and "squawk alley" is live ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ happy thursday welcome to "squawk alley." i'm jon fortt with carl quintanilla and julia boorstin and, boy, we have a lineup this hour that's enough to last a week bumble's founder and ceo whitney wolfe herd will join us later this hour with that ipo on deck. sonos pumped up the volume in the latest quarter

patrick spence is with us with that stock up more than 14% in the early trade. it's doubled since just before the last earnings report three months ago and later the ceo of zinga as ea announces game on and, of course, more on reddit's pot trade coming down from quick highs, but we're going to start with bumble's debut. julia? >> that's right, jon bumble's pricing above the range last night and increasing the size of its deal as we await that opening trade our next two guests just launched a spac targeting that same female demographic, dana settle an early investor in bumble and katherine power is the ceo of click brands and the founder of three other brands aimed at the female consumer now before we get to the spac, let's start off with bumble. dana, tell us what drew you to this investment and what it is about the company and the leadership of ceo whitney wolfe

herd that gives you confidence in its ability to compete with match and so many others >> well, this is really an incredible story of perfsistence and a founder with great vision and execution that is unparalleled we originally met whitney in 2016 when she was just getting started and sadly had already raised some funding, but we kept after it and were very grateful to have been included in the investment from blackstone last year >> and, katherine, you're very much focused on that same demographic. what is the fact that the deal is raising more than expected say to you about this perhaps newer interest in the power of the female consumer? >> i think it really has to do with creating a company that has values that align with the modern consumer. that's really where whitney hit the nail on the head

today consumers want brands and leadership teams that share their values and really speak to them in the way that they haven't been spoken to before. >> dana, good morning. it is jon fortt. i'm thinking in this moment about stitchfix and katrina lake who previously was the youngest woman to take her company public she also faced some barriers in -- with dealing with male investors, right and so often when i've talked to female entrepreneurs they have said what we need beyond more startups by women, which we certainly do need, we also need more female investors to create an ecosystem that's healthier, that's looking at different types of data, that's more welcoming to all kinds of ideas. how does the spac that you guys are launching fit into the broader ecosystem that sort of needs to be built out?

>> it's a great question and thank you for asking it's certainly something we're focused on and a big reason that katherine and i launched powered brands was really to, well, first of all, to build an incredible company we think should exist but, secondly, to inspire other female leaders and founders to take their companies public and to, in doing that, create wealth across the cap table and create more angel investors that are women and people of diverse backgrounds because we think that ultimately that is how you can make change. >> and, katherine, as you're putting together what will eventually be the company here, what do you think are perhaps the structural ways that you can be creative and perhaps different than the other approaches to the beauty market that we've seen so far >> sure. well, we're looking for a number of fundamentals. first and foremost looking for brands and leadership teams with real x factor, looking for

companies that have a high digital iq and e-commerce expertise built into the foundation of the company. we're looking for things like clean ingredients, sustainable supply chain and really inclusivity and diversity built into the business from the beginning. this is very hard to layer on after the fact, and this is how the new generation companies are forming and producing their products today >> dana, i think we're getting some initial indications on the ipo, i think 67 is probably the latest indication. i think i saw 67, yeah 61 about half an hour ago. dana, it's always a little annoying when people try to reduce management styles by gender you often hear, okay, women or men are either less or more risk averse, for example, but are there some broad brushes that you think are actually legitimate and valid >> i think that whitney and

katherine, are just two examples of phenomenal leaders whether they're male or female they have a vision they go out and execute against that vision. and i don't think it matters what gender you are. i think that it's about having a vision and executing and that is the important story here and whitney is going to take this company all the way. i mean, it is an incredible, incredible story but it's really only just getting started. >> katherine, i want to get to you and your vision for this spac but what you've learned about this market not just for your own companies but also in terms of these consumers of bumble i think it's interesting you've launched four companies and each of them is based on the data you're seeing in the market. what is the data you're seeing right now about the female consumer how is she different now on the other side of covid and how do you expect her trending her spending habits to change post-covid >> yes, well, she's definitely

still shopping 2020 was a record year for direct-to-consumer e-commerce companies. and what should have taken us three or four years happened in just one year. so certainly that's a major shift in behavior and one of the reasons that e-commerce expertise is so fundamental to this new company that we're creating the consumer is after this sort of notion of less is more really rallying around comfort and quality. and i think we'll see that play out in various categories across this millennial consumer >> dana, i want to pose a similar question to you. you have a lot of data that drives your research as a venture investor what are the trends you're seeing that for both your investment in bumble and in the spac, i'm wondering in terms of the competitive landscape there are so many dating apps. people aren't necessarily loyal to just one. do you think female consumers

will be more loyal to bumble or how does it compete there? >> well, bumble has built a real brand, and i think when we do a lot of our research and investment we do a lot of primary research it is about listening to the market, understanding the modern consumer and katherine has touched on it but it's critical the modern consumer cares about the brand they care about the team behind the company. they're looking all the way through. we think that is going to be a major differentiator when you look at whitney's vision to really create a platform for healthy relationships that is extremely broad, very differentiated in terms of positioning and has a great business model behind it >> and, katherine, we were talking a bit before about the consumer environment and about the way that a new company can be tech led. my question for you is about the omni channel environment, that mix of technology and brick and mortar and how through the pandemic strategies need to shift for after.

how important are big retailers still? how important is a social presence for, say, a new beauty brand in this environment, and do you need to go after it in a different way than you might have 18 months ago >> absolutely. i think this is a great question and we've seen so many great retailers pivot successfully on two things like reserve online and pick up in store, executing with different technology partners, same day delivery. these things are going to be key going forward. i am a big believer in traditional brick and mortar retailer as well as direct to consumer e-commerce. i think we're going to see the strongest brands and retailers survive and thrive as a result >> katherine, dana, thank you both so much for joining us. we look forward to seeing what deals you do with your spac and, of course, with your separate

businesses as well thanks, guys >> thank you keep your eye on uber today. shares not moving a whole lot as the ride hailing business slowly recovers but delivery grows more than 1x. morgan stanley reiterates it as a top pick today price target 70. you can watch the earlier interview online at cnbc.com this is decision tech. find a stock based on your interests or what's trending. get real-time insights in your customized view of the market. it's smarter trading technology for smarter trading decisions. fidelity.

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sonos is turning out to be quite a story today, shares up almost 14% sales growth in the holiday quarter, stocks up big as you can see. with us first on cnbc is sonos ceo patrick spence patrick, welcome back. i never say this but congratulations on the quarter because we've spent quarter after quarter talking to you about supply chain challenges and you managed to find ways to work around it >> we have thanks for having us, carl it was an incredible quarter i think it shows the resilience and adaptability the team has built over the last 19 years you name it, you talk about it all the time we saw component shortages we saw covid hitting dock workers and also some of our plants we saw container shortages we saw port backlogs you name it, we saw it in the quarter and the team did a phenomenal job to come in ahead

of expectation on every metric i'm just so proud and grateful of everybody's work. >> how do you raise your guide when the, i guess, the lazy narrative at the moment is people will be spending less time inside their home, maybe less money upgrading their home and that may have an impact on the purchase of personal electronic components, for example. >> so i think there definitely has been a tail wind of more people at home but i think there are three big mac ro trends, the first is the explosion in audio, streaming music but also podcasts, audio books and now social audio and so there's a lot going on in audio and that's where we play a huge opportunity and just explosion in audio the second is this great reshuffling and as we've seen and many companies are looking at providing more flexibility. that creates a world where more people are moving setting up

shop in different places and they want to make sure when they're working from home they have a really good setup and so the other thing i would say we're seeing a lot of video streaming go direct to consumer and people want to create a theater in their home. that's what we're world class in those three trends will not be over this next period of time. we see these happening for years and we think we're positioned to take advantage of them >> patrick, i'm so glad you mentioned social audio we've been talking about the impact of clubhouse, the fact twitter and facebook are interested in this audio conversation space how big of an opportunity do you think there is there for a company like yours to have people spend even more time listening to audio >> it breaks my heart people are listening today on their phones and having to put one that quality of audio, so it's something i think over the long term is a great opportunity for us because why not be sitting at home or on the go and actually interact with that in a much higher quality way or maybe in a

different environment than today. i think there's a really good opportunity for us there long term >> it's jon fortt. once again i want to understand your customer ecosystem better from my look at things, it looks like you got 1.8 million new households in 2020, average of 2.9 registered products per household. how is the behavior different for your above average household, the ones that have three or more devices? how do you make more money off those households whether it's upselling them maybe into different services that you could offer, maybe roku style, or getting them to buy more devices? >> yeah, so thanks, jon. there are two things there, services so just over the last few months we've introduced our first service and have seen great take on that. it's a whole new world for us. it's complimentary to what our partners do. it's resonating with our customers. there's opportunity there. and then there's also

opportunity -- i mean, audio is a $60 billion market so we're just a small portion of that today we see a huge opportunity to disrupt other categories and we know our customers will come back and buy those we think we're well positioned to build on this brand and customer base up to this date. >> i'm just using myself as an example, i'm one of those sonos owners who have had the devices for years and they continue to work, so i see no need to upgrade. i'm not giving you any more money right now and, i don't know, maybe i should be. how do you get me to do that >> jon, we're playing the long game i'm so glad to hear that there's lots of customers in your shoes our job is to bring out new products that then interest you in adding another one. that's what we see

we saw a record number of new customers but a record number of our existing customers, customers like you, coming back and adding additional product. i think now we'll take up the challenge of making sure one of our next products is one you want to add to your system customers continue to show they're willing to come back and add another sonos product to their system >> finally, patrick, street is asking some questions about what you're going to do with your cash you have minimal debt. there's m&a, buybacks, what's the top priority in terms of cash >> we see huge opportunity ahead. the primary focus now that we're in a really strong financial position is how we invest to drive more growth. and that's through potentially acquisitions, investing in new categories organically that's where we're fully focused. >> patrick, again, great to have you on the quarter certainly shares reflecting the strength of the quarter.

appreciate it. patrick spence of sonos. >> thank you >> pot stocks getting crushed today. names like tilray, aphria and sundial all down big meantime we continue to await bumble's first trade founder and ceo whitney wolfe herd joins us in just a few minutes. some say this is my greatest challenge ever. but i've seen centuries of this.

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as reddit moves on to pot stocks, users who feel burned by the gamestop trade and company restrictions are showing up in its menlo park headquarters. kate rooney has the story and she's there at those headquarters kate >> reporter: hi there, julia a handful of robinhood customers have been showing up here at robinhood's headquarters in menlo park venting frustration they can't get in touch with anybody about some of their account issues we saw one gentleman this week

kicking and banging on the front door of robinhood claiming he was unable to access his account, and this wasn't the only time menlo park police have been called to robinhood lately. police records object taped by cnbc show a total of ten incidents at robinhood from january 28th to february 9th and before late january the department said that they had seen zero reports n. one case a man threw a t-shirt at a security guard's face, another vandalize add sculpture. the most extreme, someone allegedly threw dog feces at the front door we spoke to a robinhood customer who says he drove 2,400 miles across the country after losing $50,000 trading nokia. he says he was locked out of his account. >> i had money in my account here at robinhood i need for living expenses, bill money, grocery money, family money.

my money is held hostage to robinhood. i can't get it out >> reporter: robinhood declined to comment rayl said they have since resolved the issues with his account in particular. these are obviously just a few examples of robinhood's 13 million customers but they do echo conversations we've had with other users and complaints made through the ftc in recent weeks. this started with robinhood limiting the buy they said they did that because of requirements from their clearing house and say it was not for the benefit of hedge funds that had gotten squeezed robinhood clients have filed more than two dozen lawsuits seeking damages. for now rayl says he is moving his money into cash. he doesn't trust wall street, robinhood or the other brokerage firms.

back to you. >> everyone is trying to make sense of the u.s. personal savings rate and robinhood downloads. today it's b of a. the chart is titled stuck at home with just sof cash and free trades others argue a correlation is not causation. do you think this makes sense trying to pair the two >> reporter: we saw a similar uptick with stimulus checks and people say in the case of the gentleman we spoke to he's a professional poker player. he says that he has been using this as a form of gambling he's used to using money, but some of the newer users for robinhood and other brokerage firms have seen a new landscape. they are at home trading and might not have been able to gamble on sports there's a ton of new factors here so i wouldn't be surprised if bank of america is spot on there. >> yeah, new factors that are something we haven't seen yet at

least in this economy. thanks so much great stuff. keim your eye on zillow shares today getting a nice boost after the earnings quarter up almost 16%. revenue up 22 on the year despite the effects of the pandemic as we said earlier bumble's founder and ceo whitney wolfe herd will join us in just a few moments as that debut is moments away as well

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i'm courtney reagan and here is your cnbc news update across northern texas at least six people are reported dead in car crashes related to icy conditions in dallas a single accident involved more than 50 vehicles including several 18 wheelers. firefighters are going car to car looking for people in need of medical attention mori, president of the olympic organizing committee, will resign over a sexist report mori, a former prime minister of japan, apologized for saying at an olympics meeting that women talk too much. and for all my swifties, taylor swift is releasing her third album of the pandemic. this is a rerecording of her second album "fearless."

she vowed to redo her albums after her former manager sold them the new version will include six songs that didn't make it on to the original album that's your cnbc news update this hour. carl, back over to you i'm pretty excited >> yep, yep. scooter will be sorry. thanks, courtney reagan. keep your eye on paypal today. that's an all-time high, the company's investor day kicks off. it happens at the same time where payments are pretty hot today. mastercard joining paypal and its move to crypto dan schulman is on "mad money. dad, i'm scared. ♪♪ it's only human to care for those we love. and also help light their way. ♪♪ it's why last year chevron invested billions of dollars

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welcome back sa sales of zynga higher saying it's building a war chest for potential m&a. the ceo is joining us now, another first on cnbc interview. frank, welcome back. i want to talk about consolidation happening in the game space we just saw ea, microsoft making buys and google shutting down the stadia, and what's all this action around gaming studios and where is it headed >> 2020 was a transformational year

the entertainment you get from playing games reached new heights of participation, engagement and also commercially the industry has never been bigger new technologies will lock in growth you see a tremendous inflow of capital and a lot of deal making in 2020 there were over 200 merger and acquisition deals on record and it looks like '21 is starting off to a faster pace. we have had huge contributors to our success this year and think will help drive the company going forward. a lot of the incumbents are seeing pressure from new ipos on the way with roadblocks, a lot of spac activity that are bringing companies into the public markets

the new companies coming in that aren't really traditional game companies. game units, sometimes there are platforms, a unique focus on mobile it's really causing a lot of shifts i think it's an exciting time for investors to be looking because there's so much new choice and the growth is profound >> so, frank, should we think about this like the netflix effect on tv because video games have been around for a long time one might look at this and say why is making games so hard? we should know how to do this by now. you have studios failing, getting bought out because they're so good. has the advent of the cloud changed what's possible to such an extent there's a new skill set or a new type of creative that's more successful in this environment? >> i think it's the fact the audiences are so vast now.

over 2.5 billion people playing mobile games every day you have a proliferation of hardware out there you can play games on phones, pcs, consoles, in your chat clients so you can play games pretty much anywhere at any time and it's not just young men that are playing games anymore. it's men, women, it's people 8 to 80 all over the world now the difference is that the talented people at that actually make the games, there aren't that many of them. it's a finite base of talent in the industry so you see a lot of people chasing highly talented people that know how to make great games that reach these huge audiences and that's part of the pressure, not a high enough supply for engineers and designers and a lot of companies are fighting over who has the best talent and has the right culture for that talent to really prosper >> frank, as you look at the number of your gamers who are playing on apple devices i want to you tell us about what impact you see apple's new operating

system having on your ability to target ads obviously this is something we're talking about with a lot of ad-supported companies. >> it's been a big issue inside the industry, a big story and this year apple will start to roll it out more formally. i think it's part of a larger trend around privacy the european union has implemented privacy rules, california has as well and we at zynga respect our players' privacy as we've incorporated new regulations and measures we haven't seen an impact on our business as we've looked at idfa we found it impacts certain companies in the ecosystem. heavily ad-based networks or marketing service companies. when you're a game company really how players come into your services is as less relevant as the fact your players are in the games for very long players of time. the majority of revenue comes from existing players and they stay engaged for months if not

years. a good example is our words with friends game, 12 years old had its best quarter and best year ever so people play games for very long periods of time and these changes in privacy are something we can account for because we're operating at a very high level of scale, over 150 million people playing our games every day, every month and when we look at the diversity of the games we make, we're not as reliant on the advertising piece of the business as potentially some of the other companies in the ecosystem. >> you mentioned words with friends and how it's 12 years old but still going strong give us a sense how that works mechanically within your business i imagine the margins have to be, you know, pretty good. it's not like there's a whole new dictionary coming out you have to worry about every year and i believe you mentioned that margins will be accounting in the first half because of the launch of new games. do you have franchises that are proven like words with friends,

in effect, funding these launches of new concepts that you have coming out? >> yes, we do. our portfolio is a mix of games that have different -- our poker game, our racing game, words with friends are profitable and long in terms of life cycle and the engagement you see has been strong the whole time. what we've done is start to fund the investment in some new game releases we released harry potter puzzles and spells which is off to a tremendous start and the early stages of these games you do invest marketing to get to a level of audience you can then sustain for very long periods of time and so that's what you see us doing in the early part of next year we have a new farm bill game we're working on another game and have announced a star wars product we're releasing in '21 we're investing more this coming year in our new game releases but the breadth of the portfolio is going strong, profitable,

helping to fund growth initiatives we talked about on our call yesterday. >> interesting model frank gibeau ceo of zynga, thank you. >> thank you very much bumble founder and ceo whitney wolfe herd joins us first on cnbc next don't go anywhere.

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bumble's public debut is expected in just a moment pricing at $43 last night with

the latest indications they're at $73 bumble founder and ceo whitney wolfe herd joins us now. whitney, congratulations at 31 years old the youngest woman to take a company public and an ipo my question for you first is what's next for bumble >> well, we are so honored and excited about this community and we are really so excited about getting back to work and growing into our big future vision of really connecting people across all verticals of love and friendship and business and going international and taking our mission to different corners of the earth and helping to put the power into women's hands when they connect. we're so excited and humbled to be in this seat right now. >> and, whitney, as you look at this business model, a big number of users is growing fast but a small percentage are paying subscribers how important is it to bumble

and your other future to get more people to pay on a monthly basis? >> yes this is high priority we are very committed to reinvesting in future monetization and product offerings to become paying users. we'll do this through a body of subscription services, higher tier and other adjacent opportunities. >> good morning. it's jon fortt i want to mention the indications now are $75 a share. we'll see where this opens i want to ask about badu because i believe you said it was in the latest quarter that you reported 39% of revenue is from this app that isn't as women led but, of course, that core bumble app is growing much faster. what is the future of badu do you expect it to decline?

are you transitioning people over to more after bumble experience what should investors expect to see? >> listen, it's a great technology platform and there's a very loyal customer base in a lot of international markets and what we're focused on is really reinfusing our mission of an accountable, kind, digital ecosystem and leveraging their incredible legacy technology which has been an innovator and pioneer in the digital space they were one to do video dating a year before the pandemic really taking that technology and putting a new emphasis on the brand and really making sure that we merge under this one umbrella brand of bumble which encourage as kindness, accountability and making the first move more broadly but for bumble we'll stay committed to women making the first move. >> and tell us about that, both brand and cultural journey that bumble has been through because a year and a half ago very

different story when andre was still in the picture and all these questions about the culture he had built around that company that, in effect, owned bumble at the time you said that you hadn't experienced the kind of misogyny some people had. what did you learn from that experience >> yes, so today bumble is all about looking forward and we are committed to our customers we're also very committed to our team we have merged under one consolidated internal team and we are all here for diversity, inclusion, equality and breaking down barriers that have historically existed in the tech land skam and the technology and the team that came before us, but we are looking forward and really are excited about building an inclusive not only user base and technology platform but a culture where our

team members can thrive. >> whitney, speaking of the user base and thinking of engagement, can you talk about how you view the way in which the pandemic altered engagement behavior and whether or not you see that changing again once we get out from under this thing? >> absolutely. so the pandemic has been incredibly a difficult time for people around the world. what i think it highlighted was the need for relationships now more than ever before we recognize the importance of having companionship and community, and what we've also seen is people are really leaning into a digital first approach prior to the pandemic you would see people engage on the product and they would jump into the real world as far as interaction went and this fascinating shift has taken place we think is here for the long term, people are getting to know each other on our products, on video, on audio.

socializing, building connections and understanding if they're compatible, digital first. some are building the first several months getting to know each other digitally before they meet in real life and the meaningful relationships are profound this also engineers an extra layer of safety and accountability into your relationship journey if you can get to know someone by video and someone you feel safe with, someone you actually want to meet it takes out a lot of the cumbersome nature of going off line immediately all right. so as we, and i'm sure we're going to hear more of this as the country gets vaccinated but this notion we're hungry for human-to-human contact that we're going to want to go back to, i guess, classic environments like restaurants and bars and blind dates, you think is not dispositive of future growth? >> completely positive for us. as the world slowly transitions back to normal we think we have

this massive opportunity to meet each other in a seamless way, a way that feels safer than the historical opportunity is going to a bar or a concert or a crowded place. even as the world completely goes back to normal the ease and the opportunity that online dating offers will be here to stay we really think this is a ties mick shift for the better and is a long-term industry with long-term staying power and long-term both during and post pandemic >> and, whitney, i want to get a better sense where you see bumble fitting into the competitive landscape for online dating you're up against match, facebook making a move in the online dating space. any platform could copy bumble's female first led approach. >> i totally appreciate that opinion and we've seen that happen over the years. bumble is not a feature.

bumble is not a gimmick and is not just a technology redesign bumble is a brand and we are authentic and have engineered this brand from the ground up and that is something that cannot be replicated features and products absolutely people can build those we love the coming out of the space, but you cannot replicate a brand and that's something we are proud of and we continuously reinvest in our brand and in the mission ahead of us to really put women in the driver's seat of their relationships and more broadly with the do and the broader ecosystem of kecking to engineer safety and accountability to make it pleasant for everyone. >> and your rival match just bought another app that's focused more on friendship, and i'm wondering going forward, how important your non-dating business is. you have bumble bff for friends and bumble biz and how will it be for your growth >> they'll be very important in the long term.

in the near-term we're very focused on dating. we think there's tremendous opportunity to re-write the norms of dating around the world and love needs a facelift in terms of how we treat each other and how we do so accountably with health and equity on the base of that for the meantime we are focused on taking our dating approach across the board and doubling down on our strength and our growth and our domestic and core markets, but in tandem, in parallel we're looking to the future and we're focused on the long-term horizon of being the global platform to connect you to anyone you might be looking for well beyond love so stay tuned. >> wow whitney that will run you right up against facebook and a big marketing opportunity. i am so glad you put biz and bff into that context because in some of these s-1s companies try to present themselves as

something, and glad to hear that you're not doing that. you said that biz and bff are longer term. what can you tell us about the important metrics and data associated with those? maybe we're not ready to talk revenue yet, but what kind of engagement are you looking to build in that will show you the health of those ideas over time? >> absolutely. i think it's important to emphasize that we evolved our product offering to include friendship and business because that is what our community was commanding we were watching the behavior take place in our product and we were listening to our customer which, if you do that thoughtfully they are your best road map and we recognize that because we had the strong barrier to entry of women making the first move women in particular, but men as well, were commanding their profile to look for platonic relationships. when we saw this take off we built a feature around it, and the fact is we have 9% of our dating customers using the friendship mode right now in a very v-1 version it is important to note that we have not optimized or invested

or really put time or effort into the friendship category yet. so it's in a very, call it, test phase still. so to see just that type of adoption just shows you the massive opportunity we have. >> can you give the viewers, whitney, a sense of rnd, where that budget goes and to what degree artificial intelligence, computer learning plays in figuring out the right algorithms or figuring out what we want, perhaps, before we are able to tell you >> sure. i can't talk too granularly about the algorithms and the approach to that, but i can tell you we invest a lot into both very strategic team members and capital more broadly in data and understanding the customer and understanding how and who they want to meet and we really factor that into the algorithms meticulously and we will continuously invest in that as time goes on

we understand the importance of seeing who you want to see and not just people and we are focused on this quality approach and we think that our quality audience is ultimately what has propelled our growth thus far and the fact that we are predominantly an organic growth business is something we are proud of and we protect. >> whitney, i thought it was interesting in your s-1 that you spoke to how you think apple's new operating system will minimize your ability to target ads. what kind of an impact should we expect that to have on your business >> sure. i think what we are focused on right now is meaningfully ve investing in our organic growth, as i said. we have seen such strong network effect by staying true to our strategy and not being hyperreliant on performance and paid marketing at the moment we are doubling down on our focus of engineering true network effect. >> and whitney, i've got to ask, on this day which is huge, those of us who have followed your

career for a while, saw the way you sort of got pushed out, cut out of tinder and so your path and your journey to this moment being the youngest woman to bring her company public and for it to be a dating app that focuses on women leading is really significant i know you want to focus on the company and the path forward, ceos and founder do at a moment like this, but what does this mean for you given the journey you've been on >> i don't want to comment on that particular topic, but what i will say is this is a moment that should give means to someone who feels they've gotten to the end of the road there is always a moment to reinvent yourself. i took situations that hurt me or impacted others that i knew in a negative capacity which was the toxicity of the internet and coming off of these platforms where i'd been harassed by strangers and it was demoralizing to me and i turned

that and turned that into purpose, passion and tried to come up with a solution and upon meeting andre and con vinesing me to look at it through the lens of dating i was able to go out and find a wide-open space and i recognize that half of the market had been overlooked when it came to dating more broadly and that was women so every single day we've just gotten up in the morning and built a experience around women for women and when women are happy everything else follows and this should serve as an example that anything is possible, and i am so excited to hand the baton to the next woman who surpasses me as the next youngest woman and we are honored to be here >> whitney, we are grateful for you joining us on this big day and we hope that you will come back and do more interviews with us very soon whi whitney wilford herd on bumble

>> can't wait to hear the conversation as it relates to the ongoing reopening of the economy. the covid trends have been encouraging and the vaccinations are getting better and even the street with the upgrades with the like of simon property and under armour and disney tonight we will see whether or not the quarter reflects an environment in which we will see economic activity take off. the halftime is coming up next t-mobile is now america's largest and fastest 5g network. right now, current and new customers can get a free samsung galaxy s21 5g. the leader in 5g coverage. the fastest 5g speeds and a free samsung galaxy s21 5g.

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- [group] grubhub! - [announcer] grub what you love. >> welcome to "the halftime report." i'm scott wapner front and center, the dow, the index hitting a new high today and why one investor is buying each though at record highs. we discuss that with josh brown, jon najarian, steve weiss and tiffany mcgee. let's check the markets, the dow at a new ridiculous today a positive day for technology and you have chairman powell helping out. there's your picture right now s&p, nasdaq, and markets are

washing liquidity an