Building a good team is similar to starting a successful relationship. That’s according to Karima Ben Abdelmalek, CEO of Happn, a dating app. “When you’re dating, you need to trust your partner – and it’s the same in your professional life,” she says.
Since 2021, when Ben Abdelmalek became chief executive and president of the French company, the number of registered users on Happn has grown to 156 million, worldwide. The app frequently ranks among the top 10 most popular dating apps in the world, by downloads.
Still, standing out in the dating-app market is challenging. Here, Ben Abdelmalek shares her advice on how to stay innovative and reveals the best piece of business advice she has ever received.
What was your journey to CEO like?
My background is in law and I’ve been a legal counsel for 20 years – mostly in tech companies, including Dailymotion and Microsoft. I moved to Happn in 2017 as general counsel because the business was facing a data-driven challenge and my specialism is in data protection and safety.
I spent three years focusing on corporate governance and safety compliance, working closely with the previous chief executive. I then became CEO in 2021. The shift felt really natural because I was already working on many of the topics I now focus on. The main difference between the work I was doing previously and what I do now is the amount of time I spend working on the company vision and strategy.
How has your background helped you as a CEO?
Understanding law is very helpful in my job. At law school, you learn how to strategically defend a client, how to anticipate risks and how to comply with different regulations worldwide. So my background has been useful and helped me to be a better CEO.
What skills does a good leader need?
As a leader, I try to empower others as much as I can and give them autonomy. Sometimes people need encouragement and to feel trusted to produce their best work.
What is the best bit of business advice you’ve ever received?
Be yourself. If you’re an authentic CEO, you build more trust and have better relationships with your team. I show my strengths, challenges and emotions openly. I encourage everyone to be authentic at the company – it’s like a family.
What do you look for when you’re hiring for your leadership team?
Finding someone with the right skills is the basic requirement, but the most important thing for me is finding someone I trust.
I look for someone with the right personality, who is open to learning and growing. I’m not necessarily looking for the perfect person for the role right now; having potential is more important. I prefer to recruit people who can grow with me and the business.
I’m also looking for people with the right values. I need to have people who can drive the company forward in a positive way, so optimistic people are really important. Leaders must be able to keep others happy and be a positive influence on their teams, even when the work is challenging.
Courage is also important. I like to take risks and I want to see the same quality in my team. I want them to take the initiative, rather than waiting for someone to tell them what to do. Failing doesn’t matter, as long as they face up to the situation and try to progress.
What’s the biggest challenge facing your sector at the moment?
The sector is very competitive; there are so many dating apps for people to choose from. But I enjoy the challenge because it forces us to be creative and innovate to fit the needs of single people.
Culturally, dating varies a lot from country to country. The needs of single people in India are very different to those of people in Brazil, France or the UK. This means we need local teams to help us understand the trends and apply the right marketing campaigns in each region.
In Europe, for example, dating apps are already popular and people use them frequently. But in emerging countries, such as India, the number of people using dating apps is still growing and we are facing more issues around women’s safety. At the moment, our priority there is to ensure that women can use dating apps safely.
What impact did the pandemic have on your business?
After the Covid pandemic, people grew tired of using dating apps. Dating-app fatigue became a real issue and people’s habits changed.
In response, we’re working on a new feature that will share a few profiles with users that are tailored to them. We prefer to show a user 10 people who we think will be a good match, rather than making people swipe through hundreds of profiles.
Our strength as a company is being agile, resilient and creative. If you learn and listen to your users, you can be very successful.
What’s the most enjoyable part of your job?
Being a CEO is like living 10 lives in one day. My main role is to work on the strategy and to drive the company forward with long-term goals and ambitions. But I also need to work closely with my teams, inspire them and ensure everyone is working towards the company’s mission, vision and purpose.
Half of my days are focused on strategy, vision and finance and the rest are spent working closely with the team operationally.
What’s one business book you’d recommend other people read?
I love the book No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention. It’s about the experience of Netflix CEOs Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer, the culture of the company and how they changed it. I enjoyed this book because I felt that I was facing many of the same challenge as they were.
What do you enjoy doing outside of work?
I have two boys, aged 10 and 12, so whenever I have a spare hour, I spend it with them. We live next to a forest, so we enjoy going for walks there or to the local swimming pool.
I also like going to flea markets. I like to give old things a second chance.
