Whitney Wolfe Herd says her need for external validation stopped her from following her instincts. Now she’s back as Bumble’s CEO with a ‘fresh mindset’: ‘I don’t care if people like me’

Good morning! PBS and NPR are testifying on public broadcasting's federal funding, 23andMe customers want their data deleted, and Whitney Wolfe Herd is back as Bumble's CEO—and she doesn't care what you think.

- The love company. Last week, I caught up with Whitney Wolfe Herd. It was the Bumble founder's second day back on the job as CEO, 14 months after she left the role behind.

While Wolfe Herd has always had a lot to say about her company and industry, she was especially candid this time around. Her company has seen better days, and she knows it. Wolfe Herd passed the CEO job to former Slack chief Lidiane Jones in late 2023, and it's been a rough go of it in the year-plus since. Bumble's stock is trading at $4.71, Gen Z has broken up with dating apps, and for users who haven't been lucky enough to find love, few are happy with their experience using the app.

Wolfe Herd has started describing Bumble as a “house of love” that, though it was “built with so much love and intent,” “has started to crack over the years.” In a new interview for Fortune, she tells me about her plan to fix the app—which involves pivoting from relationships to "self-love." She envisions a "Duolingo-esque" product that teaches users how to love themselves, before helping them find relationships. The CEO told me she was planning to rebrand Bumble's parent company, Bumble Inc., as "the Love Company"—but Bumble later followed up to clarify that the name will stay as-is and "the Love Company" will be its motto and guiding principle.

Wolfe Herd's ideas came from her own experience after leaving her CEO job. During her time away, she says she "broke up" with fear and the need for external validation. “I was so scared of what my employees thought of me that I wouldn’t make the right choices. I didn’t want them to not like me. I didn’t want them to hate me. I didn’t want the journalists to not like me. I didn’t want someone to judge me. I was so swept up in this external validation that I would not follow my instincts on things, and it degraded me. It took everything out of me," she says. "Now I’m back with this fresh mindset—my ego was stripped away. It’s gone. I don’t care if people like me. I swear—a year ago, I cared. I do not care.”

Read her full interview here.

Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com

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