would be run independently from Austin, Texas, with the ability to tap into Andreev and Badoo’s years of experience in the dating industry when needed. It certainly wasn’t a typical arrangement, especially in the world of tech startups where, in order to build a successful company, you’re supposed to rally a group of two to three co-founders, raise a seed round, then a Series A and so on.

But now, four years and 30 million users later, Bumble’s cap table looks exactly the same as it did the day the company was founded. Wolfe Herd’s 20 percent undiluted founder’s stake is evidence that an atypical path was right for Bumble.

A startup office with no engineers

It quickly becomes apparent to me as a technology writer walking through Bumble’s Austin headquarters that this isn’t your typical startup office. It looks and feels much more like a living room than any sort of standard tech office environment.

For a small space that is now overflowing with more than 50 employees, there are only about 25 desks, and most of those remained empty during my two-day visit. Everyone seems to prefer rotating through conference rooms, counters, coffee tables, floors and the largest couch I’ve ever seen, which sits in a semicircle ready to comfortably fit upwards of 30 people, if needed.

“I believe in taking people away from their desks and making them feel collaborative and inspire one another instead of being siloed,” she explained.

While the setup may not work for some companies, it certainly does for Bumble. But that doesn’t mean everyone agrees. Wolfe Herd explained that they had to rotate through multiple designers before settling on one that aligned with her vision.

“So many people wanted to make it hyper functional and minimalistic and stark…almost cold,” she told me. “I didn’t want it to feel that way. I wanted it to feel welcoming and warm and do it differently.”

The design isn’t the only thing that stands out when walking through Bumble’s office. It also doesn’t have a single engineer.

Just like Andreev promised Wolfe Herd when they first decided to build Bumble, all engineering is still handled in Badoo’s London offices. While some technology veterans may bash Bumble for offloading their engineering to their parent company, she is unapologetic about the benefits and practicality of the arrangement.

“Had I gone out and tried to do this on my own with no tech support, Bumble would be a year-and-a-half behind. Think of all the marriages and babies and connections we’ve made [in that time],” explained Wolfe Herd.    

She continued: “It’s like building a road. If you can get the materials from someone quicker that will make people’s lives easier, why would you say, ‘No, I want to build this with my own two hands,’ just to be able to say I did?”

I asked Wolfe Herd if there are ever times when their team has wished that their developers were sitting in the next room, standing by for a product consultation or roadmapping session.

But Wolfe Herd actually attributes much of Bumble’s success to working in an environment devoid of a dev team. Specifically, she explained that it gave her team the creative freedom to allow Bumble’s message and brand to drive the product, and not vice versa. By letting branding take the front seat instead of product, Bumble leapfrogged the “connections app” phase and became a lifestyle brand.

“How do you have different touch points in a user’s life? How do you reach them on their drive home from work? How do you talk to them on social media? How do you make them feel special? How do you add your brand into their different touch points?” Wolfe Herd says. Her original vision was to build a social network rooted in positivity and affirmations, but asking (and answering) these questions has allowed her to help in building a whole world for Bumble users rooted in positivity and affirmations.

Versace, Balenciaga, Bumble

Last summer if you happened to be walking through New York’s trendy Soho neighborhood you may have noticed a new tenant sandwiched between Versace and Balenciaga on Mercer Street.

In a first for a dating app and pretty much any social app, Bumble opened a physical space as an attempt to formalize the community that was naturally forming around it. At the time she told me that the opening coincided with Bumble’s brand becoming something that people are now proud to associate with in real life.

Bumble’s New York City Hive

This message was repeatedly echoed to me by others around Wolfe Herd, and it seems to be one of the internal barometers the company uses to track its success. Samantha Fulgham, Bumble’s second employee who now leads campus marketing and outreach, explained how male college students are now applying to become ambassadors, interns and even full-time employees.

“We tried to [have male students be campus ambassadors] in the U.S. probably two years ago. They didn’t really want to do it, because they thought it was a girl thing. Now we’re trying it again in Canada and we’ve already had so many guys asking how they can work for Bumble… saying, ‘I want to be a part of this company.’”

And it’s not just college students champing at the bit to associate themselves with the brand. When Bumble launched its business networking product last fall, the startup’s NY launch party was attended by Priyanka Chopra, Kate Hudson and Karlie Kloss, while the L.A. event hosted Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Garner and Kim Kardashian West.

Bumble Bizz’s NYC Launch Party. From L-R: Whitney Wolfe Herd, Priyanka Chopra, Karlie Kloss, Fergie and Kate Hudson. By Neil Rasmus/BFA.com.

A digital response to a real problem

Bumble has been able to grow into the company it is today because it was founded on the basic principle of taking a stance on a contested issue: Women were never supposed to make the first move. But Bumble didn’t stop there, and under Wolfe Herd the startup has been very vocal about making sure they are using their voice to address issues that other companies are taught to avoid taking a stance on.  

In the wake of the Stoneman Douglas school shooting, Bumble did something that breaks just about every rule taught in marketing and PR 101: The dating app very publicly decided to insert itself right in the middle of our nation’s ongoing gun debate by banning images of guns on its platform.

“We just want to create a community where people feel at ease, where they do not feel threatened, and we just don’t see guns fitting into that equation,” Wolfe Herd told The New York Times after the ban.

She told me at the time that the move shouldn’t be seen as Bumble taking a hard stance against guns or gun owners, but rather taking a hard stance against normalizing violence on their platform.

While an outsider may have been surprised to see such a fast-growing company break the status quo and decide to take a stance on a political issue, those who know Wolfe Herd will say that doing things like this is exactly why Bumble has become so successful in such a short amount of time.

What’s next?

For an industry that’s been around since the beginning of time, matchmaking sure is having its moment. And even the big players want a piece of the action; Facebook has announced it’s expanding into the dating space. So how does Bumble, a barely four-year-old, non-venture-backed company take advantage of all this attention while simultaneously defending itself from the threat of big players entering the space?

Over the summer we reported that Tinder’s parent company Match was set on acquiring Bumble, first at a $450 million valuation, then a few months later at “well over” $1 billion. It would have been an ironic ending for a company that was at least partially founded because of Wolfe Herd’s negative experiences surrounding her time at Tinder and Match.

Ultimately negotiations fell through between the two companies, and from there things escalated quickly. In March, Match sued Bumble for “patent infringement and misuse of intellectual property,” and a few weeks later Bumble sued Match for fraudulently obtaining trade secrets during the acquisition process. Both lawsuits are still making their way through the courts, but it’s safe to say that a deal between the two is off the table for the foreseeable future.

So what’s next for Bumble? The company is profitable and self-sustaining, and has no need to take on capital or sell itself. But Wolfe Herd acknowledged that the right acquirer may allow them to fulfill their goal of “recalibrating gender norms and empowering people to connect globally” at a much faster pace.

Wolfe Herd explained: “If the right opportunity presents itself, we’ll absolutely explore that and we’ll absolutely always explore the best way to take what we’re trying to do and what our mission is and what our values are. If we can be acquired, that will help us scale 10 times faster and that’s something that’s interesting to us, right?”

But she was also clear that cash isn’t what they’re looking for. “We would only ever consider an acquisition of sorts that brings strategic intellectual capital to the table, strategic knowledge of new markets that we have not yet gone into, and added value in ways that supersedes just straight cash,” said Wolfe Herd.

To the casual observer it sounds a lot like Facebook and its 2+ billion active users could do a pretty good job helping Bumble quickly spread its message around the world.

And Bumble seems to agree. After Facebook’s announcement about its dating play, Bumble issued a statement saying, “We were thrilled when we saw today’s news. Our executive team has already reached out to Facebook to explore ways to collaborate. Perhaps Bumble and Facebook can join forces to make the connecting space even more safe and empowering.”

In a conversation with me following the announcement, Wolfe Herd said that Facebook’s expansion into dating “is actually super exciting for the industry, because if you look at the history of Facebook when it comes to building their own products versus acquiring, they oftentimes attempt to build their own. If those products don’t successfully come to market, there’s usually a transition into acquisition. Who knows what will happen?”

So if Facebook comes knocking, don’t be surprised if Bumble answers… and quickly. But if they don’t, then current indicators are that Bumble will be just fine.

In just four years the company has flipped the switch on app-based dating, taking something that was once taboo and making it something that users are proud to associate with. So luckily for the more than 30 million women (and men) who have used Bumble to break gender stereotypes and make over 2 billion matches on their own terms, Whitney Wolfe Herd didn’t care what she or her company were supposed to do.

from Social – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2IdbuiE Original Content From: https://techcrunch.com

[abckidstvyara]

It’s 4:55pm Central Time on a Tuesday at Bumble headquarters in Austin, Texas. Whitney Wolfe Herd, the 28-year-old founder and CEO of the woman-led dating app is showing me around the nearly four-year-old startup’s office before we sit down to talk.

Our first stop is the standard startup watering hole, with a few twists. The fridges are stocked with Topo Chico instead of La Croix and the built-in taps are purely for decoration. Maybe one day they’ll be filled with Kombucha or iced coffee, a team member tells me. But no mention of beer. We’re not in Silicon Valley anymore.

As Wolfe Herd pours two glasses of white wine and plops in a few ice cubes, she briefly pauses to ask if I’m okay with the drink selection. Her question quickly caused my mind to wander back to my 21st birthday when a waiter told me men aren’t supposed to drink white wine with ice cubes.

There was perhaps no better way to begin my time with Wolfe Herd than a reminder that no matter how many hundreds of millions of woman-initiated matches have been made on Bumble, the company still exists in a world so ingrained with gender stereotypes that we couldn’t get through pouring a drink before the first one reared its head.

Luckily for me and my unsophisticated palate, I’d soon learn that Whitney Wolfe Herd doesn’t particularly care what people think that she or Bumble are supposed to do, let alone what we should be drinking.

‘I’m not building a dating app’

Bumble isn’t Wolfe Herd’s first exposure to the world of digital dating and connections. She moved to Los Angeles in 2012 and became an early co-founder of Tinder, but eventually left the company amid allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination against another one of the company’s co-founders. The lawsuit was settled, and while the past is the past, the history does help set the stage for the idea that would eventually turn into Bumble.

“I was just poof, gone, ceased to exist. It was like leaving behind an abandoned life, fleeing from the storm or whatever it was,” explained Wolfe Herd when talking about leaving Los Angeles after her time at Tinder. “I was experiencing all this, and then the Twitterverse and the Instagram world and the online sphere started attacking me. And I had never really understood online bullying. I didn’t even know what that meant or what it felt like. It made me really depressed.”

As successful entrepreneurs are known to do, Wolfe Herd soon began figuring out a way to leverage these closely held personal experiences into a new product. Her solution was Merci, a female-only social network “rooted in compliments and kindness and good behavior.”

Original mockup of Bumble, then known as Merci

While she was building out the idea, Andrey Andreev, founder and CEO of Badoo, the largest dating platform in the world, contacted her. Little did Wolfe Herd know, but Andreev saw her departure from Tinder as an opportunity, inviting her to meet the Badoo team in London where it had been based for more than 10 years. After some reluctance on Wolfe Herd’s part, she decided to go for it. After all, she was looking for feedback on her Merci idea, and worst-case she’d at least leave with a better idea of what she wanted to build next.

But Andreev had other plans. During their first meeting he frankly asked Wolfe Herd to become the chief marketing officer of Badoo.

She didn’t even consider the offer. First, it would have required her to move to London and, more importantly she was adamant about never working in the dating world again. With the CMO offer in the meeting’s rearview mirror, Wolfe Herd shifted the conversation to Merci, and gave Andreev a deep dive into her idea for a woman-only social network grounded in compliments and positive feedback.

“I love it,” Andreev said. “We’re going to name the dating app Merci.”

She was aghast, even in her retelling of the story.

“The what? What are you talking about? Did you hear what I said? I’m not building a dating app. Merci is the name of my female-only social network.”  

Andreev clarified: “I love your vision for a female-first platform, but you need to do this in dating.”

He essentially offered her the funding she needed to get the app off the ground, and, perhaps more importantly, full access to Badoo’s technical team to build and ship it. Plus, full creative control and decision-making ability regarding the direction of the new company.

From L-R: Whitney Wolfe Herd, Andrey Andreev and Sarah Jones Simmer, Bumble’s COO

But Wolfe Herd had no interest in building such an app, and Andreev had no interest in getting involved with a new social network. So she headed home, all the more determined to make Merci the next big thing. But the offer from Andreev was still lingering in the back of her mind.

“My husband, boyfriend, whatever you want to call him — Michael, we’ll just call him Michael,” Wolfe Herd told me. “Michael was like, ‘Whit, this opportunity doesn’t strike twice. You’re going to try and raise money right now? You’re literally a scorned seductress, according to the VC community right now. Good luck to you. I know you don’t have the backbone right now,’ because I had been so depleted and I was so low on myself.”

With the encouragement of her then-boyfriend (now husband) Michael Herd, she decided that Andreev’s offer was too good to pass up, and headed back to London, where she essentially made a handshake deal with him to build this new woman-first dating app.

Bumble was born

The company would exist as a new entity with 20 percent ownership belonging to Wolfe Herd, 79 percent to Badoo and 1 percent divided between Christopher Gulczynski and Sarah Mick, two early consultants who went on to join full-time after the company was up and running. Briefly named Moxie, the group settled on Bumble after a trademark search turned up conflicts.

Bumble would be run independently from Austin, Texas, with the ability to tap into Andreev and Badoo’s years of experience in the dating industry when needed. It certainly wasn’t a typical arrangement, especially in the world of tech startups where, in order to build a successful company, you’re supposed to rally a group of two to three co-founders, raise a seed round, then a Series A and so on.

But now, four years and 30 million users later, Bumble’s cap table looks exactly the same as it did the day the company was founded. Wolfe Herd’s 20 percent undiluted founder’s stake is evidence that an atypical path was right for Bumble.

A startup office with no engineers

It quickly becomes apparent to me as a technology writer walking through Bumble’s Austin headquarters that this isn’t your typical startup office. It looks and feels much more like a living room than any sort of standard tech office environment.

For a small space that is now overflowing with more than 50 employees, there are only about 25 desks, and most of those remained empty during my two-day visit. Everyone seems to prefer rotating through conference rooms, counters, coffee tables, floors and the largest couch I’ve ever seen, which sits in a semicircle ready to comfortably fit upwards of 30 people, if needed.

“I believe in taking people away from their desks and making them feel collaborative and inspire one another instead of being siloed,” she explained.

While the setup may not work for some companies, it certainly does for Bumble. But that doesn’t mean everyone agrees. Wolfe Herd explained that they had to rotate through multiple designers before settling on one that aligned with her vision.

“So many people wanted to make it hyper functional and minimalistic and stark…almost cold,” she told me. “I didn’t want it to feel that way. I wanted it to feel welcoming and warm and do it differently.”

The design isn’t the only thing that stands out when walking through Bumble’s office. It also doesn’t have a single engineer.

Just like Andreev promised Wolfe Herd when they first decided to build Bumble, all engineering is still handled in Badoo’s London offices. While some technology veterans may bash Bumble for offloading their engineering to their parent company, she is unapologetic about the benefits and practicality of the arrangement.

“Had I gone out and tried to do this on my own with no tech support, Bumble would be a year-and-a-half behind. Think of all the marriages and babies and connections we’ve made [in that time],” explained Wolfe Herd.    

She continued: “It’s like building a road. If you can get the materials from someone quicker that will make people’s lives easier, why would you say, ‘No, I want to build this with my own two hands,’ just to be able to say I did?”

I asked Wolfe Herd if there are ever times when their team has wished that their developers were sitting in the next room, standing by for a product consultation or roadmapping session.

But Wolfe Herd actually attributes much of Bumble’s success to working in an environment devoid of a dev team. Specifically, she explained that it gave her team the creative freedom to allow Bumble’s message and brand to drive the product, and not vice versa. By letting branding take the front seat instead of product, Bumble leapfrogged the “connections app” phase and became a lifestyle brand.

“How do you have different touch points in a user’s life? How do you reach them on their drive home from work? How do you talk to them on social media? How do you make them feel special? How do you add your brand into their different touch points?” Wolfe Herd says. Her original vision was to build a social network rooted in positivity and affirmations, but asking (and answering) these questions has allowed her to help in building a whole world for Bumble users rooted in positivity and affirmations.

Versace, Balenciaga, Bumble

Last summer if you happened to be walking through New York’s trendy Soho neighborhood you may have noticed a new tenant sandwiched between Versace and Balenciaga on Mercer Street.

In a first for a dating app and pretty much any social app, Bumble opened a physical space as an attempt to formalize the community that was naturally forming around it. At the time she told me that the opening coincided with Bumble’s brand becoming something that people are now proud to associate with in real life.

Bumble’s New York City Hive

This message was repeatedly echoed to me by others around Wolfe Herd, and it seems to be one of the internal barometers the company uses to track its success. Samantha Fulgham, Bumble’s second employee who now leads campus marketing and outreach, explained how male college students are now applying to become ambassadors, interns and even full-time employees.

“We tried to [have male students be campus ambassadors] in the U.S. probably two years ago. They didn’t really want to do it, because they thought it was a girl thing. Now we’re trying it again in Canada and we’ve already had so many guys asking how they can work for Bumble… saying, ‘I want to be a part of this company.’”

And it’s not just college students champing at the bit to associate themselves with the brand. When Bumble launched its business networking product last fall, the startup’s NY launch party was attended by Priyanka Chopra, Kate Hudson and Karlie Kloss, while the L.A. event hosted Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Garner and Kim Kardashian West.

Bumble Bizz’s NYC Launch Party. From L-R: Whitney Wolfe Herd, Priyanka Chopra, Karlie Kloss, Fergie and Kate Hudson. By Neil Rasmus/BFA.com.

A digital response to a real problem

Bumble has been able to grow into the company it is today because it was founded on the basic principle of taking a stance on a contested issue: Women were never supposed to make the first move. But Bumble didn’t stop there, and under Wolfe Herd the startup has been very vocal about making sure they are using their voice to address issues that other companies are taught to avoid taking a stance on.  

In the wake of the Stoneman Douglas school shooting, Bumble did something that breaks just about every rule taught in marketing and PR 101: The dating app very publicly decided to insert itself right in the middle of our nation’s ongoing gun debate by banning images of guns on its platform.

“We just want to create a community where people feel at ease, where they do not feel threatened, and we just don’t see guns fitting into that equation,” Wolfe Herd told The New York Times after the ban.

She told me at the time that the move shouldn’t be seen as Bumble taking a hard stance against guns or gun owners, but rather taking a hard stance against normalizing violence on their platform.

While an outsider may have been surprised to see such a fast-growing company break the status quo and decide to take a stance on a political issue, those who know Wolfe Herd will say that doing things like this is exactly why Bumble has become so successful in such a short amount of time.

What’s next?

For an industry that’s been around since the beginning of time, matchmaking sure is having its moment. And even the big players want a piece of the action; Facebook has announced it’s expanding into the dating space. So how does Bumble, a barely four-year-old, non-venture-backed company take advantage of all this attention while simultaneously defending itself from the threat of big players entering the space?

Over the summer we reported that Tinder’s parent company Match was set on acquiring Bumble, first at a $450 million valuation, then a few months later at “well over” $1 billion. It would have been an ironic ending for a company that was at least partially founded because of Wolfe Herd’s negative experiences surrounding her time at Tinder and Match.

Ultimately negotiations fell through between the two companies, and from there things escalated quickly. In March, Match sued Bumble for “patent infringement and misuse of intellectual property,” and a few weeks later Bumble sued Match for fraudulently obtaining trade secrets during the acquisition process. Both lawsuits are still making their way through the courts, but it’s safe to say that a deal between the two is off the table for the foreseeable future.

So what’s next for Bumble? The company is profitable and self-sustaining, and has no need to take on capital or sell itself. But Wolfe Herd acknowledged that the right acquirer may allow them to fulfill their goal of “recalibrating gender norms and empowering people to connect globally” at a much faster pace.

Wolfe Herd explained: “If the right opportunity presents itself, we’ll absolutely explore that and we’ll absolutely always explore the best way to take what we’re trying to do and what our mission is and what our values are. If we can be acquired, that will help us scale 10 times faster and that’s something that’s interesting to us, right?”

But she was also clear that cash isn’t what they’re looking for. “We would only ever consider an acquisition of sorts that brings strategic intellectual capital to the table, strategic knowledge of new markets that we have not yet gone into, and added value in ways that supersedes just straight cash,” said Wolfe Herd.

To the casual observer it sounds a lot like Facebook and its 2+ billion active users could do a pretty good job helping Bumble quickly spread its message around the world.

And Bumble seems to agree. After Facebook’s announcement about its dating play, Bumble issued a statement saying, “We were thrilled when we saw today’s news. Our executive team has already reached out to Facebook to explore ways to collaborate. Perhaps Bumble and Facebook can join forces to make the connecting space even more safe and empowering.”

In a conversation with me following the announcement, Wolfe Herd said that Facebook’s expansion into dating “is actually super exciting for the industry, because if you look at the history of Facebook when it comes to building their own products versus acquiring, they oftentimes attempt to build their own. If those products don’t successfully come to market, there’s usually a transition into acquisition. Who knows what will happen?”

So if Facebook comes knocking, don’t be surprised if Bumble answers… and quickly. But if they don’t, then current indicators are that Bumble will be just fine.

In just four years the company has flipped the switch on app-based dating, taking something that was once taboo and making it something that users are proud to associate with. So luckily for the more than 30 million women (and men) who have used Bumble to break gender stereotypes and make over 2 billion matches on their own terms, Whitney Wolfe Herd didn’t care what she or her company were supposed to do.

[theinvinciblenoob]

It’s 4:55pm Central Time on a Tuesday at Bumble headquarters in Austin, Texas. Whitney Wolfe Herd, the 28-year-old founder and CEO of the woman-led dating app is showing me around the nearly four-year-old startup’s office before we sit down to talk.

Our first stop is the standard startup watering hole, with a few twists. The fridges are stocked with Topo Chico instead of La Croix and the built-in taps are purely for decoration. Maybe one day they’ll be filled with Kombucha or iced coffee, a team member tells me. But no mention of beer. We’re not in Silicon Valley anymore.

As Wolfe Herd pours two glasses of white wine and plops in a few ice cubes, she briefly pauses to ask if I’m okay with the drink selection. Her question quickly caused my mind to wander back to my 21st birthday when a waiter told me men aren’t supposed to drink white wine with ice cubes.

There was perhaps no better way to begin my time with Wolfe Herd than a reminder that no matter how many hundreds of millions of woman-initiated matches have been made on Bumble, the company still exists in a world so ingrained with gender stereotypes that we couldn’t get through pouring a drink before the first one reared its head.

Luckily for me and my unsophisticated palate, I’d soon learn that Whitney Wolfe Herd doesn’t particularly care what people think that she or Bumble are supposed to do, let alone what we should be drinking.

‘I’m not building a dating app’

Bumble isn’t Wolfe Herd’s first exposure to the world of digital dating and connections. She moved to Los Angeles in 2012 and became an early co-founder of Tinder, but eventually left the company amid allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination against another one of the company’s co-founders. The lawsuit was settled, and while the past is the past, the history does help set the stage for the idea that would eventually turn into Bumble.

“I was just poof, gone, ceased to exist. It was like leaving behind an abandoned life, fleeing from the storm or whatever it was,” explained Wolfe Herd when talking about leaving Los Angeles after her time at Tinder. “I was experiencing all this, and then the Twitterverse and the Instagram world and the online sphere started attacking me. And I had never really understood online bullying. I didn’t even know what that meant or what it felt like. It made me really depressed.”

As successful entrepreneurs are known to do, Wolfe Herd soon began figuring out a way to leverage these closely held personal experiences into a new product. Her solution was Merci, a female-only social network “rooted in compliments and kindness and good behavior.”

Original mockup of Bumble, then known as Merci

While she was building out the idea, Andrey Andreev, founder and CEO of Badoo, the largest dating platform in the world, contacted her. Little did Wolfe Herd know, but Andreev saw her departure from Tinder as an opportunity, inviting her to meet the Badoo team in London where it had been based for more than 10 years. After some reluctance on Wolfe Herd’s part, she decided to go for it. After all, she was looking for feedback on her Merci idea, and worst-case she’d at least leave with a better idea of what she wanted to build next.

But Andreev had other plans. During their first meeting he frankly asked Wolfe Herd to become the chief marketing officer of Badoo.

She didn’t even consider the offer. First, it would have required her to move to London and, more importantly she was adamant about never working in the dating world again. With the CMO offer in the meeting’s rearview mirror, Wolfe Herd shifted the conversation to Merci, and gave Andreev a deep dive into her idea for a woman-only social network grounded in compliments and positive feedback.

“I love it,” Andreev said. “We’re going to name the dating app Merci.”

She was aghast, even in her retelling of the story.

“The what? What are you talking about? Did you hear what I said? I’m not building a dating app. Merci is the name of my female-only social network.”  

Andreev clarified: “I love your vision for a female-first platform, but you need to do this in dating.”

He essentially offered her the funding she needed to get the app off the ground, and, perhaps more importantly, full access to Badoo’s technical team to build and ship it. Plus, full creative control and decision-making ability regarding the direction of the new company.

From L-R: Whitney Wolfe Herd, Andrey Andreev and Sarah Jones Simmer, Bumble’s COO

But Wolfe Herd had no interest in building such an app, and Andreev had no interest in getting involved with a new social network. So she headed home, all the more determined to make Merci the next big thing. But the offer from Andreev was still lingering in the back of her mind.

“My husband, boyfriend, whatever you want to call him — Michael, we’ll just call him Michael,” Wolfe Herd told me. “Michael was like, ‘Whit, this opportunity doesn’t strike twice. You’re going to try and raise money right now? You’re literally a scorned seductress, according to the VC community right now. Good luck to you. I know you don’t have the backbone right now,’ because I had been so depleted and I was so low on myself.”

With the encouragement of her then-boyfriend (now husband) Michael Herd, she decided that Andreev’s offer was too good to pass up, and headed back to London, where she essentially made a handshake deal with him to build this new woman-first dating app.

Bumble was born

The company would exist as a new entity with 20 percent ownership belonging to Wolfe Herd, 79 percent to Badoo and 1 percent divided between Christopher Gulczynski and Sarah Mick, two early consultants who went on to join full-time after the company was up and running. Briefly named Moxie, the group settled on Bumble after a trademark search turned up conflicts.

Bumble would be run independently from Austin, Texas, with the ability to tap into Andreev and Badoo’s years of experience in the dating industry when needed. It certainly wasn’t a typical arrangement, especially in the world of tech startups where, in order to build a successful company, you’re supposed to rally a group of two to three co-founders, raise a seed round, then a Series A and so on.

But now, four years and 30 million users later, Bumble’s cap table looks exactly the same as it did the day the company was founded. Wolfe Herd’s 20 percent undiluted founder’s stake is evidence that an atypical path was right for Bumble.

A startup office with no engineers

It quickly becomes apparent to me as a technology writer walking through Bumble’s Austin headquarters that this isn’t your typical startup office. It looks and feels much more like a living room than any sort of standard tech office environment.

For a small space that is now overflowing with more than 50 employees, there are only about 25 desks, and most of those remained empty during my two-day visit. Everyone seems to prefer rotating through conference rooms, counters, coffee tables, floors and the largest couch I’ve ever seen, which sits in a semicircle ready to comfortably fit upwards of 30 people, if needed.

“I believe in taking people away from their desks and making them feel collaborative and inspire one another instead of being siloed,” she explained.

While the setup may not work for some companies, it certainly does for Bumble. But that doesn’t mean everyone agrees. Wolfe Herd explained that they had to rotate through multiple designers before settling on one that aligned with her vision.

“So many people wanted to make it hyper functional and minimalistic and stark…almost cold,” she told me. “I didn’t want it to feel that way. I wanted it to feel welcoming and warm and do it differently.”

The design isn’t the only thing that stands out when walking through Bumble’s office. It also doesn’t have a single engineer.

Just like Andreev promised Wolfe Herd when they first decided to build Bumble, all engineering is still handled in Badoo’s London offices. While some technology veterans may bash Bumble for offloading their engineering to their parent company, she is unapologetic about the benefits and practicality of the arrangement.

“Had I gone out and tried to do this on my own with no tech support, Bumble would be a year-and-a-half behind. Think of all the marriages and babies and connections we’ve made [in that time],” explained Wolfe Herd.    

She continued: “It’s like building a road. If you can get the materials from someone quicker that will make people’s lives easier, why would you say, ‘No, I want to build this with my own two hands,’ just to be able to say I did?”

I asked Wolfe Herd if there are ever times when their team has wished that their developers were sitting in the next room, standing by for a product consultation or roadmapping session.

But Wolfe Herd actually attributes much of Bumble’s success to working in an environment devoid of a dev team. Specifically, she explained that it gave her team the creative freedom to allow Bumble’s message and brand to drive the product, and not vice versa. By letting branding take the front seat instead of product, Bumble leapfrogged the “connections app” phase and became a lifestyle brand.

“How do you have different touch points in a user’s life? How do you reach them on their drive home from work? How do you talk to them on social media? How do you make them feel special? How do you add your brand into their different touch points?” Wolfe Herd says. Her original vision was to build a social network rooted in positivity and affirmations, but asking (and answering) these questions has allowed her to help in building a whole world for Bumble users rooted in positivity and affirmations.

Versace, Balenciaga, Bumble

Last summer if you happened to be walking through New York’s trendy Soho neighborhood you may have noticed a new tenant sandwiched between Versace and Balenciaga on Mercer Street.

In a first for a dating app and pretty much any social app, Bumble opened a physical space as an attempt to formalize the community that was naturally forming around it. At the time she told me that the opening coincided with Bumble’s brand becoming something that people are now proud to associate with in real life.

Bumble’s New York City Hive

This message was repeatedly echoed to me by others around Wolfe Herd, and it seems to be one of the internal barometers the company uses to track its success. Samantha Fulgham, Bumble’s second employee who now leads campus marketing and outreach, explained how male college students are now applying to become ambassadors, interns and even full-time employees.

“We tried to [have male students be campus ambassadors] in the U.S. probably two years ago. They didn’t really want to do it, because they thought it was a girl thing. Now we’re trying it again in Canada and we’ve already had so many guys asking how they can work for Bumble… saying, ‘I want to be a part of this company.’”

And it’s not just college students champing at the bit to associate themselves with the brand. When Bumble launched its business networking product last fall, the startup’s NY launch party was attended by Priyanka Chopra, Kate Hudson and Karlie Kloss, while the L.A. event hosted Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Garner and Kim Kardashian West.

Bumble Bizz’s NYC Launch Party. From L-R: Whitney Wolfe Herd, Priyanka Chopra, Karlie Kloss, Fergie and Kate Hudson. By Neil Rasmus/BFA.com.

A digital response to a real problem

Bumble has been able to grow into the company it is today because it was founded on the basic principle of taking a stance on a contested issue: Women were never supposed to make the first move. But Bumble didn’t stop there, and under Wolfe Herd the startup has been very vocal about making sure they are using their voice to address issues that other companies are taught to avoid taking a stance on.  

In the wake of the Stoneman Douglas school shooting, Bumble did something that breaks just about every rule taught in marketing and PR 101: The dating app very publicly decided to insert itself right in the middle of our nation’s ongoing gun debate by banning images of guns on its platform.

“We just want to create a community where people feel at ease, where they do not feel threatened, and we just don’t see guns fitting into that equation,” Wolfe Herd told The New York Times after the ban.

She told me at the time that the move shouldn’t be seen as Bumble taking a hard stance against guns or gun owners, but rather taking a hard stance against normalizing violence on their platform.

While an outsider may have been surprised to see such a fast-growing company break the status quo and decide to take a stance on a political issue, those who know Wolfe Herd will say that doing things like this is exactly why Bumble has become so successful in such a short amount of time.

What’s next?

For an industry that’s been around since the beginning of time, matchmaking sure is having its moment. And even the big players want a piece of the action; Facebook has announced it’s expanding into the dating space. So how does Bumble, a barely four-year-old, non-venture-backed company take advantage of all this attention while simultaneously defending itself from the threat of big players entering the space?

Over the summer we reported that Tinder’s parent company Match was set on acquiring Bumble, first at a $450 million valuation, then a few months later at “well over” $1 billion. It would have been an ironic ending for a company that was at least partially founded because of Wolfe Herd’s negative experiences surrounding her time at Tinder and Match.

Ultimately negotiations fell through between the two companies, and from there things escalated quickly. In March, Match sued Bumble for “patent infringement and misuse of intellectual property,” and a few weeks later Bumble sued Match for fraudulently obtaining trade secrets during the acquisition process. Both lawsuits are still making their way through the courts, but it’s safe to say that a deal between the two is off the table for the foreseeable future.

So what’s next for Bumble? The company is profitable and self-sustaining, and has no need to take on capital or sell itself. But Wolfe Herd acknowledged that the right acquirer may allow them to fulfill their goal of “recalibrating gender norms and empowering people to connect globally” at a much faster pace.

Wolfe Herd explained: “If the right opportunity presents itself, we’ll absolutely explore that and we’ll absolutely always explore the best way to take what we’re trying to do and what our mission is and what our values are. If we can be acquired, that will help us scale 10 times faster and that’s something that’s interesting to us, right?”

But she was also clear that cash isn’t what they’re looking for. “We would only ever consider an acquisition of sorts that brings strategic intellectual capital to the table, strategic knowledge of new markets that we have not yet gone into, and added value in ways that supersedes just straight cash,” said Wolfe Herd.

To the casual observer it sounds a lot like Facebook and its 2+ billion active users could do a pretty good job helping Bumble quickly spread its message around the world.

And Bumble seems to agree. After Facebook’s announcement about its dating play, Bumble issued a statement saying, “We were thrilled when we saw today’s news. Our executive team has already reached out to Facebook to explore ways to collaborate. Perhaps Bumble and Facebook can join forces to make the connecting space even more safe and empowering.”

In a conversation with me following the announcement, Wolfe Herd said that Facebook’s expansion into dating “is actually super exciting for the industry, because if you look at the history of Facebook when it comes to building their own products versus acquiring, they oftentimes attempt to build their own. If those products don’t successfully come to market, there’s usually a transition into acquisition. Who knows what will happen?”

So if Facebook comes knocking, don’t be surprised if Bumble answers… and quickly. But if they don’t, then current indicators are that Bumble will be just fine.

In just four years the company has flipped the switch on app-based dating, taking something that was once taboo and making it something that users are proud to associate with. So luckily for the more than 30 million women (and men) who have used Bumble to break gender stereotypes and make over 2 billion matches on their own terms, Whitney Wolfe Herd didn’t care what she or her company were supposed to do.

via TechCrunch