I always had a deep respect for people who started businesses, but now I cherish them. There's a lot of anxiety and blood, sweat, and tears that goes into this, and I love it.
— Julie Wainwright
You really need a unique selling proposition, and people need to care about that unique selling proposition.
Amazon has reported a loss of nearly $900M in 1999... because, guess what, ecommerce is a business of scale. And, the Internet bubble had burst... which meant that no one was getting funded.
I said the only way I would join Pets.com was if I could get Amazon to invest, and I did. I knew that anything that could be sourced externally, Amazon could do better and cheaper than anyone else except Walmart. It was really obvious to me.
Something like Pinterest would scare the hell out of me. With $5 billion valuation - regardless how sound those numbers are - wouldn't be one that I would start, given what I would consider the risk of failure.
You tend to do deals with people you have an affinity with, especially at the beginning.
Some people will be quite happy you have failed and will find a way to tell you so directly and indirectly. Yep, that is life. Do not let their insecurities impact you.
I came from a family that loved what they did every day, and they never stopped.
The reason we went into jewelry was we were trying to cater to our consigner base, who was saying, 'Can you sell this for me? Can you sell that?' And we said, 'You can bring in your jewelry and watches; we have a gemology and a watch expert on site.' And it just exploded our business.
Silicon Valley's definition of luxury is a Tesla in every garage.
Why are people so obsessed with Pets.com? We shut it down and returned money to shareholders. Besides, there were plenty of other dot-com failures around then.
When I started in e-commerce, there was not a lot of clutter because there were not a lot of companies. Nowadays, you have to have a pretty serious moat around your business to compete with Amazon, Wal-Mart, and even Alibaba online.
When I turned 50, I truly felt I was too old to work in Silicon Valley. No one said anything to my face, but when you can be the mother of some of the people you're interviewing with, that says it all.
Whenever people think of the dot-com collapse, they think of a handful of companies that epitomized the era, and Pets.com... is always up there, right?
That is the beauty of doing something when you're older. It doesn't matter what anyone else says because you're not doing it to build credibility.
Investors do not like losing money. They do not like companies that fail. They do not like entrepreneurs that fail. There is not a culture of celebrating failure in Silicon Valley or anyplace else. That is a myth. Recognize this, and if you start another business, get it to a successful point before approaching outside investors again.
When you fail, things get real. In fact, they get real real. If your success was a high profile success, then your failure will be a high profile failure. Opportunities and 'friendships' will evaporate. Failure shines a bright light on all relationships. The ones that last are pure and true, which is a true gift.
If you get a no, your best bet is to find out why. The more concrete your business gets, the more you'll get yeses.
Failure is ultimately very liberating. Once you come out the other side of it, you just might have faced one of your biggest fears and lived. The other side of failure is a big elimination of fear of failure. Trust me, that is an amazing gift.
I had never created my own business before. I had always been the gun to hire... But I had to finally say, nobody is going to give me my dream job, so I better figure it out myself.
I'm happy to buy something that was previously owned, as long as I can get it conveniently.
Here is what the world looked like in 2000... there were no plug and play solutions for ecommerce/warehouse management and customer service that could scale... which means that we had to employ 40+ engineers. Cloud computing did not exist, which means that we had to have a server farm and several IT people to insure that the site did not go down.
You have to have a unique product that Amazon just can't source. It's all about the product. Why is it important? Why is it different? Amazon are not merchants. They are technology platform guys.
You have a big playbook when you know something is really a win.
I think if you're out there trying to raise capital, and you're a woman, and you're in tech, I think what you need to do is find people to work with who know you and believe in you.
Do not wallow in your failure. Spend some time grieving, learn from it, and then move on. Constantly replaying what went wrong will not benefit you. Get involved in another company, another cause, another relationship.
I thought to myself, 'What can I do that Amazon can't replicate?' I wanted to do something Amazon couldn't do, and something that I absolutely loved.
The truth is, Silicon Valley doesn't like people who are older, and they're not that much of a friend of the woman. I certainly was a woman, and I was older.
I think going public is a really smart thing to do.
