Rent The Runway: Jenn Hyman

Jenn Hyman got the idea for Rent the Runway in 2008, after she watched her sister overspend on a new dress rather than wear an old one to a party. Jenn and her business partner built a web site where women could rent designer dresses for a fraction of the retail price. As the company grew, they dealt with problems that many female entrepreneurs face, including patronizing investors and sexual harassment. Despite these challenges, Rent The Runway now rents dresses to nearly six million women and has an annual revenue of $100 million. PLUS in our postscript "How You Built That," how Dustin Hogard and his business partner designed a survival belt that's full of tiny gadgets and thin enough to wear every day. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  I said, you know, we should really call Diane von Furstenberg, the famous fashion designer. Fast forward a few weeks and we're driving to the second meeting. And her assistant calls and says Diane no longer wants to see you. She's not interested in this idea. And I said, oh yeah, we're just around the corner. Like, we'll just drop by for a second. And again, her assistant, very firmly, said, she doesn't want to see you. What do you not understand? And I said, oh, we're cutting off, we're cutting off. And I hung up. And then I sped down the West Side Highway and we were at her office and we just showed up.

• 0:46Guy Raz?

  From NPR, it's How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 0:57Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz, and on today's show, how two women who wanted high fashion but couldn't afford the price tag decided to make it possible to rent the runway.

• 1:13Guy Raz?

  So Rent the Runway is now one of the hottest fashion companies in the US. It's growing like crazy. It's doing more than $100 million a year in revenue, and it has something like 1,200 employees. But given that its core product is designer dresses, you might be surprised to discover, as I was, that just 10 of its employees work in the fashion department. Most of the rest, well, they work for a technology company, because that's actually what Rent the Runway is. Now, the way it works is you go online, or you go to the app, and, well, you rent a dress, a dress that might cost thousands of dollars to buy, except you only pay a

• 1:55Guy Raz?

  small fraction of that, and you get to look fabulous for one night. And then, in the morning, after you've recovered, you mail it back. It's kind of like Zipcar meets Netflix meets Zappos, if that makes any sense. Anyway, the co-founders, Jen Hyman and Jennifer Fleiss, came up with the idea when they met in business school. And, as you will hear, the path to building their company was fraught with all kinds of challenges, among them rampant sexism and even harassment.

• 2:27Guy Raz?

  Jen Hyman has only recently been opening up about that. But her story begins just after she graduates college and gets a job working as a junior analyst for the hotel company Starwood.

• 2:39Speaker 00

  About a year into my time at Starwood, when I was 22, I had this thesis that we had entered the experience economy. And people were getting married later and starting to value experiences like travel over owning things. And so I had an idea at the time to launch the first honeymoon registry in the world, where couples could register for their honeymoons and their friends and family could contribute by paying for scuba diving, or paying for a massage, or a hotel night, as opposed to buying them pots and pans. So as a 22-year-old, I was really passionate about this idea.

• 3:24Speaker 00

  I emailed the president of Starwood, and I pitched him on this idea to start a wedding business at Starwood, where the cornerstone of it would be with the first honeymoon registry.

• 3:35Guy Raz?

  Just stop for a second. First of all, you're 22. I mean, that's incredibly precocious. But was there anybody around you who was like, hey, stay in your lane? Or was there anybody who was trying to tell you to keep quiet?

• 3:48Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. Several bosses of mine were telling me to keep quiet. And one of the experiences that really impacted me was I had a female boss. And at the time, I think she was like 35 or 36, so kind of about my age right now. And I would often raise my hand in meetings, and speak, and make points. And I remember her grabbing me after a meeting one day, and she said, Jen, I really want to give you some feedback. It's really important for your career. And I said, oh, I'd love to hear. What's your feedback?

• 4:31Speaker 00

  And she said, you really need to shut up.

• 4:34Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 4:35Speaker 00

  You're a girl, and it would be much more becoming if you acted sweet in conversations, because you're too confident, you're too bold, and it's coming across the wrong way.

• 4:55Speaker 00

  And of course, I didn't really know how to take this. I mean, I don't even know how I would take this today, let alone as a 22-year-old. I started hysterically crying. I was in the middle of like, an open floor plan. And a more senior man saw me. I literally credit this guy for my entire career. He took me aside, and because I didn't even understand office politics at the time, and like, what I should and shouldn't say, I kind of just blurted out, "Oh, my god, like, this woman just told me X, Y, and Z." And I repeated the entire conversation to him. And he said, "You know, Jen, you keep doing what you're doing, because that woman's going to be working for you one day."

• 5:38Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 5:39Speaker 00

  And he, in a sense, gave me permission to just act like myself. And who I was as a 22-year-old is the same person as who I am today. It's the person who had a creative idea about the experience economy, and I wanted to share it.

• 5:59Guy Raz?

  So what did you end up doing with the idea? I mean, you pitched this to the president of Starwood.

• 6:04Speaker 00

  Yeah. I think he thought I was so a little bit crazy-

• 6:09Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 6:10Speaker 00

  -for going and pitching to him, that his response was like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, whatever." And I took that as a yes.

• 6:16Guy Raz?

  Wait, he said, he didn't say yes, he just sort of said, "Yeah, that's interesting." And you went back to your desk, and you started to map out how this could happen?

• 6:26Speaker 00

  I started to work on it. I spent the next three years working on it. And, you know, Starwood still participates in the honeymoon registry to this day-

• 6:36Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 6:37Speaker 00

  -and has taken it to a whole other level since I left. But it was such a fun experience for me to, A, work on something that I loved and was passionate about, and B, be part of the process of creation.

• 6:49Guy Raz?

  So you were, obviously, on the fast track to, like, if you were still at Starwood today, you might be running the place. I mean, you were doing this at such a young age. Why did you decide to leave after a couple of years?

• 7:01Speaker 00

  Well, I always thought that I would go to business school.

• 7:04Guy Raz?

  Huh.

• 7:05Speaker 00

  Both of my parents had gone to business school. And so I thought that the track was you work for four years between college and then you go to business school. So when I was at Starwood for three-plus years, I applied to business school and I got into Harvard Business School.

• 7:20Guy Raz?

  So here's a question for you about, because we're going to get, I want to ask you about, of course, what happened at business school, which is key and critical to Rent the Runway. But, you know, the vast majority of the entrepreneurs that have been on this show did not go to business school. And you had all this incredible experience, and you were really ambitious, and you were entrepreneurial already. Why did you think you needed to go to business school?

• 7:45Speaker 00

  Well, first, I have always had big dreams for my career, but I didn't exactly know what those dreams were. You know, Sarah Blakely was a guest on your program, and she's someone who has always been an inspiration to me. I remember being a younger girl and seeing her on Oprah. And she had this amazing business, but she also like seemed like a real person who cared about getting married and having kids and having friends and having a social life. And that was really important to me. I was still fearful that you had to

• 8:27Speaker 00

  make a choice between having an incredible career as a woman or having a family. And I've always wanted both.

• 8:35Guy Raz?

  So in a sense, going to business school was a chance for you to really think those things through?

• 8:40Speaker 00

  To think it through, to get that kind of extra, potentially, stamp of approval that I thought that I needed. I had lots of opportunities that I could go into different kinds of companies in different fields. But I really wanted the time to think about, like, where do I want to spend my time? Like, what am I most passionate about?

• 9:01Guy Raz?

  Yeah. You, while you were at Harvard Business School, you met the person who had become the co-founder of Rent the Runway, Jennifer Fleiss?

• 9:10Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 9:10Guy Raz?

  How did you, how did you guys meet?

• 9:13Speaker 00

  So it's a really funny story. My sister Becky Prior to me going to business school, put a Post-It note on my pillow one night with Jenny Fleiss's maiden name on it, which was Jenny Carter. And she said that you have to meet this girl when you go to business school because a friend of a friend of hers knew Jenny Carter. And my response to Becky at the time was, you know, I'll meet her if I meet her. Needless to say, Jenny was one of the first people I met at Harvard Business School because we were placed in the same section. Because her name had been on a Post-It note for me, I was like, oh, my God, you'll never believe this. Like, my sister told me, we need to be friends.

• 9:57Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 9:58Speaker 00

  And we became really fast friends. And, you know, the rest is history.

• 10:01Guy Raz?

  And at what point did you say, let's do a business together when we leave this place?

• 10:06Speaker 00

  So, we were friends. We actually threw our birthdays together in September of that second year of business school. And in November of the second year of business school, I went home for Thanksgiving, and I was in Becky's apartment. And Becky had just gone to a store and bought a dress that was higher cost than her rent. And as her responsible older sister, I was remarking how she should probably wear one of the dresses in her closet again, as opposed to being in credit card debt. And her response to me was, you know, everything in my closet is dead to me. I've been photographed in it.

• 10:50Speaker 00

  The photographs are up on Facebook, and I need something new. And, you know, Becky was a 25-year-old, like, normal girl who lived in New York. She wasn't a celebrity. But she was talking about being photographed and not being able to wear something again. And it was a lightbulb moment for me because I realized I was having a conversation with my sister about the experience of wearing an amazing dress, of walking into a party, feeling self-confident and feeling beautiful. And that's what she cared about. And she didn't care about the actual ownership of the items in her closet. The other thing she cared about was the photograph that would exist after the party

• 11:34Speaker 00

  that she could post on Facebook and kind of share with everyone she knew how awesome she felt and how confident she felt at that wedding. So anyway, this idea happened on a Saturday night. I go back to school on Monday. I happened to have lunch that day with Jenny. We were talking about our weekends. I was like, oh, I had this idea. Like, what if we rented dresses?

• 11:53Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 11:53Speaker 00

  And she responded, oh, this sounds fun. You know, let's like work on this idea together. Who do you think we should call to figure out if it's a good idea? And I said, you know, we should really call Diane von Furstenberg.

• 12:08Guy Raz?

  And The like

• 12:10Speaker 00

  The famous fashion designer. Jenny said, do you know Diane von Furstenberg?

• 12:15Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 12:16Speaker 00

  And I said, obviously, I don't know Diane von Furstenberg, but we could probably figure out her email address. You could, at this point, figure out anyone's email address in the entire world.

• 12:26Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 12:26Speaker 00

  So Jenny and I wrote an email that afternoon to many different versions of Diane von Furstenberg's email address. And we basically said, hey, we're two women at Harvard Business School. We have an idea. We'd love to come in and talk to you about it. And this is where luck plays into the situation because she or someone from her office opened that email. She responded, I'll see you tomorrow at 5:00 p.m.

• 12:54Guy Raz?

  Tomorrow at 5:00 p.m.

• 12:56Speaker 00

  Yep. And we drove down to New York that next day, put on our DVF dresses and walked into her office and introduced ourselves as the co-founders of Rent the Runway.

• 13:09Guy Raz?

  You had the name at that point? You came up with a name?

• 13:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, we just, we did everything very quickly. Now, we didn't really have a structured idea. So, you know, we were kind of iterating the idea by pitching it. And the initial idea, actually, which, you know, we've never really told. The initial idea was, what if we could rent the dresses that she is selling on her website? So what if we powered rental for her on dvf.com?

• 13:39Guy Raz?

  Ah.

• 13:39Speaker 00

  And, you know, when we went to chat with her, she was not too thrilled about the idea of renting clothes in general and thought that it would cannibalize her retail sales and it would dilute her brand. And she was ready to end the meeting with us after a few minutes. And I started asking her questions about what she disliked about the idea, what was she scared about. And by the end of what was almost a, you know, hour and a half conversation, we learned that a lot of her customers were in their 50s and 60s.

• 14:20Speaker 00

  And that if we were to build a business that could make her relevant, to put her products into the hands of women in their teens, 20s, 30s, and 40s, that that might be interesting to her and she might want to work with us.

• 14:37Guy Raz?

  So was, was she warm? Was she nice? Were you guys nervous? I mean, you're still business school students. I mean, I can't imagine like what that would feel like to walk into that room and try to, you know, keep her attention and get her excited.

• 14:52Speaker 00

  Well, it's a funny story. So at that first meeting, I've always learned, you know, when you're in the first meeting, schedule the second meeting. So when we were in the first meeting, we scheduled a conversation for a few weeks later with her. Fast forward a few weeks and we're driving to the meeting. And we get a call while we're in the car from her assistant. And we're on the West Side Highway. We're about 40 blocks from her office. And her assistant calls and says, Diane no longer wants to see you. And I said, oh, you know, well, we're on our way. We'll just come in and say hi. And her assistant's like, no, she really doesn't want to see you. Like, she's not interested in this idea.

• 15:37Speaker 00

  And I said, oh, yeah, we're just around the corner. Like, we'll just drop by for a second. And again, her assistant, very firmly, said, she doesn't want to see you. What do you not understand? And I said, oh, we're cutting off. We're cutting off. And I hung up. And then I sped down the West Side Highway. And we were at her office, and we just showed up.

• 16:00Guy Raz?

  Wait, most people in that situation would have just been like crushed, would have felt so dejected. Like, I know I would and would have just said, well, forget it. Forget Diane, let's just move on. How did you not feel that? How did you, how were you able to just say, we're going? We're just going to do this. We're going to walk in there.

• 16:20Speaker 00

  Well, Jenny initially was, actually started to cry and was a little bit upset about the situation.

• 16:25Guy Raz?

  Like, most people would.

• 16:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, which I think is the much more natural reaction. And I was like, we're just going to do this. What do we have to lose? Like, what's the worst thing in the world? We show up and she doesn't meet us?

• 16:37Guy Raz?

  What if you walked in there and they were like, "Security, please escort these women out"?

• 16:41Speaker 00

  Great, then we have a story that we could tell all of our friends.

• 16:47Guy Raz?

  When we come back, what actually happened when Jen and Jenny finally showed up at Diane von Furstenberg's office? I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR.

• 17:12Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So before the break, Jen was talking about how she and her co-founder Jenny basically busted into Diane von Furstenberg's office to have a second meeting. And amazingly, Diane agreed to meet with them. And in fact, she wound up giving them some pretty good advice.

• 17:31Speaker 00

  Actually, that was the meeting where she told us, you know, I don't want you to do this on my website. You are going to have to sell this idea to other designers and get lots of people on board if I'm going to do this, too. So in a sense, in that meeting, she gave us permission to make it a consumer-facing business and to approach the rest of the industry.

• 17:53Guy Raz?

  Wow. So I mean, it sounds like she kind of rewrote your business plan right there.

• 17:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:58Guy Raz?

  So did you walk out of her office with like names or contacts? Or did you just walk out of her office saying, all right, cool. This is clarifying. We now know where to head next.

• 18:08Speaker 00

  Well, we did ask her for some introductions. And I think that she introduced us to one or two people in the industry. We then would meet with those people and we'd ask them for introductions and so on and so forth. But we continued to just cold call people. So one of the next people that I cold called was the president of Neiman Marcus, because he was both a HBS alum, so I had access to his email address. And I thought that, you know, if this whole Rent the Runway thing falls through, like, maybe I could work for Jim Gold at Neiman Marcus.

• 18:44Guy Raz?

  And what did he say?

• 18:45Speaker 00

  He said, yeah, this is a really good idea. Women have been renting the runway from my stores for decades. It's called buying something, keeping the tags on, and then returning it to the store.

• 18:57Guy Raz?

  Which probably cost them millions of dollars.

• 19:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's kind of the dirty secret of retail. The return rate, especially of dresses and special occasion attire, is extremely high.

• 19:10Guy Raz?

  Can I just pause for a second and ask this question, which is, so I'm wearing, the outfit I'm wearing today, like, I've worn this in the last few days. I have no shame about it, and obviously, there's different, society has different standards for men and women. But what is this about? Like, what's this thing where women feel like they can't wear the same dress at, you know, two different functions?

• 19:31Speaker 00

  I really think that there's a value that women place on self-expression and that clothes make you feel a certain way about yourself. You put on an amazing outfit in the morning, and it makes you feel powerful, or beautiful, or sexy, or relaxed, or however you want to feel that day. There's just a general value in our society right now around individuality and self-expression. And so, the way that you're going to achieve that with fashion is via variety. So, I had seen, at the time, and it's even more true today, that the way that women were accessing variety and individuality was through fast fashion and off-price.

• 20:15Speaker 00

  Because the only place that you could buy a quantity of items was at a place that was selling them for a very cheap price.

• 20:22Guy Raz?

  Like Forever 21, or H&M.

• 20:24Speaker 00

  Exactly. So, I think that when you don't have to buy something, it allows you to try new things, to constantly be playful, to experiment, to try things that are in colors, or in trends, or, you know, different kinds of styles that you never would purchase, because they're irrational. So, with Run the Runway, it's like a Willy Wonka-land of fashion. You could have whatever you want, whenever you want it. Let's say you have a job interview, you have a party, you have a wedding you're going to. You're saying, "I want it to arrive at my home on September 15th, and I'm going to wear it and use it for a few days, and then I'm going to return it." And it's about 10% of the retail price.

• 21:05Guy Raz?

  So, how did you know for sure that, you know, that women would be interested in, like, doing this? I mean, did you, did you guys do any research?

• 21:12Speaker 00

  No, we never did research in an academic sense. We did real-life research, which was, we went to Bloomingdale's, we bought about 100 dresses.

• 21:23Speaker 00

  All in our own sizes, so that if this whole experiment didn't work out, we would have an awesome new wardrobe. We spent a lot of our savings on this. And we hosted a pop-up at Harvard undergrad. And we invited different groups of Harvard undergrads to the pop-up. And the idea behind this was to learn, A, will women rent dresses? B, what do they rent? How much will they pay? What brands do they want? And most importantly, if they do rent, what happens to these garments after they rent? Do they get destroyed? Can you send them through the mail? How do you dry-clean these items? And so on and so forth.

• 22:07Guy Raz?

  This is like, still, like, I mean, today, this seems like a no-brainer. But this is, what, 2008, 2009?

• 22:14Speaker 00

  This, our first pop-up was in April 2009.

• 22:17Guy Raz?

  So, I mean, at that time, Netflix was like mailing DVDs to the mail. So that was going on. I guess Zappos, you could get shoes and you could mail them back. But it was still, it wasn't like what it is now. I mean, it was still new.

• 22:31Speaker 00

  It was. And it feels both so long ago and also yesterday.

• 22:37Guy Raz?

  So you got the sense right away that this, that this could work? Because these undergraduates, these women were like, yeah, I want to rent this.

• 22:45Speaker 00

  I got the sense that it would work because I saw the emotional effect. So in this pop-up, I saw girls, you know, stripping down, trying on these amazing dresses, and feeling beautiful.

• 23:01Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 23:01Speaker 00

  And you saw their facial expressions change. And they threw their shoulders back, and they tousled their hair, and they walked with a new sense of confidence. And, you know, I really thought, wow, this could be a business that isn't just about offering her a rational or smart choice, but it also can be a business that is delivering something emotional to her, making her feel beautiful every single day.

• 23:33Guy Raz?

  Jen, a lot of founders choose to do it on their own, like Gary Erickson from Clif Bar or even Sarah Blakely from Spanx. I mean, she owns 100% of her company. But you guys went for venture capital pretty quickly, pretty early on. Why?

• 23:50Speaker 00

  We had to raise money because we needed to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in inventory to even launch a business or to assess whether it was a viable idea. And I don't come from a family that has hundreds of thousands of dollars of savings, especially savings that they're going to invest in their daughter's crazy idea.

• 24:17Guy Raz?

  And so when you were pitching venture capitalists, how much money were you looking to raise in that first round?

• 24:22Speaker 00

  We raised $1.75 million.

• 24:25Guy Raz?

  Wow. So I mean, with that money, what could you do? I guess, build a website, right?

• 24:31Speaker 00

  You could buy initial inventory in various size runs with some depth because we knew we needed many different designers. We needed a selection, right? You weren't going to come and start renting if there were only five units of inventory on the site. We could hire some people. We could launch a website. That was about it.

• 24:50Guy Raz?

  And take photos of the dresses and put them on the website?

• 24:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's another funny story. Until two weeks before the website launched, we didn't realize that we would have to take photos of the inventory. We thought, of course, in this industry, there's some centralized place that takes photos of this. How ridiculous is it that every retailer would have to photograph this inventory over and over again? Needless to say, we figure out like right before the website's meant to launch that we have no photos. And we put together an impromptu photo shoot where we found a photographer on Craigslist who ended up working with Rent the Runway for six years.

• 25:29Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 25:31Speaker 00

  And we bring our own shoes and our own accessories to this photo shoot. And our initial team of five employees and many interns at the time kind of figure out how to do it.

• 25:45Guy Raz?

  So once you launch, how do you get the word out? How do you get people to even know what this is?

• 25:51Speaker 00

  Hustling.

• 25:54Guy Raz?

  So what was the hustle?

• 25:56Speaker 00

  The hustle was, we wanted to build a list of as many women as possible. You know, the Sex and the City movie had come out that summer. And we would go to movie theaters with women who were attending that movie, and we would get their email addresses. We would convince friends to send us email addresses of other friends of theirs. So like, we were really doing anything and everything. So one of the names that was on this list that we had billed at Rent the Runway had a @newyorktimes.com. And I was like, oh, like, there's someone who works at the New York Times on this email address. And I looked her up, and I saw that she was a 22-year-old technology reporter. I was like, oh, let's invite her in.

• 26:40Speaker 00

  Maybe she could write about Rent the Runway. So we met with her, and we decided we were going to give her a story. And I thought that if Jenny and I were photographed for this article, potentially, we could be on the front page of the business section.

• 26:56Guy Raz?

  If there was a photo of the two of you?

• 26:58Speaker 00

  Yes, because it was a technology reporter, and no women are ever covered in the technology section.

• 27:05Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 27:05Speaker 00

  So I say to this reporter, oh, maybe, you know, you should take, maybe you could take a photograph of us at the quote-unquote warehouse, which was a dry cleaner at the time. So we put on like, these crazy dresses. And we showed up when the photographer showed up to the dry cleaner. And we stood on ladders, and we told the photographer to take a photo of us on ladders in front of kind of the array of dresses that were on the kind of dry cleaning machine. And because the photo was so utterly absurd, it ended up on the front page of the business section and the headline A1 photo on nytimes.com.

• 27:49Speaker 00

  So we had 100,000 people sign up for Rent the Runway off of that story.

• 27:54Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 27:56Guy Raz?

  So you had, did you all of a sudden have people making orders?

• 27:59Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 28:00Guy Raz?

  Did you have the inventory to handle all the orders?

• 28:03Speaker 00

  No.

• 28:04Guy Raz?

  So what'd you do?

• 28:05Speaker 00

  We raised more money. So because of hustling to get this story and the luck of ending up on the front page of the New York Times, we met our first year sales projections in three weeks. And we had a clamoring of venture capital investors who were kind of coming into our office pitching us on Series A. So we had gone from, you know, a very undesirable investment to like people showing up at the elevator in our building to meet with us unannounced.

• 28:41Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 28:41Speaker 00

  Because they wanted to pounce on the deal.

• 28:46Guy Raz?

  Did you? I mean, both you and Jenny are, unfortunately, still rare in the startup world in that you're two women, leading a huge company. But at the time, when you were raising money, did you ever get the sense from venture capitalists, who presumably were mostly men, that, I don't know, they were like a little bit dismissive, or condescending, or, you know, I don't know, treated you differently?

• 29:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, we had several different, very condescending conversations. One in which a partner at a very prestigious firm took my hand into his. And he said, you know, this is so adorable. You're going to get to wear such pretty dresses. This must be so fun for you.

• 29:35Guy Raz?

  How did you react?

• 29:36Speaker 00

  We both froze a little bit. We were very polite. And we walked out and we said, you know, thanks for the feedback. Now, of course, we never... Interacted with this firm or this investor. Again, we never pitched them on any subsequent round. We were like, kind of good riddance to these people. So there's an element of, you know, we had access to capital. We had choices because the business was growing. And that's a privilege.

• 30:09Guy Raz?

  I read in an article about you that one investor said to me like, oh, you know, let me talk to my wife about this idea.

• 30:17Speaker 00

  Well, that's something that we heard all the time. That wasn't one investor. That was most. Let me talk to my wife, my daughter, or my admin. Those were the three, you know, target customers that we would hear. And let me tell you why each is problematic. Number one, the wife of a venture capitalist is a billionaire. So the wife of a venture capitalist is not my target customer.

• 30:42Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 30:43Speaker 00

  The daughter of a venture capitalist, in most cases, is about 12. Because most venture capitalists are, when they're in the prime of their careers, they're kind of 45 to 50. So, you know, their daughter's not a great target either. And their admin, the admins who work in the venture capital industry, because it's such a prestigious job, are often women who are in their 50s and 60s. Again, not women who were in my target demo. So we would preempt that by showing videos and inviting these investors to some of our pop-ups. Show them who the customer was so that they really got a sense for who we were catering

• 31:28Speaker 00

  to.

• 31:29Guy Raz?

  There's been a lot of attention recently to the bro-ish culture of venture capital in Silicon Valley and how women are finally publicly being able to come out and talk more about their experiences. Did you experience some of that culture in this process?

• 31:50Speaker 00

  I, through the process of building Rent the Runway, was sexually harassed by one individual, and I'm happy to share that experience. However, I will say that I've had interactions with

• 32:08Speaker 00

  Dozens and dozens of venture capitalists at dozens of firms, and this was just one individual. So the far, far, far majority of my interactions have been incredibly positive. But I was in a situation once where I was kind of propositioned, sent sexual text messages.

• 32:31Guy Raz?

  This is why you were trying to raise money for Rent the Runway?

• 32:35Speaker 00

  While I was building the company, yes, from someone in the investor community.

• 32:39Guy Raz?

  Sending you text messages like, let's go on a date, or whatever it was?

• 32:44Speaker 00

  That and things that are more explicit than that.

• 32:46Guy Raz?

  Were you shocked to get those?

• 32:51Speaker 00

  I was. I thought that it was inappropriate and fairly bizarre, given that it was happening over text message. So there was evidence created. Now, there was also conversations that were happening in person that were also threatening and very bizarre.

• 33:12Guy Raz?

  Yeah. Did you just ignore it? Was there anything you could have-- did you feel like you couldn't really do anything about it, except just ignore it?

• 33:19Speaker 00

  So I initially ignored it, and that was the plan. I was planning on ignoring it and decided I was going to keep it silent. And then this person decided to call one of my board members up on the phone and say, Jen never responds to me. And I think that this is a real problem, and she's a really unresponsive CEO. And she's probably, if she's doing this to me, she's probably doing this to other people. And he really challenged my behavior as a CEO.

• 33:54Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 33:55Speaker 00

  And actually, that board member came into my office to give me feedback and say, I need to be more responsive, which was my instantaneous reaction was, oh, my God, I can't believe that this person, after being rejected by making these sexual advances, is now trying to ruin my career.

• 34:17Guy Raz?

  In just a minute, how Jen handled that very tricky situation. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR.

• 34:39Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So in those early days of Rent the Runway, Jen Hyman faced the situation where one of her investors was harassing her. And when she ignored his advances, he took it out on her. He actually complained about her to a member of her board. And so when that board member asked Jen about it, she decided to be totally transparent about what was going on.

• 35:05Speaker 00

  I showed this board member the text messages at that time and basically, you know, asked my board member how they'd like me to respond.

• 35:17Guy Raz?

  What did the board member say?

• 35:18Speaker 00

  I mean, the board member was shocked.

• 35:20Guy Raz?

  I bet.

• 35:21Speaker 00

  And I proceeded to tell everyone else on my board, as well as some key executives who were working with me at Rent the Runway at the time. And the board was unbelievably supportive. And we decided that we were not going to do business anymore with this individual or his firm.

• 35:42Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 35:43Speaker 00

  So there's that form of sexual harassment. And I think that that's a lot of what's been getting recent media coverage.

• 35:50Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 35:51Speaker 00

  And hopefully, by nature of a lot of very brave women speaking out right now, that sort of sexual harassment will be stamped out of the industry in one way that I think over time that it needs to be stamped out is by diversifying the sources of capital, making sure that 50% of investors are women. But let's put that aside just for a second. The second form of sexual harassment slash gender discrimination is way more subtle, and it's way more difficult to prove.

• 36:30Speaker 00

  But for instance, overall, I have seen male founders receive, you know, sometimes more mentorship or more chances to be successful. They get more strikes against them before their investors kind of pull the plugs. And in a lot of cases, women are only given, you know, it's a one-striker, you're out as the CEO and founder. There are situations where-- I've now come to understand that a lot of how deals get done and how companies, let's say, get acquired is someone is saying something like, oh, you should really meet this guy. He's a visionary. He's incredible. You should get to know him. And I think across

• 37:14Speaker 00

  the board, more of those comments are being made about male entrepreneurs than they are about female entrepreneurs. We, as a society, feel uncomfortable using the words visionary or brilliant to describe women. That's not always intentional. I think it's just ingrained in people. I would say in a lot of different instances, people have actually genuinely been trying to be helpful to me. Like, there was a time early in my career where an investment firm, you know, said to me, oh, Jen, you know, you should really meet these other entrepreneurs. They're around your own age. They're brilliant. You could learn a lot from them. They're

• 37:58Speaker 00

  building incredible companies. They're going to change the world. Now, all of those entrepreneurs were men, and they were kind of prefaced as being geniuses, brilliant, et cetera. And this same firm never introduced me in that same way to those same entrepreneurs, even though we were at similar tenure and similar stages in our company. The irony is, a lot of those guys, their businesses, you know, aren't around anymore.

• 38:24Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 38:25Speaker 00

  And, you know, I'm the one who's still chugging. Now, I don't think that they were trying to be intentionally sexist. It's just that there's a shade to which we all operate that puts women at a bit of a disadvantage.

• 38:40Guy Raz?

  Yeah. It's really amazing. I mean, you, it speaks to the, this like, perception of power dynamics that's so prevalent in the venture world.

• 38:51Speaker 00

  I think that those power dynamics exist in so many different industries. And I don't think that it's just a Silicon Valley or technology problem. And that's why I think that the more egregious, sending you a text message in the middle of the night, asking to sleep with you, sort of sexual harassment, hopefully can

• 39:17Speaker 00

  Be stamped out via just being more vocal about it. I think, though, that the more subtle form of harassment slash discrimination, or just lack of opportunity, is actually the harder problem to solve.

• 39:30Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 39:31Speaker 00

  It's the more pernicious problem. It's the reason why only 4% of venture capital dollars are going towards women. And, you know, very, very few investors are women. So, you know, we need to fundamentally diversify who has access to power, who has access to capital in order to get a diversity of ideas and entrepreneurs out there.

• 39:52Guy Raz?

  Yeah. And you, obviously, you have had incredible success despite the challenges that you faced and that women in tech face. And as you sort of began to develop as a leader, as a CEO, how did you, how did you sort of make that transition? How did you figure out how to, you know, manage lots of people?

• 40:12Speaker 00

  I think that it is a continuous work in progress. I had never managed people across the diversity of functions that we have at Rent the Runway. You know, Rent the Runway is primarily a technology and logistics company.

• 40:26Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 40:26Speaker 00

  We have 1,200 employees. 10 employees are in my fashion department. And, you know, hundreds are in my logistics department. Hundreds are in my engineering department. And these are areas in which I had had no experience. And, you know, one thing that I've learned is that leadership evolves over time. First of all, being a leader of a 1,200-person company is different than being a leader of a 100-person company. And so I have to really evolve, even though I've had the same title for eight-plus years. Like, there are so many things that, you know, I've done wrong along the way.

• 41:06Speaker 00

  And I think that the thing that has made me grow and develop is the recognition of failure and the desire to improve and the desire to get better.

• 41:23Guy Raz?

  I don't want people to have the impression that this was all, you know, you just fleeted from success to success. It was easy and there were no low points because there have been, like with any company. And in 2015, you got some tough press about some people who left the company. There were quotes in newspapers calling it a mean culture and things like that from some of these employees who left. Did that, were you hurt by reading that stuff? Some people were criticizing you and your management style and leadership.

• 41:59Speaker 00

  It was the most difficult experience of my life, actually. It was such a difficult time because as a woman, there's two things they could really call you as a woman. They could call you the B word.

• 42:15Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 42:16Speaker 00

  Or they could say you're an idiot. And I've never really had a fear of someone calling me an idiot. But I do value myself for how I treat others. So to be called mean and to, you know, be quoted as having a mean girls' culture at the company was so unsettling and sad and horrible to me because it's the thing that's the most important to me. You know, what had been happening at the time was the company was going through a quite

• 42:55Speaker 00

  painful and difficult transition from being a, you know, one phase of a startup to trying to develop some sense of entering our teen years or our adolescent years. And I started to realize that I needed to make the tough calls and fire some people. That was very unsettling to people because we give men permission as leaders and as CEOs to make the tough choices.

• 43:26Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 43:27Speaker 00

  You know, with women, we don't give them as much permission to make those tough decisions. And we often, when we do make those decisions, we're often labeled as the B word or... You know, et cetera. So it certainly was a low point, but it led to the biggest outpourings of support I've ever had. It led to more courage around my own decision making because I led the company into the best place it's ever been.

• 43:59Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 44:00Speaker 00

  And in a sense, it makes the future less scary.

• 44:04Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 44:05Speaker 00

  Because that article, or a version of it, it will come out again. And the next time it comes out, it's just not going to have the same impact on me.

• 44:17Guy Raz?

  You mentioned earlier in the interview how you always wanted to run a successful company, or start a successful company, but also have a family and a kid. And you did that. You have a child and a partner. And how have you figured out how to do it in the way you wanted to do it?

• 44:37Speaker 00

  Well, first of all, let's backtrack to being 28 and having the idea for Rent the Runway. And I just want to tell the real story here, because I think that a lot of women go through this and they don't talk about it. One of the major considerations that I had in starting Rent the Runway was, is this a smart idea for me? Because if Rent the Runway is successful, will I ever be able to get married?

• 45:06Speaker 00

  I was always confident that I would turn Rent the Runway into a consumer behavior that millions of people did, and that I would build a, you know, I still believe we're going to build a multi-billion dollar company. But at the very, very beginning, when Rent the Runway launched, I had been dating someone from Harvard Business School, who I was very much in love with. And

• 45:30Speaker 00

  The day that Rent the Runway came out and we were on the front page of the New York Times, he broke up with me shortly thereafter. And he told me that he realized that he didn't want to be with his equal.

• 45:46Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 45:47Speaker 00

  So that was really sad and disheartening because I was very in love with this person. And that's what led into this fear. Now, it ended up that this fear was completely unfounded and I had no issues, you know, falling in love while building Rent the Runway. I just think that it paralyzed me.

• 46:10Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 46:11Speaker 00

  Because the number one priority in my life has always been having a family and having kids. So the amount of happiness that I have now, having a daughter, I just got back from maternity leave last week. I'm engaged to the love of my life. I can't even describe to you the level of joy that it brings into my life on a daily basis to truly have all of my dreams have come true.

• 46:38Guy Raz?

  I guess last year you guys had, you became profitable, which I should point out is exceedingly rare so quickly. And, I mean, your revenue is over $100 million, according to public reports. The valuation of the company is, I don't even know what it is. Do you know what it is?

• 46:59Speaker 00

  I do know what it is.

• 47:00Guy Raz?

  But you can't say what it is.

• 47:02Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 47:03Guy Raz?

  But it's probably higher than you ever imagined. Even though it may still be on paper, this thing that you built, that you and Jenny built, has made both of you rich. I mean, you are, even though it may just be on paper, you are rich. You're a rich person. You did not grow up that way.

• 47:20Speaker 00

  Well, being rich on paper is very different than being rich in reality. So let's talk in a few years.

• 47:25Guy Raz?

  Okay.

• 47:26Speaker 00

  Because I didn't grow up saying, I want to found a company. I had this idea for Rent the Runway. I saw that it was mission driven. I saw that it was driving self-confidence and making women feel incredible about themselves. And I knew that I had to commit my life to that. And I'm really proud that we have had many...

• 47:47Speaker 00

  Different women leave Rent the Runway and then raise their own venture capital and start their own companies and go after their own dreams. And Jenny and I, two years ago, decided to start a foundation where we've raised millions of dollars to support other female entrepreneurs scaling their companies. And we've now helped thousands of women throughout the United States in scaling their organizations. So this mission of empowering women and making women feel confident is the actual thing that I care about.

• 48:24Speaker 00

  Now, if it happens to be that Rent the Runway brings me the ability to provide for my family and thank my parents, that would be wonderful. But honestly, if it amounts to nothing, it is the absolute best experience of my life, and I would do it over a million times.

• 48:46Guy Raz?

  Jen Hyman, founder of Rent the Runway. By the way, her co-founder, Jennifer Fleiss, recently left the company. It was amicable. Both Jen and Jennifer each own 13% of the company, and it's put them on Forbes' list of the richest self-made women to watch. Rent the Runway isn't just profitable, it's also become America's single largest dry cleaner, dresses from 500 different designers, including, though it took a while to convince her, Diane von Furstenberg.

• 49:18Guy Raz?

  And please do stick around, because in just a moment, we're going to hear from you about the things that you're building. But first, a quick thanks to one of our sponsors, American Express Open. Every week on How I Built This, we bring you stories about entrepreneurs who beat the odds, overcame obstacles, and made their ideas happen. It's never easy, and that's why American Express Open wants to help with money and know-how, so you can turn your ideas into impact and get business done. Learn more at open.com.

• 49:50Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks for sticking around because it's time now for how you built that.

• 49:55Speaker 02

  My name is Dustin Hogard. We live here in Seabrook, Texas. It's southeast Houston, Texas.

• 50:00Guy Raz?

  Dustin grew up on a ranch, and so he spent a lot of time outdoors. And around the age of 10 or 11, his parents started to let him hike in the woods by himself.

• 50:10Speaker 02

  And since I was a little kid, I was obsessed with survival kits. When I would go to any store, anywhere, I would always go immediately to the survival kit section.

• 50:19Guy Raz?

  And as he got older, he started to design some of his own survival gear. And eventually, he got a job with the Texas State Guard.

• 50:27Speaker 02

  And the story that you hear all the time when you do these case studies of people who are in survival or emergency accidents is that they were never expecting to get into it. So you need some tools on you just in case something happens, whether it be a natural disaster or an emergency that happens while you're out doing an outdoor activity. You need to have those things on you at all times.

• 50:47Guy Raz?

  But most people just don't have those things on them at all times. I mean, most people do not want to carry a bulky survival kit around on a daily basis.

• 50:56Speaker 02

  They don't, in the morning, go, when they're going to work, put on their survival kit. It's awkward. It's weird. And people don't like to think about that.

• 51:03Guy Raz?

  So two years ago, Dustin started to design a survival belt that you could wear every day, whether you were heading into the woods or, you know, just going out to walk the dog.

• 51:14Speaker 02

  So when you think about a belt, you think it has to be comfortable, and it has to still be fashionably appealing. So the number one goal is to make sure that everything fits comfortably and does not weigh too much or doesn't look weird.

• 51:26Guy Raz?

  So as Dustin started to research how to make this belt, he found out that someone else was working on virtually the same thing. And that person lived about 15 minutes away. So Dustin contacted him, and he said, hey, you know, let's work together. And it turns out that other guy was a former engineer at NASA. So they decided to partner up. They called a bunch of mills. They found a military-grade webbing for the belt. And then they had to figure out how to make survival tools small enough to fit into it.

• 51:57Speaker 02

  We had to invent every single small part, almost. So the foil is a custom foil. The duct tape is a custom duct tape. The water container is a custom water container. All of the parts and pieces required us to go out and test the heck out of it.

• 52:11Guy Raz?

  Dustin and his partner worked with almost 30 manufacturers to custom design every miniature gadget that goes into the belt.

• 52:19Speaker 02

  We also have a ceramic knife, a high-quality button compass, purification tablets, safety pins.

• 52:25Guy Raz?

  And even with all of this gear on the belt, it doesn't weigh a ton.

• 52:30Speaker 02

  It's really hard to believe, but if you put it on, you would know you're wearing a bunch of survival stuff.

• 52:34Guy Raz?

  Last year, Dustin and his partner Nick decided to launch a Kickstarter to get the whole business going. They were hoping to raise $15,000, but they raised a quarter of a million dollars. So right now, they are extremely busy fulfilling pre-orders and getting them shipped out. But they're still experimenting with the belt and testing it out, and Dustin says he wears it every single day.

• 52:58Speaker 02

  We wear it every day. The only days I don't wear it is on laundry day, when I don't have belt loops because I'm wearing shorts or pajamas or something. But otherwise, we are our biggest testers.

• 53:10Guy Raz?

  That's Dustin Hoggard of Seabrook, Texas. His company is called Wazoo Survival Gear, and his product is called The Cash Belts, which is available online. And you can read more about Wazoo Survival Gear on our Facebook page. Just search How I Built This on Facebook. And of course, if you want to tell us your story, go to build.npr.org. We love hearing what you're up to. And thanks for listening to the show this week. If you want to find out more or you want to hear previous episodes, you can go to howibuiltthis.npr.org. You can also write to us. That's h i b t at npr.org. And if you want to send a tweet, it's at How I Built This. Our show was produced this week by Rachel Faulkner with original music composed by Ramtin Arablouei.

• 53:54Guy Raz?

  Thanks also to Neva Grant, Sanaz Meshkhanpour, Claire Breen, and Jeff Rogers. Our intern is Lawrence Wu. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This from NPR.

• 54:30Speaker 03

  Gregory Warner here to tell you about NPR's new international podcast. It's called Rough Translation. Each week, we're going to take you to a different country to hear a story that reflects back on something that we are talking about here in the United States, maybe get a perspective shift. Travel with us. Rough Translation is on NPR One or wherever you get your podcasts.