Julie Wainwright (Founder, The RealReal) on Facing the Competition and Taking Companies Public
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Hi, it's Tracy DiNunzio. I'm an entrepreneur and investor, and I'm also guest hosting Money Rehab this week while Nicole is on maternity leave, sort of. Today I'm talking to Julie Wainwright, who's one of the most accomplished female tech founders of our generation. She's been on all the lists. Inc.'s Female Founders 100, Fast Company's Most Creative People, Forbes 40 Over 40, and

Her amazing career included stints at Clorox, Real.com, and a roller coaster ride as the CEO of Pets.com during the dot-com crash. After that, she started The RealReal, a luxury resale marketplace where you probably buy discounted Louis Vuitton and hopefully also sell things from your closet. And you're probably thinking, wow, that's an impressive resume. I'd hate to have to be the guy who goes up against her.

And well, I was that guy. My company, TradeZ, was in the exact same category and was a competitor to The RealReal. So today, Julie and I have some real talk about what it was like competing in a high growth category. We give advice for entrepreneurs starting companies and building in a competitive space. Julie talks about the pros and cons of taking a company public and the future of fashion.

And we get a very special guest appearance from Nicole at the very end, making sure that Money Rehabbers get all their questions answered. So you'll hear that at the end, but let's start at the beginning. Julie Wainwright, welcome to Money Rehab.

Hi, Tracy. It's good to see you. It's fun being here. So Julie, you've had an incredible career with many acts and we're going to talk about all of them, including your latest business, Sahara Med. But I want to start by saying you're one of the most successful women in tech business.

Full stop. I don't know if that's true. I think so. It depends on how you measure it. But yes, I've had success. You have had a lot of success. You've run multiple public companies. You've been a founder, not just a CEO, but a founder. What do you think makes a great entrepreneur great?

I could ask you the same thing, but I honestly think it's, first of all, you have to propensity to take risks. You have to be able to operate in gray areas. You have to come in with a very strong point of view and execute and then right away iterate if it's not going to work. So you have to come in strong and hot and then say, okay, I was wrong moving over this way.

I think you have to recognize what talent is in other people because no one does it by themselves. You have to have the ability to raise capital if you're in the venture capital world. Certainly, that's the world I know, which means taking a lot of rejections and not taking it personally and learning from the interactions. Even if you learn, I never want to be that person who you just talked to. You have to have a lot of energy. Yes.

You also have to decide that's what you want to do. And what I mean by that is there is no work-life balance when you're an entrepreneur. If you're doing it, you're doing it. You have to be in. You have to be committed.

And you have to see it through. And what I find fascinating, because I'm just talking to entrepreneurs all the time, if they bring up, I want to work-life balance, I'm just like, why would I give you my money to make your life better? I'm going to give you my money to make more money. So you also have to recognize if you take money, you have an obligation to the investors. Right.

Yeah, I think you're right. And as much as we would all love work-life balance, I think we both know from experience, you start a company, you owe it to your employees, your investors, and your customers to do everything in your power to make the company better all the time. So you don't really get balance during those years.

What do you think it was about your life or your personality that made you feel like that kind of life without balance with, you know, what made you suited to it? Sure. I think the first thing is I started my career. I'm going to go way back. So I started my career in brand management at Clorox and I was the second undergraduate they ever hired. And I was there three years and I got promoted online.

Once about ready to get promoted again. And when I looked above me, I didn't want to be those people. You weren't after the big corporate job. It wasn't even that. I don't think I was that savvy. I was young. I think it was more about every woman in the brand organization tended to go into HR when they left brand. So none of them were general managers. They just looked like old people.

grumpy men to me. Think of it though, I'm like 25 years old, not even 25 because I started early. Remember, I'm the second undergraduate they ever hired.

I'm living in California. In the meantime, my former boss's wife, former boss at Clorox's wife calls me and says, why don't you join the tech world? I know this is the future because the guy in finance had smuggled in an Apple II and run VisiCalc, the predecessor to all spreadsheets.

and did what I was doing by hand in seconds. I'm like, this is the world. This is where I should be. It was exciting. It was the future. And when I looked above me, I just saw men that were most likely going to, as I got promoted, put me in HR. And I'm like, that's great for people in HR. I didn't see myself in that. I saw myself creating something.

And that comes from my childhood because my dad ran his own art and design studio. Both my parents were artists and they created products for other people. He did Flintstone vitamins, bottles and packaging, promotional materials, and

Chevrolet ads, Kohler annual reports, Midwest type of big brand, but we made our own product. So we had this really bad wine called the JNS Wine Line. And then my dad threw a tennis tournament every year and it was called the Wainwright Invitational and he printed up shirts before it was hard when you had a silk screen and it had a big brand, it had a family brand. So I just came from a place where you were creating things

And then when I saw that I had an opportunity to create in the future, which for me was tech, I felt I have to go there. That's the future. And by the way, the people when I joined that company were sort of my age. So we were inexperienced. We didn't know what we didn't know.

And we really wanted to be part of whatever was going to happen in the future with the personal computer. So I saw that early on. I know that was a lot, but I would say my nature is toward taking risks and creating and not being held back by someone else's idea of my success.

Like you can't go at anyone else's pace. You have to go at whatever pace you feel. Just think about this. You're starting a job and every time you say, oh, I'm going to get promoted to that, but then they're going to want me to go here, but I'm really this person.

Do you think it's changed since then? No. Oh, I think Clorox is better because, but do I think it's changed? Look at the numbers say it has, it's, let's just talk about change. It's not linear. All right. It's not linear, but I would say that there is a positive arc and I'm not at Clorox now, but I would say in general change in corporations, change in our laws, big

Big changes are not a linear thing, but there's more laws to protect women. There's more laws to protect women's wages.

When I was there, there wasn't even a sexual harassment law yet. It was a long time ago, and women were getting sexually harassed, and we talked to each other about it and knew who to avoid. But if you went to HR, nothing was going to happen. So you had that experience of being sexually harassed at work early in your career? Well, not just me. Yes. Every woman you knew had that experience. I would say, yes, but we knew who the problem people were, and we knew how to stay away from them.

And we also knew that HR wouldn't do anything. So if you just think about the world I entered into, has it changed? Yes, I think it has. Has it been linear? No, it has not. It stays the same and stagnates for a while and then there's a movement like me too. It goes backwards. I would say two steps forward, one step backwards. When I think naively, I thought it would be linear. And when I started, I didn't really realize that women...

we're second class citizens and it was new for us to be in the workforce because I thought, of course we can do it. We're smart. We're ambitious. So one of the big reasons that organizations form like this where there's disproportionate power with the men and some unfairness and sexual harassment tendencies is because historically the leadership has always been men. And that's usually because women don't raise as much capital

to build big new companies. Oh, now you're back in the VC world. When you look at venture capital, the percent of money going to women has actually declined. Yes. And I don't see that changing because there's now a wave that where inclusion or at least the semblance of inclusion has gone the other way and perhaps it swung too far. Now, the venture capital world is still very male. It's changed a little bit, but the big funds are still run by men. But you

know, hope all you need is a couple of women doing great things. And then things do change. It's not impossible. I don't want to, obviously I raise money. You raise money. I think in my lifetime, I've raised over a billion dollars. I added it up for fun. It's crazy. It is. If I can do it, anyone can. I went to Purdue. I didn't go to Stanford or Harvard. Same. I went to an art school.

So you are the outlier. That is not normal. Let's talk about so you've raised over a billion dollars in your career. Let's zoom in a little bit on the phase of your career where our paths crossed when you founded the real real. Can you tell the audience? I feel like everybody knows what the real real is. But for those who don't, can you tell everybody what the real real is?

Simply stated, The RealReal is the place where you buy and sell luxury consignment. On a more sophisticated level, the company was set up to provide a lot of service to people for getting their product into. It's not a self-posting site. The RealReal consolidates product. There's at least three different op centers. At least it did when I was there. I left two years ago. And

And at those op centers, things are inspected, they're authenticated, and the RealReal controls the pricing. Yes. And it takes things like fine jewelry and watches. The largest group of gemologists, I think, in the world work at the RealReal. Handbags, clothing, a little bit of art and home. And so for men and women, the fashion, that concept was, when I introduced it, was completely new.

No one had actually focused on the luxury end of the market. No one had taken possession unless you were in a brick and mortar store. No one had leveraged technology to help set the right pricing. And authentication was an ad hoc consideration. Yes. And I heard you say it was not a self-listing site. For anybody who doesn't know,

I had a website called TradeZ. It was a direct competitor to the RealReal. We were really, I think, two of the three largest in the luxury resale space. And it was a self-listing site. So on our site, our sellers listed their item directly, sort of like you would on eBay. And we virtually authenticated. So early on, our companies were on a similar trajectory. And then the RealReal pulled ahead.

Yes. Why do you think that was? My vision was different than your vision, to be honest. I had access to capital. And I always focused on getting the product in and didn't worry about demand. So focused on getting all the supplies. And I built up a big infrastructure. And I do think that the luxury culture

customer and consigner wanted a level of service that your model couldn't deliver. I know that you think the stores supercharged us. They didn't, didn't. I have to say the stores were, when we first opened a store, which I- By the stores you mean, so the Real Real had brick and mortar stores. And we opened our first store in Soho, I think in 2017 after a pop-up.

And the pop-up in Manhattan did change perception. Yes. It did change people's perceptions. I thought so, too. Oh, it was in the data. So the data showed that we changed people's perception. And how do I know that? People that had previously shopped only online and then went into the store, not only did their average order size go up. Yeah.

Their propensity to consign and buy went up. So it had a halo effect. And then the Soho store after the pop-up was next, same thing. The LA store on Melrose also rose.

Big boon. So those were local things that happened. And I remember reading something at the time that said that for people who shopped online, if they were within a five mile radius of a store, their conversion rate went up. Was that true also? Their average order size went up. Average order value went up. So I think the biggest problem, the company was supply limited. It's always constantly about getting new product. But having said that-

Their propensity to consign went up. It made it even easier. So we would come to your house, but then you could also drop it off. So if you're looking at... In cities where you have dense populations... Exactly. It's just easy. It's easy. It totally makes sense. So yes, it did change the economics, but it also costs more money. And it created...

Here's the interesting thing. When you post a thing online, it's also in the store. So it created a technical challenge. Yes. It added another level of urgency. But the infrastructure to get those stores going was not trivial. The tradeoff wasn't clear when we first got started and the model had to evolve. Hold on to your wallets. Money Rehab will be right back. And now for some more Money Rehab.

I think it's easy to look at a business like The RealReal or TradeZ and think, oh, they're doing e-commerce.

But it's not e-commerce. It's a two-sided marketplace. It's a marketplace. Which is 10 times more complex. So a skew of one business is really hard to run. Especially when you're taking possession. Yes, which we didn't do. We had other challenges like when a seller shipped an item directly to a buyer, what if they didn't put the right item in the box? Yeah, so that we were trying to solve for that not happening, which doesn't mean we didn't miss ship things. But the goal was...

If you're paying $400 for something or any money, really, that's a luxury good. And you expect to get the right thing at the right time and to make sure it's authentic. The other thing we did is,

We got people to think about recirculating their goods because if you bought it on the real rail, you should be able to resell it when you're done with it. In theory, you can have a free, like a net neutral cost wardrobe. Very close. Depends how long you sit on it and how bad the usage is. But yes. Yes. And also I think the real rail and trade suit before we sold it can be very addictive because it's skew of one. You have that timer on the shopping cart, which I know you came up with.

early and it's brilliant. It gives you a sense of, oh, I'm going to lose this if I don't get it. Do you want to know why we did that? Why? Well, all right. Another skill for an entrepreneur, you're always solving the most important problems. And one of the things we wanted to see happen were sales. No kidding. And people were hoarding.

So literally they would put, someone would get on the site early and they would put 60 or 80 things on their cart. And they would leave them in the cart for hours. And we're like, and then, and especially so if it's still a problem, you still don't want that to happen, obviously. But in the beginning, it's,

We were running sales three times a week with only 60 or 70 products. I remember this. It was like, you were like the first to do a drop. Now that's the whole thing. But I remember when the real, real was, it was like, oh, it's a real, real deal. That was by necessity, not by design because we didn't have enough product. We wanted to aggregate the product under themes and make sure that we actually had enough product to execute on that theme. And

And so if people come to the site and there's no product to buy, everything's on hold, then you don't have customers. So right away, literally within one day of doing it, I'm like, we got to put a timer on that cart.

And it never changed. I would have written a script that just said, sweep everything into my cart and leave it there. Something was going, people were doing that. Yeah. So we're like, we will never have a sale. But then they hoard everything. Then the customers were gone and they buy one thing. We're like, oh, this is not good.

Okay, so I have a fun question for you, considering that we spent the better part of a decade as leaders of organizations in the same category and as competitors. How did you think about the competition? I didn't. Never worried about you guys at all. And there's so many reasons for it because everyone thought they were a competitor. No one was doing what we were doing.

So no one was taking possession. No one, the company at one point, I don't know where they are now under me, we had 450 people in the field picking up products. No one had the capability to open stores because you didn't take possession.

possession. No one was really doing the level fine jewelry and watches were a key component of the business. About 34, 35% of the sales, you can not authenticate a piece of jewelry online and nor can you understand the jewelry, nor can you really authenticate a watch. And if you think you can, you're probably selling fakes. So our product mix was different and,

Our service level was different. Our ability to market via our stores was different. And I always thought I was in competition with ourselves and it was a capital intensive business. And how do I actually continue to raise capital to keep the business going?

So it was not thinking about the competition a way that you operated throughout your career? No, not at all. This was a unique offering in a unique space. You have to be aware of the competition, but we had a moat around the business and it was always ours to lose. How much money did you raise for the RealReal? I'd have to add it up, but it was in the hundreds of millions. Very few women in tech.

raise hundreds of millions of dollars and then you eventually had an IPO you took the company public. That is also very rare. I think when we did it an executive at Nasdaq said you're the 23rd woman founder to take a company public ever. Isn't that sad? I know a handful of women who've taken companies public and the one thing they all have in common is that when you shut the door and you start to talk about what was it like raising enough capital and pushing a company through all those phases of growth they

They have a lot of horror stories. So will you tell us some of your behind closed doors horror stories about fundraising and building your company? What are things that you haven't talked about publicly? Oh, I think you're gonna have to wait for the book. The book's coming out in June. The book is coming out in June of next year. It's called Time to Get Real. Okay. And it's right now,

It's with a publisher in their legal department. And let me tell you, my focus was a little different in writing this. I wanted to walk people through how the RealReal was built year on year.

So it has this sense of urgency. And then I did have to weave in lessons, but I wove in those lessons as I was learning that. So I walked through it and it's a fast paced read. My favorite book of all times for business is Shoe Dog. And the reason I love Shoe Dog is I love it. I love it for multiple reasons. One is I thought I knew the story. I didn't. I don't know why I thought I did. And you felt the struggle.

of getting Nike to become Nike. And I felt like I was along the ride. I was in the car even. - So that's what we can expect. - I hope so. And not until June of next year. It is coming out. There are a lot of stories. I can tell you a fun one because remember we were talking about doing drops. We were doing drops because we didn't have enough products. In the early days, we were in a strip mall that was really a bad strip mall, but I needed to rent a warehouse.

And I got a railroad card style warehouse. So you walk in and this crunchy brown carpet that was really gross crunched when you walked on it into the area where we processed goods. And then the middle was the photography area. There were little storage alcoves off of that. But in order to take the right photos on the mannequin,

The photographer had to open the one door to the bathroom and step into the bathroom to take pictures of the photos. The back area had a roll-up door and was a proper warehouse with a loft. But the whole thing was maybe 3,000 square feet. And this is how we got started. I thought, well, we have to start somewhere. And I was floating the money. And I'm like, OK, I'm going to do this. All right, so we get it going.

No VC money yet. All right. Just friends and family. No, no VC money. Angel investors. One who was amazing entrepreneur himself. So we're working in this and,

And we realized I had this idea where I need to get to aggregators of products. Who aggregates products? Stylists, because they know a lot of people and those people buy a lot from them. So I went down to LA and developed a stylist program, promoted that, went to New York, found stylists, pulled them together, promoted the program, tried some direct mail. And I'm thinking, this is great. We're going to get tons of product rolling in. And of course, nothing's happening. Right.

The program didn't seem to be effective. We weren't getting calls. We'd be checking in. What year was this? 2011. So no product.

And then we're running the sales. It's going into the summer. And I'm like, we are so screwed because everyone we knew had given this product. We tried some direct card marketing that was percolating in through the post office, literally a postcard explaining the service. Did you choose zip codes with ultra high net worth people? Well, we did, but we didn't. If someone in LA, we didn't have a team down here yet. We had to fly someone down to get it and drive a U-Haul back.

All right, so we're really-- Scrappy early days. And we get a call from a stylist. And I don't think I can mention the celebrity, but she said-- Oh, come on, Julie. Tell us. I don't think I can because she did not want the sale public when she did it. She subsequently did do public sales on the RealReal. But we get a call. X person wants to clean out her warehouses.

Warehouse is. Yes. Was it Celine Dion? I'm not. We're not going to go through the documentary about Celine Dion. Warehouses of costume. It turns out it's the thing in fashion. All right. Not just celebrities.

And can you, this literally got the call at three o'clock in the afternoon. Can you be there tomorrow morning? I'll text you the address. I'm like, yes, always. Yes. It has to be. Yes. Employee. Number one, Rati Levac. At that time, she's now the, she's now the president. Okay. All right. So flew down and with it's an intern. All right. The next morning. So we had a one in Georgia. All right. So Georgia and Rati fly down and,

Rent a U-Haul, which I'm sure Rachi will be mad I say this, but she's not the best driver. At least she wasn't at the time. Oh, I get that. Nicole always tells me I'm not the best driver, too. So her car back in San Francisco was beating up. I'm like, oh, I don't know about her driving this U-Haul. Anyway, they go to this person's warehouse. And I'm trying to talk to them all day. They're like, yeah, there's a warehouse. This person then decided she wanted to try on everything one more time before consigning. Of course. Of course.

You can't be sure you want to let go of it until you do a personal fashion show. A pickup that probably would have taken eight hours was now extended to two and a half days. Wow. Which meant I had to call the intern who was a high school girl's mom and say, do you mind if Georgia spends the night in LA? Did she have to miss school? She was a summer break, but she was underage. So I had to get him a hotel room.

And I had to like, and then all of a sudden that they go in. And then I said, do you want me to fly someone down there? Cause I'm answering the phone. I'm skewing product. I'm doing everything. I can't leave. Someone's got to be at the office. And remember, this is very early days and she's like, send someone down. So I sent my boyfriend down. He's driving it back. All right. It just wasn't that great.

So they're calling. It was a total punk. She gets there, opens the U-Haul. Tons of boxes. Tons. But nothing good? Everything was good. Not a lot of handbags, but everything was. No, she was totally punking me. But here's what happened. And this person's so little. It was like a double zero, zero. Turns out a lot of people wear that size. It's got us through the summer.

That stylist gave us more product from our clients. Another one did. Then we put someone in LA and there it started. We said it's more complicated. Yes, because we were a marketplace. We couldn't just call up a vendor and say, I want more. No, you're constantly managing the supply and the demand, the sellers and the buyers. It's such a complicated business. Hold onto your wallets. Money Rehab will be right back. And now for some more Money Rehab.

It's so funny to hear you talking about these kind of scrappy early days because after that phase, after you had a warehouse with a crusty carpet. Oh, so bad. And the French guy stepping into the toilet to photograph things. So after all of that, the business grew. Like you say, you raised hundreds of millions of dollars. You took the company public. What did it feel like to ring the bell? Oh, you know, there really isn't that thing. It's a simulation. So that's too bad. I didn't know.

Yeah, I mean, look, we were with NASDAQ. We weren't on the New York Stock Exchange. You hit a button, but it's already done. It's like you're doing it. It doesn't really. No, but I'll tell you what's fun. Confetti comes down. So it does make you feel good. That makes it hurt a little bit. Yeah. And everyone in the company had stock.

Anyone that had been with the company five years more were part of the IPO and were there with me, standing with me. And honestly, they said they have never seen an IPO like this.

Really? In what way? Well, first of all, it was inclusive. All right. So people had their kids there. People had been there for a long time, whether you were in the ops center working an hourly job or you were an executive. Also, I'm sure we were the most stylish. There's no doubt in my mind we were the most stylish. Oh my goodness, there was never so much Gucci on the Nasdaq stage. No, there wasn't. And you know, when you walk in, you've been into Nasdaq, right? All right. So when you walk in,

They have the fraternity of all the people that have actually ever done this, shots of all the men. And I'm like, let's get my picture up there next time I walk in there because there were no women on the fraternity board. Really?

Really? So on that particular stock exchange, was that the one that had 23 women in it? No, that was overall. It was anybody taking a company public. Wow. But then there's been women since then. So that's good. Yeah, yeah. It does seem like more women's companies are getting to IPO, even though, like you said... Not lately, but you're right. And then we had like Bumble come out, I think, right after that. And that did well, women-led. But before me was Katrina. Yeah.

Katrina Lake with Stitch Fix. Yep. And then also my friends over at Figs had a great idea. Figs is a great product. Wonderful. So we're seeing it more and more and more and more. A little bit. Yeah. Yeah. A little bit. A little cracks. A little cracks. Yeah. And so you took the company public. It is the greatest victory for a founder to do that. It's fabulous. From zero to IP. Well, all right. Let's just take a step back. If you take money from people, which I took a lot of money.

You have to have a vehicle for them to get it out. Totally. It's as simple as that. You either have to sell the company or take it public. That's it. You only have two paths. Or if you shut it down, you're sort of in hot water for a long time. Yeah, that's not the pathway. That's a bad end. So I find founders, they don't always understand that you are obligated.

to actually return money once you take it in. So no one was going to buy the real, real. So our path was going public. And my goal was when the company got to at least a billion dollars in top line sales, we should be ready because it was becoming highly predictable.

And we were. That year we hit a billion. 2019, we hit a billion in top line sales. It was predictable. Everything was totally normal after 2019, right? COVID hit. Yes. And so you were still running the company. Now it's a public company, which means that you have to report to the whole world how you're performing, right? It's different than when you're a private company. Nobody knows your business. Except you still report. You still have a board of directors. But when you're public...

you report publicly. The mechanism, in my view, isn't that different. If you're running a company, you're still having board meetings, preparing financials, reporting. You better have checks and balances on those financials and you're reporting into the board of directors. Yes. Right. Yes. You just have fewer eyes on you. If you have a bad quarter and you're private, your circle knows about a

but the whole world talks about it. Yeah, everyone talks about it. But you're right. I agree. I'm just being a little cantankerous, but I don't disagree. But look, the RealReal was growing 40% in January of 2020 versus a year ago, same period a year ago. February, same number, 40% versus a year ago.

March, San Francisco and New York were early people to force shutdowns. I remember. And March went from first, I think, 10. I think they shut it. In fact, I know they shut it down on March 12th. First 10 days growing 42%. Which is a good month for seasonality. It's very good. Very good. People are in the mood to start thinking about spring and they're thinking again. Soon from that day, that month started.

of March ended at minus 46% versus a year ago. Because your warehouse is shut down, right? So you couldn't physically ship product. We couldn't. No, demand dried up. Demand came back in April, but it was bigger than that. We couldn't pick up product. And we were allowed to operate in New Jersey.

Which was your biggest warehouse?

New York was the single largest market for the RealReal. And we couldn't pick up product. When you think about a marketplace, let's just talk about dynamics. When you have buyers and sellers, you're not a way station. You are a way station, not a warehouse. So if your product isn't selling, then your sellers are unhappy. And then you may not have the right buyers. But if your products don't sell for your sellers, they aren't going to give you more product.

So you need to have a rhythm and the real world developed a very specific rhythm through optimal pricing, not best pricing, optimal pricing. Where sellers could expect that. Within 90 days, 90% plus would sell through. And then COVID was like...

COVID stopped that, but it picked up again. And oddly enough, by the end of April, when it was two weeks and we were like in it, we didn't know how long we'd be. By the end of April, people started buying handbags and shoes and then other things, but a lot of handbags and shoes and jewelry. All right, let's go back to the necessity to keep product flowing through. So 90% of the product flows through in a quarter, which means by the end of, if you think April, May, June,

The inventory is being depleted very quickly, but it's not being added back because we couldn't pick up products in California. Really, the only states that really acted like COVID didn't happen, Florida, Arizona. Florida was Arizona, not a great big market for the company. Florida, good, but not of the caliber of the other states.

and a little bit of Newport in California, which wasn't big enough. You had these little pockets where you walk in and you're like, wow. These are, by the way, all of your more politically conservative markets, areas where people didn't do COVID. No, they didn't have the shutdown restrictions. So the company was in trouble.

And how was your work-life balance during this phase? Oh, look, it was surreal because also we had supposedly they were short sellers. So we have one operating op center that's in New Jersey. And at that time, we had a couple in New Jersey, one in Secaucus and one in Perth Amboy.

We had the Bay Area one that we needed to leave anyway, the Bay Area, because we'd grown out, but shut down. In fact, when we were just trying to move product to New Jersey so we could process it and give people their returns. Yeah, even that, right? No, the sheriff showed up and put it like, we're going to throw you guys in jail. I'm like, oh, come on. Anyway, we finally got the product. There will be no shoes and purses transported. Oh, no, the whole thing was nuts. It was a bit crazy.

We had to open a new ops center, which we got going in Phoenix. And then we had some odd calls coming into the Perth ops center from people saying we were killing our employees, not following protocol, which wasn't true. I'm on the phone with the mayor. I'm on the phone with the head of police in New Jersey saying, okay,

walk through we're following protocols are these calls coming on in-state are they coming in or out of state they were all out of state so you know it was a short seller that's wild so short seller meaning somebody who had bet in the stock market against the company's success was now putting their hand on the scale and trying to influence whether we could process products oh it completely disrupted but they were trying to make it even further worse

It's so stressful. And I think it's really helpful for a lot of our audience here. They're early stage founders or they're young women in business. And I think it's so helpful for them to hear that even when you get to the point that your business is a household name and it's big and it's a public company, you're still dealing with... Oh, no, this was a nightmare because we had to start buying product, which the quality of the product was good. And where were you buying product from? From...

Some directly from the brands because remember they couldn't sell their product either. Totally. Some directly from the brand, some from people that resell for the brands of product that couldn't move. So the caliber of the product was great because it never made it on the shelves. Yes. But the margin was horrific.

We did the same exact thing during what a nightmare. The whole thing was it was tough. It was really tough. It was better than off price. If it didn't sell once, it's not going to sell the second time. This is the beauty of resale. If someone bought it once, then people will buy it again. Absolutely. Yes. You took the company through COVID through some of its toughest times.

And then in 2022, you left the company. I got fired by the board. Oh, okay. We're talking about it. Julie, tell us what happened. There's a couple different things that happened. Yeah.

In my world, the board of directors I grew up with were the venture capitalists. When I say grew up with the company, the venture capitalists and all early investors except one actually left. And the board had to be, I had to rebuild the board and make recommendations to rebuild the board. So after you went public, you got a whole new set of board members. Except for one. And that one never sold. Right.

Oh, so they held on to their stock. And the price had gone down. But I would say a couple of different things. And this is really good advice for anyone choosing a board. When you get money from people, and let's say you only have one term sheet or two, the investors sit on the board. Yes. So you don't choose your board to choose your money source. Later on, you can make recommendations. And I always thought it would be great to have key areas of subject matter expertise on the board. Yes.

It turns out that that's one criteria, but the overriding criteria should have been shared values.

And it also should have been more entrepreneurial focused because The Real World was still an entrepreneurial-led company and was still a very baby company. So you were a public company, but you still had a lot of room to grow, and it still needed to be run like... I think shared values is actually more important than area of expertise. For a board member. Yeah, for a board member. And I didn't go that way. And I would say that...

I had one disgruntled board member who didn't sell his stock. Mm-hmm.

who in my opinion believed he knew more than anybody else about how to run a company. I also had new members on the board and there was a huge disconnect and I was busy running the company and I would say lack of shared values. And yeah, they came after me and they fired me. And the rationale was I didn't hit my numbers during COVID. It could have been also because I told one key board member who I believe was out to get me

who had a plan for the company to basically, in the board meeting, to F off. And he wasn't going to ruin the company. And then one of the female board members, who they were almost all females, stood up and said, you're not a good leader. You can't talk to a board member that way. And I said, I can't when that board member's lying. And it went downhill from that. So that's what happened. Now, I have to say, it was...

sad. It was very sad. I think the key lesson is values matter. And what were the values that you felt like you were bringing to the table that your board didn't share?

And it's also a way of operating. So let's just talk about the difference between a corporate citizen. You grew up in the corporate world versus an entrepreneur. Yeah, there are a lot of differences. So corporate citizens tend to work on politics. If you're a woman, there tends to be room for one woman at the top. So they really aren't necessarily people that you would even want to have a drink with. Politics matter more than results.

Let's just say you're working in a multi-billion dollar company and it could be great training for you. Are you, what you do going to make the biggest difference in that company or who you know, and maybe who you suck up to or whose team you get on going to make the biggest difference. It is very hard to turn. So politics matter. In a startup, it's much more of a meritocracy. You can't hide anything.

Your results matter. And hopefully the management recognizes it is a meritocracy. But at the end of the day, the data doesn't lie.

And every person in a startup is so important. And getting the right way to measure their performance is important. And making sure that you get out any bias in the way they're paid. All of that's important. I'm not saying meritocracy doesn't exist in a corporation. It's much harder to find because it's much harder to measure.

If you have people that grew up in a political world, meritocracy doesn't matter. If you have people that knew structure and they weren't big risk takers and they like things rolling along in a methodical way, that's not what a startup looks like. It's messy, it's meaty, it's risk taking.

If you have people that grew up in a world where they wanted to be the smartest person in the room instead of a collaborative person, which my board was collaborative, most successful venture capital businesses are collaborative. It's a hierarchical model in the corporate world.

In a great startup, it's a collaborative world. Collaboration makes better ideas. So think about what I said at the beginning. I didn't want to be the people at Clorox and all of a sudden I have people like them on my board who think they know and they're hierarchical.

And to the same thing, you can't talk to a board member like that because what they're saying is wrong and will hurt the company. And it was a lie. You brought people on for their subject matter expertise, but it turned out that because they had spent so many years in the corporate world. It's a huge disconnect. And I would say there's two problems. One is it was all corporate except this one person. And I just think it's the wrong thing. I think that we need to look at choosing board members differently. Okay.

And I think it's really critical. But if you're raising capital, you get that board member. And that board member may also be toxic. But I didn't have that experience prior. The board members, the original investors, except for one, were pretty remarkable. So you had a great board that really supported you. And I think that person would have supported me. He wouldn't have messed up and gotten off the board. He blew it. Everybody answers to somebody. So I'm sure he messed up. He should have gotten his money out. He didn't.

So you were fired from the company.

Yeah. That you started. I was. That you built. I was. I mean, what did that feel like? It was very dark. When that happened, were you able to speak publicly about how it went down? Well, it's your story, so you can always talk. I don't think it benefits me to talk that publicly about it. It's in the book, though, of course. How do you think the company is doing now? If you follow their financial results, they're not in a growth mode. Their customer base shrunk by over 9%. Okay.

Their average order size went way up, which I know they're very proud of. I think it's dangerous, especially in a bad economy. I'm not there day to day. I would say I really can't comment beyond that. But the stories I know are the stories I know. I still people call me and I will just go on record. Rati does not call me, but they've fired the CFO, who also was the new CFO in the company.

And look, I'm not there. So I'm not going to say anything good. I hope it goes on. It was a labor of love. And honestly, it's a great service. We really changed the fashion world. We got people thinking about recirculating goods. We raised awareness of the issue of unused clothing or really poorly made clothing going to landfills, which is for microplastics.

which goes right into your drinking water. And the fact that these clothes don't break down and they can be in landfills for over a hundred years, just leaching really bad chemicals versus buying good things and recirculating them. And we democratize luxury, which you help do too. So all of those things are great. And honestly, and most of the time it was so much fun.

It was just fun. Yeah, I think that's also something that gets lost in the story of all the massive business successes, that there was a sustainability mission for these businesses. And the idea, particularly for those of us in luxury, was you don't have to buy cheap, fast fashion that's disposable. You can afford really beautiful clothing and then pass it on when you're done with it. And recirculate it. Yes. And I think that we completely changed the game in terms of making resale cool.

That was my goal. I knew when I first launched the RealReal that if I didn't make it

really relevant and cool and make sure you look great and really have an image with it, it wasn't going to work. Totally. And so my goal was to change perception. Yes. And I think luxury customers at the time that we were getting started turned up their noses at used clothing. And now everyone likes a deal. So they did and didn't. And the other thing is for the first time,

People could actually, when they bought something, they had a way to monetize it afterwards in a way that they didn't have to go to a brick and mortar store and drop it off. And the value of the internet, which you know, you can have millions of customers look at it. The speed of sale is always faster and the price is always the price the market will bear. Totally. That's the marketplace value system. Hold on to your wallets. Money Rehab will be right back.

And now for some more money rehab. I'm glad that you shared the story of both how you started and how you departed the company. I think it's really helpful for people to know that even when they see big success stories from the outside, there are a lot of ups and downs. There are a lot of challenges right from the first day till the last day. Now you're building something new. I am. So it's exciting. So one of my passions has always been nutrition. And I started a company with a medical doctor about two years ago called Ahara.

It was pretty clear to me when we got in the market, we've been in the market about one year, that really what people kept asking us for was help with losing weight. And even we're selling into corporations, they would say, do you have a track on weight loss?

We certainly did, but not the track they wanted. So we did, and we still do. We have a metabolic track to how to speed up your metabolism, foods that are best for you. But really what they wanted in corporations and what our customers was telling us, no, we want to understand nutrition.

what's going on in the weight loss drug world. And we want to know how to eat if we choose to go in that route. So like an Ozempic or a Wagamay. And so we launched Ahara Med. So we spent, I spent a lot of time along with some of the key people working with me, interviewing doctors groups that are specialized in weight loss and can help someone. Number one. Number two, we went to state licensed compounders

Because the drugs in the compounding are similar, the active ingredients are the same. So they use the same active ingredients, but they compound them differently. But the same active ingredients in a nozempic

or a Wegove are compounded. Now, let's talk about the advantage. You have a doctor's group. Can you explain to people what is compounding? Compounding means they're made, they're actually made not in mass production with a big brand. In like a small pharmacy. They're small batch. Small batch, yeah.

And there isn't a drug shortage. There is a delivery mechanism shortage. So the big brands use special pens that obscure the fact that you're putting a needle in you. Where you stamp yourself. Well, you do. It doesn't maybe look like a needle. But what...

I decided after talking to my investors that we should own the compounding pharmacies. We should have the relationships with the doctors. And really importantly, we should work with the insurance companies to make sure that we could get nutrition consulting through registered dietitians approved.

with the insurance company so we could be there hand in glove with the user and give people dietician consulting when you start on the drug. So we offer dietician consulting, the compounded drugs, which are about 70 to 80% off the retail prices. How much does it cost per month? So something like an Ozempic equivalent is $200 a month.

Wow. And that includes having a nutritionist who helps tell you that includes having a dietitian to help you. One month we're doing free right now. Aetna and United Health have already said they're covering the expense and we're just waiting on Anthem and Blue Shield. Wait, so for a lot of people, your insurance company will pay if you go to a HaraMed store.

So you sign up for a dietitian. I'm calling it complimentary because it is. Your insurance will cover something like 89 million people are covered by those two insurance companies.

So you can get dietician consulting as you start on your weight loss journey. You have a great medical doctor who is really great in telehealth who's focusing on weight loss and a compounded drug from a state-licensed pharmacy. And you get started with $195. And it is absolutely imperative that people combine dietician consulting with this because

First of all, 40% of the U.S. is considered obese, according to the latest stats from the NIH. 40.3%. Of those, 10% are considered morbidly obese. All right, so a huge population. And obese people tend to be malnourished.

Also, when you get off the drugs, whether they're compounded or branded, people can gain the weight back because they didn't know how to eat in the first place. They didn't get the guidance. So our goal is to help people along that line. And also there is muscle loss with this. Help them get the right protein amount. Check in on their weightlifting exercise. So when they get off the drugs, they...

don't have a metabolic disorder. Maybe they can actually get rid of their type 2 diabetes if it was a weight induced. I know that it absolutely will go. Blood pressure will be good. It is

Awesome. I'm so excited to offer this. Yeah, I feel like everyone I know who's been on the GLP-1s, they're like, I don't know what to eat. I'm not getting enough protein. So the idea that they could get a nutritionist for free to help them with that is amazing. Let's say you're on it for six months. And let's say you've lost 40 pounds. Highly possible. Or maybe it took you eight months. But 40 pounds, game changer. You wear different. You feel different. Your blood pressure is probably better. It's just everything gets better. Yeah.

Except the probability of you gaining all that weight back without proper gut is very high. Oh, wow. Unless you learn how to change your diet and eat for your health. People don't shrink their stomach while they're on the drug. No. They tend to gain the weight back when.

No, they're not as hungry. It is good to get good nutrition guidance. Micro and macronutrients are really important. And to get those habits set up while you're on the weight loss drug so then you can continue when you leave. Julie, that sounds amazing. I have no doubt that AHARA Med is going to be another massive success for you. Before we go, will you play a game of Never Have I Ever? Oh, no. All right. Ready? Never Have I Ever.

Paid on the first date. I've done it. Okay. How'd it go by the way? How'd it, how'd it work out with the guy that you paid on the first date? Not great. Not great. No, no. All right. So, you know, yeah. So don't do this, but yes, I've done it. Okay. Ask for a raise. I've been my own boss for so long. I'm always asking for my own.

my own so that means this is yes you put another finger oh i have to put it in yeah okay explain really quickly when you're the ceo who do you ask for we have to go to a comp committee but that's used data on the board but you use data yes okay never have i ever oh i gotta do this whatever this is okay bought a fake bag to my knowledge i have never bought a fake bag never have i ever bought a birkin

Oh, I bought one. How many have you bought? More than one, but then I sold them because I did sell them. Yeah, were you not using them? I feel like I never used them. You know, my problem is handbags to me are utilitarian unless you're going out someplace fancy. And the Birkin's not that comfy. And I don't like to change bags because then I always forget something. So I'm a bag and shoe trasher. So I felt like I would never trash a Birkin bag. It's too beautiful and they're handmade and...

And I just sat there in my closet. It made me sad. I know. I did the same thing. And then I bought another one. And then I didn't like it when I carried it. It felt awkward. Oh, then I bought more. And then I'm like, what am I doing? And then I'm like, okay, I can't. Okay. Never have I ever signed a prenup.

Oh, you know what? I haven't. So what is the thumb going around? But would I, should I have? Absolutely. So that was a mistake. Absolutely. And I wouldn't do it again without signing a prenup if I ever got married again. Yeah. What a mistake. For all of Julie's future potential suitors, just be warned. They're going to have to sign a prenup. Well, it's good business. Yeah, it is. It keeps everything clean. Never have I ever fought with a family member about money. Oh.

Oh, my God. So that's a yes. So I just thumb go in. Yeah, that's a problem. Goes in. Yeah. Okay. And never have I ever, this is the last one, maxed out my credit cards. Oh, when I was doing the RealReal? Of course I did. You did. Thumb in or out. Of course.

Okay, but it turned out to be a good bet. Not only did I max out my credit cards, I also took down my IRA and 401k. Remember, I'm telling you, I didn't get VC funding for a while. You went all in. Oh, that's it, babe. You got to do it. And honestly, that turned out that was an understatement of the show.

That turned out. It will go down in history. Okay, Julie, we end episodes of Money Rehab by asking guests for one tip that they can take straight to the bank. So it can be about personal finance, investing, anything money related. Your best tip for our audience. I would say just, first of all, do not let balances go on your credit card.

Pay those off. And wait, two tips. If you are working in a company that has a 401k or an IRA, put that money in and then forget about it. Let me give you a story. And it's a good story. Because I told you, I really did clean them out. Except I had in a small IRA, I had, by the way, you pay penalties for it. It was grim doing it to start the real, real. But in a small IRA, I cleaned it all out. And I only had...

three little stocks left. And I think when I, this is started to begin the real, real, and those three stocks were worth. So think 2011, they were worth $12,000. I'm like, okay, I can stop. I don't need that $12,000 today. I know it's coming. $150,000 because a, I didn't look at them. All right. I just left them there. And one of them was Facebook. Facebook.

One of them was Microsoft and one of them was Netflix. Okay, so never take your money out of a 401k unless you're going to use it to start a business that eventually becomes a multi-billion dollar company. And just by the way, if you do take a company public, start actually selling your stock. You need diversity in your assets. Yes.

And I did that right away. So even though the stock has never been as high as when I was CEO, they've never brought it back to that level. Luckily, I had diversified enough that it feels very, very good. So that's more than one. Julie Wainwright, my former competitor and current dear friend, thank you so much for coming to Money Rehab. I had so much fun. Oh, I hope it's a good one. Thank you, Tracy. I think it's a good one. Thank you, Julie. You know what? I'm glad we became friends. It's been delightful. Me too.

I have a question. Do you want me to get up? No, I want to sit with you. I've been listening and you guys did great. The reason that you're co-hosting is because of Baby, but Baby hasn't popped out yet. So as I was listening, I was just curious because while Julie didn't think about competition when you guys were rivals, what did you think?

Of Julie and the Real Role while you were in the midst of crazy. Oh, I did think about competition. What did you? I did. I thought, Julie, I thought about you a lot. I even bought...

a book you wrote a long time ago. And I read it many years ago that I bought it and read it. It was my first company. I didn't have a lot of background in business or any background in business. And so once you guys pulled ahead and started growing faster than us, I wanted to know everything about what you were doing and how you were doing it.

to learn and to catch up. I thought about your business model all the time. I thought about how you were operating as a CEO. I hired people who had worked for you and I learned from them about how you operated the company. And I really, I had a combination of like fire to catch up and, you know, like win and win the whole market, but also deep admiration and respect because more than anybody, I think I knew how difficult that job was. So yeah.

Well, that's nice. That was a generous thing for her to say. It's great. It's all true. And a million years ago, Julie, you were also the CEO of Pets.com. I was. Which is like the butt of jokes when you think about the dot-com bubble. How do you feel about that? How do I feel about that? Well, it was a little bigger for me. First of all, let's just go forward. Chewy.com, multibillion-dollar company. Chewy.com is nothing but Pets.com.

They don't do anything that Pets.com didn't do. We just did it 20 years. So I would say, how do I think about timing? Everything. So timing is really important. So it was a timing issue. But when I shut and I did shut the company down, gave shareholders back their money. I didn't run it to bankruptcy. And sadly, that same day I was shutting down, my husband asked me for a divorce. So it's very emotionally charged for me.

But it really is time means everything. And I also think, you know, Webvan was the precursor to Instacart. They went through a billion dollars worth of capital, a lot more than Pets.com did. And you never heard about that, did you? Do you think there might have been a little bit of women bashing going on in there?

I don't want to say that. I have been told that. I've never heard of it. What? I have been told that from other press people, that if I was a man, you know, I don't know. I'm not a man. I don't know what would have happened. But look, Pets.com was ahead of its time. And it was not pretty. And I had reporters showing up at my house, showing up at my door. Yeah.

you know, knocking to get, and I luckily after my husband moved out, a good friend moved in and he would answer the door and say, she's not talking to you. And I can call the police because you're on private property now. And how did you come back from that?

I gave myself two years to either start a company myself. I didn't start pets.com. I was brought in to run it. To start a company myself and make it successful, or I was going to have to leave town and do something else. Put my house on the market, sell something. I don't know, go into real estate in Arizona. I didn't know what I was going to do. It was Arizona real estate or become a yoga instructor.

And I wouldn't have been good at either of those things. It would have been a nightmare. So that was my plan B. And, you know, when you get older and you start a business and you recognize that a lot of successful businesses started by mostly men that got funding in Silicon Valley, they're no smarter than you are. There's nothing more that they're doing except they're doing it and taking the risk. And they're persistent. Yeah.

And so, you know, and I figured, well, if I start a great business, I'll get the money. And that's why I waited also for a year. I was afraid before I took VC money. I was really convinced that with Pets.com was still looming large in my past and no one was going to give me money unless I proved it. In the first year, we did $10 million in revenue for the RealReal. So I knew I had to prove it.

And then I would, you know, it's pretty hard to deny a $10 million going toward $25 million the second year. Most companies don't do that, you know, ever. So, yeah. So it was a massive milestone in my life. And, you know, you're having, is it first show, second? All right. So also he asked me for a divorce and I was 41 years.

And it was, we had sort of been trying to have kids, but hadn't really. And then so then I had to go through and make that decision. Like, am I going to be...

you know, I'm going to be a single mom. What should I do? So it sort of hit at one of those critical, you know, men don't think this way, but women have to. You really have to plan out if you really want kids. I had raised my brother in my head, and in reality, I did pretty much have to. My mom had MS when I was a kid, so I was the oldest, so I had a lot of responsibility and felt like

In my 20s, I just wanted to have fun because I didn't, you know, had a lot of responsibility from the age of eight until I, you know, went out on my own. And so I didn't have this burning need like a lot of people because I felt like I've raised my kids. But then when you're faced with that decision, like, oh, my God, I'm 41, I'm 42, going to be 42 soon, not married, whatever.

What am I going to do? Then you're really up against it. Like I've got, you know, I did check. I saw a few good eggs running around there, checked with the gynecologist and I had to make a big decision and I decided not to.

to consciously be a single mother. And so I made that decision. I would say it was, that was harder than any decision probably ever to really know. And if I, if I'm really honest, has it made me sad? Sure. It's made me sad, but it hasn't made me depressed. It hasn't like, you know, it's sort of like, it wasn't,

It was a hard decision to make. It was the right one for me at the time, but it didn't come without consequences. Regret? No, not regret. I would just say, you know, you don't live that long and having children is one of those life experiences. And so it's not regret. It's just a little sad, but it's not like, you know, because I know I made the right decision at the right time, but it's a little sad. But, you know, you always have to

When you're choosing a road, you have to leave something behind. And I wouldn't have probably started the rail rail. I wouldn't have done other things I've done in life if I would have had kids. And to be honest, it's hard having kids now. It's hard. It's hard. Close your ears, little baby. You may have a perfect child and have no problems, but you're going to have, you know, you know, you've got, there are more challenges with social media. There's more, there's just more challenges now.

Yeah, because when you hit the stride in your career, as women, men don't think about this, it's also when you hit your biological prime. And which is without a doubt been researched, and you probably know this, that that's when women start losing on the financial curve. And there are so many reasons because even though men have gotten much more involved as fathers,

it still falls on the woman. And I don't care how old you are. It still falls on the woman like, or how young you are. No one's that progressive. And there's always the odd, there's always the exception, but,

you know, where the man's doing or the man's really 50-50, but that's the exception, not the rule. And so statistically, that's where women lose out. And I would say if you just talk about being an entrepreneur, that's why you really have to understand your trade-offs and make choices that are aligned with where you are because you can have it all, but it's not in, it's a serial experience. Yeah.

It's an asynchronous experience. What it means. You can't always define what that is. Yeah. You just have to be comfortable with your choices. And then you have to really know yourself. And that's not easy. You know, it's not easy. It's not. That's a life journey. That is your life journey to know yourself. But you birthed another beautiful baby.

Yes, I'm very happy. And now, look, AHARA Med is really exciting. I mean, look, 40% of the U.S. is considered obese, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular issues, metabolic disorder, neuropathy. Look, I honestly think my father died at 86 of complications from obesity, and it was a terrible death.

And I actually think mentally he was great. I think he would have had the last eight years of his life would have been really, really great if the drugs were there. And he would have taken them because he had had a heart attack at the age of 72. And instead of taking care of yourself, he actually started gaining 100 pounds.

And I think it was a combination of depression, et cetera, et cetera. But I think he would have had a longer, happier life. Or maybe he would have died at 86, but it would have been a more active, fulfilling life. So now you're birthing a whole other business baby. You never die, Julie. They can't hold you back.

Well, I mean, what am I going to do with all this energy? You're using it. Thank you guys for letting me crash. Yeah, thank you for crashing. You look gorgeous. She started kicking as soon as Julie started speaking. Money Rehab is a production of Money News Network. I'm your host, Nicole Lappin. Money Rehab's executive producer is Morgan Levoy. Our researcher is Emily Holmes.

Do you need some money rehab? And let's be honest, we all do. So email us your money questions, moneyrehab at moneynewsnetwork.com to potentially have your questions answered on the show or even have a one-on-one intervention with me. And follow us on Instagram at moneynews and TikTok at moneynewsnetwork for exclusive video content. And lastly, thank you. No, seriously, thank you. Thank you for listening and for investing in yourself, which is the most important investment you can make.

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