Rapid Response: Pet adoptions: Up. Delivery business: Up. What that means to Chewy’s Sumit Singh
Masters of Scale
WaitWhat
4.6 • 4.4K Ratings
🗓️ 25 April 2020
⏱️ 30 minutes
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Summary
Pet adoptions have soared during the coronavirus lockdown, as people seek companionship and solace. For Chewy, the pet-supply company, that’s driving unprecedented demand. Ultra-rapid growth has its own set of challenges that CEO Sumit Singh is responding to by: hiring (at 13,000 employees, with plans to add another 6,000 to 10,000 by end of year); setting up a COVID task team that meets daily; instituting health and safety checks; rolling out customer-facing innovations in a weekend, and more. Why? Because a leader's job during a crisis, Singh says, is to first communicate with the team, and then innovate for a post-pandemic world. Interviewed by editor Bob Safian.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey everyone, you may have heard read talking about the future of AI and chat GPT on |
| 0:04.8 | Master's of Scale recently. |
| 0:06.6 | If you're interested in learning more, I want to recommend Wired's new podcast Have |
| 0:10.6 | a Nice Future. |
| 0:12.0 | Each episode explores the future of AI through illuminated conversations, featuring top technologists, |
| 0:17.7 | thinkers, and creators who share stories of how politics, culture, commerce, and more |
| 0:22.3 | are all touched by technology. |
| 0:24.8 | New episodes of Have a Nice Future are released every Wednesday. |
| 0:28.2 | You can listen and follow now wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:54.8 | Some things that we're going to have to prepare for and react very quickly to. |
| 0:59.2 | Leadership or lack thereof, at least in my opinion, is most visible during a crisis like |
| 1:04.3 | this. |
| 1:06.5 | Chewy is a nine-year-old company, and in nine years, we've had nearly five billion dollars |
| 1:11.4 | in revenue. |
| 1:13.8 | It's switched from, hey, pets are happy, this is a happy and healthy world, too. |
| 1:18.6 | We're here for you and find moments of comfort with your pet during this time. |
| 1:22.7 | Only relevant innovations during the time, it's been incredible seeing the camaraderie |
| 1:26.6 | and the innovations spread across the company. |
| 1:35.1 | That was Sumit Singh, the CEO of Chewy, the online pet food and pet supply retailer. |
| 1:41.1 | If you're one of the millions of Americans with pets, or you've adopted one amid the pandemic, |
| 1:46.4 | you know how therapeutic having a little friend at home can be in a crisis. |
| 1:51.1 | But even if you're not a pet person, Sumit's experience is instructive. |
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