Investors lost their passion since the pandemic block-buster IPO of dating service Bumble. The company's shares are traded at about $11, light years away from the $76 they closed with in its first day as a public company February of 2021.

Of course, investors are fickle, which is something of a challenge for almost any publicly traded company. The larger worry for Bumble, however, is user fatigue. People aren't downloading dating apps quite so enthusiastically as they used to, and that means less subscription revenue. Younger people, in particular, are flocking to other platforms to find love - including TikTok, Snapchat, and even Discord.

Now it's Lidiane Jones's task to reverse these trends. It's a tall order, one faced by many CEOs who have been entrusted with rescuing outfits from the post-pandemic doldrums-in publishing, in retail and in the automotive industry, among other sectors. Of course, the outcome is far from certain. But Jones, who was poached from Slack in January to run Bumble, where she served as a turnaround CEO hired and then left after only 10 months, has a game plan, as she explained recently while dining amidst the clamor of a San Francisco restaurant.

Part of the plan ties to AI, which Bumble's rivals are also leaning into more heavily. Part of it ties to "margin expansion." A big part of it, Jones told me, is simply restoring joy to an experience that is no longer fun for nearly half of the participants. Much of our conversation follows, edited for length and clarity.

Like a lot of CEOs these days, you walked into a situation where, almost immediately, you had to lay off people—only 30% of a staff of 1,200. That's a lot to figure out fast. How did you manage it?

I had a bit of onboarding that was going on before I even started. [Bumble founder] Whitney [Wolfe Herd] was super invested in my onboarding, so that really sped up the ramping up of the organization. She's been super supportive. I think it definitely made all the difference. And I'm also a huge believer that if you are going to go through a transformation, you have to be really thorough and do it thoughtfully so that you are not putting the company through a long multi-phase process.

You are relaunching Bumble itself in the second quarter this year. I understand you are taking a further significant step to revisit the decision of making women make the first move.

Your brand awareness is off the charts-how is that possible? And if you ask anyone about Bumble, they will say that it's for women, and the essence of that still remains intact. We are a company that really cares about women's empowerment.

It's really a great moment to think about how we best serve our mission as we approach our 10-year anniversary. For us, it's really all about how we celebrate women's empowerment today and for the next 10 years. What we really want is to move from where women make the first move to women deciding who should make the first move. We give them more control and flexibility based on what works for them.

Can it be that Bumble's encouragement of women to take the initiative results in users being a different kind of crowd? My friends have told me that men sometimes are too passive on the platform-to their consternation.

Well, historically what we have seen, it seems like a lot of the men who are coming to Bumble believe in empowered women. I don't hear, occasionally, some feedback around that's a bit passive [men], but not even to the same extent. Certainly, our ultimate goal is that our customers do have a great experience.

Other areas of focus for you are security and AI. What can Bumble's users expect to see with this relaunch?

If one reads this fantastic development in technology as applied to dating, it is only as good and safe as a company's data and safety practices. In fact, the privacy of our customers and trust in the company has always been incredibly strong and we've had a healthy bar for connections.

For the last 10 years, we have been building a ton of AI and technology that indeed safeguards behavior in the app and lets us tune the models to reflect our values and safety guidelines. But we want to take it even further. That's such an important part of Bumble's DNA. We really advocate for policies that make sure women feel safe. And certainly we'd want to be at the forefront of driving not just great technology development, but really policy advocacy for safety online.

The company has long checked physical verifications of its users to ensure that user profiles are not bots or scams but it does not do criminal background checks. Is that changing with the help of AI?

Background checks is one that we are exploring. It's one that we certainly will partner with different [players]. But it is a priority for me. I think is an important next step for us.

What else should people know about the update?

It's actually the start of a whole new pace of innovation for Bumble. It's the start of a new set of experiences. We are updating the profile experience; we're updating the visual language of the app; we want to feel more connected to our users and for the tone of voice to be fun and joyful. We are looking at AI to help augment some of the inflection points in people's lives that are particularly anxiety provoking, like the profile creation, which can be really challenging. We really want dating to be fun again-that's the key of it.

User fatigue is a lot to fight. Is there a new user acquisition strategy to accompany the new app?

Bumble has always done a great job on community-based marketing, really with events and people who want to represent the brand. That got a bit disrupted during the pandemic, but we're using this moment ahead of our launch to reignite a lot of community-based events because there are a lot of people who are excited to reconnect in person, and that is the starting point.

Bumble was always about far, far more than dating too. It has massive amounts of dating, but we've always been in this relationship where we believe a need for connection and friendships is far more relevant. So, we're going to invest further into our friendship capacity because we think many people want just to start with just hanging out with other people. From a friendship perspective, there is just a ton of opportunity there and unmet need for local and safe in-person events.

You launched Bumble for Friends last year. Do you ever see spin out as a standalone?

We're still collecting customer feedback. I've heard very passionate cases both ways. We're still exploring that one.