Stitch Fix: Katrina Lake (2018)

How I Built This with Guy Raz

Guy Raz | Wondery

Business

4.8 • 31.1K Ratings

🗓️ 16 September 2019

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In 2010, Katrina Lake recruited 20 friends for an experiment: she wanted to see if she could choose clothes for them that accurately matched their style and personality. That idea sparked Stitch Fix, an online personal shopping service that aims to take the guesswork out of shopping. Today, it has about three million customers and brings in more than a billion dollars in annual revenue. PLUS in our postscript "How You Built That," we check back with Justin Li, who created wearable equipment to keep cool and hydrated called IcePlate. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to how I built this early and ad-free on Amazon Music.
0:07.0	Download the app today.
0:09.0	New Year's is here, and with it brings the possibility of change.
0:13.0	As one behavioral scientist put it, first starts are really powerful.
0:17.0	So as you head into 2023, LifeKit is a great resource to help you plan your life and tackle changes, both big and small.
0:24.0	Listen to the LifeKit podcast from NPR.
0:27.0	Hey, it's Guy here. So Katrina Lake still holds the record as the youngest female founder in the US to ever take a company public.
0:35.0	Stitchfix is also one of a recent crop of female founded companies, now worth over a billion dollars.
0:42.0	The story of how Katrina built it is pretty incredible.
0:45.0	This episode first ran in April of last year, but it's so good!
0:50.0	We think it's worth hearing again. Enjoy!
0:53.0	At that seed stage, it was 100% just an idea.
1:00.0	I would come in and say, here's the beta that I do with 20 people, and here's how I think the business model will shape up,
1:06.0	and then probably talk to 30 angel investors who said no.
1:11.0	And when you're doing something that nobody else is doing, you are either the smartest or the stupidest person in the room.
1:27.0	Promin PR is how I built this. A show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.
1:38.0	I'm Guy Ross, and on today's show, how Katrina Lake defied the investment world to build a tech company that transformed clothes shopping online.
1:55.0	So every year it seems there's always that one buzzword or idea that everyone in Silicon Valley seems to be talking about.
2:03.0	A couple years ago, it was cryptocurrency, recently it's been blockchain, but there's also a widely held idea in the tech world that the days of retail stores are numbered.
2:14.0	Now of course, this is a combination of wishful thinking and hyperbole, but there is something to it, especially with big retailers.
2:23.0	Macy's struggling, Bontan and Toys R Us have filed for bankruptcy, and in October of 2017, Lord and Taylor sold its flagship building in Manhattan to WeWork.
2:36.0	That amazing Italian Renaissance building on Fifth Avenue is now worth more as a WeWork than as a department store.
	...

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