Julie Wainwright has taken two firms public, a fairly unimaginable feat by any commonplace. But in her new memoir, Time to Get Actual, she provides readers one thing much more helpful: a blunt take a look at the messy realities of management. Wainwright shares the sorts of powerful truths that many high-achieving CEOs can relate to however not often talk about publicly, together with the aftermath of what many would contemplate her first main setback, which was shutting down Pets.com throughout the 2000 market crash.
In the event you’re of a sure age, you undoubtedly bear in mind it. The web pet provides startup had turn out to be immediately recognizable due to its memorable sock puppet mascot and catchy slogan, “As a result of pets can’t drive.” However what appeared like only a fleeting second within the dot-com bubble’s burst would forged a shadow over Wainwright’s profession for almost a decade. “After I would discuss to recruiters, it was like, ‘Nobody’s going to rent you anymore,’” Wainwright mentioned in an interview with this editor earlier this week.
It got here as a shock, provided that Wainwright’s profession trajectory initially appeared unstoppable. After reducing her tooth at Clorox, she rose via tech firms within the ‘90s when feminine management within the sector was exceedingly uncommon. As CEO of Berkeley Techniques and later the net video retailer Reel.com, she labored “tons of hours” however was joyful 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 bought to Hollywood Video. “I simply operated higher with out a boss,” she mentioned.
Then got here the collapse that may have completely derailed many careers. In 2000, Wainwright took Pets.com public, solely to close it down later that very same 12 months throughout the dot-com bubble burst. The skilled blow was exacerbated by a private one: she says that on the exact same day she knowledgeable workers 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 damaging 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 supplied roles main turnaround efforts at failing firms. However that crossroads led to a outstanding 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, but it surely quickly outgrew her front room, and in the present day, it processes many a whole bunch of hundreds of various luxurious gadgets every month that it goals to promote inside 90 days out of its greater than 1.2 million sq. ft of warehouse house and operations facilities. It’s additionally a publicly traded firm; in her second journey to Wall Road, in 2019, Wainwright took the outfit via the normal IPO course of.
Sadly, 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 draw back from sharing. As an alternative, 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 might run the corporate higher.”
Wainwright — who absolutely helps the corporate’s present CEO (she was the corporate’s first rent) — continues 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. Within the company world, the place individuals 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. The place she messes up, she says so.
Even higher about this memoir — on this reader’s opinion — is Wainwright’s capability to supply not simply private revelations however sensible knowledge. She walks readers via her resolution to bonus her gross sales employees a sure manner, and shares her learnings a few leadership-evaluation quadrant she gleaned from McKinsey executives, together with the conclusion she had employed one of many worst varieties: a “dumb aggressive” exec, that means, in her phrases, somebody whose “have to bully and coerce and to be on prime supersede their talents.”
There’s additionally an fascinating new chapter unfolding. Wainwright is continuous her entrepreneurial journey with Ahara, a vitamin firm that’s creating personalised dietary suggestions based mostly on genetics and particular person wants.
Yow will discover our full dialog right here, by way of TechCrunch’s StrictlyVC Obtain podcast. Within the meantime, in the event you’re occupied with a compelling learn that’s each memoir and guide, providing founders one thing much more helpful than idealized success tales, you may choose up the e book right here.
Stated Wainwright once we spoke, “I personally wrote it for entrepreneurs to offer them a practical view and hopefully encourage them and, you already know, perhaps they’ll suppose twice and never make the errors I made.”