Julie Wainwright has taken two corporations public, a fairly unimaginable feat by any customary. Yet in her new memoir, Time to Get Real, she presents readers one thing much more beneficial: a blunt have a look at the messy realities of management. Wainwright shares the sorts of robust truths that many high-achieving CEOs can relate to however not often focus on publicly, together with the aftermath of what many would think about her first main setback, which was shutting down Pets.com through the 2000 market crash.
If you’re of a sure age, you undoubtedly keep in mind it. The on-line pet provides startup had grow to be immediately recognizable due to its memorable sock puppet mascot and catchy slogan, “Because pets can’t drive.” But what appeared like only a fleeting second within the dot-com bubble’s burst would forged a shadow over Wainwright’s profession for practically a decade. “When I might speak to recruiters, it was like, ‘No one’s going to rent you anymore,’” Wainwright stated in an interview with this editor earlier this week.
It got here as a shock, on condition that Wainwright’s profession trajectory initially appeared unstoppable. After slicing her enamel at Clorox, she rose via tech corporations within the ‘90s when feminine management within the sector was exceedingly uncommon. As CEO of Berkeley Systems and later the net video retailer Reel.com, she labored “tons of hours” however was completely happy and, by her telling, succeeding, together with rising Reel.com’s income from $3 million to $25 million — a time throughout which the corporate was offered to Hollywood Video. “I simply operated higher with no boss,” she stated.
Then got here the collapse that might have completely derailed many careers. In 2000, Wainwright took Pets.com public, solely to close it down later that very same yr through the dot-com bubble burst. The skilled blow was exacerbated by a private one: she says that on the exact same day she knowledgeable staff of the corporate’s closure, her husband requested for a divorce.
“My work is gone, I’m getting a divorce, and I don’t have kids,” Wainwright, then 42, recollects pondering as she confronted what felt like whole life collapse. Making issues worse, the media protection was “extremely destructive and intrusive,” to the purpose that she says days after the corporate’s closure, reporters confirmed up at her doorstep.
Wainwright describes what adopted as a sort of lengthy winter, the place she was solely provided roles main turnaround efforts at failing corporations. But that crossroads led to a exceptional second act. In 2010, she based The RealReal, serving to within the course of to pioneer the luxurious consignment market on-line. Like plenty of founders, Wainwright first arrange the corporate out of her own residence, however it quickly outgrew her front room, and right now, it processes many tons of of 1000’s of various luxurious gadgets every month that it goals to promote inside 90 days out of its greater than 1.2 million sq. toes of warehouse area and operations facilities. It’s additionally a publicly traded firm; in her second journey to Wall Street, in 2019, Wainwright took the outfit via the standard Initial Public Offering course of.
Unfortunately, this triumphant comeback has its personal harsh chapter. In 2022, Wainwright was abruptly pushed out of The RealReal by board members she had really helpful – one other twist she doesn’t shrink back from sharing. Instead, she names names within the e book, and earlier this week, she described the transfer as a “energy play” by an investor who “didn’t get his cash out of the corporate and thought he may run the corporate higher.”
Wainwright — who absolutely helps the corporate’s present CEO (she was the corporate’s first rent) — remains to be pissed off. She famous in dialog that “no founder is ever going to say they have to be shot and eliminated,” and it’s that actually that makes the e book – and Wainwright herself — so refreshing. In the company world, the place folks usually spin narratives to make themselves look bulletproof, Wainwright is a straight shooter; if she doesn’t like one thing, she isn’t going to carry again her punches. If somebody spins the story in a different way than she sees it, she’ll name it out. Where she messes up, she says so.
Even higher about this memoir — on this reader’s opinion — is Wainwright’s capacity to supply not simply private revelations however sensible knowledge. She walks readers via her determination to bonus her gross sales workers a sure method, and shares her learnings a couple of leadership-evaluation quadrant she gleaned from McKinsey executives, together with the conclusion she had employed one of many worst sorts: a “dumb aggressive” exec, that means, in her phrases, somebody whose “must bully and coerce and to be on prime supersede their talents.”
There’s additionally an fascinating new chapter unfolding. Wainwright is constant her entrepreneurial journey with Ahara, a vitamin firm that’s creating customized dietary suggestions primarily based on genetics and particular person wants.
You can discover our full dialog right here, through TechCrunch’s StrictlyVC Download podcast. In the meantime, in the event you’re desirous about a compelling learn that’s each memoir and guide, providing founders one thing way more beneficial than idealized success tales, you may decide up the e book right here.
Said Wainwright once we spoke, “I personally wrote it for entrepreneurs to provide them a practical view and hopefully encourage them and, you realize, possibly they’ll suppose twice and never make the errors I made.”
