YouSaid · the spoken record

Jennifer Hyman

lines on the record: 78
first: 2017-01-09
most recent: 2017-01-09
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Thought too much about meeting the big names. In the industry, that again are super inspirational but tactically they weren't going to show me how I should be changing my own hiring tactics on a day-to-day basis”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I had no idea what I was doing. So the mistake is that I didn't demand that my investors really do that for me. And I think that I”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“300 steps ahead of me. And to see, you know, how those teams really functioned and who I should be hiring and helping me calibrate talent for different levels of the company because I think that for me, the strategy behind Rent the Runway and the actual work has been the easiest part of growing a business. It's building a team and building a culture which is 95% of the difficult work and the learning that comes from, prior to Rent the Runway, the biggest team I'd ever managed was like 10 people. And it was like all in one function of sales. And well, that team was actually at a startup called Weddingchannel.com where I was selling advertising on the internet in the early days.”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Way too high profile. I mean, I remember meeting Reed Hastings and really thinking that I was like, it was like meeting LeBron James as like a, you know, middle school basketball player. Like this guy's inspirational, but how is this going to help me in my like Five million dollar business that I have right now, you know, I needed to meet people who were aspiration enough. They were two or three steps ahead of me, but they weren't”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I wish that I had demanded of my board to understand what excellence really was when it came to the people that should be on my C level team around me. As a first time founder and a first time entrepreneur, you know, not only do I not know how to be a CEO, but I have no idea what a CFO is. Or what a COO should do, and especially what's the difference between a mediocre good and great CEO and CFO. And what my investors did do is they would often introduce me to people that were so outside the realm of anyone that I'd ever be able to recruit. So, you know, they would introduce.”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And by the way, and thank you for everything that you've contributed To this organization. And let me also serve as a reference for you and help you in this next phase of your career.”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But because people did feel so comfortable, they felt like Rent the Runway was a family, they didn't feel like when Reed Hastings says publicly, Netflix isn't a family, it's a sports team. You can get cut anytime. I've never said that about Rent the Runway. We try to create this really loving culture where people feel welcomed. And I think that that's actually very authentic to myself and my team. But at the same time, we're still a business and we have to make tough decisions. Now, the learning process for me from this was to just talk more openly with the company about why we were making the decisions that we were making. Leaning into the chaos that it did create. I mean, I had a philosophy as well of I'm going to let people go before I've hired new people. Because I think the worst thing in the world is to go behind someone's back and recruit, you know, someone in this sneaky way without actually doing what is both the heart.”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think that had I been super tough for the extent of my business, it would have felt more natural that I was going to let people go when I did. But because people had no”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It is an interesting thing. And it's the same thing around compensation and other issues. I have noticed managing men and women that men ask for more. They just simply do. And I have to tell you, sometimes when I behave in the style of a man, I tend to do better, like in terms of embracing some of the more aggressive tendencies.”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's either that I'm not qualified to be the CEO of this company because I'm not able to make the tough decisions, or I'm going to make the tough decisions and guide the company towards, you know, the highest level of success that it possibly can. And I think that the real reaction towards actually a woman firing someone, of which, by the way, I'm not great at firing people. Like it actually was unbelievably painful and upsetting to do so. But seeing a female CEO who you expect to be nurturing and loving and warm, and most of the time at work, I am all of those things to see me then fire someone, it's such a mind altering, yes, such a mind fuck, right? Because you're thinking like, wait, this person gave me a hug yesterday. Yeah, yeah. Like, she must be someone totally different than what I thought.”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I know the feeling. I know the feeling. It's extremely hard. But what was interesting was I was just making the same business decision as anyone else in my position actually has to make.”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I flipped out basically 50% of my executive team in 2015, hired new folks who all came in last year. And 2016, as just evidence, is our highest growth year in history. We're profitable. We launched two subscription products, et cetera.”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you're remembering it exactly correctly. You know, there was a point in 2015 where I saw my business accelerating. And that's often perceived to be a great thing. And I knew that I wanted to take this company to IPO and I wanted to deliver a multi-billion dollar outcome for all of my investors. I looked around me and I had had a lot of members of my team who had been with me for many, many years, some of which were not scaling to get us to the next level. And I made a decision with the board to change and make very difficult changes on the executive team.”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“See me more casually. For me to have lunch with members of my team for them to see me with my family, with my fianc ⁇, to see kind of the real me because the expectation is very different than the reality sometimes.”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Super transparent. I mean, we have thousands of different data reports that anyone in the company can access at any point in time. I think also just making myself as accessible as possible to everyone in the company. I mean, with a company of 1,200 people, I am very present. In meetings with people that are of every level in the company. And I think that that's important as well for people to get to know me on a personal level because in a sense to see a female boss when most people have never had one before, you know, people have very different reactions to it. Sometimes it's actually scary to people that for a woman to achieve this level of leadership, it must mean that she's a bitch, right? It must mean that she's tough or that she's mean. So the way that I inspire, actually, the most loyalty in my team is for them to actually just”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That I'm not going to always be given 100% benefit of the doubt on that. So rather preempt it and just show you here's all of the numbers behind everything that we're doing.”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, one thing that I've done that potentially I've had to do as a female entrepreneur is that I have been unbelievably transparent with my team as it relates to financials and metrics and not only transparent of here's how we're doing, but we've had sessions against the ROI of every single strategy that we have at the company. Now on one hand, that's because I want everyone to be educated about what we're doing so that great ideas can come from anywhere and that people could actually be entrepreneurial in their jobs. On the other hand, I want this divers team of people that we have to know that we're making really smart, really strategic, very financially driven decisions in every single area of our business. And maybe that's a little bit of me knowing or me assuming”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Learn how to lead in the best way possible while the train is moving at a thousand miles an hour. Give a tip. There's a lot of entrepreneur”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And who's following them and found across the board no matter what the industry was for women who had achieved that level of success as a man, they were being followed by far less people and most of their followers were women. Whereas men were being followed by both men and women and by more people. So I have found that, you know, I have to work Much harder as a female CEO. What are your”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Would it be as inspirational? Would it have as much gravitas to it? We're taught that a certain type of voice, a certain type of posturing of cadence is something that you should follow. And I know we were at dinner last week. I have been obsessed with the selection and have thought about, okay, what does it mean about female leadership in general? And I did this very wrote non-scientific study on Twitter where I took women who had actually achieved great success. So I looked at female Fortune 100 CEOs versus male Fortune 100 CEOs, female venture capitalist versus male venture capitalists, and just looked at how many Twitter followers do these people have.”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The election. I mean, I think about some of the most inspirational moments that we learn about growing up. You know, we learn about MLK's I Have a Dream Speech. Take that same speech and put it in the voice of a woman.”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The thing is that I find that what's the most difficult is building a culture, recruiting a team of people that genuinely want to work for a female boss. That building followership and inspiration around female leadership is something that is quite difficult to do because as women and men, we're not primed and taught to feel that women are as inspirational as men.”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're now divided up into corporate, retail, logistics, and we actually have a lot of executives in our New Jersey facility. But let's just say that we have 600 people who are working in our logistics fac”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“More proven to show me the numbers. Prove it to me. It's like, I have to come in with 15 spreadsheets and like, here's exactly what we've done to get that funding. Okay, here's the interesting part. There's 1,200 people that work at Runthrunway.”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's not why I started Rent the Runway. So I think that that's a challenge. I think that one thing that people don't talk about. We often talk about okay, it's difficult for women to raise money, there's data on that, only 4% of VC dollars are going to women, and it's often in early rounds. So it's very difficult to raise your A, your B, your C, your $60 million round into the company. That's for sure. We oftentimes on this show that, you know, men can come in with a more loose idea of where they're going in the future and raise billions of dollars against changing the transportation industry or changing the hospitality industry. I actually do have that 50-year vision for how I want to power rental on the internet. It's a big deal. Close is the third largest industry on earth. It's a 1.7 trillion dollar industry because it's one of the things we have to do every day. But I'm not given as much credibility as a woman to have kind of a PowerPoint in a dream and get...”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was more that I was in a state of shock. I just didn't understand whether it was a joke or had We'd already in our first two months after launch had 200,000 people sign up for this service and had unbelievable metrics and were, you know, at least deserve the respect of we weren't doing this so that we could wear frilly dresses every single day. I didn't know if it was.”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm trying to handhold people through the fact that there's demand for We're doing And I think that that's the larger problem in raising money against rent the runway or in raising money against a stitch fix or a birch box or a class pass. It's about you're given limited time to do that. Now, there were also some more interesting things that happened in our earlier rounds. With investors who we did not take money from where I had an investor approach me after what I thought was a fabulous pitch and we'd received four or five term sheets in that round already. And he took my hand in his after the pitch and he said, you know, this is just adorable. You must be so Excited, you're going to have all of these amazing dresses to wear all the time. This is someone.”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, as opposed to going into the hardcore economics of the business, which is what I want to actually be talking about, you're hand-holding ROI”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And this is a partnership group of people every single day that wear khakis in a blue button down shirt to work. And they cannot think of why having variety in their wardrobe is something that hundreds of millions of women around the world are doing and they don't understand that this is, I have to prove to them the data that's already out there. So I'm spending over 50% of my pitch actually on things that when I speak to a woman, it takes me five minutes.”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, we found out that we had to preempt that conversation. So we started using video in these investor presentations prior to even going through the pitch where we would show who the customer was and let her speak for herself about why she was renting and what the experience was. The larger issue though is not that. The larger issue is you're given 60 to 90 minutes with a partnership group.”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because I do not want you to ask your billionaire wife about whether she's going to rent clothes. She's not my target demo So we would have to think of”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sad and bizarre. And what we often heard when we were going around and pitching in the early days, and even in recent rounds, which is even more surprising, was well, let me ask my wife about this. Oh. Which is the kiss of death as the one guy in the room.”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we definitely did. I think that one of the first things you hear, first of all, we're the only women that most of our investors have ever invested in. Which is”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm not going to have to rent anything during that period. So I'm going to pause my subscription at that point in time and we'll figure out what I need for when I come back to work.”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's going to be a time in March, God willing that I actually have a child. I'm probably not going to leave my house for a few months.”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. So I think that what we're trying to move to actually in 2017 is asking our customer, what's your lifestyle like? How much, what are you spending today on clothing? What's going on for you this year? And making a recommendation to you that's of highest value to you of which of our products you should be using. I'm not trying to direct everyone into the most expensive product because not everyone should have a subscription to fashion and have rented clothes in their life every single day. It doesn't make sense. For instance, for me right now, I'm six months pregnant. Thank God for my subscription to fashion because I'm literally changing size every single week. And I actually need to flip out those things. So it's saved me. Yeah, it saved me. God knows how much I would have spent in maternity clothes otherwise.”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Etc. You know, with rent, the runway, we started off where it was very much like you can rent for a Saturday night and here's the specific four-day rental that you can have with Unlimited, we're offering the complete opposite end of the spectrum to say you could take as much as you want for as long as you want. And we're probably going to give you choices in between. So we'll give you a program that's an alpha of the month, an alpha of the week. If you want two alphabets a week.”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think that the way that I think about it is not actually separate businesses, it's just offering customers different frequencies with which they are able to rent. And so if you think about a business like Blue Apron, I can choose to subscribe two nights a week, three nights a week, four nights a week.”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So from that standpoint, that's awesome. However, from the just sheer gross margins, inventory margins of the business, the on demand business right now is a higher margin product because we've had seven years to iterate it.”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, if you talk about it, it depends on whether it's from kind of an inventory margin standpoint, or you're looking at it from a customer lifetime value standpoint. Clearly, we're making much higher customer lifetime value on the subscriber because not only is she renting and subscribing for $139 a month, it normalizes the behavior of rental to her very quickly because she's using product from us every day. She tends to also consume from our on-demand business as well. So like if she happens to be a subscriber and her sister is getting married and she wants to reserve a specific dress for her sister's wedding, she'll use on-demand. And what our on-demand customer delivers in five years, our subscriber delivers twice that in six months.”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Subscription is going to be 60 to 75 percent of the business, and events will be 25 of the business while still growing. You know, women of all ages still have weddings and holiday parties in New Year's Eve and Valentine's Day that they're celebrating. It's just that the events business is primarily about a Saturday night, where a subscription is about every other day of the week.”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so we launched our subscription product out of kind of waitlist mode in March. And it's going to comprise over 25% of company revenue this year. And that business is really about everyday clothing to where to work. So it's dresses that are appropriate for work, lasers, coats, tops, pants, skirts, but things that feel more casual. Our events business is still 75% of our business. Now, my expectation is within the next four to five years, subscription is, it's going to flip.”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And he taught us with Netflix that when they were in the physical DVD business, having hubs of distribution that were close to the customer actually reduced churn in increased customer satisfaction because they were always able to get you something quickly. And if you didn't like what you got, you can always get something new within a day. And so to me. Opening up retail stores is the exact same strategy. It's having hubs of distribution close to the customer. I'm just also going to monetize them on the top line as well.”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Saves a huge amount on shipping, it also saves a huge amount on leakage. So we're still in the business of renting clothes. There are times when you will rent from rent the runway and the outfit won't fit. Or you just don't like the way it looks on you. Now, in the thirty miles around New York City or around San Francisco or around Chicago, if you ever have a fit issue, I could actually courier you more units from the store. So what would have been a refund is now cash to my bottom line because I can save the X percent of experiences that would have gone away. We actually took the model, so for many years Barry McCarthy, who was the CFO of Netflix, sat on our board.”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So that was the original concept. I really would not have been able to predict all of the cost savings that the store gives us because of the percentage of the market that wants to pick up their order in store, that wants to drop off their order in store, the amount of customer.”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, free is great. Then we got a really, really cheap space on 18th Street, which was 1,300 square feet. So we kept on kind of evolving the concept. And with each of these iterations, we learned some new things. We had always thought that we're going to convert new customers into rent the runway by having physical retail, A, because they can see that the product itself doesn't look used. It looks brand new. It looks high quality. And there are segments of women that we found, especially women who are 40 plus, who find it to be more comforting to them to try rent the runway for the first time in a physical location as opposed to on mobile or online. Whereas the 17-year-old who's snapping every single second, she's used to it, she will definitely try us on mobile first.”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then over time, we evolve that beta test, which has always been the strategy of rent the runway, where we go from one beta test to the next, we learn something else. So we went from actually having a kind of store within our office in New York to then opening up a kind of free space that we got at Henry Bendel's, which was a department store that was essentially kind of closing down on Fifth Avenue and 57th Street. They gave us free rent. So we're like, okay, we'll take that space.”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was essentially the same as every other investment we've ever made, which was what's the ROI and prove it to me first? And you better beta this and do it as cheaply as possible initially, prove that there's a real business here, prove what it's going to be. Is this going to be a revenue driver for you, cost saver? Is it about brand awareness? And I couldn't answer those questions intelligently when we first launched kind of a pop-up in our office two and a half years ago.”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Users are never changing their buying habits. My users right now are shopping primarily at fast fashion. So they're shopping at Zara and HM and I'm already trying to get them to change their buying habits away from Zara and H&M into basically a competitive rent the runway in my opinion is a competitive product to H&M, but it's at the same fast fashion price point, but the real designer product. We're hoping that by nature of having women fall in love with design.”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In to pick up and drop off their orders are actually buying something else at Neeman Marcus because it's convenient for them to do so. They're not expecting people to change their buying habits.”
2017-01-09 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Hyman, CEO, Rent the Runway · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT