Jennifer Hyman: Rent The Runway's Journey to $1.7B IPO; Lessons from Beyoncé & Estée Lauder | E1031

ℹ️ EPISODE INFO

Released

June 28, 2023

Duration

1h 4m

Channel

The Twenty Minute VC

Watch on YouTube

▶ Open ↗

📝 EPISODE DESCRIPTION

Jennifer Hyman is the Co-Founder and CEO of Rent the Runway, the world’s first and largest shared designer closet. Under Jennifer’s leadership, RTR has made history by being the first company to go public with a female founder/CEO, COO, and CFO. Jennifer serves on the Board of The Estée Lauder Companies and Zalando, and also is a Founding Member of the NYSE Board Advisory Council, a Member of the Women.nyc Advisory Board and a Member of the Launch with GS Advisory Council for Goldman Sachs. --------------------------------- Timestamps: 0:00 The Aha Moment for Rent The Runway 5:50 How To Build The Best Team 14:56 Why “I Wish I Ran My Startup Like a Public Company” 24:00 What does Wall Street not get about Run The Runway? 32:15 Do Brands Like You? 37:14 Why Paid Marketing and Growth Hacking Ruined a Generation of Startups 49:22 What’s Missing in Consumer Subscription Businesses 54:32 Boards 101: Leading and Learning from Estée Lauder 59:43 Quick-Fire Round --------------------------------- In Today’s Episode with Jennifer Hyman We Discuss:

1. The 14-Year Overnight Success: Scaling Rent The Runway To IPO: What was the a-ha founding moment for Jennifer with RTR? What does Jenn know now that she wishes she had known at the beginning? Does Jenn believe that naivete is good or not when starting a business?

1. Building the Best Team: What have been Jenn’s single biggest lessons when it comes to acquiring the best talent? What have been Jenn’s biggest hiring mistakes over the years? How does Jenn approach the interview process? Why does Jenn not focus on their professional career and achievements? What questions does she ask? What does Jenn believe are the single biggest mistakes founders make when building their teams?

1. Building the Business for IPO and Beyond: Why does Jenn wish she had run RTR as a private company in the same way she does now as a public company? How does the way you run the company differ? What about the unit economics of RTR suggesting it is a fundamentally better business than apparel competitors? How have their margin profiles changed over time? Why does Wall St not love RTR? What is required for that to change? Why does Jenn believe the street is wrong on how they analyse RTR?

1. Boards 101: Leading and Learning from Estee Lauder: What are Jenn’s biggest lessons to founders on how to manage boards successfully? What have been 1-2 of Jenn’s biggest lessons from being on the Estee Lauder board? What do the best board members do? What do the worst board members do? --------------------------------- Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3j2KMcZTtgTNBKwtZBMHvl?si=85bc9196860e4466 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-twenty-minute-vc-20vc-venture-capital-startup/id958230465 Follow Harry Stebbings on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarryStebbings Follow Jennifer Hyman on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jenn_RTR Follow 20VC on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/20vc_reels Follow 20VC on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@20vc_tok Visit our Website: https://www.20vc.com Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://www.thetwentyminutevc.com/contact --------------------------------- #JenniferHyman #RentTheRunway #HarryStebbings

🎤 SPEAKERS

• Jennifer Hyman

  guest

• Harry Stebbings

  host

🧾 EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of The Twenty Minute VC, featuring Jennifer Hyman and Harry Stebbings, Jennifer Hyman: Rent The Runway's Journey to $1.7B IPO; Lessons from Beyoncé & Estée Lauder | E1031 explores jennifer Hyman on Reinventing Fashion, Leadership, and Sustainable Subscription Growth Jennifer Hyman recounts Rent the Runway’s journey from an ‘aha’ idea sparked by her sister’s dress debt to a capital-intensive logistics and technology platform that went public and is now nearing profitability. She explains how treating fashion as a replenishment subscription business creates a structural margin advantage versus traditional apparel, despite heavy operational complexity. Hyman dives into building missionary teams, hiring for resilience and ownership, and why she now runs the company with public‑company discipline she wishes she’d applied earlier. She also critiques growth hacking and over-reliance on paid marketing, shares lessons from Estee Lauder’s long-term, strength-based leadership, and lays out how AI will supercharge discovery rather than disrupt her business.

🔗 RELATED EPISODES

Inside Legora: Jude Law Generated $50M Pipeline | Are They Undervalued at $5.5BN? | Patrick Forquer

Cliff Weitzman: What I Learned from 100 of the World’s Top CEOs & Why Tokens Will Outspend Salaries

Shopify CEO on How AI is a Scapegoat for Mass Layoffs & Trump Derangement Syndrome in Canada

Inside Clay's Sales Playbook | Becca Lindquist

Jackie Reses: The Most Powerful Woman in Finance; Making $50BN for Yahoo on Alibaba | E996

Tom Hulme & Stan Boland: Lessons from Jensen Huang & How to Fix the UK Tech Ecosystem