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.