Closet in the Cloud - Jenn Hyman, Co-Founder and CEO, Rent the Runway [S6.E3]

Our guest today on scaling up is Jenn Hyman, co-founder and CEO
of Rent the Runway (Nasdaq:RENT). From a thought bubble to
ringing the bell on the Nasdaq and being the first business to do
so with a female CEO, CFO and COO, Jenn has been at the helm of a
business that is a classic two-sided network case study. We dive
into this, and the scaling challenges of growing both sides of
the network in creating a closet in the cloud for over 2.5
million American women. The network playbook has been rolled out
perfectly by Jenn and her team, and the lessons on the power of
the network effects that come at scale and how hard it is to
compete against are clear as Jenn adeptly walks us through how
Rent the runway has layered in platform utility over time. 


We also discuss the leadership growth she has had to undergo to
scale with the business and the importance of a feedback culture
in doing so. 


There are so many lessons that hopefully will get the juices
flowing for business builders of all sizes. 


If you want to learn more about how we think about Networks, and
how to assess them at TDM, we have some useful videos linked
below. Also below are other links to deeper discussions on the
founding story of Rent the runway, as we do move through this
fairly quickly in the episode.


Show notes; 


TDM Network Effects Youtube video:
https://youtu.be/ed292C36CvA 


TDM Network Effects Blog post:
https://medium.com/tdm-tidbits/network-effects-tdm-style-ff0828165a5 


How I Built this episode:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0ufSODSepCl5PPVuNAjUw6?si=6d286431430546f7 


Founding story (2:47) 


Business model evolution – leveraging the power of a 2-sided
network (Inventory/designers and consumer facing) (6:50) 


Scaling the supply network from a minimum viable supply to the
present-day aggregation of designers (8:23) 


Integrating and innovating with designers – share by RTR
(consignment business) and exclusive design collections
manufactured by RTR (13:28) 


Scaling the demand network – diversifying the inventory to
increase customer engagement (15:56) 


Challenges in scaling logistics and technology to create a
vertically integrated end-to-end logistics experience
(20:15) 


Utilising data at scale to improve the customer lifetime value
and inventory ROI (23:47) 


The impact of covid on RTR and avenues used to overcome these
challenges/leverage opportunities post pandemic (27:59) 


Jenn’s growth and evolution as a leader and advice for scaling
leadership (30:09) 


Operationalizing a feedback culture into Rent the Runway
(33:12) 

This podcast is created and published for informational and
entertainment purposes only. It is not financial advice.
Transcripts may contain occasional errors in fact.