Julie Wainwright has made two companies public, a quite incredible feat for any standard. However, in their new memories, Time to be realShe offers readers something even more valuable: a blunt look at the messy realities of leadership. Wainwright shares the difficult types of truths with which many high -performance CEOs can be related but rarely discuss publicly, including sequelae of what many would consider their first important setback, which Pets.com closed during the 2000 market accident.
If you have a certain age, you definitely remember. The online startup of pet supplies had become instantly recognizable thanks to its memorable Calcetin puppet pet And catchy slogan, “because pets can’t drive.” But what seemed only a fleeting moment in the explosion of the point bubble to launch a shadow on Wainwright’s career for almost a decade. “When I talked to the recruiters, it was like, ‘No one is going to hire you more,” said Wainwright in an interview with this editor earlier this week.
It was a shock, since Wainwright’s professional trajectory initially seemed unstoppable. After cutting the teeth in chlorox, it rose through technological companies in the 90s, when female leadership in the sector was extremely rare. As CEO of Berkeley Systems and later of the online video store Reel.com, he worked “tons of hours”, but he was happy and, by revealing, he succeeded, including the revenues of reel.com growth from $ 3 million to $ 25 million, a time during which the company was the company sold to the Hollywood video. “I just operated better without a boss,” he said.
Then came the collapse that would have permanently derail many races. In 2000, Wainwright made Pets.com, only to close it later that year during the Dot-Com Bubble explosion. The professional coup was exacerbated by a personal one: she says that on the same day she informed the employees of the company’s closure, her husband requested a divorce.
“My work is gone, I’m divorcing and I don’t have children,” Wainwright recalls, then 42, he thinks he faced what seemed like a total collapse of life. To make things worse, the coverage of the media was “incredibly negative and intrusive”, to the point that it says days after the closure of the company, the reporters appeared at their door.
Wainwright describes what followed as a long -winter kind of winter, where only the response efforts for the companies that fail were offered. But that crossroads led to a second remarkable act. In 2010, she founded The royalhelping in the process to be a pioneer in the online luxury consignment market. Like many founders, Wainwright first established the company of his own home, but soon exceeded his living room, and today he processes many thousands of different luxury items each month that he aims to sell within 90 days of his more than 1.2 million square feet of spaces and store operations centers. It is also a company that quotes on the stock market; On his second trip to Wall Street, in 2019, Wainwright took the outfit through the traditional OPI process.
Unfortunately, this triumphant return has its own hard chapter. In 2022, Wainwright was abruptly expelled from the royal by the members of the Board he had recommended, another turn that does not shy away from sharing. On the other hand, she names names in the book, already beginning of this week, described the movement as a “power game” from an investor that “did not get her money from the company and thought she could administer the company better.”
Wainwright – who fully supports the company Current CEO (She was the company’s first hiring): she is still angry. He pointed out in a conversation that “no founder is going to say that he needs to be triggered and eliminated”, and is so honestly what makes the book, and Wainwright herself, is so refreshing. In the corporate world, where people often turn narratives to look at bulletproof, Wainwright is a direct shooter; If you don’t like something, you won’t contain your blows. If someone turns the story differently from the one who sees it, he will call it. Where she ruins, she says it.
Even better about this memory, in this reader’s opinion, is Wainwright’s ability to offer not only personal revelations but also practical wisdom. She walks readers through her decision to extract her sales personnel in a certain way, and share her learning about a leadership evaluation quadrant she obtained from McKInsey executives, including the understanding that she had hired one of the worst types: an “foolish aggressive” executive, which means, in his words, someone whose “need for Bully and Coerce and coercle and being in the best types.”
An interesting new chapter also develops. Wainwright continues your business trip with AharaA nutrition company that is developing personalized dietary recommendations based on genetics and individual needs.
You can find our complete conversation herethrough the Strictlyvc download podcast of TechCrunch. Meanwhile, if you are interested in a convincing reading that is both memories and manuals, offering the founders something much more valuable than idealized success stories, you can collect the book here.
Wainwright said when we talk: “I personally wrote it so that entrepreneurs give them a realistic and, hopeless vision, inspire them and, you know, maybe they think twice and do not make the mistakes I made.”