Ep 32: Tracy DiNunzio (Part 3), Founder of Tradesy, on Rapid Growth and Rapid Learning

Part 3 of 3. Tracy DiNunzio is a killer. She's the self-taught founder and CEO of Tradesy.com, which has taken off like a rocket ship. She's raised $13 million from investors including Richard Branson, Kleiner Perkins, and yours truly, and board members include the legendary John Doerr. Tradesy is on a mission to make the resale value of anything you own available on demand. Their tagline is "cash in on your closet." Tracy is in the trenches 24/7, making it the perfect time to ask her... How has she created such high-velocity growth? How did she recruit the investors she did? What's been her experience as a female founder? What are her biggest mistakes made and lessons learned? This multi-part series, fueled by wine, will answer all this and more. Even if you have no desire to start your own company, this 3-part series will get you amped to do big things. This series is brought to you by the Tim Ferriss Book Club at www.audible.com/timsbooks

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

• 0:00Tim Ferriss?

  Guten Tag, ladies and gentlemen. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. This episode is brought to you by the Tim Ferriss Book Club, a very small collection of books that have had a huge impact on my life. You can check them all out, listen to samples at audible.com/timsbooks. There are five or six of them. What you are about to hear is Part Three, the final part, of a multi-part conversation with Tracy DiNanzio, co-founder and CEO of Tradesy. It's a fascinating story, lots of lessons learned. I had a blast with this conversation. If you didn't catch the first two parts, you might want to do that before venturing in. But if you don't mind, your story is more of a jigsaw puzzle, then by all means, keep on listening.

• 0:42Tim Ferriss?

  We bounce all over the place, so you will get something out of this, even if you just listened to this part. So without further ado, please enjoy Part Three of The Tim Ferriss Show with Tracy DiNanzio.

• 0:55Speaker 01

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question?

• 1:02Tim Ferriss?

  No, I would have seen it before.

• 1:05Speaker 02

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 1:16Tim Ferriss?

  What was the trigger for you to become so analytics and data-driven? See, I would never have imagined in a million years that you came from a sort of play with dolls, act dumber than you are to be popular. And I'm putting words in your mouth, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I never would have imagined that coming from you because you have a tighter hold and more masterful grasp of analytics than the vast majority of CEOs I've ever dealt with. Regardless of gender, regardless of ethnicity, regardless of fucking whatever, it doesn't matter. That's the fucking list courtesy of wine.

• 2:01Tim Ferriss?

  But I'm also from Strong Island, so I should just point out.

• 2:06Tracy DiNunzio?

  Let's put on our accents.

• 2:08Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, God, no. God, I've spent so long trying to beat it out of me. I used to have a rat, rat tail. I mean, like, one, my accent was, yeah, anyway, that's a whole separate story. Yeah, you know, rat tails were pretty rad back in the day.

• 2:19Tracy DiNunzio?

  They were very cool.

• 2:19Tim Ferriss?

  But when did you, if there was a particular shift, I mean, how did you become so data comfortable, to put it one way? I mean, is that something that your parents instilled in you? Is that something that came much later? How did that develop?

• 2:34Tracy DiNunzio?

  Well, I think that in general, any kind of like obstacle or hardship, and everybody has them in their life and along their journey. You're forced to learn things and like acquire new tools. So I had like a crazy kind of health problem that I was born with. And very early on, realized that doctors didn't have all the answers, believe it or not. And so even from the time I was a teenager, I was doing like a lot of medical research about things related to my own condition. And, and a lot of that research was really data driven because I was looking through medical journals at the library before, before the internet.

• 3:17Tracy DiNunzio?

  And then later on, online, you know, reading a bunch of stuff that wasn't my field and trying to assimilate it and then put it to practical use, which is just the same exact sort of pattern of, you know, starting a business in a field that you don't know anything about, you collect a lot of information and data, you try to retain the things that are important and apply them to a practical usage. So I think, you know, it's a big cliche to say that like your, your hardship is your greatest gift. Everyone says that and, but I think it's so true. And so, you know, I didn't know it at the time when I was afraid that I wouldn't be healthy and I needed to learn all this stuff that the methodology would actually carry through for the rest of my life and be kind of useful.

• 3:58Tim Ferriss?

  And I know the answer, but I have to ask on behalf of everyone who's listening and going, "You're killing me. Just tell me what it is." Are you comfortable describing or just mentioning what that condition is?

• 4:12Tracy DiNunzio?

  Yeah, sure. I was born with spina bifida, which is a congenital birth defect where your vertebrae don't form around your spinal cord. So that cord that hangs down the middle of your spine, that's full of all these really sensitive nerves that control like all the functions of your body and help you walk and do all the great things that humans can do. It's left exposed and usually there's some damage to the spinal cord at birth because of that. I was really lucky. I was born by cesarean section, not because they knew that I had this, but just because I wouldn't come out apparently, which meant that I didn't have so much damage at birth.

• 4:51Tracy DiNunzio?

  And I was able to, through a very long series of surgeries and more surgeries and different therapies, be mobile and healthy throughout my life in a way that most people who were born with spina bifida are not able to. And then I also, the reason that I was born with spina bifida is likely attributed to my dad's exposure to Agent Orange when he was in Vietnam. So when I did, Agent Orange is a chemical defoliant that our country sprayed in order to kill the brush in the jungle in Vietnam, because the Vietcong knew their way around and our troops didn't. So they needed to clear the way so that everyone was on equal footing. And those chemicals ended up being very toxic and they're still in the soil

• 5:32Tracy DiNunzio?

  and the water supply in Vietnam and causing these kinds of birth defects in like a fifth generation now. So I started off looking for ways to improve my own health. And then I got really interested in learning about, you know, why I had this thing and how I might be able to contribute to helping other people not be born with this thing. And so I also, while I was a painter, spent some time, I don't know if you'd call it as an activist, but I did a lot of artwork that was based on my father's photographs from Vietnam. I did a lot of painting series when I was recovering from surgeries. So I had to use interesting techniques like crawling on the floor to make the painting because I couldn't stand up. And there was so much research that went into all of that. So, so yeah, that's the story.

• 6:14Tim Ferriss?

  God, you're a beast. In the most complimentary way possible.

• 6:19Tracy DiNunzio?

  Yeah, I'll take it.

• 6:21Tim Ferriss?

  I am very impressed with how little you complain. I don't know if I've ever heard you complain explicitly about anything. And I just, I feel like that is such an undervalued skill or attribute because complaining does not fix the problem.

• 6:38Tracy DiNunzio?

  Yes. So it's a skill. It's not an attribute. It's a skill. I used to complain like crazy.

• 6:44Tim Ferriss?

  Really? Okay, I want to hear you talk about this. I want to hear you talk about this because I was reading recently about Hell Week within BUDs. So that's the part of the Navy SEAL qualification and training. And they go many days without sleep. They're exposed to freezing cold water. They're just basically tortured and put through hell to force them to give up, which they do by ringing a bell, among other things. And one of the general tenets of Hell Week is keep your suffering to yourself. Meaning like, don't bitch and moan about your pain because it's contagious and it will affect the morale and success rate of the other people.

• 7:26Tim Ferriss?

  So if you're suffering, if your legs are tired, if you're fucking cold, if you haven't slept in two days, keep it to yourself. And I'm not saying that's always the best policy, but I feel like complaining has become a national pastime in the United States and people are very eager to be offended because it gives them a reason to spout off instead of doing whatever the fuck they should be doing. And so I would love to hear how you trained yourself not because you have what I think everyone would consider legitimate reasons to complain, to be bitter, to not proactively do all the incredible things that you've done. So how have you trained yourself not to do that?

• 8:08Tracy DiNunzio?

  Yeah, I tried like complaining and being bitter. It didn't work. It was just terrible. And I was definitely bitter and I definitely, you know, went through my ups and downs. Okay, so Stephen Hawking actually has the best quote on this and also the best like legitimate story of, you know, has the right to complain probably more than anybody. And he says that when you complain, nobody wants to help you. And it's like the simplest thing and so plainly spoken and it's, and only he could really say that brutal, honest truth, but it's true, right? So if you spend your time focusing on the things that are wrong, and then that's what you express and you project to the people you know,

• 8:48Tracy DiNunzio?

  you don't become a source of growth for people. You become a source of destruction for people. And that draws like more destructiveness. And I think that because that was how it felt for me when I was thinking about how I was in pain and talking about how I was in pain. Um, it definitely, it started a momentum that went in a negative direction in my life. And so at one point, I would say, I don't know, probably in like 2006, 2007, I just decided to, it's kind of like a Tim Ferriss challenge, but I didn't know, I didn't know you then. Um, but I put myself on like a, um, almost a complaining diet where I said like, I'm not going to, not only am I not going to say anything negative about the situation I'm in,

• 9:34Tracy DiNunzio?

  but I'm not going to let myself think anything negative about it. And this coincided with, I had, I had lost feeling in my feet because of a surgery. So I don't have any feeling in my feet, so I have to keep my eyes open when I walk. Um, and so at the time I was reading about like kind of how plastic the brain is when it comes to filling in the gaps where you're, you know, losing information. And in starting to understand just scientifically how plastic the brain is, I thought, well, if I refuse to have negative thought and I only let myself have a positive thought, eventually that's going to change my brain. I don't know how long it's going to take though. And it took a long time and, and I wasn't perfect at it, but I definitely feel like. So not only did replacing those thoughts help me kind of start moving my life in a

• 10:19Tracy DiNunzio?

  better direction where I wasn't obsessing about what was wrong and I was just thinking about what was right, it also made me not feel physical pain as much, which is very liberating and kind of necessary if you want to do anything because if you're in pain, it's really hard to do anything else but feel it. So, and you know, you know probably more about this than I do, the way that the body processes pain and how pain is in a way just a thought. So yeah, I just, I did this experiment where I tried to control my thoughts for some time and it just started things in the right direction. It doesn't mean that everything's always good. I definitely have, you know, days where I'm still like, this sucks. I wish I just had like, you know, normal feet and could go run around and not

• 11:03Tracy DiNunzio?

  think about all the little things that I have to think about, but for the most part, I just don't think about it anymore.

• 11:09Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, no, it's just taking a second for it all to soak in for me. First of all, I owe you a thanks for a very extensive email that you wrote to me subsequent to my contracting Lyme disease, which I really appreciated. And it's been impressive to me how methodically you've deconstructed not only your condition, but the symptoms and how to address all of them. And that's coming from someone who's made somewhat of a career of doing weird experiments on himself. The, and for those people interested in the, the no complaining challenge, there is a post that I wrote at one point called the, the 21 day no complaint experiment, which is something I borrowed from a pastor, actually, which I would encourage

• 11:53Tim Ferriss?

  everyone to check out. But I think you're very good and I'm astonished, you know, it, we still haven't hung out in person, but I didn't meet my first sort of full-time executive assistant for four years. Hopefully it won't take that long in our case. But I feel like you're very good at inspiring people. And to flash forward from your round of funding that you explained not too long ago, you ended up with a $13 million Series B investment led by Kleiner Perkins, John Doerr, who is of course, one of the most famous venture capitalists of all time, joining your board, Stephanie, who we mentioned earlier, joining

• 12:36Tim Ferriss?

  as well. Richard Branson ended up investing. And then a bunch of previous investors and then little old me ended up investing as well, which I was very excited about. How the hell did that happen? I mean, it's it's an incredible roster of investors excluding me.

• 12:54Tracy DiNunzio?

  Including you.

• 12:56Tim Ferriss?

  And I would love to know what happened in between those two funding rounds that enabled you to make that quantum leap forward. And I'm not saying the previous investors weren't incredible, but you added a lot of really, I think, global MVPs is what they would be considered by a lot of people in the startup game. How did that happen? What were the things that happened in between those two periods and what enabled you to close that type of of round of investing?

• 13:27Tracy DiNunzio?

  It was wild. I still, we closed that round in May and I still kind of can't believe it. It's really, it's really cool. So, so I'll tell you actually the slightly longer version of the story because I think that there's a good lesson there.

• 13:40Tim Ferriss?

  I've got half a bottle of wine left and I'm in no rush, so please continue.

• 13:44Tracy DiNunzio?

  So Tradesy grew quite a bit in in its first year and we were, so flashback to about a year ago, September of 2013, we were growing at a healthy clip. We were growing at, you know, between 10 and 15% month over month and we were running out of funding and it was time to go back out on the campaign trail and raise more money. So I spent last fall up in the valley and in New York, talking to a bunch of VCs. We were trying to raise $6 million and it wasn't an easy fundraise. We weren't getting a lot of momentum because that 10 to 15% a month is, it's very solid, but it doesn't, you know, blow anyone's hair back. It doesn't make them say, oh gosh, this rocket ship is taking off and we've got

• 14:27Tracy DiNunzio?

  to, you know, get on this. And there's so much competition and noise in our market that it just wasn't enough to really differentiate us. And so I had given initially all of the VCs we were talking to a deadline of Thanksgiving and said, you know, we need to know if you're in by Thanksgiving. We had three funds that were still interested but not ready to make a decision. So I extended the deadline to Christmas and on Christmas Eve day, all three passed. And we didn't.

• 14:54Tim Ferriss?

  Sorry, I'm only laughing because that interested but not ready to make a decision shit is so just like textbook VC. It makes me insane. Please continue.

• 15:04Tracy DiNunzio?

  It was, it was so painful, but in all honesty, I think that those, those funds were excited and interested and I don't, I don't blame them for being kind of on the fence at that moment because there was a leap of faith component at that moment. I was predicting a huge uptick in the beginning of 2014, based on a lot of the metrics we were seeing that were indicative of, that we were poised to have a huge kind of step function growth period. But it's very hard to believe like one person who has a vested interest in, in raising this money, saying, we're about to blow up.

• 15:41Tim Ferriss?

  You have, you have a bit of a bias.

• 15:44Tracy DiNunzio?

  So they all passed and I spent most of Christmas in bed, you know, I might have shed a tear and I just thought what we, we had about 18, 20 employees at the time and I thought, what am I going to do? We only had about two months of runway. I made a deal with our existing investors, Rincon Venture Partners and DeHare Ventures, where if we hit our goals of 20% month over month growth in the first quarter, they would give us another million dollars that would let us go out and raise the next round and, and keep us afloat. So we had this goal of 20% month over month growth in Q1, but we still didn't have enough money to make it through Q1. So I rounded up the six members of our senior team and I said, hey, guys, we make up, you know, more than half of payroll and we either need

• 16:29Tracy DiNunzio?

  to all take a salary cut or one and a half of us needs to get fired. And I don't think we can do this without all of us here. So, you know, go home, talk to your wives and girlfriends, come back on Monday and tell me if you can do a salary cut. And immediately that same day, every single one of them came back to me and offered to take a bigger salary cut than what, what I was proposing.

• 16:49Tim Ferriss?

  That's, that's amazing. What, now just, I hate to pause it because you're on a roll, but what do you attribute that to?

• 16:56Tracy DiNunzio?

  We believe very heartily in, in our mission and in our vision and we love working together and we don't want it to end. So I think that, you know, part of it was a sense of like team and duty to do that. And then part of it was like, hey, if this thing goes away, we're gonna have to go back to working at other companies. Nobody wants that. So, you know, it was our, it was our hail Mary and we all said like, we can do this. And so I had a really carefully articulated plan for making that money stretch out through Q1. And starting January 1st, as predicted, we hit this huge growth spurt and we started growing first 30%, then 40%, then more month

• 17:39Tracy DiNunzio?

  over month. And so not only was our cash flow actually really good because we, we are a revenue generating business, so we had more runway than we thought. But right at the end of January, I said, you know, we weren't going to raise yet, but this is it. This is the moment to go do it. I'm going to go back to the valley and I'm not coming back without a term sheet. And after about a week up there, talking to some new investors, targeting a larger raise, we started to get some momentum and the mechanics of kind of the valley machine started to kick in and we became a hot deal.

• 18:10Tim Ferriss?

  The irrational hysteria, you mean? I'm kidding, I'm kidding. Not irrational. It's, it's not irrational in this case. The question I have for you is why did you predict a massive uptick in January, February, March in Q1? What, what would cause that? Because you think of the gift giving season, the buying season, let's just say in publishing, it makes sense that you would have Black Friday, Cyber Monday, October, November, and even December is large shopping months. But why would your Q1 pop in the way that it did?

• 18:44Tracy DiNunzio?

  It's kind of boring and technical and it's multifaceted, which is why-

• 18:49Tim Ferriss?

  My favorite all around.

• 18:50Tracy DiNunzio?

  Yeah. It's not like, it's not like a neat story, which is also why it was hard to convince investors because I was a little bit of a mad scientist. I was like, look, look at this number. It's indicating that this could happen next. And, and there were just a number of components. You know, I, I think the, probably the headline that's like easiest to understand is that Tradesy isn't the ideal place to shop for gifts because not everybody feels comfortable giving something pre-owned as a gift.

• 19:17Tim Ferriss?

  Ah, wait a second, but it's the ideal place to get rid of your gifts that you don't want.

• 19:21Tracy DiNunzio?

  It sure is.

• 19:22Tim Ferriss?

  I love it.

• 19:24Tracy DiNunzio?

  In January, so we were seeing that we were achieving some much better rankings on search, but that they weren't paying off in traffic yet because of that probably seasonal factor and what people were searching for when they were in gift giving mode versus, you know, come January, it's back to, you know, what am I going to wear? And so there's some differentiation there. And a lot of what was happening with our retention numbers, so we had a much smaller user base, but we had started doing some kind of retention marketing initiatives that were paying off in spades. And all we needed to do was increase the size of our user base to really see that have long-term effect. So it was those two things are the headlines, but there were all these other smaller things that contributed as well.

• 20:08Tim Ferriss?

  So the hit list, the listing of big names, John Doerr, right? Richard Branson, holy shit, Lionsman and everything. What were some of the tipping points or moments where you snagged these folks? What made them say yes?

• 20:25Tracy DiNunzio?

  Well, I think so a few things happened with, with Kleiner in particular. We had four term sheets and we liked most of the, we liked all of the.

• 20:35Tim Ferriss?

  Term sheets, for those who don't know, is just a formal offer for investment with specifics.

• 20:41Tracy DiNunzio?

  Yes. So, so we had these four different funds that were willing to invest and, and lead a round of anywhere from 10 to 15 million. It varied based on the fund and the term sheet. And we, I had known some of the folks at Kleiner, I had never met John Doerr, and we connected with them kind of late in the process and they invited us to a partner meeting and it was our last meeting of the raise. We were prepared to make a decision, we were happy with the four term sheets we had, and we went to the Kleiner meeting because we were still interested in hearing what they had to say, but we thought it might be too late for them to be able to move quickly. And honestly, I was just so excited to go sit in a room with Mary Meeker and John Doerr and Randy Comissar and, you know, it's like the Mount Rushmore of, of venture capital.

• 21:25Tracy DiNunzio?

  Like it was just a it was a fun moment. I didn't know if they I didn't know if they would be interested in the investment either. They're not necessarily known for investing in, you know, fashion companies. So part of what was great about that was that we walked in with four term sheets in our pockets. So it was easy to do a great pitch.

• 21:43Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you have nothing to lose.

• 21:45Tracy DiNunzio?

  Yeah, we were very secure. And then in that meeting, we saw, I don't know if we had a preconceived notion of Kleiner, but I definitely didn't expect them to be as warm or as thoughtful as they were. So having met with tons of VCs, there were plenty that would, you know, kind of play with their phone in the meeting or ask questions that seemed not like the most intelligent questions. And the Kleiner team just asked the smartest questions in that meeting. They were so thoughtful. They were so impressive. And my co-founder and I left saying like, wow, they're every bit as awesome as they're cracked up to be, if not more. And so they came back very quickly and offered us a term sheet and we had 24 hours to make a decision.

• 22:29Tracy DiNunzio?

  And we took a bit of a risk because we didn't know them as well as we knew the other funds. But of course, we knew their reputation and John Doerr's reputation kind of precedes him. And he was signing up to be on our board and that's a that's a once in a lifetime opportunity. And so we took it. I I negotiated the term sheet with John Doerr, which was, you know, all all under kind of time pressure, which was actually probably the most intense and bizarre, wild experience of the whole thing. And and yeah, we signed. They actually facilitated the introduction to Richard Branson shortly thereafter. I got to go meet him and hang out with him, even have a few drinks with him

• 23:09Tracy DiNunzio?

  and pitch him and he was awesome and agreed to invest and was excited about the vision. And I think more than anything, what got them so excited, of course, the numbers were going up quickly and thank goodness, knock wood, they still are. But I think it was the larger vision that we were talking about earlier that really excited them. And John Doerr said to me, kind of when he called and offered to invest, he said, "We really believe that you're building a category, not just a company, and we want to be part of that."

• 23:38Tim Ferriss?

  That's high praise from the priest himself. That's

• 23:42Tracy DiNunzio?

  Surreal.

• 23:43Tim Ferriss?

  That's a big, that's a big statement. You know, Randy Komisar, I have to just mention that when I was graduating from school, Randy Komisar knew a professor of mine named Ed Shau, Z S C H A U, who was a congressman for one or two terms in Silicon Valley, competitive figure skater, also took a couple of companies, public, I mean, really my kind of guy.

• 24:04Tracy DiNunzio?

  Yeah.

• 24:05Tim Ferriss?

  And so I sat in on Ed Shau's last class at Harvard Business School, where he also taught. Randy Komisar was a guest speaker. I ended up with a copy of The Monk and the Riddle by Randy, which had a huge impact on me. And, and that was, I have to say, it came out probably between 97 and 2000, at a very frothy point in the Valley's activity, not unlike where things are now. And just as a side note, I would like to recommend to startups that your ability to raise funding is directly inversely proportional to your

• 24:46Tim Ferriss?

  need to raise money. So you should raise money when you do not need it. You need to kind of dig your wells before they're dry and sort of account for the worst case scenario, which I think a lot of people are bad at doing. But, so you raised this, you raised this round with a bunch of iconic folks, again, excluding me. I've got a lot to prove before I get there. But with a bunch of really just incredible, brand name folks. So you mentioned earlier that 1.5 million hits your bank account. Holy shit, 1.5 million. Now you have, how much was it? 13, 15?

• 25:22Tracy DiNunzio?

  13.

• 25:23Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. So now you have 13 million hit your bank account.

• 25:28Tim Ferriss?

  How do you use that money? And how do you not succumb to the temptation to rapidly misspend that money? Which I think is a common issue with a lot of startups where they have limited resources, limited cash, limited headcount, and they have to evaluate every decision very carefully. They get a bunch of money and then they misspend it very quickly because they feel like they're in a land grab with competitors and they just flush a ton of money down the toilet.

• 26:01Tracy DiNunzio?

  Totally.

• 26:01Tim Ferriss?

  Bam, $13 million hits the bank account. What now?

• 26:05Tracy DiNunzio?

  Well, we spend it and we spend it fast, but not, but not, but not stupidly. And so I think that where a lot of companies misstep and overspend is in their marketing budget, because if you, if you dump a lot of cash into customer acquisition and those customers don't convert and create long-term value, then you've thrown that money away. And Google and Facebook are the only ones who win. So a big part of how we avoided that pitfall is really just built into our business model where the majority of our customer acquisition is organic.

• 26:39Tim Ferriss?

  Organic, meaning search traffic?

• 26:42Tracy DiNunzio?

  Search traffic and other sources that don't cost money. So referrals and et cetera. So because that's kind of built into our model and it's self-perpetuating, the more products we have, the more organic traffic we get, the more customers we have, they list more products and we get more traffic. And so it's this flywheel of growth that was always built in to the model. It was, we were never a company that thought that we would pay to play. And even now that we spend what would probably be considered a modest amount, but a lot for us on marketing every month, where we match it very carefully to how our growth is going on the organic or free side, so that our overall pool of customers still ends up being

• 27:26Tracy DiNunzio?

  worth a lot more than what we spent on marketing. So for people who are in the industry, it's like our, we keep our blended CPA really low. But look, it goes fast. I mean, the first 1.5 million went shockingly fast. This, this 13 million goes shockingly fast. Luckily, we're, we're seeing returns for it, which means that it won't be a problem to raise more. But It's certainly a challenge to not overspend and I also tend to be very liberal when it comes to compensation packages for our, our team. I think that all of our best people, which is really all of our people, they're all doing the work of three people. And we keep a very, very high bar for performance and we compensate our people accordingly.

• 28:10Tracy DiNunzio?

  So much more of our funding is actually going towards people than, and paying people salaries and perks and bonuses than towards marketing, which I think is the real kind of black hole of where you have a risk of not getting enough value out of your spend.

• 28:25Tim Ferriss?

  Absolutely. Yeah. A hundred percent agreed. If you focus on recruitment and retention of top talent, your ability to create an impressive number on a revenue or profit per employee basis is really very, very high. I read a biography of Ryanair at one point, which was actually, this was probably five to seven years ago, very, very impressive on those types of metrics. What positions are you currently looking for and where can qualified folks learn more about those positions?

• 29:02Tracy DiNunzio?

  So we've got a jobs page, tradesy.com backslash jobs and we have-

• 29:07Tim Ferriss?

  Is it a backslash or a forward slash? I hate to be a jerk about it.

• 29:11Tracy DiNunzio?

  Gosh, I think it's a backslash.

• 29:13Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 29:14Tracy DiNunzio?

  It's a backslash.

• 29:15Tim Ferriss?

  All right.

• 29:16Tracy DiNunzio?

  But that kind of like rocks my world. I'm now I'm not sure. Try both. It's the first test to see how interested people are in working for tradesy if we can figure out the front or the backslash. It's part of the hazing process.

• 29:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 29:31Tracy DiNunzio?

  So right now, what would make my life so nice would be a killer retention marketing manager. And that's someone who runs mostly our email marketing, helps us to target and segment our lists better and really digs into kind of the business intelligence around our existing customers to see how we can serve them better. So that kind of like killer marketer, growth hacker, if you will, we're definitely on the hunt for someone like that. And we are never turning away a good full stack engineer. We're hiring lots of those.

• 30:05Tim Ferriss?

  What's the jobs page again, one more time?

• 30:07Tracy DiNunzio?

  tradesy.com backslash or forward slash jobs.

• 30:12Tim Ferriss?

  Awesome. I'm extremely bullish on you guys, not surprisingly. And I do want to ask you a bunch of questions. Are you still okay on time?

• 30:24Tracy DiNunzio?

  I'm good.

• 30:25Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, cool. Since you're on, you're three hours behind, so I'm, I'm willing to burn the midnight. Jesus Christ, the midnight oil. This is where, this is, this is where the witching hour gets really interesting. Good Lord. I apologize to the world at large for any stupidity that comes out of me from this point forward. I would love to ask you a million questions, but I won't ask you a million. But I would start with your recommendations for people who are, let's just assume that they're smart. They're willing to do their own homework. They're hardworking. Let's just assume those things. What resources or books or anything else would you recommend they consume?

• 31:08Tim Ferriss?

  Before starting their startup? And that doesn't mean venture backed necessarily. It could be in that. But you know, if there were two to three books, two to three sites, two to three articles, whatever it might be.

• 31:23Tracy DiNunzio?

  My dog has some strong opinions about that.

• 31:25Tim Ferriss?

  No, I know. Your dog, your dog rightly so. That's okay. What kind of dog do you have?

• 31:31Tracy DiNunzio?

  She is a little mutt that we adopted about a year ago and she's also the team tradesy resident dog.

• 31:39Tim Ferriss?

  I have huge dog envy, so I'm going to be getting a rescue in the next couple of months, which I've been saying for a while, but I need to get there.

• 31:46Tracy DiNunzio?

  Our office has anywhere from six to 10 canines every day.

• 31:50Tim Ferriss?

  Oh my God.

• 31:51Tracy DiNunzio?

  Extremely dog friendly. So yeah, if you need a dog fix, we're definitely the place to stop.

• 31:57Tim Ferriss?

  Half the reason I live in, in San Francisco is because there are more dogs than kids, so I can always get my dog fix. So resources, books, if you, if you were giving a commencement speech and had to recommend to this small army of would be entrepreneurs, a few resources, what would you recommend?

• 32:14Tracy DiNunzio?

  So there's like, there's the classic good to great, which I think is just, it's, I don't, most people cite it as their favorite business book and I read it like almost begrudgingly because of that and

• 32:25Tim Ferriss?

  Jim Collins.

• 32:26Tracy DiNunzio?

  Yeah, it's too good. So that's definitely a must read. I just finished the book about Amazon, The Everything Store.

• 32:34Tim Ferriss?

  I've heard great things about it.

• 32:36Tracy DiNunzio?

  Oh, wow. You know why I think it's a great book? Um, and, and especially for people starting out, there's so much like, um, so in the beginning of the book, Jeff Bezos says to the author, how are you going to avoid the narrative fallacy? Meaning when you tell a story of something that, you know, became a great success, you have all this information about what happened along the way and you, you just lean towards piecing together the bits that sound like it was inevitable and you kind of leave out the parts where everyone stumbles and falls or things just get murky for like a really long time. And I think the book does an incredible job of avoiding the narrative fallacy. It's a great read for anyone who's in the internet business. It might not be if you're not in that business

• 33:21Tracy DiNunzio?

  because it's a pretty detailed sort of granular tale of, you know, then we did these 10 things and this one was okay and that one was great and these two sucked and, you know, so it doesn't glorify or glamorize the process of building a huge company. And I really appreciate that because I think a lot of books about this do. There's a lot of like, people like to think, looking back, like a lot of people tell me now, I knew that, you know, that you were going to take it really far. And it's like, you, nobody knows. It's all just primordial soup in the early stages and it kind of continues to be. So if it doesn't feel like you're on a magic carpet ride to, you know, inevitable success, that doesn't mean you're not. It's, it doesn't really feel like that, I don't think.

• 34:06Tracy DiNunzio?

  So I love the Amazon book for how it details the, you know, two steps forward, one step back process of building something. And so I definitely think that's a new, a new must read. And then just for like, online resources, for me, early on, I leaned a lot on the stuff that the guys from Angel List published. So now I'm gonna like-

• 34:27Tim Ferriss?

  Are you talking about Venture Hacks? Or are you talking about Angel List itself?

• 34:31Tracy DiNunzio?

  Yes, Venture Hacks. Yep. Like, that was how I learned what the terminology and the language were. That was my lay of the land. I think I paid $7 for a download and it was like a great $7 at a time where $7 mattered. And so I definitely recommend that for like a getting your feet wet about what it means to take investment capital and how to think about your plans for that. And yeah, those are, I'm not good at the resources thing because I've done a lot of things in a bubble and I don't think that's necessarily the right way. I just, I get a little bit obsessive about what I'm working on and building the stuff I'm working on and, and don't take enough time to get the advice of people who've been there and I'm trying to work on that.

• 35:16Tim Ferriss?

  You know, I'm not convinced that's a bad thing. I think that oftentimes, on one hand, you could say that, you know, what you don't know, you don't know is what hurts you. But same time, there are many examples of people who have done the supposed impossible because they didn't know it was impossible in the first place. So I think there's, there's an argument to be made both ways. And the Venture Hacks tip, I would definitely endorse, and that's not just because, it has nothing to do with the fact that I'm an advisor to Angel List because they're entirely separate. But, you know, really, Naval, Nivee, they had some unpleasant experiences in the world of venture capital and realized that it was

• 35:56Tim Ferriss?

  a very opaque world, for the most part, and really strove to present a transparent interpretation and list of suggestions for how to optimize in that venture-backed environment. What would your advice be to those sitting down late at night, realizing they don't like their current job, they're considering a change, that could be a change of job, it could be starting their own gig, they're not sure? What would your advice be to those people?

• 36:32Tracy DiNunzio?

  I think the worst thing is to be static. Not everybody who quits their job and takes a risk is going to be financially successful. It's just not true, you know? So a lot of people are like, hey, chase your dreams and it always works out and you'll get there. Well, you know, a finite number of people can actually get there, whatever there means. But I think the the journey is a lot more exciting when there is some risk and when you can be a master of your own destiny to some degree. And I think there's like a lot of fallacy around the idea that you're gonna do it after you have this or that, after you have a certain amount of money or a certain, you know, amount of knowledge. Because anything that you acquire in the pre-planning stages

• 37:17Tracy DiNunzio?

  is gonna go faster or be less relevant than you think. And the only way to to do it is to do it. It's harder when you have more at stake. I didn't have a whole lot at stake. I had like a stalling art career. Two thousand eight, nobody was buying paintings. And I think that you hit it on the head when you said, you know, when you don't know what you're risking or or or what the odds are against you, it can be sometimes easier. But you can make a choice to be ignorant about those things and just do it if you feel a real calling to it. So but it's not, it's not easier necessarily. And it's not always all it's cracked up to be. So, you know, it's a decision to be on a on a journey and have an adventure, not necessarily a decision to move towards an outcome because the outcome's uncertain, no matter what.

• 38:00Tim Ferriss?

  Very sage advice for a young woman. No, that's great advice. Um, advice that I could also incorporate myself more so in a lot of things. How can people learn more about Tradesy and help Tradesy?

• 38:14Tracy DiNunzio?

  Well, you can.

• 38:15Tim Ferriss?

  And can I, and can I, as a male, go on your site and sell a couple of things that I've been dying to sell? Like a, like a gorgeous Dianesi.

• 38:26Tim Ferriss?

  Black and red leather motorcycle jacket.

• 38:29Tracy DiNunzio?

  So here's the funny thing. We don't have a men's section yet. We will in 2015. But if you go on Tradesy and you look in certain categories such as outerwear, like you've got, or watches, we've got this insane, amazing collection of men's stuff that's cropping up in our women's categories. So clearly there's some supply out there and I think some demand. So we are going to have an official sanctioned men's category soon. But in the meantime, if you want to list it in the women's category, I think a lot of women are shopping for men. I bought my husband a really amazing Montclair blazer on Tradesy the other day. And I think that there are so many women on Tradesy that have husbands and brothers and boyfriends

• 39:14Tracy DiNunzio?

  that are shopping that we're seeing men's inventory move. So you have my permission to list in an unsanctioned women's category until we have the men's category.

• 39:22Tim Ferriss?

  All right, I'm on it. And how can people most help Tradesy or find out about Tradesy?

• 39:29Tracy DiNunzio?

  Come visit us at tradesy.com or download the app. We're in the iTunes store and will soon be on Android. And just start using it. I mean, the average woman has only worn about 20% of what's in her closet in the last year. And I think even if that particular statistic doesn't apply to you, everyone's got something they're never going to wear again. And nobody, I think, doesn't need a few extra dollars. So if you're so inclined, list an item for sale, tell your friends and spread the word.

• 40:00Tim Ferriss?

  Indeed. Yeah, I have, you know, I just recently moved into a new place and I have so much crap. It is unbelievable. I mean, the number of boxes that I've unpacked that really don't deserve to be unpacked because I haven't needed them for five months is incredible. So folks out there.

• 40:22Tim Ferriss?

  No.

• 40:22Tracy DiNunzio?

  I mean, the whole, there's another thing, kind of, when we, when we went through our, our branding exercise, which we finally did, there's this sense of like, unencumbered living, like, stuff freaks me out. I don't like accumulating stuff. It makes me feel like I can't go where I want to go and do what I want to do because I have all this responsibility. And it's a very sharing economy kind of thing, like, get what you want when you need it, use it for a time, and then don't have the burden of ownership. But I feel liberated, you know, having a, having a small closet, having few belongings. I live in a tiny apartment with my husband. We don't keep a lot of stuff. And it's really refreshing. So I'd say even more than, than coming to Tradesy and using Tradesy, being part of that kind of movement towards more lightweight living is something that just, you know, makes us happy.

• 41:06Tim Ferriss?

  Absolutely. And it's not a San Francisco limited Burning Man slash mushroom infused euphoria that leads people to scuttle a lot of that excess nonsense. It's a really liberating process that almost anyone can engage in. And I think that there's, there's a documentary, it's, it's very, it's not the most professionally made thing, but it is an entertaining film called Tiny, about tiny home living, that I think elucidates a lot of these issues. So for those out there interested in simplifying, check out tradesy.com, T R A D E S Y dot com. And Tracy,

• 41:49Tim Ferriss?

  any parting comments before I let you get back to your fine evening?

• 41:54Tracy DiNunzio?

  No, I just, I thank you so much for the time. This was so much fun. And, and that's it. It's been really a pleasure.

• 42:02Tim Ferriss?

  Awesome. Well, this is, this has been great. I think I shall do more of these. Very tactical, very deep in the weeds, in a good way, and hopefully helpful for folks. Are you on, personally, on Twitter, Facebook, where people can tell you how they feel about this episode, anything like that?

• 42:21Tracy DiNunzio?

  Yeah, I'm on Twitter. I'm Tracy Dinunzio on Twitter. I'm on Facebook.

• 42:27Tim Ferriss?

  That's with a D-I?

• 42:29Tracy DiNunzio?

  D-I-N-U-N-Z-I-O.

• 42:34Tracy DiNunzio?

  It's a whole lot of name.

• 42:35Tim Ferriss?

  At T R A C Y D I N U N Z I O.

• 42:40Tracy DiNunzio?

  Yep. And I'm on Facebook and we have a Tradesy Facebook page where we welcome all kinds of feedback. I'm pretty easy to find.

• 42:49Tim Ferriss?

  Awesome. Tracy, you're a trooper. You, I think, are going to do great things. So for everyone involved, and that includes most of the planet, I think, if you fulfill the vision of the company. I appreciate you taking the time to chat with me this evening. So, thank you very much.

• 43:09Tracy DiNunzio?

  Thank you so much, Tim.

• 43:11Tim Ferriss?

  All right, guys. All of the relevant links and whatnot will be available on the blog and the show notes. So, visit if you would like to find links at 4hourworkweek, all spelled out, dot com, forward slash podcast. And Tracy, we shall be talking. So, thank you so much for the time. And we need to meet in person, so I can get intoxicated in a more civil fashion.

• 43:37Tracy DiNunzio?

  Yes, for sure.

• 43:40Tim Ferriss?

  All right. Thanks for listening, guys. Talk to you soon. Bye.

• 43:49Tim Ferriss?

  If you want more of the Tim Ferriss Show, you can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or go to 4hourblog.com.

• 43:54Speaker 04

  F O U R A H O U R B L O G dot com.

• 43:58Tim Ferriss?

  Where you'll find an award-winning blog, tons of audio and video interview stories with people like Warren Buffett and Mike Shinoda from Linkin Park, the books, plus much, much more. Follow Tim on Twitter at twitter.com/TFerriss.

• 44:11Speaker 04

  That's T F E R R I S S.

• 44:13Tim Ferriss?

  Or on Facebook at facebook.com/TimFerriss. Until next time, thanks for listening.