How Bumble Got Their First Users

Hey founders!

Look at nearly any list of the top female entrepreneurs of the last decade and you’ll see this name: Whitney Wolfe Herd.

• Founder of Bumble

• Youngest woman to take a company public in the U.S

• Net worth: approx $750M

If you don’t know Bumble, it was the first dating app that allowed women to make the first move. At the time, it was an innovative approach to the online dating game. 

But before Bumble became a $1B company, it started at nearly zero:

• Zero users.

• Zero attention.

• Zero sales.

And even though this wasn’t Whitney’s first rodeo (she had previously co-founded Tinder), she was essentially starting from square one. 

So today, we want to share three crazy simple tactics Whitney used to get her first users. 

The $20 Cookie Campaign

In the beginning, few people know you exist. Whitney knew she needed to generate some attention and create a buzz (pun intended) around her business. 

So with $20, she approached a local bakery in Austin and begged them to create yellow-frosted cookies with the Bumble logo on them. And with a few more bucks she created items like balloons, koozies, and even yellow panties – all with Bumble’s logo. 

She then took these cookies, koozies, and panties to the nearby college sororities and made a deal: download Bumble and share it with friends. And in exchange, I’ll give you some of this stuff! 

It sounds really simple, right? It might even be a tactic you’ve used for your business. But it’s really smart when you break it down. 

See, when you’re starting, you have to think about how to stretch your budget. How can you get the most attention without breaking the bottom line? 

But secondly (and this might be even more important) was that this strategy was highly targeted.

She didn’t take the cookies and panties to the biology club (no offense to all our bio majors out there). She took them to an influential group – college sorority members – who are typically well-connected and active in their social circles. 

It gave them something to talk (and share) about, making them ideal brand ambassadors. 

It was a brilliant combination of getting the most bang for your buck. 

Pizza with a Side of Bumble

Building on the success of the cookie campaign, she extended her tactics to reach another influential group – fraternities. 

Again, she kept it really simple. She arranged for pizzas to be delivered to various frat houses one weekend, each with Bumble stickers slapped on the box. It turned an ordinary meal into a brand experience. 

And in the process, Bumble got even more attention, now with the other half of her target audience. 

The lesson here is simple: meet your users where they are – literally. In both examples, Whitney inserted herself directly to where her ideal users already were. She went to them (not the other way around). 

So today, go knock on some doors. Make a few calls. Walk around your neighborhood. Send DMs on social media. Wherever your users are, go there. 

Sneaky Marketing 

As she continued exploring how to get users from colleges, she noticed something interesting.

She saw many college lecture halls had signs that explicitly banned the use of social media apps during classes. And this is where she had a brilliant, sneaky idea. 

Whitney made additional signs, but she added Bumble to the list of banned apps. So there on the sign were Facebook, Instagram… and Bumble. 

This clever tactic insinuated that Bumble was already as popular and widespread as these other apps, even if students hadn’t heard of it yet. It created a sense of credibility and intrigue around her app. 

This is a genius tactic because perception can be just as powerful as reality when it comes to marketing. She leveraged a psychological principle known as social proof. 

By suggesting that Bumble was already popular enough to be banned, Whitney tapped into students’ FOMO). This curiosity, combined with the rebellious appeal of using something that was ‘banned,’ led to an increase in downloads.

In some ways, she faked it before she made it. Something I think all early-stage entrepreneurs can relate to!

Do What Others Won’t

We love diving into the early days of a business because that’s where you see the actual work that went into it. 

When a company is big and successful, it’s easy to think something like: “Well they must have had an easy path.”

Certainly, some do more than others. But the early days of any business are a grind (as you know!) It’s late nights, lots of caffeine, and doing anything you can to get a user. 

Whitney did what others might have not done. She took creative routes, she went to her customers, and she was willing to take risks to get customers. She created a buzz in any way she could. 

And she reaped the reward. She went on to become the youngest female to take a company public and today Bumble is still valued at over $1B. 

That's all folks. Hope you enjoyed today’s newsletter. 

See you next Friday — Tribe Team

P.S. check out another interview she did more recently on Diary of a CEO