YouSaid · the spoken record

Jens Grede

lines on the record: 99
first: 2025-07-01
most recent: 2025-07-01
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

“She has an ability to bring everybody with her. Me and myself included, I go along with everything she says. Now that's not that unique in a marriage. Let us go along with what we're told, but Shias is unbelievable ability to inspire people and bring people with her. It's exciting to be around her. I think everybody's around her has that feeling. It's intoxicating. So it's a remarkable quality. I wish I had a fraction of it. But they say you marry someone that compliments you. She's the charm.”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm very grateful that I was able to move to the United States in my late 30s and has had the ability to reinvent myself in this country and having another chapter in this country. It's a country and a community that has welcomed me, my wife, my family, and allowed us to be both successful but also a member of our more direct community in a way that can happen on any other place on earth. I don't know if it's an act of kindness. I pay a lot of taxes in return. But I'm incredibly grateful for that opportunity. And that's why I'm optimistic about the future. I'm optimistic about this country. I am not fearful, even though I understand why many people are personally. I'm just excited to be part and live for this time in human history, which is arguably the greatest time in history to be alive.”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Them, what they require in return. That's the deal. And to do that, the most likely outcome is to be a public company. I do think though that it's healthy for a company to have outside shareholders. At some point it's healthy for a company to be public. It fosters good governance. But a company as it scales and as it grows and matures, it's not just about a founder. It's about everyone. It's about all the stakeholders, your employees. You have a greater responsibility. It's easier to take that responsibility as a public company. So I'm pro the public route personally, but that's not to say it's for everyone. If I own this company 100% myself, maybe I would have taken a different view.”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Public private, it's really a matter of taste. You used to have to go public. Today there's this semi-liquid market that has emerged that gives a lot of early shareholders at least a great deal of optionality. You look at companies like Stripe or SpaceX. There's been a lot of optionality and liquidity for early shareholders and people can trade in and trade out even privately. Maybe it's less important today than it was. For me, I made a choice to have institutional shareholders. I've got to respect their timeline. And what matters to them, they have entrusted me with their capital. I will do everything within my power and I will make sure I give”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You have a duty, you have a responsibility. I treat everybody's money like your own. I understand that my motivation and their motivation, there's times where they're not going to be completely aligned. I'm going to be in this company for a very long time. I'm probably going to go public one day. My cap table in five years is going to look nothing like the cap table today. And that's okay. I know how the game goes. And my responsibility at this point is actually to deliver an excellent return for my shareholders. And in the process, hopefully having a good time doing it. For me, the most important thing is to do a great job and have fun. And if I'm doing great work and I have a good time doing it, money normally.”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's just not how you think. You wake up and you say, I have to do it. I cannot live with not doing this thing. And then you got to love it. And you got to love it through the great times because there is enough hard times in any entrepreneurial journey that you need a lot of love to carry you through. I think Jensen Hong said the other day, something along the lines of that he would never have been an entrepreneur if he knew how hard it was. I had to be an entrepreneur to do what I love to do the way I want to do it. And I had to be an entrepreneur to realize the creative vision that I think entrepreneurship is. So I had no choice. This is what I had to do. With that, as you bring something to life and you bring capital partners on board,”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's the biggest part of the kick. It should be. If not, they weren't doing their jobs. But as a founder, you don't sit and think, I'm going to start this company because I'm going to make so much money with it.”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What are we doing this for? I think it's a fair question. And I ask other founders that as a founder of a company that receives a lot of public attention like Skims, I have the opportunity to meet other founders that have created unbelievable businesses that also are in the public eye. We talk about it. What are we doing it for? In my view, is the result of doing something great money by itself is a poor purpose. It shouldn't be the reason we get up in the morning. It should be the result of us doing something we love and doing a great job and exciting our customers. And that should be rewarded. But that's me as a founder. If you're an investor, the money is the purpose in many ways, not for everybody. It's not the whole cake”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Lucky for me now as the pacers in OKC feels like I can miss the whole series, so I get some time back. If it was Nick's, I would have to watch it. When Luca got traded to the Lakers, I was watching, I think it was first take on ESPN, and they said, we're now waiting for Luca to show up in the Skims campaign. First of all, whenever they talk about Skims and ESPN, I'm excited. So I was very happy. However, if there's an expectation, there's also not a surprise. To me, that's a signal that we have to take a step further and continue to do the unexpected. And I love Luca. the door is open. If he wants to do it, having said that, it's to do what you're not expecting me to do next. If anything keeps me up at night, it's probably that idea.”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Today, about a year after we launched our own app, we do over 20% of our business through it. But building our app and loyalty, which is a nice way to say trying to expand that direct community in a closed network where I can have my customers' attention, that's going to be the difference maker. I think over the next five years or so. To continue to evolve the way we do business, to continue to be surprising. When we started, we did a lot of things that no one else did at the pace no one did it. I have to really watch it so we don't become a victim of our own success. So we have to continue to innovate, not just on the product side, but also on the marketing side. When Luke got traded, To Lakers, just to bring it back to basketball again. Clearly, watch too much basketball.”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm working on how do I scale at pace the business to meet the global demand for the brand. Right now, it's a big global brand, but we're yet to do business the way that customers like to do business, which is highly in-person. I'm very focused on the global physical distribution of skims. That's important. And I'm now starting to tie some of these things we talked about, I guess, together, which is if social media is a less effective way for me to communicate with my community, what really matters is the community that I'm building through my app and loyalty.”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Those are two basic things that I don't think I'm going to be very wrong about, which product will work. I couldn't tell you, which founder that's going to be successful, I don't know, but I know where it's going. If I had their expertise and many others where they have enough of a sample and enough of a nose for great founders, you want to back people that are creating the companies that fits this worldview. And hopefully you're going to be right.”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We touched on some of it today. If you go with my theory, which by the way is not my theory, I think is wildly established that we're living in kind of a post-truth society that's been written endlessly about. As a result, an individual voice can cut through and control a narrative and what they say is taken as a truth over what you refer to as an anonymous journalist. Well, let's assume that's the case. An individual is going to be only more important, not less important. If the algorithm is going towards a place of entertainment not following, one has to assume that the person that has a higher degree of influence will have the opportunity to forge their own network.”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Own long term view, and I think both of them do. Honestly, I've learned from that. I don't know where the world is going within the next year, but I think we can be relatively confident where the world is going in five years. I think we can be very confident where the world is going in five or even ten years. It shouldn't be impossible to, if you have the stomach for it, if you invest with that perspective, you're going to be right more times than you're wrong.”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Them. They're already incredibly successful. I'm scared for how successful those two are going to be. They're young too. Give them 20 years of compounding into this worldview. Most people are overly optimistic, don't have the stomach for the long term. I find that a lot of investors that come across are very influenced by market trends. When something is good, there's no end to how good it can get. When something is bad, there's no end to how bad it can get. On 21, you can give away retail real estate. Now it's the hottest part of the market. Years ago, you couldn't give away offices. Now occupancy in the right places are at capacity. There's no end to demand. Very few people dare to have their own.”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Josh and Neil are both really, really special people. Dare I say, atypical in many ways, they're both guys of really high conviction that take a long-term view. And they take a lot fewer bets than many other people that I know in the venture space. They really do believe in doubling down behind their winners and staying engaged. And they seem really unfaced by a news cycle a month, a quarter, they tend to have really long-term views on everything. And they invest into that worldview. And I think that's ultimately going to make.”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really no difference. I don't know what the future looks like in 20 years, but as far as my children goes, they combine physical and digital status, what teenager or 20-something doesn't have status in the amount of followers they have, status exists in so many different ways. I don't think that's going anywhere. It's right up there with hunger.”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think status is going anywhere. Basic human want. I don't think our physical lives are going anywhere. But let's assume that it is going somewhere. What is status to my 11-year-old? Well, he has status in what he has achieved in Roblox. He feels a great sense of status of what he's built, what he has. I don't think that status is limited to physical objects. Humankind will always find ways to display status if you interact in social gaming from what I'm seeing. All of our cues of status here in our physical world is in their digital world. It's a direct transference.”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the end of the day, he works to inspire and excite his customer for all of his unbelievable success. He's just highly in tune with what his customers will give him agency to do or not to do. I come back to this notion of being objective. He has that in spades.”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Redmond Montclair. I don't know if I would have gone about building schemes the way that Kim and I went about building schemes. What about...”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“More in common with a sneaker than they do with a t shirt. They're all performance highly complicated from a construction fit. It has to do a job, especially in women's, more so than for men's, but has to offer support and comfort for 12 hours in a row, 14 hours. That's a performance product. There's a much higher moat, much harder to compete, it's much harder to innovate product in it. Once you have a customer's trust, they're very loyal, super high retention, underwear and performance wear has a lot in common. And the same thing, if you think about performance ski, it's highly complex, highly technical, has to do a job for you. I looked at taking a category like that and attaching it to culture. And if I hadn't had the opportunity to observe”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Different things. Remo taught me about the power of the role of art in commerce and letting go. And he took something which was a small company called Montclair. It was a small ski company. And he attached it to fashion and the popular culture and to sport. He was able to build just a unbelievable brand and company by borrowing all the cues while staying true to the core of the product, which was performance ski. If it wasn't for that experience, I wouldn't have started skims. I wouldn't have started frame. The thing with underwear that people don't really think of and I don't blame them is that they have a”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I was unsatisfied working on behalf of everybody else. It comes a moment in your life where you want to be the guy, not working for the guy. I knew that in my early 30s, however much I would build this group in the end of the day, I was figuring out ways to sell time. And at the end of it, there's not that much emotional. Of the work that you create. You're a hired gun. You go home at the end of the day. And when something goes wrong, it's your fault. When it goes well, it wasn't you. It's a pretty thankless place to have a full career. And I'm very grateful because I had the opportunity to work with some of the greatest to ever do it, Bernard Arnaud at the LVMH or Remo Ruffini at Montclair and becoming inspired to the point where I wanted to be like them, not work for them. So I'm very grateful for that.”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Louis Vuitton or LVMH fashion. And he said, Jan's the secret to our success is that we always transform on the way up. And there's a truth to that because you think how we operate is as long as it's good, we don't want to change. And then when things plateau or trails off, human nature are optimistic. So we go, it's a moment. We'll be back. We were first. We did this first. They will remember it. It's going to come back. And then it doesn't come back. Then we start thinking about changing. And then by the time we actually have implemented any change, things are already going down. Who fires a CEO when a company is growing? Almost nobody. Sometimes maybe we should.”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Under the guy who founded that magazine called Tyler Brulet, I learned two things. One is that a magazine can be a reflection of your own interest in your own life. And wallpaper just will say total reflection of what we as a team were living through in that moment in time. And I think that's what made it so powerful. It also taught me that you can't hold on to a good idea. meaning When you're early on something, when you found different way to communicate or speak or create product, everybody's going to pilot. You have to continue to transform on your way up. Because once you plateau, it's already too late. A guy that made a big impression on me was a guy called Pierre Yves Roselle. He was the chairman of”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But he wasn't supposed to be. He was supposed to be in GQ when he knew about it. And he taught me this idea of not to break things. You didn't have to be first. You needed to be at the forefront of your own customer. That thinking has really reflected on most things I've been involved with. I'm not so worried about always being first, the product being first. I think it's sometimes phenomenal to be number two or three that can be a much better place to be, in fact, and focus more when I think it's right or it resonates with me. And I'm not necessarily on the cutting edge, but I'm probably the tip of the spear of mainstream. The other thing, working for a magazine called Wallpaper in the UK,”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was just a wonderful thing to do because it's the storytelling, it's the sense of discovery, and then storytelling. I used to work with GQ and the editor of GQ in the UK was Guy Dylan Jones. And I think he probably was one of the greatest magazine editors of all time. Everybody worked at GQ were frustrated with him at times because he said I knew Arctic monkeys were going to blow and he wouldn't write about it or I knew this was going to happen and I was so excited about this, that. And he said no. He knew that he was the top two percent of readers, but he was a customer of his own journalism. So there was a moment in time when he got it, it was never first.”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To as mainstream media, saw it as an existential threat. They took action that over time, in many cases, undermined some of their editorial integrity, or at least that's what a large part of America believes today, rightfully or wrongfully so. As we went into COVID, they just were not able to put the genie back in the bottle. I was listening to the All-In podcast and I can't remember which one of the guys that said it But I thought it was very insightful and I'm paraphrasing again that said a journalism became activism and I think maybe it did for a period of time. It's been pretty hard to put that back in the bottle today.”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Don't have all the answers. This is a tricky question because I believe that news organizations have an incredibly important role within society. I think it's a shame. Some of it they did to themselves, partly because of what we're talking about. They had to create journalism that was clickbait. That's saying, show me the incentive and I show you the result. They had to create incentive structures for the people working there to get eyeballs on what they were doing. I think that changed things. This is just my personal opinion. I'm not the highly political person. This is not me making a political statement in any shape, way or form. I'm just objectively observing that during the first Trump administration, what he often refers to.”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is because engagement is being spread. The size of the following doesn't matter so much anymore. So that audience someone has built maybe spent 10 years building that size of that following. But now they're actually unable. They're not getting through your 400 million followers and you say something 400 million people is not going to see it. Only a fraction. I have no opinion if that's good or if it's bad. It's clearly good. Otherwise, we wouldn't have moved away from it. It is what it is. And I'm sufficiently entertained. I'm a very happy customer of Instagram. It's a fantastic product. I'm excited about it. Having said that, Of course it creates this opportunity to build these networks where you have your own captive audience and then can monetize that audience.”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The power of that closed, more intimate network where we engage directly with someone we admire, a voice of authority, someone that inspires us. There's a real need for it today because going back to the social algorithm, they are really not about following as much as they are about entertainment today. I think talent or creators have realized on the social platforms that they don't really own their audience anymore. You don't really own your following. I'll give you a challenge. You can do it after. Go and look at three different artists that say one has 5 million followers, one has 20 million, and I'll give you a name of someone has, let's say, 300 to 400 million. You'll find the exact same amount of engagement. Has that statistically possible?”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm very excited about the creator economy. I think we are in the early innings of the creator economy. I'm an investor in several companies, but one that I have been a little bit more involved with is one called Passes, which was founded by Lucy Gu, who was co-founder of Scalai. She's built a platform for creators to directly monetize their audience, their fan base. And I think that's incredibly powerful. I think we're in the beginning of talent building and monetizing their own networks. It can be a network around fly fishing. It could be a great chef. It could be an athlete. It could be a pop star. So it can be a 1,000 members. It can be millions of members. But I really believe in the past.”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a famous one. I would think it's one of my more trusted sources of information of what's going on in our economy today. When there's critical events happening, I turn to that chat group. I find it highly informative. I respect the voices, ultimately the individuals in that group. That's a power of a micro network, but it's incredibly important. Obviously, we always had micro networks, our community, our church, our basketball team, friend group networks have always existed. But these larger closed networks with a thousand members or a million members, but it's closed. They have a lot of power. I think Reddit is emerging as a platform with a tremendous amount of power today.”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“See it in chat groups. WhatsApp has emerged as a much more powerful tool of information sharing. One chat group that sometime has the one with one.”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Makes a lot of sense Of course, it's going to happen. And ironically, the way we watch television now is we watch it over a period of time. The whole premise of the movie Mountain Head, and I'm not going to give away any spoilers. Don't worry. But it's the premise about four tech founders in a remote hilltop house. One has just made this AI tools available where we cannot tell what's real and what's not. And the other person has exactly what you're saying. He has the technology that can validate or invalidate content. That is essentially the premise of the movie. It's a satire, just like Dr. Strangelove was a satire, of a dark future. However, it's hard not to think that it's incredibly important to validate information that we're getting, increasing this.”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. It's the only way to go. The power of the individual is only going to strengthen in this current culture. There's no doubt about it. However, we probably have to ready ourselves for a time where if Elon Musk says it, we will be debating if he actually indeed did say it. Unfortunately, as a result of deep fakes, we are probably going to be skeptical of everything we see soon enough. And I believe in the power of networks. I believe in closed networks. We follow individuals and we will make sure that they are saying it and we'll take their words as gospel. I think it's already there.”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Twofolds one, you don't necessarily trust what you read, even from a trusted news source. That could be misguided, but that's how people feel. I'm not talking about what is fact and what is not fact. I'm talking about how most Americans feel about what they read. They're skeptical. We have gravitated to individual voices as a source of information, but also as a source of the singular truth. You can be a disciple of Elon Musk. Or you can be a disciple of AOC and you're far more likely to believe either of those two than the Washington Post.”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Close right to see it. I have no idea what an album cover is of any artist in the last five years. Things can be incredibly important for an hour in our culture today. I can't change that. The only thing I can do is I can increase the output.”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We take in an enormous amount of messages in our daily lives. When we were kids, we took in a fraction, not a percent even of what we were taking in today. When I say the Coke Pepsi challenge, you know what I'm talking about? Have you seen a Coke Pepsi challenge? They might not have done it for 30 years. I have no idea when the Coke Pepsi challenge even happened.”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have never spent too much time worrying about the ROI of one single opportunity. I think if you do, two things can happen. You can be right and positively surprised and next time you make a mistake or you can be disappointed leading you to think that you're overspent and therefore pull back and not do the next one. I come back to a little bit, wouldn't this be cool to do? Am I proud of the result? Am I excited about it? Do we think it represented the brand well? Think those things are more important? And again, just the pace of output.”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A company grows, there needs to be disciplined, there needs to be a sense of structure, it needs to have a sense of process, they're necessary, but if you're not very, very careful, they'll kill what made you special to begin with. I think that's true for any sector. What about the process?”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Build that muscle, you build it over time. It's not hard in the beginning. Small companies can do remarkable things. Every founder would tell you that what the first 12, 20 people can accomplish is unbelievable. And what the next thousand can accomplish is disappointing.”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is as good of a process to determine what to do as anything else. It's just that our culture and especially when we are responsible founders and executives, we love the idea that we can control an unpredictable outcome. We can't. If we could, every LTV to CAC model that you ever saw over the past 15 years what I worked out, And let me tell you, I haven't seen one.”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As a team, as a company, as a culture, what do we want to see right now? And then we try to make it happen and we're not trying to hit it out the park every single time. If you like baseball, Shariotani, greatest baseball player probably ever lived, even though I'm sure that's debatable. He doesn't hit the home run every time he steps up to bat. That's us. We don't hit the home run every time we step up to bat, but we hit them often enough.”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The two girls that were all a little bit quietly excited about were our Valentine's couple. And we took them out of the show. I think going by what are we interested in? What do we want to see? What are we excited about? You can ask me right now this afternoon what I want for dinner. I will have a pretty good idea of what I fancy. Public culture is the same thing. I know right now what I want to see. Then the only thing stopping us is our ability to attract the talent or the opportunity to do it for us in that moment. Then you have to take a lot of chances. Not everything is going to hit. We had Sabrina Carpenter one week before she went number one with Espresso. I wish I was one week later. We are really working with”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly But when we featured Usher, we knew he was doing the halftime show. When we had the Italian girls that played a pivotal role in the season for us of White Lotus, it was clear that they were the breakouts. So what's the decision-making process? It's very simple. I love white lotus. Wouldn't it be cool?”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But imagine if we operated six weeks in advance. Well, six weeks in advance. I know it's going to be nominated for the Oscars. I know he's likely going to be up at the Grammys. I know that the next season of White Lotus is coming out. I know when the CC Finale is going to be. So when you're operating much more in the immediacy of popular culture, your chance of being effective increases exponentially. So if you think about some of the stuff that we've done at Skims, last year for the MBA, the face of Skims was Shajil Alexander. That was his breakout year. This year was Donovan Mitchell. Last year, we featured Patrick Mahomes and family over the holidays. We didn't know he would win the Super Bowl.”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No one really cares, but it's also one year later. It's like if my wife asked me what I want for dinner on first day on a Monday, I don't know what I want for dinner on Thursday. It's Monday. Popular culture is dairy. It goes off. The first thing we did was first go at it. Not everything we do is going to be successful. Not everything is going to track. We don't optimize for what is going to work and not work. That sounds simple. Maybe counterintuitive. But if you want to be in the site guys, it's about doing rather than not doing. It's about action rather than inaction. So you do more rather than do less. The second thing is just the decision making process. You can't operate six months in advance, a year in advance. It's impossible.”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've got to put that to Kim because she's a participant in popular culture, not an analyst or someone who is trying to figure it out. She is it naturally. Are dispositions different? Corporate America looks at what they do and they overanalyze it and they invest time and money in research and decision making and to build consensus about who to endorse and what to do. They try to create content that everybody can be happy with and sign off. And then they put it out in this world.”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Platform allowed other athletes that shared his competitive spirit and athletes that were connected to culture and you kind of know what the Jordan athlete is about. The Jordan brand is inspired and built upon Michael Jordan's importance in popular culture in that era and has become a platform in pop culture for 40 years as a result of it. I'm paraphrasing slightly, but I believe that 20 years ago about 14, 15% of American teenagers wanted to be a professional athlete today, that number is more like 3%. But almost 20% of American teenagers today wants to be a creator or an influencer. Well, for you tell me, isn't it? Kim Kardashian, the Michael Jordan of the influencer generation, I would say she is. She deserves to have a brand that is inspired by that and a brand that will live.”
2025-07-01 · Invest Like the Best · Jens Grede - Building SKIMS - [Invest Like the Best, EP.431] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source