Co Founder of Pickle - Navigating the Scrappy Road to Success, Investors & Team Building

Perustin pyöräilyvää teitä valmistavan ornotin vuonna 2013. Mielestäni parasta Shopify saan se, että voimme harjoittaa liiketoimintaa ilman teknistä osaamista. Voimme hallinoida yrityksen taustajaristeelle mien ja front-endia sekä myydä verkossa, vaivatta. Jos Shopify olisi pyöräilyvaruste, sollisimielestäni itse polkupyörä. Sillä asiat hoidetaan ja meidän liiketoiminta me hoituu Shopify'ss. Aloita ilmainen kokeilu, Shopify piste komsi vustolla. Heya, hei, jotenkin järjestelmässä. Nyt on johtaa järjestelmässä, jotenkin järjestelmässä, jotenkin järjestelmässä. Ja tää on Julia Omera, joka on suurin koko koko. Tämä on koko. Ja mä olin järjestelmässä, joka on järjestelmässä. Ja mä olin järjestelmässä. Ja mä olin järjestelmässä, että mä olin järjestelmässä, että mä olin järjestelmässä. Ja mä olin Julia, mä olin järjestelmässä. Ja mä olin järjestelmä. obviously, but we both grew up together, did all the sports together, studied a lot together, and then-- - Did she play the cross-- - Yes, and we play the cross together too. - And what's her name? - Lauren. - Lauren, so she went to Penn and played the cross with you. - Yes. - Oh my gosh, that is crazy. I can't imagine having a twin. - It's amazing. I miss her every day. She lives in Philly now with her husband, and I am in New York, so I don't get to see her as often. During college was the first time we started diverging paths, and she knew she wanted to go to med school, and she went on the pre-med track, and I didn't really know anything. I went into school, I actually studied material science engineering, which is completely irrelevant. - Literally, is that? What even is that? - It's literally the study of materials at the atomic level, so how things work at its most basic form. And what? - It's crazy because I unfortunately don't use the knowledge that I gained from that major, but I like to say that I picked up a lot of great problem-solving skills from the engineering degree as a whole. I also did study engineering entrepreneurship as a minor, which was much more relevant. That skill set that I learned there has nothing to do with what I'm doing now, or even what I would be potentially interested in, and I think I just didn't understand what skills I had, and how those would translate to a professional career. And I didn't have advice on that as a freshman in college, and I think that something hopefully schools are getting a lot better. - I mean, that's insane, I feel. - I also think I was a little lost in the sense that I was like, maybe I do want to be a material science engineer. And as soon as I started getting into lab work and things like that, I was like, oh, it actually turns out I don't want to go get my PhD or become a professor at some point or go specifically into the material science industry. A lot of people did that, it was really cool for them, but I am a people person, and I loved the business side of things a bit more, and in hindsight, I could have probably done systems engineering, or something that would have still given me some of those hard skills or data analysis. That's really helpful and valuable today, but I didn't really need to understand how things worked at the atomic level. - That is so impressive today. I'm genuinely shook. What would you say to someone who's in college right now? Like, what skills would you say, learn this right now? Because when you graduate, you're going to be so valuable as a potential employee. Like, what should people be learning? What programs do they need to know? Give us the 4011. - The number one thing that I think people could learn and pick up in school would be data analysis. And the familiarity with different programs that you can do to conduct that. So there would be tools or platforms that you could already start to get familiar with, whether that is Google Analytics, or getting really familiar with Python, so that you can break down different data sets and come up with different insights. That's something that all of our employees at our company are encouraged to learn and participate on so that when we are looking at the marketplace and understanding the dynamics of both sides, including demand and supply, the people that are renting items from other people and the people that are renting out their items, that analysis goes such a long way 'cause we'll uncover little insights. We'll be like, oh, we didn't know that this brand has just increased in demand by 70% last week. And we're seeing that in New York, this supply is pretty much balanced with demand, but in LA, we don't have enough of that item. What can we do as a strategy to try to get more people to upload that specific brand or item? Just based on that analysis. For example. And so you'd say learn those platforms? I'd say yes. Data analysis or any skills that you can learn around that would be great 'cause I think there are some great data analytics classes that people can take now. Are there any other programs like you mentioned about Python that you would recommend people need to learn? It definitely depends on what industry you're potentially interested in. If you're at all interested in the product side of things or if you'd like to be able to design different mockups and things like that, like I have skills in Adobe XD or Figma, these are design platforms so that you can mock up different screens and prototypes as you're building out and app, for example. So that's a good one. Canva is, we use that all the time. - I think so. - So if you're using it all the time. I feel like most college students that I've been recently meeting are talking to also use it. So, but if you're not absolutely, notion that we love notion and we use it all the time. So those would definitely be good. Data visualization tools as well. We use QuickSci, which is an AWS platform, but if you get to ever dabble in like Tableau, that's really helpful too. I feel like this is combining where someone says, I have a lot of really great soft skills and stuff, but where can I add some additional technical aspects? Those types of platforms will give you an additional leg up or get you closer to being able to speak more on the technical side. I'm not a software engineer. Brian, my co-founder is a self-taught software engineer. - Oh my God. - And great. It's crazy when we were starting the first version of Pickle, which I never like closed the loop on exactly how that pivot happened, but we were thinking about engineering resources and we were looking at a few different options. We didn't want to bring on a third founder because then we'd be giving way more of the company and that just wasn't in our interest. We couldn't afford a software engineer. They're very expensive. And then when we looked at some more affordable options, they just weren't aligned with the skillsets that we needed. So Brian was like, I'll just learn how to do it. Okay, great. I'll love it for you. - Wow. - So I'll have to do a kid. - No, amazing. So we'll go for you. - No, I know. - Great, great. - This is great. I'm gonna work on the designs. You work on the code. We'll let little builds together. I'm gonna learn how to try to make TikTok content. That's embarrassing. She's scrolled back far enough on our TikTok. There are-- - No, that's amazing. You should look back in cringe. I did really crazy. - It is very cringy. - She's a thonda. - Yes. Fortunately, I don't have to be in the weezah as much on content anymore. My team still loves to try to get me involved, but that's not my exact best skill, so. - I'm gonna start saying that for like self-taught. I'm gonna be like self-taught genius. - Yeah. (laughing) - I love it. I love it. - Self-taught engineering. - Yeah, it's like literally no one would know because in self-taught, I just-- - You have to be self-taught for almost everything. And that's another piece of advice, I guess, for college students. There's a lot of things that you will try to pick up skills and learn in college, but most of what you'll do will be learning on the job. And it's taking that really open, proactive approach. You'll have to go out at your first job so that you can learn a lot. And really get involved in projects that are valuable in that matter. I think there are people that sometimes get really comfortable in an internship or a job where they're just able to check off tasks and get things done or like hit the bare minimum. If that's your prerogative, that's also totally cool, but if you're looking to accelerate your growth in a career or if you're looking to get some additional responsibility that could open up other doors and opportunities for you, it will be taking that proactive approach of you. My manager, I noticed that this project takes up a ton of time on your plate and I figured out how to cut that time down by 20%. Or I figured out another resource or tool that can simplify this process for us. And that type of stuff is exactly what employers are looking for. It's the way you look for it when we're hiring people. - Absolutely. - Perfectly as well. Yeah. - I didn't think the same for me when I'm looking to hire someone. - Even if it's an independent contractor, I want them to be doing stuff that I don't even have the brain space to think about. Like they're being so proactive that they're like, "Oh, I think you should start doing this." I didn't even have time to come up with. - Yeah. - Or couldn't come up with. And I think that's the type of person that thrives in this startup entrepreneur space. - Absolutely. - Because you have to be proactive. You have to be a doer. - Yes. - When you're, you have to be a doer and nobody will tell you what to do. If you go and start a company, nobody will be there to tell you what to do. - But you have to be decisive. - You have to think. - You have to think decisions. - You have to be decisive. You have to figure out what tests are on, what experiments to go with. And you really scrappy because you won't have much money either. - But something I've definitely learned with working for myself because it's only my second year doing full-time influence thing. And it's 10 times easier to be told what to do. - Yeah. - I think. - Always. - It's because it is a luxury being your own boss, but the same times it's so scary and hard because it's like no one's telling you what to do. You're just betting on yourself and hoping you're making the right decisions. First is someone being like, just do this. - Exactly. - So easy to be a doer list. - You have to hold yourself accountable. If you wanted to take the day and not be productive at all or sleep in or not prioritize your mental health or your physical health or thing, you don't have to because no one's making you do it. - Something I'd Julia is that we met over the phone. And she was helping me snatch a Coachella outfit. - Yes. - That's really where we hit it off and I became obsessed with pickles. I had no Coachella outfits and I really wanted this health address. And I found it on pickle and Julia was like, "Pyra, let me help you get it. "Got a career. "It was delivered me the day I left insane. "My friend Libby and I were just freaking out "about it the whole day. "Anyway, what I have to ask is how can you manage time "for yourself?" Because this girl was out here texting me at like 3 a.m. New York time, which was like midnight at late time and I was like, "Oh my God, go go to bed." But like, you were grinding, you were texting me, you're trying to make sure I got the package right first thing in the morning or texting me at like 5 in the morning. I'm like, when do you make time for yourself? To date, to hang out friends, to work out, to sleep. I'm like, what does your schedule look like? - It's a great question. I would say my schedule is not necessarily like ideal, right? So I would never say, "Oh, I'm the poster child "for exactly how you should do your work life balance." Because I'd say, if you do go and start a company or you work for yourself and you really have to juggle a lot of things, you're going to make sacrifices. And so I have gotten very comfortable with those sacrifices but it's also because every minute of work that I put in a pickle, I see results in it, which is really impactful. So that's something that you don't get when you work at a really big corporation. And that drives me forward because it's helpful for our overall team or overall company and for our end customers and you were customers. So I was like, of course we're going to get you this health address for Coachella and-- - Which things do you want to do? - Oh, of course. - Of course. - But also, and it's definitely a founder mentality in somebody at an early stage company. There is no task too small, and yes, you have to get good at scaling and delegating and everything, but I am not above any task that would be involved with pickle, whether it's personally helping somebody make sure they get their order or helping someone else deal with a customer service issue, because I used to also do every single aspect of that job before we hired our team. But to actually answer your question about work and my balance, one, for like working out, because I do love to work out. I have to do it in the morning, so I'm a morning workout person, if I don't get it done in the morning, I also have to give myself grace and say, that's okay that you didn't work out today. Maybe you can get in a walk of some sort, or do a meeting on a call, or you're walking, or something like that, and I do have to try to give myself the, it's okay that you didn't do that. You needed the extra sleep, and that's also how I do a little bit of the balance of like sleep too. Every person that is in my life right now that I'm able to make time for is incredibly supportive of what I'm doing, and they know how much time I'm putting into pickle, and that means that I won't have the same flexibility that other people do for events, or activities, or dinners, or drinks. Like, I don't really do a lot of plans during the early days of the week, because I'm workingly, and I'd rather try to prioritize that type of free time towards the end of the week when more of my friends are available and everything. Are you doing fun things in the weekends or are you working? I definitely do a combination. I wouldn't say that I am ever taking a full day off of on weekends, but that doesn't mean-- - I'm gonna say. - That I'm, exactly. - Oh, you know. - It doesn't mean that I'm working for eight hours. Sundays are definitely busier days. We like to start our weeks off really, really strong, and we have a big growth report meeting, and we do a full analysis on what happened week before, and what we're planning for the next week. - On Monday? - On Monday. - So I'm basically doing most of that on Sunday, because we have the meeting on Monday mornings, and so Sundays are busy with that, but I also am very aware that if I don't actually give myself some time to reset or prioritize friends family, then I won't be as productive during the week. I've also found that when I do take some space from the physical work, or being behind the computer, I'll come up with creative ideas or things that I hadn't thought about, or even just going-- - Same. - And prioritizing a coffee chat or talking to a new person, you might come up with a new idea together, and so that can be really productive in itself, too. - What workout studio? - I love SWET440. - What was that? - It's this class. It is a 40 minute workout. It's four, 10 minute circuits, and it's weight incorporated, kind of like hit, but I like-- - I kind of like a 45. - It's like a 45. It's very similar to that. I like a 45 as well. I just have the studio is like right by my apartment in New York. The place that I've been going in LA is called Training Mate. - What for that? - Yeah, I really like that too. - Yeah, you don't love it. - Yeah, it's great. - And you try to do it once a day. - Oh, what the hell? - Yeah, I won't go every day. It's a pretty intense workout, so I feel like if I go three times a week, that's great. And then I'll do either like a run or some other sort of like hit class outside of that. - How logistically did you guys make that happen? - We have contracts with the different career networks. So like Uber and DoorDash, we use a third party delivery technology called SHIPDAE, where we're able to dispatch these careers. So all of those delivery networks exist, which is great. So we're not supply constrained there at all. So just the same as if you were ordering on UberEats, that's the exact experience that you're gonna have when you order on pickle with career. When we started the marketplace, we had just pivoted over from pickle poll, and we basically started from scratch. We had built up that first app, and we had probably gotten over 10,000 users or so. We had built it up for a year, but we weren't seeing the retention metrics that we were really excited about. And so we found the little nuggets of insights that gave us the conviction to pivot over. We basically saw people in these fashion polls. They were recommending things that they already own in their own closets, and they were even commenting on these polls and saying if you were like, "Oh, what should I buy? What should I wear?" And you'd give options. People would comment things that they had in their own closet, and people would even say, "You can borrow this from me." - Yeah, I'm really excited. - What? This is crazy. And it was such a unique way of using the platform that was unexpected. But gave us the conviction to pivot over to the rental marketplace. We basically shut down the app in April of 2022, retooled the whole platform, and then had like a soft launch in beta open in May of 2022. So that summer, we were building it out further. And when we were building out the rental marketplace, we knew that we had two key priorities. One, we wanted to make sure that we had the best stuff that people could rent on pickle. So one of our first strategies was trying to work with different nano and micro influencers. So they had an amazing style. They knew what the coolest stuff was. And we were like, "Let's focus on getting these girls on pickle. We'll see if we can get their closet started because they're going to set the precedent for the rest of pickle of this is the caliber clothing that people want to share and they want to rent. This isn't a place where we're dumping stuff that you're trying to sell out of your closet. This is like, these are pieces we love. - Yeah. - That was a key priority. And then two, Brian and I were like, we have to make this experience so seamless. This needs to be so easy. Of course, people need to be able to have these rentals delivered right to their door. And we're like, this is such a good idea. Day up, same day. This is such a good idea. But we didn't have any money. So we didn't have any money to pay careers or start that technology. Really so, Brian and I were the couriers. - Shut up. - Shut up. (laughing) - We have no money for careers. So we will be the couriers. And I'm not even kidding. Brian and I did deliveries for six months before we were able to pay. - So were you just delivering it all day every day? - At the beginning, it was so, 'cause we didn't have rentals yet. So a rental would come in and Brian and I would be like, oh, I'll get it. I'll go run there. We would even like, pair a workout. I'd be like, I'm gonna run to this and like, pick it up and then I'm like, I would pair it with a run or a workout or something. You're like, this is really fun. - We've got to learn the city. - Oh my gosh. Yes. - Yeah. - Can you please do a TikTok series of you deliver? - I know, because we go for a run. - I know. - Oh, good. - Actually, of like, we should bring it back with the career day. - We feel like founders are gonna go for a run. - We're gonna go for a run and do a delivery. - That's so funny. And then like, film it like 0.5. - I know, this is great. I'll get the content details from you. - You mean, you do it. - 'Cause I need you to direct it. - Yes, please. - And then we'll go and do it. But we basically were delivering ourselves because we couldn't pay the careers. And at the beginning, the volume was slow, but then all of a sudden, we were picking up volume. And so, Brian and I would be out and we would split up the deliveries. And so, he would do like west side of Manhattan. I would do east side. And we would like, pair all of this stuff. We'd map it out on a shared note. It was crazy. By the time we had like the highest volume before we literally couldn't do it anymore, we were doing deliveries from like 7 a.m. until like 9 p.m. - How many deliveries is where you doing it at? - I remember one day, we had a Halloween, like, huge busy day. And there were like, 50 deliveries that had to happen. - No. - And we split it up between the two of us, 25 each. And we were out all day all night. I remember that might have been the longest day. I hit 22 miles of walking. - No. - Yeah. - I was like, you had a million. - Four more. - It's in the head of Maryhunt. - Yeah. - And you were just watching everywhere. - Walking or subway? So, we tallyed it up and we took like a total 4,000 subways. - Shut up. - We knew the subway system very well. - That is insane. You need to do a series. - I know, I know. That was, we should do a throwback of like, this is what we used to do. And surprise some people and show up at their apartment. - Yeah. - We're doing your delivery today. - Yeah. - That's an example of how scrappy we were because we didn't have the money to afford it, but we knew that that would make the experience so amazing. And that was some of the early indicators of the potential success of our platform was even when we were at that really, really small volume. People had an amazing experience and they were retained on the platform. So they'd come back and they'd continue to shop. They would rent again. And that was something that we didn't see on the previous app. And so that was like, oh, this is actually working. We have a sticky product. And those retention metrics was why we were able to raise capital. - Got it. - We're hosting a business trip to the world's largest market in 2013. We're also starting to see the shop in Paris because we can see the difference between the technical and the business. We can see the difference between the market and the front end and the market in the future. If the shop is a business trip, it's the same as the market. We're also starting to see the difference between the market and the market. We're starting to see the difference between the market and the front end and the market. - We're starting to see the difference between the market and the front end and the front end. - We're starting to see the difference between the market and the front end. - Okay. - Going back to Pickle one more time. - Yes. - This is the polls. - Yes. - How did you know and how the confidence to shut it down? - Start with this essentially brand new idea. I mean, yeah, I was a plan on the original idea, but how did you know that was going to be your million dollar idea? How did you guys have that confidence? - Yeah. - I mean, so we saw some interesting user behaviors. So we like to listen to our users and cost them. We conducted some different interviews with people that were like, "Hey, what do you think about this idea?" We didn't just jump ship without talking to people. We definitely did that. We did a lot of research in the rental industry as well. and no one has really tackled peer-to-peer. Well, yeah, especially in the United States. And-- - Or day of. - Or same day, that type of convenience, like the peer-to-peer aspect, and when it's done locally and really efficiently, then you can get that item delivered within two hours. - I mean, the only place that I can think of where I can get something delivered within the day is maybe, I guess, Amazon, maybe. - Maybe. - Maybe. - And then the other really good shipping is revolve. - Yeah. They'll do two days. - Yeah, they'll do two days shipping. - Yeah. - Sometimes I'll get it in a day, which is crazy. - Yeah. - And their return policy is amazing. But like, other than that, I really have an epical if I need something to. - Right. - Yeah. - Exactly. - Or you have to go out and-- - And we see it in total. - Which I can't do that. - I mean to go. (laughing) - We see in the day or two, people love shopping last minute. We have the last minute girlies that are panicking Thursday Friday. Like, we got our weekend plans. We're going to a wedding. - Yeah. - We have sagecoach, we have Coachella, whatever it is. Didn't plan outfits. That's me, I'm an outfit procrastinator, but I just use pickle all the time. So it's fine. And the honest answer about a pivot or starting a company is you do not know for sure that it is going to work. And there is not enough data or research that you can do in advance of actually launching the platform to be so 100% sure that it's going to be successful. But when investors look at founders and companies that they believe can be successful, especially at the early stage, often they're looking at the founders that can be really adaptable and willing to pivot and persevere. So there were so many times where we were running out of money or we could have folded and just said, "Oh, this isn't working. We're not picking up traction enough." And we were like, we have enough conviction. We see that this product is sticky. And we have, even if we have 10 people that absolutely love using this platform, that's 10 people that would be sad if it didn't exist. And so that really, really kept us going even when we were smaller volume. And then there were network effects and people were referring to their friends and they actually started growing and then we were able to use those growth metrics and retention metrics to raise that capital. But it's a big personal thing as a founder. You have to be so willing to adapt and change. Your first idea will not be what you likely end up succeeding with to be your billion dollar business. - 'Cause I'm from India. Could someone in Indiaapolis use pickle right now? - Yes, great question. The answer is yes. So even though we are very focused locally, you can still ship items. So if you find something in an LA closet or a New York closet and you are absolutely obsessed with it, then you can submit an offer and have it shipped to you via USPS priority mail. So if you're in Indiana and you love an item that you see on pickle, you just have to plan out a little further than same day. - Got it. So are you going to eventually hopefully have same day everywhere? - Ideally, that would be the dream. That is the hope that we would have this type of community access in every city and neighborhood in the United States and eventually internationally. - I mean, the grand grand grand vision. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Okay, so when you guys like have these careers, are you as pickle paying them like a massive fee every year or is it the renter that's paying? - The renter pays for the career fee. - Okay. - Yes, we'll do some different incentives at the beginning of someone's experience for trying out career delivery. Right now we offer a discounted delivery rate for your first time that you're renting, but that's something that we play around with just to see if it's helpful for getting people over the hurdle to try renting for the first time. But it's based on the distance of the delivery. So it's like mileage based and Uber, they're calculating that cost on their side and then it's passed on to the customer. - Approximately how much is like a delivery? - It depends on the geographic location and the distance. It'll range anywhere from like $5 or $15, depending on distance. - Yeah, well I mean 100% worth it. - Yeah, I mean the cost benefit is thinking about how long would it take you to go pick up that item or are you able to use your time in the market? - Well it's a delivery. - Yeah, same thing. - Same thing. - Yeah. - Okay, well I mean I think what you guys have done with this app, you've solved so many problems. And it's absolutely crushing and I am like such a fan of it and we've started to work together on my closet on pickle, which you guys can shop it by the way. And you guys have done such a great job having other creators and influencers on the app. - Yes. - So what I wanna ask is like what has been your strategy with working with influencers? And like are people actually making good money? Is this a good side hustle? I wanna hear all about it. - Yes, our influencer strategy is interesting because when we again we're launching our influencer strategy we really didn't have any capital. So we had to get really creative and scrappy with the way that we were working with influencers and honestly even after raising our capital we allocate most of that towards hiring personnel and our marketing budget is very lean. So we still don't have budget that goes towards paid influencer marketing. We work with influencers and creators who one align with our brand and our mission and are passionate about sharing their clothes. And so the people that we're working with are some of the most trendy, fashionable girls in New York and in LA, they are kind of setting some of the trends. They're inspiring people, they're helping people with their different lookbooks or inspo or guides or whatever it is. And that then is like taking us up further where they're doing all of that type of organic content anyway with different brands and different companies or that's just like their niche. And now they're able to circulate their closet. And so it's a very organic partnership when they're able to say you guys are always asking where my items are from or where I'm shopping and now you can borrow them. And it's affordable too. And I'll see this on social media when influencers sometimes they'll get comments, they're like, oh, can you link everything in some of them? I'll see, I saw a comment there that I said, all these dresses are over $500. Do you have any affordable options that are under a hundred or something? And what's great is with pickle, these girls are sharing their $500 dresses, but they people can rent them for under $100. And so it's accessible that way as well. - And what's awesome is like if the creator's already posting and you can already see how the fit is in them and things because they're taking so much content or video content. - We call it like the copy and paste from Instagram to pickle. - Yeah. - And like the creators and like this is so good. You have such great pictures and people can see how you styled it, how it fits you. And then you just put it right on pickle after you wore it. - And I'm always a sucker when I'm like shopping online. I like to see the video. Like I love when a website has the video 'cause then I can see like how the dress moves or like how long it's sometimes I've like ordered stuff and then I get like a dress and I'm like, oh, this is a score? Like not? - Maybe, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah. - 'Cause you can't see the way it moves. - Absolutely. - Or like in styling photos, there's so many times where like there's you know clamps in the back to make it look fitted really well or whatever. And I think that's why in blizzard marketing in the fashion space has worked so well. - Absolutely. - Just in general. - Because it's been around in real girls wearing the stuff versus like a stylist glam. Everything is made into the item look perfect. - Right. It is so awesome and they are making a great side hustle. It's awesome. There are-- - How much is it making? - In New York, first of all, that are covering their rent with pickle earnings, which is amazing. So that's a couple of grand a month. - And the work rent is crazy. - Rent is crazy. In general, in New York, but then it's crazy that they can pay for it with pickle. It's amazing. - And you know those influencers, rents are crazy. - That would mean. - Yeah, we're like, oh, the numbers are higher on all these sides. Our top lenders, one of the top ones made 40k. - In a year. - Yeah. I mean, that's crazy. That's a salary. - Yeah. - Wow. - And is this person like, do they have like the most like designer shit? Like what's the-- - They definitely have super, super high quality pieces in their closet. And I would say that they are somehow on the forefront of the trends all the time. They always are able to snatch up the pieces before they're sold out online. - I mean, this is probably one of like a full-time job for them. - I mean, it's definitely something that I'd say is probably like their second full-time job outside. 'Cause some of our top lenders are top lenders. They're not influencers. They're just these girls that have amazing tastes and have a really passion for fashion. - Yeah. - Which is really cool. We do have some amazing influencers in New York that their causes are killing it. We have some upcoming LA influencers too. - Woo! - Like your closet is about to be popped. - Period. - Yeah, I'm excited. - That'll be really fun. - What's like the most popular thing? People, it's popular brand, popular item. I wanna hear all of it. - So there's some brands that are higher and towards luxury that do super super well. Like, Calcaya, Arsena Ori, Miraclei. There are some really beautiful, beautiful pieces that are retelling $600, $700. - Which I never going to pay. - It's just so hard to justify that. If you don't know if you're going to really wear it, what, at least five times? I don't know what, you know, maybe you need that number of wears. But then there's also brands like Realization Power, House of CB, Reformation, that do so well on pickle. And what I love about that is that it makes pickle really accessible for anybody to be a lender. So even if you're not somebody that's like, I am, I'm not gonna shell out $700 on a dress, but I invested in a beautiful dress for graduation or for wedding guest outfit or something. You can rent out that piece even if it is something like, Realization Power, that might be a little bit more accessible to people, but then they're like, do I need to spend $300? I could rent it from you and your closet instead. - Or so my first rent tour that wanted to rent from me was on a revolved $300 like sequin and feather dress that I wore to the Taylor Swift concert. And then I also wore to like a event in Italy. And it was perfect for those events, but it's like, okay, one of them I'm gonna wear the sequin. - How many times do you wear it? - Yeah, you know, people see me wear it now a couple of times and it's also like, I don't necessarily need this in my closet as like, you know, a stable or a, if someone rent it, I'm not gonna be like, oh shoot, I need it. - You're right, you know what I mean? - You have other things to wear. - One of those things, yeah. It's one of those things where it's like, it's fun. I'm glad I have it for what I need it, but it's a perfect example. It's a perfect example. Pickle piece. So anyway, I think it's retail is for like 300, which means I mean the person's resting for like in the 30s or 40s, which is amazing because they'll have it for the whole weekend or their whole trip. And I'm like, that's the type of shopper I am. I'm not like one to just like scroll and like see if I want something. I'm like shopping for something. Or like a trip or something that's coming. And I feel like Pickle's perfect for that because when I have a trip and it's like you can select the dates when it's available. Yeah, just like Airbnb, but for your closet. Yeah, we said it basically. Yeah, exactly. Okay, I want to talk a little bit about the technical side of like creating the app. Like how do you even go about that? There are a few options. One, if you're not technical, which is great. There are a lot of no code platforms where you can design and configure at least a prototype of an app without actually knowing how to design or develop. So that's an option. One, I'd say when I'm talking to people and they do have a friend who is like a software engineer or somebody that is interested in picking up the code side of it, I'd say that's great because it's nice to build the platform in-house. So you have so much control over the iterations and how fast you're able to build on it. One of the reasons that we were able to do so much with Pickle with with just Brian and I was because we really were doing it all ourselves when he taught himself how to code and I taught myself how to design and we could basically build it together. Self-taught engineer. Self-taught, we just had to do that. It gave us flexibility though where we're like, we need this new feature and we're going to design and build it and have it released tomorrow. And that's something that you can't do as quickly when you're relying on contractor resource or somebody that's not fully bought into your company or maybe is working on it like part time and everything. So as much as you can have that ownership in-house, I highly recommend but if you're not technical and you're looking for another option, I would say go with like a no code platform. How did you guys raise all of this money for your app? Because you've raised over what $8 million? We raised $8 million. Which is insane. Congrats. Thank you. You're just like out here being a 26 year old being like yeah, I raised $8 million for my brand. That's crazy. It is a bit crazy too when you think about it like that. That is a lot of money and it's obviously when you have that kind of money though, you're allocating it and you're building out a team and you're hiring and you're getting office space or opening like a retail location or things like that. There's that money goes places. Obviously kind of quickly but with incredible purpose to grow quickly and that's you know, our goal with that capital. How do you can start raising a money? Yeah, it's a great question. So when we were first starting, we raised a family and friends around and we used a safe note for that and most people don't know what that is but if you're interested in raising capital from family and friends, it's a really, really flexible investment vehicle. If you give $10,000 and you invest that into the safe note, what happens is there's a valuation cap put on that note. So say it's a $5 million valuation cap. You put in $10,000 when the equity converts at a future round, you are going to be held at that cap of $5 million. God. That's the benefit because ideally when you get that price round, the valuation goes up to $15 million but your equity is converting at $5 million. So you're getting more of a company and so because you invested early, it's the riskiest time to do it but you are getting that best value for the shares that you're putting money into. So how much are you getting from family and friends? We raised $250K for family and friends. It was awesome. It was great. It was not just strictly family and friends. This is not like, oh, I called my mom and dad and stuff. We really went to our different extended networks and it was a very formal process. We pitched a full deck. We went through and it was not just like, oh, hi, give us your money. We have this formal presentation and deck to go through with you. We have this official investment vehicle, the safe note that you'll be investing in. This is how it works and everything. That was what we were using to just kickstart the company and I definitely recommend if you are raising family and friends. Those dollars that you are getting from anybody in that area needs to be dollars that they're completely comfortable with losing. Do not go to them and say, hi, I'm going to turn your $10,000 into a million dollars. You should say, this is our company. This is our pitch. This is what we believe is going to happen. This is our path to revenue. How we're going to get to be a billion dollar company. But I will not take your money if you're not comfortable with losing it because this is the riskiest part. A lot of companies can't even get to the part of raising capital. When you're going out to your personal network and you have this baby idea, how are you getting this meeting? You'll have a lot of confidence. You have a lot of confidence. It's also weird to ask family and friends or connections or people for money. That's why we made it very formal and we took it very seriously. We did not just give them a call and say, hi, this is our idea. We basically had a few of those types of intro calls and then said, we want to formally pitch you and show you our entire deck. What we're projecting, how we're planning to build this, what we're going to do with our $250,000 that we're raising from friends and family, what's our path to getting to? The precede or seed round of fundraising. And that would give them enough conviction also obviously meeting us and everything to invest. We were never just like, oh, we're just going to take your money because you're our family or anything like that. And that was you need to have conviction in us and the idea so that you feel comfortable giving this and knowing that it could be lost. Are they blown away by your guys' progress? I mean, it is crazy. The difference that has happened for Pickle over the past year, we are still under a year since we raised that $8 million. Also, that's $250,000 that we raised. We spread that out for two and a half years. That's crazy. When we were raising, we didn't really need yourself. At the beginning, we basically didn't get paid ourselves. We took no salary for a really long time. Have any of your initial investors want to do invest more? At the seed round? Oh, yes, they all ask all the time. But we're likely for our series A, we're going to potentially add in like a component where we can get some of our family and friends in again to have a little more of a chunk. Why are you guys good co-founders? Great question. Like, why are you good match? I mean, there are definitely skill sets that we have that are super complimentary. The first thing of why we're good match is because we overlap on key things that are important to driving the business forward like our overall vision of the company, but also overall work ethic and what we believe to be like the standard of excellence for Pickle. And that's the standard that we hold ourselves to, but also our entire company and our employees. And if we weren't aligned on that, we would never be able to work well as a co-founding pair. Both being athletes also gives us, I think, some of the grittiness and like, grind that it takes to just be. This is pretty not. Yeah, because there were just so many challenges of being a demon athlete and you got go high school into college and all of a sudden you were you were amazing in high school and you were the top of like all of athletic programs and doing so well and then you get to college. It's a whole new world of that type of level of competitiveness and athleticism and it's like. At the very bottom, you're at the bottom of the totable and I think building your way up to earn, playing time or participate on that team, it just takes a lot of work ethic that not everybody has. I think also understanding time management. You guys understand that. The time management. For sure. I need this thing today, you know. And we set really, really aggressive internal deadlines. We actually, we just rolled out a new design of the app, which I don't know if you've uploaded updated your app. Yeah, we just got the notification on it. I guess we rolled out yesterday, last week, our team, we were all in the office until midnight every night because we knew that we needed to get this design out and by needed, it wasn't necessarily that we had investors breathing down our neck. Like you said, you were going to roll this out or we didn't have customers saying, you guys need to get your app design out. It was us setting a really, really aggressive deadline and if we hadn't set that, it probably would have taken another three weeks for us to really. You know what I mean? We set that kind of deadline and we held ourselves accountable for it and that's what we were able to get it out yesterday. Whereas if we had been like, "Oh, whatever, we don't need to say and like work that hard or we can just push it, we can push it." I don't know when it out of Gauntlet. And Brian and I are very aligned on that kind of thing and he is really, really, really good at pushing the team hard. We also have complimentary skill sets. So there are aspects and things that I'm owning as this COO across growth, marketing, partnerships, relationships that are more in my wheelhouse. What's his role? He is our CEO and he also runs our engineering and products teams since he is technical and we overlap the most closely on products in growth, which makes sense because obviously growth is overall. Success of the business and then product is the success of our business. So I'm able to bring forward the customer experience and end user side of things for the product and then he is helping really make sure that's fully executed in our different features and the priorities and running the engineering team and our product backlog and everything like that too. Going back to when he pitched you this initial idea because I want you to be on board, right? How did you know in that moment other than I guess you liking his idea that he would be a good person to go into business with? Even when I think about, "Oh, sometimes I maybe want to start another podcast, but I want a co-host." It's like, "Who would be a good co-host for me?" How do you know that y'all are going to work? Because this is a business. This is your baby. It's a great question. It's like really intense because it's like money is on the line and you're in your livelihood. So it's like, "How did you guys know you would be a good duo from the beginning?" Because now it's like, "Okay, you've worked out the kings. you know, each other's strengths and weaknesses. But it's like, this is this random guy you were working with. Like how did you know he would be a good person going to business with? - It's a great question, I will say. And I would say very first and foremost, tread very carefully about who you would pick to be your co-founder because you are marrying that person. Like you're committing to being with that person more than anyone else in your life. I see him more than anybody else in my life. Brian and I worked super, super well together at Blackstone. But outside of just that, we also had a really great friendship. So we did enjoy spending extra time together. So when you know the team was going out for happy hour and everything, I was like, oh, it's fun to hang out together too. And I think that also matters. Like you cannot start a business with somebody that you don't also like as a person. - It's a travel meeting. - As a human being, as yeah, all those types of things. So both of those two things were really important. I also truly believe in him. I'm like, you're a good person. That matters a lot because you don't want to go into business with somebody that doesn't have the right ethics or whatever that is. And then I think the biggest thing for me was his confidence and passion in being so good at thinking about a business holistically and really having that kind of CEO skill set gave me a ton of confidence in us building a successful company together. And a lot of things that he's very good at there, I'm not as good at. Or that's not what I'm interested in being good at or learning. So that made a really good pairing for us. And then we learned a lot about each other. We know each other inside and out and really understand what makes us work well together. We know what type of feedback to give. We know when the other person is stressed out or might need to take a beat or need some extra support or whatever it's going to be. And that has worked really well for us. But at the beginning, it was really judging or thinking about those four different areas. Wow. Have you guys ever gotten in a fight? We have definitely had contentious things that we've had to work through. I would say those were definitely towards the beginning part of building the business. And a lot of times, those can be very much paired with really tough times of the business when we were about to run out of money or figuring out, like, is it time yet to pivot or what's up with these metrics or what's happening here. And I think at the beginning, the only fights I feel like that we would ever have or points of contention would just be if it didn't seem like the other person was giving as much blood sweat and tears and effort into it. I would say that that would always have been something that I was improving on because I was really, really new in the professional world. And the sacrifice and the commitment that you give to a company was something that I was definitely learning at the very beginning of starting pickle. And it's something that I have drastically improved upon. That was the biggest point of ever not aligning. Was like, are we both putting in everything we have into this company? Because that's the only way you can make it successful. I think it really is important, like, the language and the tone. When you have those fights, like, ultimately, we know we're going to-- it's like a silly, ultimate we're blood when we're going to come back. Yeah. It is like that. Yeah. What's your silly? You're like, I'm tired of this person. I hate to have it like-- I hate to have it like-- Yeah, exactly. Exactly. How many employees do you guys have? We have 10 in our New York office, Brian and I split who directly reports underneath each of us, depending on which vertical they're in. What is the average age of the pickle employee? I guess average right now is probably 25. No, no. Probably 26 my age, my average age, yeah. And Brian's 30-- or about to be 30. Brian's about to be 30. We have a director of ops who is in her early 30s, I believe. I'd say 29. And then we have some girls that we brought onto the team that had been early days in turns before we could afford to even compensate them properly, or with us during the grinding days, we were able to convert. One of them does marketing with us, and the other does product management and customer experience. And we were able to convert both of them as full time and place, and they're amazing. They've been with us in day one, which is so incredible. Who would you say is the most valuable employee you guys have? Oh my gosh. All of them. That's-- For valuable position. For valuable position, what was your first position you guys hired? Well, the first position we hired was Susan, who is doing a lot of our marketing efforts and diving into a bit of product-side growth as well right now. She was working with us early days on anything related to social media, influencer relationships, a lot of them stuff on the community marketing side of things. She is a Jack of all trades, kind of like a Swiss army knife where you can put her anywhere you need her, because she just loves to learn. And so she has been growing in some different roles than where she started, which is amazing. But we brought her on right away. She had really put in the sweat equity of believing in us and our company and putting in time where we couldn't afford to fully compensate her and things like that. So she was awesome. And then Madeline was our next hire after that. And she really helped us tackle the customer experience and customer service side of things. So without Madeline, we would have had a very hard time building out our-- we have a team in the Philippines doing our customer support. They are amazing. Oh my god. They're great. She leads that whole team. And she built that out with us. She is two years out of college, maybe coming up on three. Oh my god. She's young, you know what I mean? But she's so scrappy. And she really wants to learn. And she's really hungry. And so those two were our first hires. And they're doing amazing. Yeah. What has been the best resource or like, tactic for you guys to get genuine downloads or people using the app? And has there ever been a time where you're like, holy shit, we're getting so many downloads right now. What has that looks like? There's definitely been some moments of social sharing, organic social sharing that have gone viral that have resulted in download spikes. Like from influencers? Yes. But also from people that were influencers that we weren't even working with. Like people that were posting about us organically and said, this is what people are using. I'm obsessed with it. This is what you should be doing. And we would find those videos and be like, oh my god, this is amazing. And we would see the downloads, bikes, and things like that. It's also really valuable when people share about their experience on either side of the marketplace. So when they're highlighting of, I just launched my pickle closet or like a campaign like that. That definitely is impactful because people get really excited to go and rent those pieces or browse around that closet. That does really well. And every time there are people that are organically sharing about pickle, we'll see a spice there. But 80% of our growth is organic. And that's word of mouth. So it's really like friends telling each other about it. Has there ever been a time where an influencer has shouted you guys out and you're like, holy shit, like you're saying like insane amount of downloads? I remember when Remi Bader posts about her closet. It did really well. People got really, really excited about her closet. She has cool pieces. She has really cool pieces. She's also listed some of her Remi Revolve line on there, which I think is really awesome. Halle Kate in New York. She, people love her stuff. And so when she was sharing about it, I think people also just love her content and how authentic she is. So that she definitely drove some great downloads for sure. So what would you say, like what moves are you making right now as the founder or co-founder of Pickle? Right now we are focusing on building and scaling New York. We have built a really strong foundation there with some awesome creators and partners and a lot of women who already love and use Pickle. But we have-- It's like the Fashion Hub. Perfect. Fashion Hub is great. We have a lot of growth to do there. There's definitely tons of people who haven't used it yet. So that'll be a big focus for us this year. And then LA is our number two market right now. Yeah. And so we have been working on some different launch initiatives. We have been starting different partnerships and working with different creators on really getting the buzz going and really explaining what Pickle is from their perspective. So the example of talking about your own closet and everything of how excited your followers are going to be to potentially borrow your items, but also get inspired to share and lend out their own pieces is definitely super exciting. So those two markets are a big focus. And then we have some really exciting things on our product roadmap that we're focusing on this year. Well, I am so excited for both of you. And I think your brand and your app is crushing it. And obviously, I'm the biggest fan because I use it all the time. But where can someone find Pickle and download it? But also, how can they start creating their closet on that? Great question. You can download it just on the app store, type in Pickle. You'll find it right there. We have this cute green pea that you'll see. You can also check us out on socials. It's shop on Pickle on Instagram and TikTok. If you'd like to learn more about the journey and see all the girls that are wearing Pickle right now. And then if you want to get started, when you download the app, you just go to your closet tab and you can click the upload button and get started there. Add some pictures of items that you are looking to upload. Add in the details, including the description, the price, the brand, all that good stuff. And if you ever want help curating your closet, you can reach out to our stylist. We have some a team of digital stylists that work on that as well. That's amazing. Well, thank you, Julia. Of course. Thanks for having me. This is so fun. Thank you. Download Pickle now, you guys. Leave in the description. Love you. I'm Shannon Maldonado. I'm a professor at Artesaan and I'm a student at the University of La Jaga. I'm a shopkeeper because I'm a professional and I'm a professional at the University of La Jaga. I was able to work on my own business and work on my own business. [BLANK_AUDIO]