Ep 16: Victoria Prew on Raising Millions, Shifting Mindsets, and Owning the Room

0:11My guest today is an innovator within the fashion industry in the sustainable fashion space As the founder of the UK's leading fashion rental platform, she has revolutionised how we consider fashion and has fundamentally changed consumers' behaviour by prioritising conscious consumption over ownership. Please welcome to the podcast, Victoria Pruitt. I have sat down with so many incredible women. Genuinely, when I started this, I knew it was going to be something that I loved, but not like it's become my obsession. I'm like, which other women do I love? who else do I want on um and yourself included in that but I always like to start way back I like to start I I'm sure there's a reason that women become entrepreneurs and I'm just I'm curious to know whether that was something in childhood or it's something that you found along the way so how did those early years look for you firstly I'm so happy to be here I've listened to every episode religiously since you launched um so looking back now I think I was built to be an entrepreneur I was very naughty at school much to my parents dismay I think I really wanted to learn by doing rather than being told um I had loads of kind of side hustles and mini companies I started all through school I was always interested in how I could make a bit of extra side money at uni I loved eBay before eBay was cool I used to sell all my clothes on eBay so I think I've always been quite entrepreneurial I've always kind of gone gone against the grain and I actually went into real estate before I started entrepreneurship and I kind of was told you to go into banking or law or property or one of these kind of traditional careers and then at 25 I thought okay now's the time to give it a go and that was five six years ago.

2:00So originally real estate so you you got your masters in real estate right what was it about that was it like you say was that a kind of like I should do something in that vein or was it like lighting a fire for you I think it was kind of tick the box because at school I remember the career advice was kind of so structured no one in school said to me entrepreneurship would suit you really well what about starting a business yeah there were definitely no women at that time that you know kind of pre-social media that I saw online so I went into real estate because I didn't really know what else to do and then I qualified as what was called a chartered surveyor and then handed my notice in literally the next day and I think the bit of the story I kind of never talk about is that I actually had three ideas before I started her.

2:44I still think the other two are like going to be quite big businesses one day but I had three business ideas and I basically took three months out once I qualified and was like okay which one do I want to go after and settled on her. Wow that's so interesting so it was kind of like an instant thing that you were just like great I have this under my belt but I know it's not for me yeah I think so it was a very male-dominated industry I was young I was ambitious and I just thought okay either I can stay in this corporate world or um my mom's an entrepreneur and she always said to me look Tori I wish I'd started a business at 25 she started her business at 40 42 right um so I just thought okay it's such a luxury to be young enough I didn't have a mortgage at the time I had limited kind of things holding me down the responsibility which is a big blocker right when you have you know family or you have a mortgage and bills to pay I had none of that and my risk appetite was so high I thought you know what I'm going to give this a couple of months and if I can get it off the ground by at that point Christmas um I'll give it a go and if not I can go back to um being in property so I had little to lose and I think when I look back now I was so naive but I was so sure that I wanted to give it a go um and that's how it all started it's kind of like a beautiful place to be when you are like when you look back you're like I had no idea what was ahead of me but I think sometimes you almost need that level of like ignorance is bliss ignorance absolutely because if you knew the kind of the shit it takes it could it could change your mind and if you're passionate about something you kind of don't want that in the way because the passion has to do the doing at the start I think it's interesting that you touch on your mum so your mum was an entrepreneur do you think that growing up and seeing that around you rubbed off in some way or did it sort of show you that actually you don't have to conform you can spread your wings into other places yeah I think she was kind of before her time and in lots of respects I had two very driven parents as my role models and I think my mum was always like why not why not give it a go um and yeah I kind of once I got my professional qualification I really had little to lose in that regard so yeah absolutely um we also don't really talk about this but she actually worked for her for the first kind of three four years um and we have quite a young team you know I obviously started her at 25 which is very young looking back and she has that experience you know when you feel the high highs and the low lows um she's a bit more stable so I think that's been quite uh helpful in that in those early early days of setting and grounding and I suppose who do you trust more in that setting than your mum right and sometimes she's like I told you so when things don't work out but other than that I mean we all do that as mums you kind of can't you can't hide from that and you actually give me confidence because I always think what will my children do and how will that look and I'm aware that I work a lot and you of course I'm around a lot too but you know if we're in the car I'm probably on the phone and I'm doing a little call on the way to gymnastics club because it's easier to do it there and because I want to do that and I want to be there for them but actually having you kind of absorb that in the most positive way yeah 100 there was no such word as no and I've kind of grown up with that yeah and you need that that is something that we all need to hear I'm so interested in her and their sort of creation of her and how that kind of was the idea and the light bulb that went off for you.

6:07Was fashion always a big part of your life when you were younger? Honestly, not really. The bit of fashion that I've resonated with most is wanting things that I couldn't afford, right? I'm a millennial myself. I rented my car, I rented my house. I'd watched that massive rise of the sharing economy, Airbnb, Uber. I was like, okay, we're all sharing our houses, our travel. Why are we not sharing our wardrobes? I have, you know, had nearly 10, well 10 weddings last year I want to wear something new for every single one of those weddings so age 25 I was like wouldn't it be cool if we could access fashion but for a fraction of the price and I think looking back to my point on eBay I was always interested in how you could kind of monetize things that you already owned and have that kind of side hustles so um age 25 when I started I was like okay I think renting is a could be a real thing in fashion but no one's really looked at it through a tech lens so literally from line one of code my co-founder and i built the platform in a basement in shoreditch for for our first nine months of hers history and we basically wanted to test the assumption that people would rent clothes and even my best friends at the time were like tori um like you do we want to share clothes is that not weird like what's going to happen about dry cleaning what happens if something gets damaged questions i've been asked a million times and have perfected uh and hopefully we've done a good job worth solving um but really it was born from a belief that fashion fundamentally needed to go from a linear model where you wore something bought something wore it and then throw it away or it stood in the back of your wardrobe um and kind of had dust on it for years to come i was like this is madness in this industry i want to be able to access something for a fraction of the price and then send it back when i'm done and that was kind of the the start of her it's i mean it's so brilliant it's so genius what um because obviously it's yes it's fashion but of course it's so tech driven was tech a big part of your life before you you know you're developing an app and you're heading down that route was tech a big part of what you were doing a hundred percent we always say we're a tech business before we're a fashion business I care hugely about product tech and the innovation that actually happens in the Her platform.

8:22We're basically running three separate businesses under one roof. And we have a business and a platform that is as functional as an Airbnb. So you can rent your wardrobe. You can rent from me. It's peer reviewed. We have like biometric facial scanning recognition so that the ID verification process is smooth. Really everything from a tech point of view. We have built ourselves. We own the IP around. And it's something that I spend a lot of my time focused on. So I'm in every single meeting to do with actually how we scale up our product. We ship features every two weeks trying to make it better.

8:56So I think the platform will never truly be done. I've still got a long way to go and I'm five and a half, six years in. But tech has always been a huge, huge focus. And that was our USP, right? People had tried to do fashion rental, but it never really worked. And my kind of thesis was, okay, if we built the tech that really got this right, it felt luxury it felt accessible but it felt kind of easy to use that's that when it comes to that is key right someone that is like technophobe you could say you just want ease don't you you want simplicity no friction yeah exactly that so one thing that I really admire about this whole story is that I think part of you know the great thing about being an entrepreneur is you're not always reinventing the wheel you're putting your own spin on something and you're noticing a problem you know you are sometimes the consumer with the problem that actually is like I like this but why aren't they doing it like x so for you there wasn't anything for you to really model yourself on there wasn't somebody that is like okay this is the state side I know it was what was the company stateside that ran the wrong way right so but but doing it differently to you yeah there was nowhere here for you to go okay this is how we should but we should do it different so you were kind of you were really innovating but also completely learning on the job there wasn't that kind of target that you were like we need to be that company but just do it a little bit different yeah it was completely I think it was a blessing in disguise um when I remember vividly when I first pitched the idea of her um I found like some loose guy on LinkedIn that I thought might be helpful and he agreed to have a coffee with me and I was so excited and I rocked up with my pitch deck I printed it out and I'd washed my hair and I was wearing a suit and he rocked up in his gym kit and kind of looked at the first page and I started talking he was like look can I tell you my honest opinion and I was like yeah of course um and he said I think sustainability is a trend not a movement and I think this is not going to work and I was like look we'll call him pete um with all due respect i think that sustainability and the circular economy is is a movement and not a trend and i think five and a bit years later here we are the impacts of fast fashion are on the front page of every single newspaper and i think i trusted my gut and wanted to prove him wrong but a lot of people wrong and lots of people that we kind of went with the idea to they were like not sure this could work so i think one of the key takeaways of looking back was look at outside of your industry.

11:31Airbnb is a world-class example of sharing houses. I took inspiration from fashion brands, from beauty brands, from positioning point of view. I took inspiration from tech, from some of the biggest tech platforms in the world. And you had your kind of five ideas of inspiration and thought, okay, if I could merge this into one platform called Her.com, could it work? And that's where we started. It's just genius. It's so, so clever. I want to sort of rewind a little bit because I've got so many her related questions you're you've got this basement this is how you are you know bringing her to us you've got a basement space you're working out how this app's gonna change everyone's lives how do you go from masters in real estate to be being able to be front and center of developing a tech app like there's that in-between transition no one starts as an expert right hey you weren't an expert podcast um host um I wasn't an expert in sustainable fashion you become an expert with experience and time and I remember thinking how am I the right person to build this business I have to prove it right I've got no track record uh a degree in you know business and then a master's in real estate it's not going to really help me in fashion rental and tech right so um I always get asked how do you know it's the right time to jump ship or to go like full in on an idea right and it's a really interesting question for me I said okay I'm going to give this six months I'm going to move back in with mum and dad and I'm going to give it six months of my time and after six months I want an MVP so a minimum viable product which is the ugliest cheapest version of what I want to create and I want to hit a couple of thousand people on a waiting list and then at that point I'm going to go and try and raise some money and that's exactly what we did So for six months, I invested what was a very small amount of savings that I had in the idea and the actual tech build.

13:24And then I spent my time trying to rally people that I thought could be our potential customers to sign up to a waiting list. And after that six month period, we had 10 ,000 people that had signed up to our waiting list. a couple of hundred transactions that were really I mean when we're talking bare minimum they were on whatsapp chat they were on a google like excel spreadsheet of like actually connecting you know my blazer with with you and and putting the money through like a paypal it was really botched job but I always say to people start with the cheapest quickest version of what you want to build and then once you've got some traction whether that's a hundred transactions a thousand transactions awaiting list of 100 ,000 people whatever it might be when you believe that you've got traction that's the point to go all in that's the moment do you know what's so interesting I spoke to um Michelle Kennedy yes who we love and she you know alludes to what you're saying and she said that actually before you the app's the end product right so before you get to the app she has lots of people asking her like you know shiny ideas which are amazing but test it in real life like build the whatsapp group see if you can get people engaged by inviting them to a dinner or just see if it's there's that desire for what it is that you're trying to build before thinking okay let's start with the app 100 i think to keep the customer voice in every meeting and at every point and your decision making is really crucial i don't know about you but when i when you have so many decisions to make in the day it's sometimes easy to actually lose sight of the customer so So whether it's a CS executive or our head of customer service, they are sat in the tech meeting, in the marketing meeting with the voice of the customer.

15:08And I think whenever you're at that point of we need to make a decision, what does a customer want? Right. And they give you brutal feedback. They are not afraid to kind of tell you what they think. Right. And that has been one of the biggest learnings for me. There have been times where I've got so distracted that I've kind of lost sight of the customer. we now have a WhatsApp community for our top lenders. So when you hit certain criteria, a bit like being a super host on Airbnb, you become a top lender on her. This WhatsApp chat is so valuable. It pops off all hours of the day and they are giving us such interesting feedback on what they love, what they hate, what they want to see more of, what they want to see less of.

15:48And I really think it's our biggest moat of defensibility because every hour, every minute, we've got real-time user insight and that is really really critical which touches back on that community word doesn't it time and time again which is so important to brands to businesses and I feel there's a real shift in that now but I feel like there were so many years where people didn't it was like this is the it was like a board level discussion and this is what should happen this or you know a marketing team and this is what we think should work rather than tapping into the very user or the very consumer you know which seems like a wild idea that you have the perfect focus group yeah why not use them 100 did you see refi did their community trip versus an influencer trip i think community is an overused word but the focus has never been more critical than than now right so how can you meet your customers is it real time is it the whatsapp chat whatsapp is free right we get amazing insights and that costs us nothing so how how can you sit kind of have those touch points for your customer, post-purchase feedback, all of this stuff will only make your product better.

16:55So if you're in those early days of launching a business and you've got your first 10 transactions, call every single customer. I called and spoke to every single person that had either rented or lent through our platform because I wanted to speak to them in real time and understand what they loved, what they hated. And I wish I could do it at scale, but it's slightly more difficult these days um but if you're a new entrepreneur just start and call every single customer that's such a brilliant idea that is such like a brilliant bit of advice let's go back to those early days that initial kind of like you say you're testing this you're it's in your words a bit of a botched job where you're you're paypal and this and you're on whatsapp and you're bringing people together like that the point where you know that you're onto something and you're testing this what did that initial investment take how how did that look from a financial point of view yeah so we raised our first uh pre-seed round which is i've got an idea i've got you know 10 000 people on the waiting list and a couple of hundred transactions the first round we uh raised was 300 000 pounds which at 25 was a huge amount of money i remember seeing it enter our you know her a bank account thinking wow pressure is on right yeah of course and um uh that was family office and angel we've gone on to raise multiple rounds and done kind of big vc rounds now um but that gave me enough capital to build to to make two key hires one was in kind of commercial and partnerships to help me drive um the the marketing and how the business would actually work and then my first hire was a guy called ollie um who's been absolutely instrument instrumental to our success who was my head of product so he literally sat with me in that basement um building out the tech and they were the first two hires and we did everything we had these kind of sexy titles like ceo and head of product but we were on the phone to customers we were dry cleaning dresses ourselves we were doing everything everything and everything it takes and i think that is so so interesting to touch on because you're right there's a lot of this like that sounds sexy and it become you know a ceo is sounds like a lovely title but what that means at some point is like you are in you are cleaning you are that it it takes everything yeah we always joke that the ceo is the least sexy like role in a business it's the sexiest title and it's the least sexy in terms of what you actually have to do so i completely agree in that first round of raising because we we talk about this you know females being so underfunded particularly in in the tech space was there a lot of no's before you got that yes so that first round looking back was a fairly straightforward round right I mean the stats on VC are pretty dire right we've got two percent of funding goes towards female founders um which is not good at all and massively massively needs to change.

19:54My piece of advice whenever I'm asked about fundraising, whether you're a male or a female founder, is finding people that are ahead of you in that journey. So the reason I had a fairly straightforward round is because I had befriended someone who had raised from one of the investors that I ended up taking money from. I had no idea, right? I had an idea. I was so driven and so sure that this was what I wanted to spend my next couple of years doing that I think that enthusiasm and drive definitely came through to investors but they're taking a punt right they've got no idea you know i've got i'm a girl with an idea i'm 25 and and no experience right it's easy now to look back and see someone as you know successful or who's gone through multiple raises back then my investors genuinely believed that i could build something and trusted me to do so so um finding founders that have done this before will be the single biggest shortcut to your success right I want to be able to call up a Michelle Kennedy a Tessa the CEO of Olio and say okay Michelle um I've been offered these terms for 300 ,000 pounds are they fair um what do you think what was your experience and she'll give me advice I'll never forget that that completely changed the course of making sure that I was getting into bed with the right people that I was making the right decisions so I really believe that when it comes to running a business as a female whether that is raising money or actually building company a company that knowledge is power right you're only as good as what you know back then I knew very little I'm got clued up pretty quickly when I entered the game of raising money because it is full-on um but finding people ahead of you that you can call up and ask has been absolutely mission critical I think and you're like this is where the power of woman is so special because like you say you call someone like a Michelle and she's like this is the advice this is what you shouldn't do that doesn't always happen yeah and when those moments when you find that girl that's got your back in a room that you're not in they're in you know me and they're so so special but that doesn't always happen and I find that so interesting about women and I actually chatted to Emma Greed about this she would say that her husband would be on the phone like going to like non-friends not even friends and saying you've got I connect with this person and this person could be great for you but it there's something with women that sometimes there can be that little bit of reluctancy in which you think okay if I help that person that might take food off of my table you find those little gems that you're like gosh could we all not have this and that that's the very reason that this podcast was born because the idea of connecting women and bringing everybody together is so special but also it kind of it's it's not as common as you'd hope right yeah I think it comes back down to scarcity versus abundant mindset right I remember vividly at 25 and often when I meet younger entrepreneurs they're kind of worried to share their ideas and people might copy them etc and I've learned six years into this game that there is room for everyone and actually there are very few amount of women that are really changing the game we need to support each other back each other mention each other's names in rooms it is absolutely so important and have each other on speed dial but I built that network right I had no idea I'm very grateful to Michelle who was a few stages ahead of me but I've DM people I've always noted people on Instagram being like I'm starting this business it's quite lonely I'm feeling quite isolated I'm not really an anxious person but I remember that feeling of anxiety and putting an idea out into the world right people are happy to align with you when it's great and it's successful and you've raised money in the early days when it's you in the basement it's really lonely so um yes there are amazing groups like the stack world which i love where you can kind of connect as entrepreneurs or women in business but build your own network find five people that are at a similar stage that you're following on instagram um and build your own people that are your top five speed dials do you think we move in a time now where people are like you said maybe anxious or maybe a little bit too proud to and that fear of kind of like embarrassing themselves I suppose or like failing loudly and that's where that kind of embarrassment comes from that we don't put ourselves out there enough like oh gosh I'm not going to send her that message because she might think x y and z where actually you know yourself if somebody messaged you tomorrow and said hi sorry I'm thinking of this that and the other I'm at an early stage you would love to like that desire to help when you have had that is kind of something that for everybody we want to be on the phone we want to be doing that more than probably that we have time to so do you think it's something that we don't do enough we don't put ourselves in rooms that could help us we don't send that dm we don't make that call because of fear of embarrassment 100 i think if you don't ask you don't get right that's always been my mentality if you want something you've got to go and make it happen And I think you touched upon something really interesting, which is that kind of embarrassing feeling of what if this fails?

24:59And I think looking back, I knew how difficult it was to get to business. Very few companies get to a million pounds revenue, 10 million pounds revenue, like serious milestones in business. It is like all the odds are stacked against you. And now you're a woman, too. Right. It's not an easy game. So I remember thinking, OK, is my life going to be over if this goes back? or it doesn't work and I had some really hard conversations with myself that I think was quite mature for a 25 year old of if this doesn't work out am I going to cry about it or am I fundamentally going to be fine and I knew that I had a career and a kind of job to go back to um but that fear of failure I took out because I was like this is not a helpful yeah fear to have I'm going to give it my all and I think it's admirable for anyone who gives it a go and if it doesn't work out they go and do something else right we see this with men uh all the time like how many times you heard the silicon valley tech bros they failed they've gone bankrupt and now they're coming back and they're starting a new co-working space right um so i want that same and i hope that i can role model to other female founders we have to lose this fear of failure um you don't need to tell everyone about your ideas you don't need a press article um and that you're launching x app until you're ready to do so you can build in private build if you're really really unsure and you're anxious and you're a bit worried um this might not be the thing um build it quietly you don't have to always be loud and I've seen people get to 500k revenue and then kind of talk about the story so I think you can go you can go from the face of the brand and and and go down the track I went down you can also be quiet so I think it's interesting to look at different ways of of of that I think the last point on this is the higher you climb the further you fall right I think when you've got little to lose that's the time to give it a go I think actually if anything I feel more pressure now six years on than I did back in the day because I have a team that I'm responsible for we have big investors and I have big shareholders that you know are investing in me to be happy yeah for a return right so um that pressure changes but if the worst thing that's going to happen is that it fails giving it a go will be the best thing you do of course of course and you're so right it's like the pressure only builds but it'd be a different level and a different type of pressure so if you can remove that layer which is almost like ego isn't it it's It's almost that kind of ego of it all.

27:34If you can remove that pressure because there's going to be all different kinds that are thrown at you. You know, we haven't met this or this hasn't worked or, you know, this didn't go down as well as we thought. There's going to be so many different rollercoaster rides along the way that actually worrying about not starting. I actually spoke to one of my girlfriends the other day. She's got like a clothing brand and it's relatively small and they're just starting to really gain some traction. And she's kind of put in different levels of pressure on herself. deadlines so she's like right i need this dress out by this date and we if we don't get this i'm like but nobody knows the dress is coming at the end of the week why don't you just wait why don't you just you've got the up you've got next week like if you're stretching everything to make this happen nobody else yet knows about this so you don't have like you say there's ways of being like going and striking while the iron's hot but not thinking that everybody knows everything that's up here yeah because we do that don't we this has to happen because i said i was to do this guess what no one else knows yeah you've got time make it right I think we're the same right we put so much pressure on ourselves because we've got you know publicly we want to keep things going and we've got a lot to prove to ourselves to everyone else as well right and I think I have suffered from extreme burnout over the years of running a business I really believed when I was young and naive that a business was a sprint and not a marathon I was like sprint sprint sprint why is everyone being slow like what's the problem here I have learned the hard way uh that building a long-term sustainable built business is a marathon and not a sprint so when you're putting pressure on yourself you need to put the right pressures on yourself that's realistic and self-care isn't selfish it's one of my favorite phrases there is no business without you and I've learned that the hard way so um you should tell your friend that yeah be kind to herself right set realistic it's day by day it's step by step it's project by project versus this big goal that feels so hard to reach you don't even know where to start right I remember feeling that too and it is hard to reach when you're going for like okay we're starting here but I've got to get there overnight it's pretty unrealistic and if that does happen I've got other friends that has happened for yeah the the journeys and the things that happen along the way because then you're not quite ready for to fulfill that because all of a sudden you've got this influx of orders that you actually can't meet of course you've got to just go easy on the pressure because there's going to be enough there's for sure going to be enough on the way I know how like we we touched on being a CEO you're it's the least sexy job of all because you've got to do everything I want to talk about your day-to-day role now at her yeah so I've gone from doing every single job and being in the detail of everything to a size and a scale where there is a lot that happens without me even knowing and it's a really really weird shift it's wonderful because we've got a team that I really really trust delivering and that believe in our in our vision and our mission but it's a really weird shift right when you go from a basement of a couple of you to actually not the doing but the kind of deciding and the thinking about what's next so I remember vividly a couple of months ago there was a platform that we have internally and I had never been into this part of the platform and I couldn't solve a problem And I was like, isn't that a weird thing, right?

30:52The business you start now has a system that I wasn't familiar with. And I remember thinking, it felt weird and good in the same way, right? And so I think like now I spend much more of my time building the business externally. So I spend a lot of my time with existing investors, thinking about the strategy, thinking about our international plans, the growth of the business. I have an amazing team delivering the day to day. And I spend most of my days on partnerships, on the marketing of the business, working out how we can do. I don't know if you saw our Deliveroo partnership these kind of weird quirky fun things that no one else has thought about right because that's our USP that's how we build our trench of defensibility is by doing things that people haven't thought of before so I've spent five years in the day-to-day really in the nitty-gritty in the last year or so I've taken a bit of a shift in terms of role and I try to take my head up and my eyes up to thinking about the big picture because it's so hard as you know.

31:58Well, because you're driving that. You've been driving it from the start, but you kind of have to give yourself headspace to be able to drive it and figure out what's next. Of course. And that can't really happen when you're constantly problem solving. Yeah, so - It's like that cycle, isn't it? That's hard to break. You want to do both, right? You know, I find myself leaning to, I'm a problem solver, right? That's why I'm an entrepreneur. I want to solve people's problems, but I've hired people that are better than me now to solve those problems. So sometimes I find myself leaning too much back into the detail.

32:28And it's hard when it's your baby to give up that control and say, OK, this is actually your role now. And I can't because you'll guess what? You're better at it than me. It's kind of a weird place to be in. I want to go back to what you're saying. So you've got this new system and you don't know how to work it. And you said it feels it's a good and weird feeling at the same time. What feels good about it and what feels weird? What feels good about it is that if I was building it, it wouldn't have looked as good. so our product team have done a way better job than I ever could um and what feels weird about it is that starting a business is so inherently you right it's your essence it's your views it's your hopes and your dreams um and you've got to hand that over and I think I realized pretty early on that for this to be a successful business I needed a big team of people that had done this before that I could trust and you could ask my team I'm very hands-off once you're in and I trust you you're in and it's over to you um and i really hope i my role now is providing that perspective that if things go wrong it's not the end of the world i i sometimes joke it's fashion rental um it's gonna be okay we are gonna be okay but you know people especially like the younger generation that haven't had that experience of failure it's my job to be like okay we'll pick up the pieces we'll go again something goes wrong okay what about this and providing that level of perspective I think in the way that my mum did when I was starting out, when everything was the end of the world or the best day ever, that stability and that leadership is what I'm trying to take forward.

34:03Which is really important. And I suppose that scale up for you. So you go from a couple of people in the basement. How many people are we talking now on the team? We went, this is a few years back, from a team of 12 to nearly 40 in three months. So we have witnessed extreme scale. This was off the back of a funding round. So Octopus Ventures, they're one of my biggest shareholders. They were the early backers in Depop, have taken Depop, which I'm sure we all know, from kind of Series A company all the way through to an exit to Etsy. So we have experienced extreme growth. growth um we've also experienced times of not so much extreme growth we've been through a global pandemic I've had COVID where quite literally my revenue went to zero it was the most single stressful time and it went on for years and years and years well it felt like years so we really have gone up we've gone down we've gone up we've gone down and I think people have this perception that you grow a little bit every month and it just keeps growing 5%, 10%, 20%, month-on-month growth.

35:05That's what we're all here to do. It couldn't be further from the truth. And when I look back, we have pivoted the company so much. It is unrecognisable from the heart. I started bidding the best way possible. And I think that adaptability to be like, okay, we call them bright spots. We can see a bright spot in our Monday morning trade. Okay, that's really interesting. People are renting, literally this Monday, people are renting gold versus red this Valentine's Day. really interesting have we got enough gold stock really weird trends let's focus more on that or um we did a big partnership with selfridges where they white labeled our technology we went on to build selfridges rental okay great let's focus more on that and still keep the the the main business running so i think what we've done a good job of is finding those bright spots and then honing in on them and growing them too and that's i mean and that's a good leader right What do you find the hardest thing about, you know, leading a team and like you say, you're 40 odd people now?

36:08What do you find the hardest part about managing people and, you know, dealing with everybody and emotions? And, you know, because, of course, when you're a leader, you want to be in on the nitty gritty and you want to problem solve. But that can sometimes be the hardest job. sometimes there are days when it's hard to manage people versus the business of course it's a really interesting question I think my answer would be around transparency as a leader and transparency is a really interesting word right because you want to be transparent but not at the point where you might spook the team right and I think I've gone from being super transparent about everything that's going on and then actually realizing that sometimes that's not the most helpful strategy we venture back we've got big investors sometimes you know we go through fundraisings that are super super stressful um so how you tread that line of kind of honesty and transparency i think is constantly changing for us i think we've got the right balance now but you know you don't want to spook people that you might go bust in a few months you also don't want to spook people that um you know we might be going through a massive growth growth spurt because we're about to take on more more money into the business so um how you kind of day-to-day manage that i think is interesting my second answer would be and i don't know if you find this how do you balance the short term i report to my investors every 30 days right they're looking at my numbers every single kpi there are over 120 kpis every 30 days how we're tracking how do you balance that pressure with the long-term vision of what you're trying to build right because they don't always go hand in hand that to me is the hardest thing so hard short-term goals I know I can quick fix my growth numbers in the next 30 days by doing x but is it aligned to where I want to be medium and long term so I think that is a team-wide decision that used to be my decision I used to kind of go on a gut instinct and give it a go yeah now I think it's much more of a kind of c-suite my head sort of decision about trade-offs right and bringing people into that fold of decision making versus is just you making those decisions in the early days.

38:16We've all made a decision that we think, oh, that probably wasn't great for the long term, but it felt right in the moment. And it actually, looking back on last year, that actually wasn't quite right. And I should have probably hunged into our values a little bit more. Not necessarily your values as a brand because you always lead by that example, but things that actually haven't helped that long-term growth and where you want to end up. 100 % I can name probably five or ten examples where we've made the wrong decision the wrong trade-off um I think the one thing I've learned is that the times I've gone against my gut instinct we've been wrong and maybe I've been pushed to make a decision or persuaded to make a decision and then retrospectively it hasn't been the right one and in my gut I have felt that it wasn't right um and now I think having gone through lots of failures lots of things that we should have done differently um I don't I'm not a very reflective person which I think is also helpful I'm very focused on what's next because running a business it's so all-consuming I need to focus on the next 30 days there's no time um so we can either look back and cry about the things that have gone wrong or we can laser focus on what we've learned what we would do differently next time and give it a go again and are you like that in the moment or do you find it hard to sort of because sometimes it can feel like a hole that you're like okay this is we need to get through this once we've got for this moment we're going to be okay this is where I find the kind of emotional balance when you're responsible for a team when you're in a situation where you're like okay this needs to happen I'm still leading so I want to give everybody a boost at the same time but we're going to get through this and I know that there's the bigger picture and it will be okay but do you find it hard to sort of like personally I suppose this isn't necessarily as a leader at the time if there's something happening do you because I am trying to get better at this I take things quite personal and just because that's naturally and not necessarily in a way that I would react I'm very considered and I'm very level-headed but there'll be it will something will sit on me until I feel like I've got every last drop of it out and then I'm good and then I'm like hang on we're not talking about that but privately at home my husband will hear about nothing else like you know my close people will hear about nothing else until I feel like it's fully gone and it might only be like two three weeks yeah but that's I'm all consumed until I feel in a better place do you do you are you like that or are you instantly in the moment are you able to just go okay this is happening but it doesn't matter because we're going here I think I'm probably fairly good at being on or off and also knowing when to cut our losses right so is the data showing me that this is a stupid decision or actually is it promising um is my gut instinct telling me this is not the right thing or it is the the wrong thing I think maybe it's partly that I've been in this game for a number of years and and I don't have the energy and the emotional like you know highs and lows that I once did but I think when I think about the best leaders that I admire they're very stable and steady with their decision making and with their kind of manner in terms of how they lead and I think from going from 25 to 31 I've gone from being like yeah let's go go go oh so much changes to being like okay let's give it a go yeah you're right in my like in the private in my private time when I'm confiding in people that I trust oh is this right is it is it not right sometimes yeah it's really personal right when you when it when it's you've made the wrong call but you don't want to show people yeah it's the wrong call right doing the right thing but it's that thing at home where I'm like oh my gosh I'm it's that when I kind of have time to sort of self-reflect yeah yeah that I kind of I need to have that thing that snaps me out of it because It's happening.

42:01It's moving on. And it's more that I have to like, do you, is there something that you have to do for you? Like when you come in, you said you had a bit of a sabbatical, which is one that was needed. Like I kind of have to make sure I really focus on my health or focus on, you know, deep dive into exercise or I'd have to take those moments for me when I feel like the pressure's all a little bit consuming. 100%. I walk my dog every morning and then I try and do a very short workout at some point during the day, whether that's after that, before that, in a lunch break or later in the evening. And I don't listen to music.

42:35Sometimes I listen to podcasts, but I don't listen to music. I just am alone with my thoughts, trying to think about the day ahead, yesterday, what happened. And my iPhone notes, if you went into my iPhone notes, you'd think I was crazy. I think they're all exposing. I think they're all exposing, right? That for me, if it's like this morning, 4.30am, had an idea wasn't sure about something wrote it down on my phone went back to bed um so writing things down um is kind of my form of therapy and then also I'm a very social person I like bouncing ideas off people but I've also learned that to be alone with your thoughts even if it's for 40 minutes 50 minutes a day kind of takes me down and and makes me a bit more kind of steady before I unleash chaos that's so funny I like that because you do you need to self-process don't you before you're like guys this is amazing what how do we do this how do we take it on because you can I find that I kind of have that brain where I get so excited about the next thing and I'm like I'll have that moment I'm like guys I figured it this is what we're going to do this is how we should do it and then I'm all systems go this podcast was one of those yeah I was like we have to do it and this is how it's going to be and it become like the thing that then took priority but Actually, I need to sometimes just settle that before I'm all guns blazing on how to get there.

43:58For sure. You told me you built the set in three days, right? I can imagine you come into the office. It's a new idea. It's go, go, go. And I think sometimes that's distracting for a team, right? So I've got a bit better at being like, OK, prioritise. Yeah. Be alone with those thoughts before you get the kind of megaphone out and start blurting out how this is going to go. um I want to discuss a little bit about successes and challenges because from the outside it seems like I've watched hers growth along with everybody else and it seems to have just sort of catapulted and it seems to have really caught the eye of the customer and I think in a way that is quite hard it's quite hard to execute that with success always comes challenge because that's just the nature of the beast right is there a particular high that feels like the highest high for you and a low that feels you know something you you are so pleased that you overcome so high for me was definitely raising our first big round of funding um it was a different environment vc has changed a lot since then but i always wanted some of the best investors in the world to believe in the business and to kind of prove to myself but also to the wider world that her was as good as an Airbnb.

45:14Let's not forget Pete at the start. Yeah that her could be as big as Airbnb that her could be as big as Depop and I was met with so many not sure this is going to work when we found investors that just got circular and understood what we were trying to build and then actually funded that and that was a really exciting moment where it went from is this a kind of you know pipe dream or is this actually what could be the next big business so for me on a personal level um that was really important to prove that kind of the hard work that I put into date was was worth it and we had I mean I was only really getting started but in lots of ways that was the kind of marker in the sand that I was going to go all in and where were you when you got that first call that you were like okay this is across the line this is happening I wish it was like dragon's den when you got a call and someone said you know here's four million pounds it's a long process any founder that has raised money it's a full-time job on top of a full-time job um so i i remember um getting our first term sheet which is you know we're putting which is yes the the the that exact moment that you talk about i was with lauren uh my number two uh at her and i was like is this is this is this happening is this true is this from octopus ventures is this really it um and then it's months and months of negotiation back and forth but you know you're getting that kind of attraction right and and someone else saying you're not crazy yes we think this is a good idea for me that was really really important kind of intellectually and professionally to be like okay the last couple of months and years of grind has been worth it challenges i would definitely say covid as you can imagine as we mentioned not a good time to run a a fashion rental business where are they going no one's moving and i remember looking at our stripe account and literally watching cancellation like thousands of cancellations just our revenue pretty much going down to zero.

47:08Luckily, I have very supportive investors who really kind of believed in the long term of the business. We managed to do a bridge of finance to kind of keep us alive during that time. It was a really tough time to lead because no one knew the answers. My investors didn't know the answers. I didn't really know the answers. My inner circle didn't know the answers. Other founders don't know the answers. We've not lived through this pandemic before. yeah it was really really wild looking back right um we actually spent a year building a white label version of our technology so you can rent and share your wardrobe on her.com we then copied and pasted out our technology which is where all of our value is in the business um and went on to launch selfridges rental and off the back of that have launched a number of retailers we've launched john lewis net a portail more recently so it was the kind of third um like kind of feather in our cap um took us a year to build um at a time where we had zero revenue so but do you it's so funny because we hear these stories and particularly about that time the pandemic and about covid that made makes you think okay what is our what's our other thing what's the string to our bow that kind of if we're ever in this situation again yeah we will be okay 100 and i think as bad and as horrible as covid was for every founder and entrepreneur and everyone i never thought is this the right business to be building I never questioned whether her should exist when we came out of a tier two lockdown right yeah and I think that's really important the the days of self-doubt you have to have such a deep belief that the business you're building is what you want to be doing with your time and is the right one and if you've got that core belief COVID that's it yeah we'll come and hopefully it will go yes absolutely that and it did for you it really did I want to do a rocket round now which is my favorite so first question what are the non-negotiables do you believe for launching a business complete self-belief and proven track record and getting your mvp so your minimum viable product out into the world as quick and as cheaply as possible okay good when did you first realize that you truly launched 2019 the first piece of press we ever had was in the ft I think my parents were more excited about it than I was.

49:25That's a big one. I could not believe it, a whole page. And I thought, oh my gosh, this is real. This is happening. Literally overnight. And then did that, like, did your friends call? Did like, it's those moments, isn't it, where people that actually, we have the friends, we have those family members that like, there are certain things that they notice. Like you could be working and you're like, this is doing really well, guys. And we've had this investment. It won't really mean much to them, but you're like, FT, that did it. You know? For me, that would be a good one. That takes a few boxes.

49:53Yeah, exactly that. Family happy. What do people usually seek your advice or help for? Starting a business and then scaling it as well. I write a newsletter on just this. It's free. Okay. There you go. Thank you very much. What brand do you wish that you'd founded? Airbnb. Yeah. They've really done a good job. They have, haven't they? They really, really have. I mean, as her. Hopefully. You're in the same conversation. if you could choose one female figure as a mentor past or present who would it be emma greece she's the og isn't she just yeah i know i feel like she's everybody's mentor like from afar for sure even just following her on instagram you're like she's giving me something today a bit of daily motivation 100 if you could trade one of your current skills for a superpower that would help your business what would it be and why a bit more attention to detail i'd love to have a superpower where i could laser focus and not lose interest i think i'm a bit scatty kind of all over the place trying to do everything all at once right i've got better at being focused but i would love a superpower where i could just lock into something this is going to sound really boring but read a legal contract from start to end in three hours and not find it boring yeah that is really where i would love a superpower or or be engaged with with the the sensitivity analysis and the scenario planning we're doing in an Excel and everyone's telling me what to do.

51:22If I could focus a bit more, I've got better, but a superpower would help. Yeah, that laser focus. You're so right to things that you don't find as interesting. I'm with you there. Every episode, I ask our guests to leave a tip. Like if they wish they would have known one piece of advice when starting out, whatever it is they do, what would that be? I would say that consistency is the key to almost everything in life and your personal life and your professional life show up take each day as it comes momentum builds momentum you build and you build and you build every day this does not happen overnight and it is very much a marathon and not a sprint trust me I've learned I've learned the hard way you're so right and that consistency like you say it doesn't have to be just applied to whether you're a founder or whether you're you know looking for that promotion or in the what you know in the workspace it is literally with everything isn't it yeah let's all by list that's what I tell my kids like just stay consistent stick to it I have gone through every uniform for every club with my eldest daughter I'm sure and then she's seeing some of her friends now like they're doing really well at this or they're because they went every single week twice a week and that you know let that be the lesson like it's okay to try everything until you find your thing but when you think you've got it like stay consistent and then you will be at their level you know life lesson this is actually always my favorite question of the podcast because I love to know how our guests spend their lunch hour we talk about ladies who launch but I'm very much a lady who lunches I like to I mean as you know not as often as I'd like yeah well how does your lunch hour look every day at work do you step out for lunch are you at the office are you at your desk and what is your order so about two years ago I put in everyone's diaries across the business a lunch break from one to two because I realized we all just worked all hours of the day and there was no structure at all and I started doing walking lunch meetings one-on-one because very often you're spread so thin right one-on-one time can be really precious and I want to get my steps in because I'm addicted to getting those steps in um so I walk around the park and then we live near a big well our office is near a big shopping center and we've got everything we've got Pratt we've got Itzu we've got Dishoom if we're feeling like a bit of a longer lunch yeah um so I normally have my walk for the majority of the hour and then I have M &S sushi or a quick Pratt oh okay nice M &S sushi okay that's really good they've got really good sushi counter and some of the big ones I'd recommend thank you very much i like that we've had a lot of salads we've had pastas we've not had sushi yet i love sushi too sushi it's quick easy and always tasty yeah delicious yeah can't go wrong well thank you very much this has been so insightful from raising funds to scaling to m &s sushi i've loved it thank you thank you for having me thank you very much

54:25don't forget to follow us on apple and spotify or wherever you get your podcast to make sure you don't miss out because next week we're going to be talking to another incredible lady who launched. If like me you're a watcher follow us on YouTube and don't forget to like and subscribe.