Julie Wainwright has two companies open to it, and by any standard it’s pretty incredible. But her new memoir, time to become real, she offers readers something even more valuable. Wainwright can involve many highly accomplished CEOs, but rarely discussed.
If you’re a certain age, you definitely remember it. Online pet supplies startups are now quickly recognised thanks to memorable sock doll mascots and catchy slogans. But what seemed like a momentary moment in Dot-Com Bubble’s burst would cast a shadow over Wainwright’s career for nearly a decade. “When I spoke to recruiters, I said, ‘No one’s going to hire you anymore,'” Wainwright said in an interview with the editor earlier this week.
It came as a shock considering Wainwright’s career trajectory initially seemed unstoppable. After cutting her teeth with Clorox, she rose to her feet through high-tech companies in the 90s, when female leadership in the sector was extremely rare. As CEO of Berkeley Systems and later CEO of online video store Reel.com, she worked “a few tons of hours,” but was happy to have succeeded, including increasing Reel.com’s revenue from $3 million to $25 million, with her story. “I managed better without a boss,” she said.
Then came a collapse that would have derailed many careers forever. In 2000, Wainwright published Pets.com, but only closed later in the same year during the Dot-Com Bubble Burst. Professional batting has been exacerbated by personalities. She notified employees that day that the company was closed and says her husband asked for divorce.
“My job is gone, I’m divorced, and I don’t have children,” Wainwright, 42, recalls her thoughts when she was faced with what felt like a complete breakdown of life. To make matters worse, reporters showed up at her doorstep until she said that she was “incredibly negative and intrusive,” and that she said a few days after the company closed.
Wainwright explains what followed as a kind of long winter. There, they are only offered a leading role in turnaround efforts in failed companies. However, the intersection led to an incredible second act. In 2010, she founded RealReal, helping to develop the online luxury commissioned market. Like many founders, Wainwright first set up a company from her own home, but soon ousted her living room, and today she aims to process hundreds of thousands of gorgeous items each month, selling them within 90 days from over 1.2 million square feet of warehouse space and operational centers. It is also a publicly available company. On her second trip to Wall Street in 2019, Wainwright took the outfit through the traditional IPO process.
Unfortunately, this victory comeback has its own tough chapter. In 2022, Wainwright was suddenly pushed out of RealReal by the board members she was recommending. Instead, she named the book and described it earlier this week as a “power play” by investors who “we didn’t get money from the company and thought we could run the company better.”
Wainwright is fully supporting the company’s current CEO (she was the company’s first employer) – still gets mad. In the conversation, she said, “I’m not going to say that the founder should be shot and removed.” In a corporate world where people often turn stories and make themselves appear as bullets, Wainwright is a straight shooter. If she doesn’t like something, she’s not going to hold back the punch. If someone spins the story unlike she sees it, she calls it. She says as she ruins it.
Regarding this memoir, in this reader’s opinion, Wainwright’s ability to provide not only personal revelation but practical wisdom. She reads the decision to give sales staff a specific way of bonuses and shares her learning about the leadership assessment quadrants she has gathered from McKinsey executives. This means “silly aggressive” executives, or “silly aggressive” executives, and “we need to maintain bullying and the environment.”
There are also some interesting new chapters to unfold. Wainwright continues his entrepreneurial journey with Ahala, a nutrition company that develops individualized dietary recommendations based on genetics and individual needs.
You can find our full conversation here via TechCrunch’s StrictlyVC Download Podcast. In the meantime, if you’re interested in persuasive readings that are both memoirs and manuals, then offering founders something far more valuable than the ideal success story, you can get the book here.
When we spoke, Wainwright said, “I personally wrote it to give entrepreneurs a realistic view and hopefully inspire them.
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