20VC: Why Your Board Are Right 50% of The Time, Biggest Lessons From Being Mentored By Reed Hastings & Raising $130m in Funding and The Balance Between Growth and Capital Efficiency with James Reinhart, Founder & CEO @ ThredUp
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 27 April 2018
⏱️ 27 minutes
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Summary
James Reinhart is the Founder & CEO @ ThredUp, the world's largest online thrift store, and consignment store. To date, ThredUp has raised over $130m in VC funding from many friends of the show including Tim @ Redpoint, Patricia @ Trinity, Eric @ Founder Collective and Ian @ Goldman Sachs just to name a few. As for James, prior to ThredUp he was a Goldsmith Fellow in Social Enterprise at HBS and a Bill George Fellow at the Center for Public Leadership at the Kennedy School. Before that, James co-founded Beacon Education Network, a charter management organization serving low-income students on California's Central Coast.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How James' childhood dream of being an architect changed to founding the world's largest online thrift store?
2.) Tim Hale @ Redpoint: "James is one of the most naturally talented leaders I have ever worked with". So what does great leadership mean to James? How has James seen the way he communicates and inspires change with the scaling of the company? What has James observed as the core characteristics that great leaders share?
3.) Why does James believe that investors are inherently wary of the female and child clothing market? How did James see the funding rounds differ from round to round? What did James really look for in his early investors? How does investor value-add change with time and scaling?
4.) What have been James' core learnings in managing a board with transparency and efficiency? James has said before "your board is right 50% of the time". How does James look to determine which 50% is right vs wrong? What is a time when James has gone against the decision of the board? How did the situation result?
5.) Having raised over $130m in funding, how does James think about the balance between aggressive growth and capital efficiency? How does James assess when is the right time to pour fuel on the fire? How does James react to the mindset of "sustainable growth"? How do investors think about capital efficiency?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
James’ Fave Book: Sapiens
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and James on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
Cooley is a global law firm built around supporting start-ups and the venture capital firms that fund them. Now we have spoken before about their forming the first venture fund in Silicon Valley, and forming more VC funds than any other law firm in the world but Cooley also represents more than 6,000 high-growth startups across the globe – through the full company life cycle. They are the #1 law firm for VC-backed exits (M&A and IPO) ranked by PitchBook, and since 2014 has represented more companies in their IPOs than any other law firm. Simply head over to Cooley.com or you can check them out at Cooleygo.com.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You are listening to the 20 minute VC and Founders Friday with me, Harry Stebbings, and I'd love to see you behind the scenes here on Instagram at H. |
| 0:06.8 | Stebings, 1996, where you can submit questions for the show and suggestions for future guests. |
| 0:12.1 | Speaking of guests, I'm thrilled to welcome James Reinhart to the hot seat for our episode today. |
| 0:16.2 | Now, James is the founder and CEO at ThreadUp, the world's largest online thrift store and |
| 0:20.9 | consignment store. To date, ThreadUp has raised over 130 million in VC funding from many |
| 0:25.8 | friends of the show, including Tim at Redpoint, Patricia at Trinity, Eric at founder |
| 0:29.9 | collective and Ian at Goldman Sachs, just to name a few. As for James, prior to Threadup, he was |
| 0:34.5 | a Goldsmith fellow in social enterprise at HBS and a Bill George fellow at the Centre for Public Leadership at the Kennedy School. |
| 0:40.9 | Before that, James co-founded Beacon Education Network, a charter management organisation serving low-income students on California's Central Coast. |
| 0:48.8 | I do also want to say a huge thank you to Leah Busky at Fuel for the intro and Tim at Redpoint who provided such |
| 0:54.4 | awesome questions for the show today. I really do so appreciate that. But before we dive into |
| 0:58.9 | the show today, our new sponsor, Ring, first made a splash when they were on Shark Tank a few years |
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| 1:35.8 | So for me, spending my life in the studio, I have my ring at home and you can instruct deliveries, check security and just feel much more comfortable, all for me from the studio. |
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