Julie Wainwright has taken two corporations public, a fairly unbelievable feat by any customary. But in her new memoir, Time to Get Actual, she affords readers one thing much more precious: a blunt take a look at the messy realities of management. Wainwright shares the sorts of robust truths that many high-achieving CEOs can relate to however not often talk about publicly, together with the aftermath of what many would think about her first main setback, which was shutting down Pets.com in the course of the 2000 market crash.
In the event you’re of a sure age, you positively keep in mind it. The net pet provides startup had change into immediately recognizable because of its memorable sock puppet mascot and catchy slogan, “As a result of pets can’t drive.” However what appeared like only a fleeting second within the dot-com bubble’s burst would solid a shadow over Wainwright’s profession for practically a decade. “Once I would discuss to recruiters, it was like, ‘Nobody’s going to rent you anymore,’” Wainwright stated in an interview with this editor earlier this week.
It got here as a shock, on condition that Wainwright’s profession trajectory initially appeared unstoppable. After reducing her enamel at Clorox, she rose via tech corporations within the ‘90s when feminine management within the sector was exceedingly uncommon. As CEO of Berkeley Techniques and later the net video retailer Reel.com, she labored “tons of hours” however was glad and, by her telling, succeeding, together with rising Reel.com’s income from $3 million to $25 million — a time throughout which the corporate was sold to Hollywood Video. “I simply operated higher with out a boss,” she stated.
Then got here the collapse that will have completely derailed many careers. In 2000, Wainwright took Pets.com public, solely to close it down later that very same yr in the course of the dot-com bubble burst. The skilled blow was exacerbated by a private one: she says that on the exact same day she knowledgeable staff of the corporate’s closure, her husband requested for a divorce.
“My work is gone, I’m getting a divorce, and I don’t have youngsters,” Wainwright, then 42, remembers considering as she confronted what felt like whole life collapse. Making issues worse, the media protection was “extremely detrimental and intrusive,” to the purpose that she says days after the corporate’s closure, reporters confirmed up at her doorstep.
Wainwright describes what adopted as a type of lengthy winter, the place she was solely provided roles main turnaround efforts at failing corporations. However that crossroads led to a outstanding second act. In 2010, she based The RealReal, serving to within the course of to pioneer the posh consignment market on-line. Like plenty of founders, Wainwright first arrange the corporate out of her own residence, however it quickly outgrew her front room, and right now, it processes many a whole lot of hundreds of various luxurious gadgets every month that it goals to promote inside 90 days out of its greater than 1.2 million sq. ft of warehouse house and operations facilities. It’s additionally a publicly traded firm; in her second journey to Wall Road, in 2019, Wainwright took the outfit via the standard IPO course of.
Sadly, this triumphant comeback has its personal harsh chapter. In 2022, Wainwright was abruptly pushed out of The RealReal by board members she had really helpful – one other twist she doesn’t shrink back from sharing. As an alternative, she names names within the e-book, and earlier this week, she described the transfer as a “energy play” by an investor who “didn’t get his cash out of the corporate and thought he might run the corporate higher.”
Wainwright — who totally helps the corporate’s current CEO (she was the corporate’s first rent) — remains to be pissed off. She famous in dialog that “no founder is ever going to say they must be shot and eliminated,” and it’s that actually that makes the e-book – and Wainwright herself — so refreshing. Within the company world, the place folks typically spin narratives to make themselves look bulletproof, Wainwright is a straight shooter; if she doesn’t like one thing, she isn’t going to carry again her punches. If somebody spins the story in another way than she sees it, she’ll name it out. The place she messes up, she says so.
Even higher about this memoir — on this reader’s opinion — is Wainwright’s capability to supply not simply private revelations however sensible knowledge. She walks readers via her determination to bonus her gross sales employees a sure method, and shares her learnings a few leadership-evaluation quadrant she gleaned from McKinsey executives, together with the conclusion she had employed one of many worst varieties: a “dumb aggressive” exec, that means, in her phrases, somebody whose “must bully and coerce and to be on high supersede their talents.”
There’s additionally an fascinating new chapter unfolding. Wainwright is continuous her entrepreneurial journey with Ahara, a diet firm that’s growing customized dietary suggestions primarily based on genetics and particular person wants.
You could find our full dialog here, by way of TechCrunch’s StrictlyVC Obtain podcast. Within the meantime, for those who’re curious about a compelling learn that’s each memoir and handbook, providing founders one thing much more precious than idealized success tales, you’ll be able to decide up the e-book here.
Stated Wainwright after we spoke, “I personally wrote it for entrepreneurs to provide them a practical view and hopefully encourage them and, you recognize, possibly they’ll suppose twice and never make the errors I made.”