Jennifer Hyman Quotes
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Taking the time to identify and infuse values certainly does affect outcomes and is one of the most important things to get right as the CEO.
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Startups, by their nature, are entrepreneurial - testing new things, launching new products, and disrupting themselves. That's why you join a startup in the first place - to create, to stretch beyond your current capabilities, and to make an outsized impact.
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Around the year 2000, businesses around the country went 'business casual.'
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As women and men, we're not primed and taught to feel that women are as inspirational as men.
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All early entrepreneurs fall prey to the same problem, which is everyone believes that if you are super intense in the beginning, work long hours, that you can create something quickly and that entrepreneurship is almost something that happens overnight.
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I didn't wake up one day and want to become an entrepreneur. I had the idea for Rent the Runway and thought it would be fun to work on and also thought if it was successful, it would make women feel great about themselves.
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I try to work with people the way they prefer.
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I think that life is difficult. People have challenges. Family members get sick, people get older, you don't always get the job or the promotion that you want. You have conflicts in your life. And really, life is about your resilience and your ability to go through your life and all of the ups and downs with a positive attitude.
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When I traveled around the country visiting women in their own homes and talking to them about their closets, every woman lamented about 'settling' for many of the pieces in her closet.
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Every single person around the world has this storage facility in their bedroom, and we call it a closet, and 80 percent of the stuff in that storage facility is worn three times or less in its lifetime.
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While it can be challenging for women with disruptive, technology-based ideas to acquire significant funding, in my experience, once I was able to raise that funding, I was met with droves of people offering to help me fulfill my dreams.
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In the early years of Rent the Runway, our challenge was twofold: getting investors to buy into our vision for how the world was changing and getting women to understand that renting was a viable - let alone a smarter - alternative to spending hundreds of dollars on dresses they would wear just once.
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Because entrepreneurship is so hard and does take so long to build something great, you do have to build an environment that you yourself as an entrepreneur want to work in for the next 20 years.
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I kick off every monthly team meeting with 'core value stories' - team members stand up and recognize how another team member exemplified a core value.
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As opposed to thinking about ourselves as disrupting the fashion industry, we're thinking about ourselves more broadly - about disrupting the closet and how you get dressed.
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I had this thesis that we had entered the experience economy. People were getting married later and starting to value experiences like travel over owning things.
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What's interesting about the transportation market is that you're often dabbling in multiple categories. The same person who might own a car is still using Uber, is still using a taxi, still might go to Avis on a business trip and rent a car.
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I can dance to Beyonce, sing karaoke, create strategy, go on dates, and build a multi-billion company and show the world that women can build big businesses.
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I think about people like Jeff Bezos or Reed Hastings, and I really marvel at the stamina they've had to keep on trucking no matter what happens.
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I think sales is the most important skill set young people can learn. Understanding how to pitch an idea with confidence and secure a client are valuable skills that apply to every single aspect of business.
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As leaders, we've all seen the painful effects of team members not keeping pace with company growth - it's called up-leveling, and it's all too common when a company goes from zero to something to hopefully an IPO.
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You need to fail quickly and learn from those failures to continue to build along the way.
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Real-time feedback and coaching promotes learning. When feedback is connected to compensation, feedback is muted, distorted, and given less frequently.
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In many cases, women are being harassed by people who are on their board or who are associated with one of their venture capitalists.