Why Supermodel Karlie Kloss Quit Victoria’s Secret to Build a Tech Empire

0:00With a woman who does it all. Her name is Karlie Kloss. She's one of the most recognizable faces in the modeling industry. She's a supermodel. She's an entrepreneur. She's a philanthropist. She is also a computer coder. Founded Code with Kossi in 2015. Karlie Kloss, welcome to The Burnouts.

0:23I want to go back to when you were 14 years old. That's when you were scouted, right? I want to know, what did your early career look like? Oh my God. I think it was 13, actually. Your life completely flipped upside down. Was it like overnight? Did you ever watch Hannah Montana? Did we watch Hannah Montana? It depends who I talk to. Many people don't know that reference. That's what I felt like my life was because before social media, I was 13 years old walking in a mall in Missouri and discovered and it pretty quickly happened that I was sort of signed with a big agency. And by the age of 15, same week I was starting high school, I was trying to find my locker on a Monday, finding my way around, you know, classes.

1:03And then by Friday, I was walking on exclusive in New York Fashion Week for Calvin Klein. Wow. And it was September 2007. So it's a different world. I mean, that was a time in fashion where those sorts of runways were the breakout. That's where overnight I had a unbelievable success and momentum and had to figure out how to juggle both. And so I was constantly on a plane between St. Louis and New York. I had an apartment from the age of 15 onwards and had my mom or aunt or teacher or neighbor, somebody sort of chaperoning me. And I was jet setting to Paris for fashion week, walking in couture, opening for Dior, traveling to Tokyo for Karl Lagerfeld to be in the Chanel show or unbelievable experiences that I was having so quickly.

1:52But I was also going back home to St. Louis and starting my high school years. And that was such a period of juggling. That's why I referenced Hannah Montana, because that's the only way I can describe this sort of double life that I had. And my friends back home had absolutely no idea. They weren't reading Italian Vogue. They didn't know any other references, not only because we lived in Missouri, but like it just was a different world and a world that I had not paid attention to before I was in the middle of it. Wait, so what did the other kids think of you? They definitely were like, where is Carly?

2:27She's just gone. But then also, I mean, I was such an awkward, tall, pale, 15-year-old girl like everybody else feeling so uncomfortable in their skin. I couldn't get a date. And not that I was like really actively trying to, but I also was like, I would like somebody to like me or like ask me out on a date. Did not happen. Literally until prom, the guy that I had a crush on, finally, he was like three feet shorted on me. but we need photos we need photos immediately photos on the internet it was such a crazy period of my life and it was before social media so nobody understood what I was experiencing but it was like my secret jet setting living this you know incredible career and working really hard as well and coming back home we have bleached eyebrows from walking in like Balenciaga Couture going back into math class and you guys are similar I mean the way that you've juggled your careers from a young age and starting so many different things and being in school.

3:25It's not dissimilar. I don't know if it's quite the same. I wouldn't put myself on the Dior runway, but you know, we'll, we'll see. But I'm so curious, like if you don't mind me asking, like, what do you do? You're 14. Yeah. You make your first paycheck. Like, are you saving it? How did you buy an apartment as a teenager? Did you feel like you had to be an adult from an early age? Oh, completely. I mean, I, I am such a frugal girl, like still to this day, which is why I love Fia because I don't care how much, you know, success or money that I ever sort of like, I want a bargain. I want a deal.

3:55I want to make sure I'm buying it as smart as possible. So thank you, Fia. But I was always saving every dollar I made. I was always flying economy class. A client would pay for me to sit in business class. I would call the airlines, literally downgrade my seat, collect the difference in the airfare, which would be thousands and thousands of dollars. They would send me a voucher in the mail for like $10 ,000, but I would still upgrade with my miles back to my first class seat. So still sitting in the same seat, but I just collected all the cash. I don't know if they let you do that anymore, but then I would fly my entire family on vacation around the world with these credits.

4:34I always saw my career in fashion as a bit of a means to an end. It was a way to make unbelievable money as a young, you know, uneducated person. I hadn't gone to grad school and I just had this unbelievable access to an opportunity and I ran for it. For me, it was sort of a job that I feel like happened to me. And it was only later that I recognized that I could actually use it to do so much more that was more authentic and was more reflective of like what really makes me tick, which is where Code of Classy sort of eventually developed and business as well. Modeling was sort of my wedge into the rest of the world.

5:15When did you realize that modeling wasn't the end-all be it for you? You wanted more out of life? The whole way through. From the very beginning, I always sort of thought like this is incredible. Again, like it sort of happened to me. I wasn't somebody who was like banging down doors with my portfolio, like please take a chance on me. It happened so quickly and so overnight that I was just trying to keep up and I feel so grateful that I was at the right place at the right time. Missouri mall. I'm going to walk around. So it feels like, where are you this week? I'm like, I'm working remote. I'm just walking around a wall in Missouri.

5:51You're like, discover me. I think you're fine. Phoebe. When did you have like the switch into like, I have this incredible career in modeling. Now I want to start doing stuff in STEM. There's this other facet in my brain I want to work on. From the start of my fashion career, always thought I'm going to do this as long as it's fun. As long as I'm enjoying it because I could see very quickly even though I was 15 years old, there were a lot of complicated factors to the industry. There were a lot of people who were not happy and not enjoying it. And I was like, this is an amazing creative world that I love.

6:24And I want to experience it, learn all that I can. And I did. I was a fly on the wall in some of the most extraordinary ateliers in the world. You know, I've gotten to work with all the greats of my lifetime. Oscar de la Renta, Ralph Lauren, and Karl Lagerfeld, John Galliano. I mean, the list goes on and on and on. And photographers as well. Stephen Meisel, Peter Lindbergh, Patrick de Marchellier. All of the greats that I could have ever dreamt of, I got to work so closely with. Same thing, photographers, makeup artists, stylists. So I feel like I have such a deep appreciation for the industry.

7:00But again, I kind of always thought it was a job. It was something I was doing. I didn't feel like it was who I was, which was sort of an interesting evolution once social media hit the scene and I want to say it was really more Instagram that changed the fashion industry for me that was 2011 I'm graduating high school and really make a decision to go fully to New York and commit myself entirely to this career and just sort of see where it takes me and then I would go back to school I mean it was like it just didn't stop I signed my first contract with Victoria's Secret and by that time I had already done so many Vogue covers and social media was developing.

7:37And that was really when I started to become more known as a person, not just a face in a picture. And people started taking more interest in what I had to say. Social media really unlocked opportunities for me as a model and my peers. And that was really all kind of happening around the same time, 2012. You know, it's funny I think about you guys and everyone even younger growing up in a world social media has always existed and how much pressure that must be to sort of come up through your awkward years your teenage years of feeling so uncomfortable in your skin and judged by your peers you're totally right I think you were at this perfect inflection point before models had social media we saw them on billboards but we didn't know them as people at all but I'm curious what was that like for you?

8:29Because I'm sure that also brings heightened scrutiny. It's hard to exist and talk and have a platform because people are always going to be critical. And you were so young too. What was that experience like for you? Yeah, I was so young when I started. But I think that the difference is that I saw social media as a tool for me to build my business. It was a professional tool. I didn't think about it as me, Carly, the vulnerable early 20 something person putting myself out there. I saw it as a way to sort of have a voice and use the platform to show who I am beyond just what I look like or the campaign or product I was selling, but really show what I stood for and what my interests were.

9:13I never took anything personally because I didn't know anybody. All the mean comments, like I didn't know those people. It must be a whole other experience for you guys and for everyone younger that has sort of grown up in this social media world where they're being judged by their peers, that sort of personal element would be a different experience.

9:42I swear, I actually think I heard about Code with Klossy first, and then I learned about you because I remember I was applying to colleges. I was connecting with all these girls and time and time again, all these super smart women in CS, they all had the same thing on their resume, which was code with Klossy. And I was like, oh my God, this is so cool. What is this program? I started learning more about it. And I was like, oh my God, that's so incredible that this woman actually was able to use her platform, pivoted and started focusing on computer science, which is obviously the thing that women need to know.

10:13I mean, I wish that I knew how to code fluently. Me and Phoebe talk about this all the time. It's just so difficult. And I remember thinking it was just such a male oriented thing in high school all the guys knew how to code and I was so intimidated I also thought that was really cool that you you didn't leave fashion behind you actually like found a way to merge fashion with computer science so tell us about how Code with Klossy started and how that evolved for you thank you well that makes me so proud to hear that you have met other scholars in the wild and the incredible places that you're in school or hopefully hopefully you'll be hiring some K with K alum soon.

10:49Give us your best before they get posed. Yes, done. Our scholars are incredible and dynamic. And to me, that's the way I live my life. Like you guys know me. And I think all of us are more than just one thing. You know, I certainly never identified with my day job as my identity, but my job as a model was sort of a wedge into this broader world to learn from the best across so many different spaces. And I used that. And I was meeting so many entrepreneurs around that same time. So I started Code with Glossy in 2015, because this is our 10 year anniversary. It's crazy. So I'd say like 2012, 13, 14, 15, I was meeting so many entrepreneurs, and even actually starting to make some angel investments, because I was meeting the people behind these big ideas and behind these big companies like FIA, especially technical products that are transforming industries and creating enormous enterprise value when you actually understand the human behind that and the technical skills that build that.

11:56And so I really was just interested in learning some high level understanding front end, back end for myself, like really almost just to demystify it. And so this is around 2014, I guess. I went back to school. I went to a coding boot camp at the Flatiron School here in New York, just down the way. And I was blown away by innately how creative coding is. I was also blown away by how, in a short period of time, how much I could learn. And that was as somebody who didn't have a four-year college degree, yet it was a skill that I could learn. It was like a language, a language to be able to communicate with a computer.

12:33and build, problem solve. And the ways that you can apply that to drive impact, to build big businesses, the sky is the limit. And I think that was sort of this unlock for me as a person of like, oh, wow, imagine the ideas I uniquely could have because of my lived experience in the fashion industry, for instance, seeing firsthand the enormous amount of inefficiencies in connecting people to product. Thank you. It's taken 10 years for somebody to finally build it. So thank you. And when did that switch flip for you where you're like, okay, I'm learning how to code. This is amazing. I can now build all these ideas to, oh shit, we got to make sure that a ton of women are getting involved in this and that their ideas can come to life.

13:15When does it resonate for you where you're like, okay, I'm doing this thing. I'm building code with Klossy. Well, I first took the class for my own curiosity. And then again, social media, this is where I'm grateful for the power of that platform because I had already a few million people following me and primarily young women. like us. And, you know, at the time I was, I think maybe early, early twenties. And I wanted to share this opportunity and this experience that I was having with anyone out there who might be interested. And I could not have imagined how many other people would be interested.

13:51I thought maybe there's a few other nerds out there like me. So I put a scholarship opportunity out on my social media and I underwrote 21 scholarships for the same experience that I had had. And I was blown away by the thousands of applications for those 21 spots of people of all ages, all genders, all around the world. And that was this light bulb moment for me of recognizing why there's a lot of other people out there who would be interested in learning these skills and imagine what they could do with them. And that was it. I didn't anticipate building an education nonprofit. I was so naive, like many people when you're starting out on something.

14:31I had no idea what would go into it, but I just knew that I had this desire and drive to connect dots here. And I didn't start it overnight building the whole thing. We underwrote a scholarship. And then the next summer, we started building the programs ourselves. And then eventually we started building custom curriculum and fully training teachers. And so it developed over the past 10 years. But now we have a really robust program. We have four different curricula, AI and machine learning, web dev, mobile app development, and data science. And so we have some engineers who will be ready. Good, good.

15:09We need some mobile, Swift devs. And share some of the amazing stats. How many people from your program end up going on to major in CS, going to CS careers, etc.? Oh my gosh. So of our 11 ,000 alumni who are all around the world, first of all, 79 % of them who are in college, major or minor in computer science. That's compared to the 3.9 % of women in America graduating with comp sci degrees. So 79 % of our alumni are majoring and minoring in computer science. And then maybe they'll stay in the technical field or maybe they'll go into other spaces. And to me, that's just as important to sort of take that technical literacy into any industry or job that you want to pursue.

15:50because we are living in a time where, one, the technical skills you need are transforming, which I think is a great thing. It further democratizes access for all to be able to use AI tools to better do your daily tasks or build a business. Code with Klossy is about democratizing access and demystifying this space that has always been very elitist and exclusive. and women need to have access to these conversations. And I think it's very similar with financial literacy. I want to touch on your business mogul now. Let's talk about that, that shift. Because I think even within our friendship, early on you were not doing this.

16:31And to see you now, you know, acquire different businesses, what you're going to create there. How did you make that decision that that was something you're going to do? And then I'd love if you could touch on your long-term vision for these different businesses. Yeah, I've always loved business. Starting a business young. I mean, my job was my business. I was paying taxes. I had to... You had an apartment. I had an apartment. I had income and expenses and I had to make sure it all like... I had blonde hair extensions at 15 and my sister was calling home from college saying I was ruining our family legacy at my high school because I looked so bad.

17:02With braces and blonde hair extensions, it was really, really rough. That's the beauty of sisters. I have three sisters and let me tell you, they call me out all the time too. Do they tell you if you don't look good on a shoot? Are they like, oh girl, those bleached eyebrows not working for you? They tell me everything I don't want to hear but need to. But yeah, I always loved the idea of entrepreneurial ways to build. I don't know. I guess I just have it in my blood. I think you might be wired that way or you're not, even if all you're willing to lose is your own time. Because at a young age, you don't have capital necessarily to put towards an investment, but you have your time and your work ethic that you can pour into something.

17:44So if you have an idea, and I think the only way that businesses really work or startups really work is when it's so deeply authentic. You can't sleep because you're just so excited about, or you have such deep conviction about this problem you want to solve or this business you want to build. And I think that's where, when I have felt that way, you've got to go all in. And so I think that you guys are going all in on this idea that you have. And I'm sure you had many ideas before this. That were all pretty bad. All very bad. I'm not going to lie. But that's good. Like, did you start anything before this together?

18:21We have a graveyard. We have a graveyard. We have a Google Drive folder that I'm afraid our team actually still has access to that I want to scrap. I feel like there's probably some golden nuggets in there. Sophia, there is no golden nugget in there. It's a field of brown shit. There's not one golden nugget in that folder. I think it's important that you just throw things at the wall and see what sticks. And I'm also curious, were there ever times where you tried something and it didn't work? And like, how did you go about that? If you can learn the wisdom in those painful moments or those embarrassing moments, because I've experienced many of those, learning from people you've hurt or like money you've lost or, you know, choices you've made in your career.

19:02for me anytime I've ever gone against my gut is usually when I end up paying the price it's going to happen like you said you have a graveyard of ideas like that doesn't take away from the fact when you find your one thing that you want to go in all in on and like it takes off like it took you all the mistakes to get to Fia took you all the sort of like bad ideas to get we're gonna make a lot more mistakes too you're gonna make so many more mistakes I think that's I'm like sitting on the other side of 30. Like I'm 32 and you guys are 20. 22, 23. 22, 23. Like I relate so deeply to both of you and because you've started working so young and you've been building for such a long time already.

19:43But I think like this pressure that we put on ourselves to be perfect and to have it figured out and to have our unicorn launched and IPO'd by the time you're 25, that is not how success happens. That's not how great things happen. Josh, my husband always says anyone who wants to start a business to make a lot of money or accolades like is not going to build a successful business. The people who build successful businesses are the ones that like are so irrationally passionate about an idea or about a problem. And I think that advice I would say is as much as you can sort of focus more on kind of listening to yourself, connecting to yourself.

20:26And part of that is also you're just building life experiences in real time. So I'd say like a little bit alleviate the pressure that we put on ourselves, or maybe that's what I would like to have said to myself. Mistakes are going to happen, failures are going to happen and like lean into them. And I don't know, at 32 years old, I feel like I'm only just beginning. Truly, I feel like I'm only just beginning and I feel like I've had seven lifetimes already. So I feel very lucky for that. I thought it was so interesting that you talked about investing in other companies like the angel investing.

20:58What do you look for when you're looking at those opportunities like things like that? Well, one thing that comes to mind, one of my early angel investments and I used to do this like I still do it. You know, when I meet somebody amazing like you guys, by the way, call me on your next round. We will be. We will be. We will be. Chris got in the round and I did it. I'm a little offended. Sorry, that's super valid. First person. I get it. I get it. We will. Go ahead. But I, you know, I started making angel investments when I was, you know, meeting incredible people with incredible ideas. And I think it's the person and, you know, the idea, but really it's the people behind it that are building it.

21:36And my thesis on sort of investing has always been better for you, better for the planet. And so whether that's a platform or a product, it can sort of take any form. and it has one of my first ones was this company called Lola and it was a great direct to consumer better for you organic feminine care product tampons pads that was really ahead of its time and it had these two amazing women behind it and this was a business idea that I had had for years and I was like great margins on tampons and I thought better than me building this company myself, let me invest in these women who are far more equipped and, you know, deep in building this.

22:19And so that was sort of the first taste I had in using capital to as a as a way of power, using dollars to support sort of impact. I wanted to see in the world products I wanted as a consumer. Another example was Jen Rubio, a good friend, somebody I met again early in my 20s. And I was so excited by what she was building with Away. And she had this great idea to, because she was really supportive of Code with Glossy and the work we were doing. And she was like, why don't we do a campaign? We'll create a limited product and line of suitcases and backpacks. And we'll do a campaign that instead of getting paid for, I got sweat equity as a model.

23:06and also put a cash investment in and also was able to have my scholars in the campaign with me. And so I was able to help share their stories and tell their stories. Uh-oh, now we might be doing this when you invest. Let's do it. Let's do it. I'm going to campaign, please, Carly. Done. I'm there. And Carly, we originally got connected, funny enough, through my sister, but then, you know, really bonded over our love of investing in reproductive freedom and reproductive health. And the thing I'll touch on there is I love what you're saying about capital is power because I think that for our work and what we've looked at investing in together has been really core to us of like, there's just nothing with the same return on capital as giving a woman access to an IUD or to birth control where she can then make every single decision about her life.

23:50And you've really taught me specifically about this kind of long-term work of advocacy of how do we change the narrative around abortion. I want to talk about for you how you got involved in the reproductive health space and how that became a passion of yours. Did that click for you right when Roe was overturned? So I grew up in the Midwest, one of four daughters. My dad's a doctor. Our conversation growing up around reproductive health was just health care. It wasn't politics. It hits so personally to me because, you know, what has unfolded across this country and especially in a state like Missouri, you know, is one of the first states to enact a six week abortion ban, a complete, you know, a complete abortion ban right when Roe is overturned.

24:33And actually, I'm proud to say that thanks to the efforts of so many people, Missouri is the first state that went from a complete abortion ban to actually thanks to the ballot initiative that we were able to pass this past November has access to Roe Standard Care, or at least technically should. Huge shout out to Carly, because this is one thing I've really learned from you. Talk about using your relationships to implement your values. I have seen you time and time again get people in your network to come over for dinner. and we'll be like, oh, dinner at Carly's. Boom, we're talking about reproductive health.

25:04There's someone there who's a doula, like we're going around. And next thing you know, these people you would never think would be investing in the ballot initiative are investing in the ballot initiative because they've learned and they've cared. And you're pulling these strings of all these connections you have of getting people into this work and getting people to care. So I think that's a huge reason why that ballot initiative got turned over. And I think that that's really, really important. Well, you are one to talk, Phoebe. You are such an inspiration to be on. so many levels and the way you've used your power for good and especially the work we've been able to do together.

25:36I think there's two areas that I really focus on. One is storytelling. So, you know, and that was leading up to the election, something that we really chose to do with this series that we produced together called Everybody's Fight. And the intention I think we were really trying to accomplish and even why we did shorter form stories that we wanted to tell was because, because we knew that that's where people were. That was the shorter bite-sized content that they maybe would have the willingness to listen to or be informed by before going into the ballot box. And the stories we wanted to tell were the stories that we were seeing and hearing because of our opportunities to go into clinics.