BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story

Rent The Runway Founder Offers Advice For Aspiring Entrepreneurs

Following
This article is more than 7 years old.

This is Power of Networks, interviews featuring real-world career advice from leaders at the top of their games.

Jenny Fleiss, cofounder and Head of Logistics at the high-end startup Rent the Runway, attributes her success to bold ideas, hard work and scrappiness. I sat down with Jenny to get her advice for aspiring entrepreneurs. Jenny and her cofounder Jennifer Hyman launched Rent the Runway to offer online rentals from designers like Narciso Rodriguez, Cynthia Rowley and Jason Wu. This year the company expects to surpass $100 million in revenues with the launch of Unlimited, a monthly subscription service, and Jenny and Jennifer were selected for the Forbes 2016 Women to Watch list.

Jessica Pliska: What was it like being a young woman entrepreneur in the startup world?

Jenny Fleiss: I’ve always wanted to be an entrepreneur, so this is a dream come true. Rent the Runway is democratizing the fashion industry so that everyone has access to it; everyone can wear something that makes her feel great every day. We are also doing something good for the designer community— they can get their clothing out to broad swaths of people across the country that wouldn't normally interact with their brand and the customers are trying luxury pieces without having to commit to purchasing. It’s a win-win.

I’m part of a generation of women where we’ve made so much progress that gender no longer feels like much of a consideration. In fact, our business only could have been started successfully by women. We live and breathe our consumers’ experience every day.

Pliska: What is the most audacious thing you did to launch Rent the Runway?

Fleiss: The idea for Rent the Runway was only a day or two old when I cold-emailed Diane von Furstenberg: “I’m the founder of Rent the Runway. Can my partner and I meet with you?”  I was surprised when I actually got a response: “Sure, how about tomorrow?” Jenn and I dressed up in Diane von Furstenberg dresses, drove to New York City from Boston, and walked in with confidence, as if we’d been doing this for years.

Diane gave us her honest feedback that we needed to strengthen our business plan, and she also introduced us to several other designers. That was how we got in the doors initially to see top designers, like Proenza Schouler.

Pliska: How did you secure your first investor?

Fleiss: It required both our network and hard work. In business school, we hired a lawyer, a friend of my cofounder who handled venture capital in the northeast. He introduced us to a number of investors; one of them was Scott Friend at Bain Capital Ventures.

Scott became our first investor. We spent hours and hours so he could get to know our business. We invited the Bain team to our trial at Harvard. They saw that we were "get things done" people. We packaged up dresses and took them to the post office ourselves. We ran back and forth to the dry cleaner. We weren’t afraid to get our hands dirty.

They got to see firsthand the emotional connections that women have with fashion. The vast majority of venture capitalists are white men, so this isn’t intuitive for them. We learned to start every venture capital presentation with a video showing the customer reaction, response and transformation. My advice to anyone looking for funding is to find a way to show your impact. Don’t just tell people about it.

Pliska: What other advice do you have for aspiring entrepreneurs?

Fleiss: The most important thing I tell people is to make sure that your concept is worth your time and energy, and worth giving up other opportunities to pursue. You need to be brutally honest with yourself.  Not every idea is a great idea and the best way to find out is to test your concept with consumers.

We test every concept with consumers before we move forward. We want to see if they will put their money where their mouths are.

Pliska: What’s a common mistake you see entrepreneurs make?

Fleiss: Often, starting entrepreneurs think they are ready to go fundraising too early. You are probably only going to get one shot at that meeting with the venture capitalist. How can you find 40 times to pitch your deck before it happens?

Pliska: Most founders would love to get even a quarter of the media attention you get. How do you do it?

Fleiss: You have to be scrappy to get things done. When we launched, we were featured on the front page of the New York Times technology section. We didn’t have a PR team. Instead, we realized that someone on our initial list of 30,000 customers had a New York Times email address. We did some research and found that it was a woman who wrote for the technology section. Jenn and I knew we had an innovative piece for her, so we invited her to bring a photographer to our warehouse. We put on our most extravagant dresses for the photo shoot, and landed on the front page.

Pliska: What do you look for when you hire?

Fleiss: I look for can-do people, people who can find a path to yes. At a startup, you are always limited in resources. You have to bring optimism every day.

I also look for a cultural fit. I can often tell in the first five minutes of an interview. Job candidates should do some research around the culture. Look at the size of the company and the amount of innovation it is inspiring. Do a recent news search.

Pliska: What do you wish you knew before you started?

Fleiss: We didn’t know how difficult this was going to be, or how many components there were.  One of many examples is at the beginning, we were going through a checklist of what we needed to launch the website, and we realized that we still needed photos of the dresses. I had assumed the designers would send them. Wrong. We had to do our own photo shoot. We had never run a shoot, hired models or edited photos. Needless to say, we learned quickly. And we made it happen.

Pliska: How do you open doors for the next generation of entrepreneurs?

Fleiss: We started Project Entrepreneur, a program to teach women tangible skills to launch their own businesses. It’s a hands-on program, so they leave our workshops knowing they have pushed their product forward. We also run a five-week incubator program in the office. We provide advisors and arrange meetings with people at Google and Bloomberg, and investors at places like Union Square Ventures.