Dear Whitney,
The headlines are quite different this time around aren’t they?
“America’s youngest self-made female billionaire”.
“Youngest woman to take a company public”.
….pages upon pages reflecting on your economic value creation, your net worth and being named as part of the elite list that includes the select few - Oprah, Sheryl and Meg.
Don’t get me wrong, all THAT deserves lots of glory (and it’s own Love Note, perhaps), but what I’m most in awe of and fascinated by is your story...and how you completely took ownership and rewrote it.
If you’re reading this and by off chance you’re not Whitney, don’t waste your time googling the garbage that is out there. Here’s the gist. Woman meets man at work. They fall in love. It doesn’t work out. She gets bad words seared on her forehead, tarred, feathered, burned at the stake (aka fired). Meanwhile the guy gets the laughs, high fives, free drinks and the promotion. Last time I time I checked it takes two to tango, yet somehow you got the smear campaign, your work contribution and professional value was directly linked with your personal decisions.
But you didn’t allow that to be the ending of your story. You may have lost your footing for a hot second (well maybe 2 years), but you knew your capabilities, you knew your value, you knew what you were capable of creating. And so, you rewrote it all.
It’s not the $16 billion market cap that is astonishing. It’s not the app that has shifted the rules of the dating game that is so impressive. It’s your journey of getting to Bumble. Your ability to find the confidence, find the strength to rise up from a challenge and retell it! THAT is what is so fucking awesome. THAT is the magic of Bumble.
Your creation reminds us that life stories are written in pencil and can be always re-written and re-drafted to what YOU want to tell.
Whether that’s a story of confidence, community, friendship, marriage, re-marriage, new families, combined families...whatever you want it to be, the power of the story-telling is in YOUR hands.
With MAD respect!
♥︎ Ani