The RealReal founder Julie Wainwright has a startling new memoir

Julie Wainwright took two companies publicly, rather incredible feat of any standard. Yet in his new memoir, Time to get reallyIt offers readers something even more precious: a dull view of the messy reality of entrepreneurship. Wainwright shares the types of difficult truths that many executive directors can relate to, but rarely discuss publicly, including the consequences of what many would consider her first major failure, which excluded Pets.com during the 2000 market.

If you are a certain age, you definitely remember it. Startup to supply online pets has become immediately recognizable thanks to an unforgettable sock mascot And an attractive slogan, “because pets can’t drive.” But what seemed like just a passing moment in Dot-com Bubble’s Burst would throw a shadow over Wainwright’s career for almost a decade. “If I was talking to recruits, it was like,” No one will hire you anymore, “Wainwright said in an interview with this editor earlier this week.

He came as a shock, given that Wainwright’s career was initially unstoppable. After cutting her teeth on CLOROX, she increased through technological companies in the 90s when the female leadership in the sector was extremely rare. As Executive Director Berkeley Systems, and later the Reel.com Internet video store, she worked “toning hours”, but she was happy and, by her knowledge, she succeeded, including a growing revenue Reel.com with $ 3 million to $ 25 million – the time during which the company was a company sold to Hollywood video. “I just worked better without a boss,” she said.

Then came collapse that would permanently overthrow many careers. In 2000. Wainwright took Pets.com Public, only to close it later in the same year during the Bubble Burst Bubble Burst. A professional blow was worsened by a personal one: she says she informed her employees on the same day of closing the company, her husband requested a divorce.

“My work disappeared, I divorce and I don’t have children,” Wainwright, then 42, remembers thinking as she faced what she felt like a total life in demolished. Exacerbation of things, media coverage was “incredibly negative and intrusive”, to the point of telling days after the company closes, journalists appeared on her threshold.

Wainwright describes what followed as a kind of long winter, where they only offered her roles of leading efforts in failed companies. But that intersection led to an extraordinary other act. In 2010 she founded Realrealhelping in the process of pionering the luxury shipment market on the network. Like many founders, Wainwright first placed a company from his own home, but soon surpassed her living room, and today he processes many hundred thousand different luxury items each month to sell within 90 days of more than 1.2 million square meters of space and operational centers. It is also a public company; In his second trip to Wall Street, 2019, Wainwright took the clothes through the traditional IPO process.

Unfortunately, this triumphant return has its sharp chapter. In 2022, Wainwright pushed suddenly from Realreal by the members of the committee she recommended – another turn that is not ashamed of sharing. Instead, she appoints names in the book, and earlier this week she described the move as a “play of power” of an investor who “did not get her money from the company and thought he could lead the company better.”

Wainwright – which fully supports the company Current Executive Director (Was the first lease of the company) – is still angry. In the conversation, she noted that “no founder will ever say that they should shoot and remove them,” which is honest that the book – Wainwright itself – makes it so refreshing. In the corporate world, where people often spin the narrative to look impenetrable, Wainwright is a straight scorer; If she doesn’t like anything, she won’t keep the blows. If someone spinning a story differently than he sees it, they will invite her. Where he messes up, he says so.

It is even better in this memoir – in the opinion of this reader – is Wainwright’s ability to offer not only personal revelation, but also practical wisdom. Readers pass through their decision to in a certain way bon on the sales staff and share their teachings on the quadrant of the leadership assessment that she collected from McKinsey’s executives, including the realization that she hired one of the worst species: “stupid aggressive”, which means, in her words, someone whose “should be charged and be in accordance with their auxiliary Supera”

In the meantime, a happy story is underway. Wainwright continues his entrepreneurial trip ThatA food company that develops personalized nutritional recommendations based on genetics and individual needs.

You can find our whole conversation hereDownload Podcast via Strictvc. In the meantime, if you are interested in a convincing reading that is both a memoir and a manual, offering the founders something far more valuable than idealized success stories, you can pick up a book here.

Wainwright said when we spoke: “I personally wrote it for entrepreneurs to give them a realistic look and I hope they will inspire them and, you know, maybe think twice and not make the mistakes I made.”