Meet Pickle | Find and Rent Premium Clothing From Your Friend's Closet

Speaker 1 Welcome back to another great episode of the Tecatura podcast. I'm your host Kabir Shah and today we're joined by Julia O'Mara. Julia is a Co founder and CEO of Pickle, the USS premier peer-to-peer rental marketplace, which makes it easy and affordable to rent high quality clothing. With expertise in business and product engineering, Julia identified a gap in fashion commerce and built a first of its kind platform that democratizes fashion access and promotes circularity. In less than a year, Pickle cultivated A thriving community in New York City, circulating more than 100,000 items from over 2000 brands. Feeling lucrative side hustles? Yes, imagine paying New York City rent with just your closet and by introducing a whole new way to shop. Under Julia and Co founder Brian's leadership, Pickle's growth has skyrocketed. Three years on, it now rents more in one week than it did in its entire first year. It's tripled its supply year over year, and it continues to expand its community and markets across the US. Her innovation and impact have earned a recognition for the Forbes 30 Under 30 list. What I'm most excited about is diving into how Pickle continues to capture that New York City magic as it expands Pickle strong community roots. Ultimately, just how two former collegiate athletes are shaking up fashion today. With that, let's get started Introducing Julia Mara. Julia, thank you so much for coming out to the Tech Couture podcast. It's an absolute pleasure having you on. Speaker 2 Thank you for having me, I'm excited to get into it. Speaker 1 Perfect. Well, let's first start off with I guess, why Pickle? Where does that name come from? You know, I've heard a couple of stories, but interested in hearing from you. Speaker 2 Yes, the name is very fun and it's sticky. We are not related to food or pickleball, the sport. We are a peer-to-peer fashion rental app and we're allowing women to circulate their clothes to each other. And so it's called pickle because if you're in a pickle and you need a last minute outfit, you can rent one from someone else right in your city. Speaker 1 I think that's a perfect pitch and a perfect story. Well, let's first start off by talking about what version one of pickle look like, because from my understanding what we see today isn't what you actually started off with. Speaker 2 Yes, we had a big pivot along the way. We actually started as a social polling app where people were crowdsourcing opinions, deciding what to wear and what to buy. So if you were in the market to buy something new, you would post a poll and you would say, should I buy option A, option B, Option C, your community would vote on it. Ideally it was de risking your purchase process, helping you decide based on social proof and what we found while building that. We worked on that for around a year. That was from April of 2021 through April of 2022 or so. We saw a lot of people were recommending items from their own closets and vouching for their favorite brands and items that they've already tried. There were even a few comments here and there that were like, you don't need to go buy that. You could just borrow it from me and it made us go and start to look at the rental marketplace space. And within the rental space, there are a lot of players that are more in the managed area or subscription model where they own all of the inventory. But no one had really tackled the peer-to-peer. And then when we were looking at companies like Airbnb and Uber that are doing an amazing job circulating these underutilized assets, we of course asked why wouldn't this exist for items that are in your closets and homes. Had enough conviction that so heavy pivot in May of 2022. Speaker 1 Yeah, and I know specifically in the fashion rental space, it's it's a space that's been around for a few years now. We have bigger players, Rent the Runway and and many others. I guess what did you learn from them specifically? And then when you were thinking about that pivot, what did you want Pickled to do differently? Speaker 2 Definitely, we looked at those players that, you know, really paved the way of normalizing rental, which was great. I think the way that consumers think about secondhand now is very different than 10 years ago where people are really proud to talk about items that they've rented or they purchased secondhand or found at a really cool vintage shop, which has been amazing to see and obviously super helpful for people talking about Pickle. But when looking at those models, the our business is really different in the sense that we don't own any of the inventory with this peer-to-peer model, we are just facilitating these transactions amongst people. And what that does is it allows us to be very up to date with the fashion cycles and trends. And one of the challenges I think with investing in that kind of inventory is you're making that decision to purchase inventory 8 to 12 months in advance. Going through that more typical retail buying cycle where you're hypothesizing that 5000 of these dresses is going to be in enough demand to circulate that properly in a rental subscription platform, which is very difficult to do when the fashion trend cycle is much shorter than that and can change on a dime with the way that social media activates these trends nowadays. So for us, the peer-to-peer model was unlocking all of this supply that is truly the trendiest, coolest items that are the most in demand right now. And we're not the ones telling people what that is. Our users and our consumers are telling people. Speaker 1 Yeah, especially around the inventory aspect, like like you said, fashion moves at such a rapid pace today and it's hard to keep up with those trends. So if you're buying that inventory beforehand, within a couple of weeks, even that inventory goes out of style. So there's certainly a lot of complications when you're working from that sort of model coming onto I guess that pivot and then the supply side aspect of it. How did you go about even 1 getting people onto the platform? You made a pivot. You were, you know, somewhat well known for that first version. You know, why should, why should people have come on to pickle? What did you do? Speaker 2 Well, when building a marketplace, it's definitely challenging because you are thinking about both sides. You're thinking about the supply side, the demand side, and you need to have enough volume of products for people to rent before you say, hey, come rent from other women on Pickle. If there's nothing there, what are you even doing on the app? So focus on the supply side 1st. And aside from personally begging my friends and going to their apartments to upload their items with them, we had we, I came up with this idea that was a strategy of thinking about who amongst the coolest women in New York have maybe excess supply in their closets or are helping drive some of these fashion trends. And that really spoke to the fashion tastemakers and creators that are in New York City. Yeah. So we started working with the nano and micro influencers in New York City. These women have a lot of items in their closet. They're defining fashion trends. And mind you, these were like small creators and also the couple of 1000 followers, people that would occasionally respond to our DMS on Instagram when we had no name or traction. And we thought it would be a really good idea to be able to help them get valuable content. So we would host these really scrappy photo shoots in Soho where Brian and I would show up and we would be there with like a bunch of green balloons and FIT student photographer. And we would meet hopefully whoever would show up like 8 to 10 creators to come and get professional photos on that they could use for their Instagram, but also ideally for their pickle profile. And so the idea of that was we're going to work with these girls to get their closets uploaded. Fortunately, that's a plot. That strategy worked pretty well. And amongst that community, it's pretty tight knit. So those creators also started talking about it with their friends. There was this also social opportunity for them to talk about Pickle a bit more on Instagram as they were posting those photos since we were working with them on that content. And that was a really good way that we kick started the supply base here. It was also helpful because it set a different precedent around the quality of supply that we were looking for with those types of photos that were getting uploaded. People were thinking about more of like their Instagram photos versus a piece of clothing on a hanger that doesn't really have a good representation of that item or the way that it's styled or it being really new and fresh and exciting to wear. So the creators were very helpful with that and some of them are still on our platform today. Speaker 1 That's awesome. Yeah. I know you, you all service some pretty big influencers and creators now as well. But I mean, thinking back to that time, like, I think that was really ahead of its time. Really. No one was talking about this idea of creators. Sure, we had influencers, but those were individuals with millions of followers, right? Or hundreds of thousands of followers. So by servicing people who are, you know, at that stage, still looking to build out there, you know, saw an opportunity on Instagram, on TikTok, and we're wanting to build out their own platform. I think that's a really incredible and smart idea. What was what kind of feedback were they giving you early on, either about the platform or just that experience itself? Speaker 2 I think we got really positive reception around getting those types of photos and everything. They wanted the content that was part of their side hustle, or maybe they weren't full time creators, but definitely a good part of their side hustle. And then in person, we just were field. A lot of it was education about even what Pickle was. I think we would convince people to come for the free photos and then like, So what is this pickle? Yeah. And then we would talk to them about it. A lot of education, a lot of hey, you can make a lot of money doing this. You can also rent. And I think what's cool about creators is not only do they have these fabulous closets, but they have a ton of events that they're going to. So they were really good for both sides. They. Speaker 1 Put mostly for both of them and for pickle. Speaker 2 Yeah, absolutely. So and then we also asked them a million questions about things if they had had a chance to download the app, things that they liked about it, things they were confused about. And then very closely listen to every question that they had for us because clearly we weren't answering those while they were onboarding themselves. Speaker 1 And you know, I've heard that in the early days, you and Brian effectively acted as your own Courier service for Pickle. Speaker 2 We did, in fact. Speaker 1 Talk a little bit about that, like what did that sort of experience really being scrappy? You know, we hear about all these scrappy founder stories, for example, but this is really in fact like you're getting on the ground, you're talking with users and your community members, you're building out of community by doing this as well. But talk a little bit about that experience. Speaker 2 Yes, the the good old days, we don't do the deliveries anymore. We are able to work with amazing professional career and delivery networks now. But the original the idea when we were launching the rental marketplace is we did want Pickle to feel like a true extension of your closet. And in order for that to happen, there had to be really quick access to items that were in your city or in your neighborhood. So of course we wanted to have door to door delivery right away, but we, we couldn't afford to necessarily build out that technology quite yet. We weren't even sure what that would exactly look like integrated within the platform. And so we just thought we can manually handle this for now. Someone will submit an offer with the door to door service, we will be that Courier. So we would literally go from a lender's apartment, pick up the item and then deliver it right to the renter. I think the stats we did like 4000 subways, we helped fulfil the 1st 2000 transactions. It was, it was a lot of running around New York. We got a lot of steps in, which was very exciting. But more importantly, we did talk to every person at their door and we got to understand both sides of the platform. When you're going and picking up from a lender, I would introduce myself. I would ask them how they heard about Pickle, ask them what questions they might have. Often we were, I was looking at the app with them directly, just looking at their phone. So we learned a ton about things that were really easy to understand or things that were confusing at first. We also started to understand how people were learning about pickle. Those days we really didn't have any marketing budget. We we still have a really small marketing budget. So it was better understanding how the network effects were starting to work and why people were starting to talk about Pickle so that we could then lean into that with our own comms and messaging, even if it was just, you know, marketing. Speaker 1 Yeah. And I, I imagine like being on the ground and getting to talk with people about the platform, good or bad. That's invaluable for any sort of company that's starting off. You have a point about network effects and you know, I was thinking about, well, why did pickle start off with this one city model, right? Because correct me, but Pickle is was available nationwide technically, yeah, at that time. But talk a little bit about why that bet on A1 city model starting off in New York City and then seeing that expansion, why did, why was that the right choice? Speaker 2 Yeah, We definitely looked at other companies that have had done similar models like Uber, that's done city by city. And for us, when thinking about the differentiator of this peer-to-peer model and again that tying back to like Pickle being a true extension of your closet, that made the most sense when it was hyperlocal. And while we didn't want to stop people from checking out the app and trying out the rental process itself via shipping, we hypothesized. And it is, you know, come, we're seeing that it's coming true that this local experience and the magic of getting something delivered right to your door or being able to pick it up from your neighbor is going to change the way that you're actually using the platform and likely increase conversion for customers. That was a hypothesis and why we focused on New York itself. We lived here. We could run around do the couriers. We could learn a lot from our customers. We are embedding ourselves in the. Speaker 1 Market to the nano influencers as well right here. Speaker 2 Exactly, exactly. So there were a lot of aspects of that too that I think is really important when building something like this that's hyperlocal and then learned really quickly things that we're working or not working amongst our customers. So we could implement that technology or feedback back within the product itself before then thinking about, OK, let's actually focus more on like a national base or start thinking about other cities. And when we were comparing users that were coming on in New York versus other cities and looking at supply density and customer conversion rate, it was definitely clear that in this local matter and better understanding, almost like the demand cycles of people renting locally from their peers local was was really helpful and effective, especially when thinking about the network effects. When you're going to dinner, you're going to a birthday party, you're going to a wedding, often you are talking with some of your closest friends that might also live in the same city with you. And if you're referring them to Pickle and you're like, this is this really cool app that I'm trying out and some girl dropped off this dress to my door or whatever, that is a really easy way to get that flywheel turning, as opposed to this shipping method where it's a bit disconnected. You're renting from somebody else across the country. Yeah, going to be a little bit harder to foster that. Speaker 1 True and it's especially in this earlier days it's so hard to get that quick feedback we're talking about right. You're sure you're waiting on a delivery coming in and then maybe that customer responding to an e-mail or filling out some sort of form. But in this case you're going right to their doorsteps. You're able to talk with them get essentially no filter risk Yeah, I still. Speaker 2 Do it. We do a lot of in person activations. We invest a ton in in meeting with our community in person. I love talking to customers and even just the other day, it was probably last week, we were doing a few different events and there was somebody that had a question. I literally went through the app with her in person. It was cool to under better understand the way that she was clicking around or like see why did she have that question in the 1st place That's immediately going to go and be translated with our product team. So I will have anyone pull up their app in front of me so that we can look at it together if they have a question. Speaker 1 Well, let's talk about the community. You know, right now, I feel like these terms, social commerce, community first, they're being thrown out a lot and rightly so. I think that's the way to go, especially amongst fashion tech, retail tech, any sort of consumer facing platform that you're servicing. How did you know that? Yes, this is a. This is the way that we want to go. Speaker 2 I think it's, I don't think we had a Magic 8 ball that was like immediately new. I think that Brian and I are very product customer centric founders and talking to people at their doors, talking to the influencers at photo shoots, all that made a lot of sense because we are getting the direct feedback from our customers. Also mind you, Brian and I are not, we didn't come from fashion backgrounds, we didn't come from marketplace backgrounds. We worked at Blackstone together. So, you know, we had to do a lot of learning on the job and I don't, you know, the best way to do that was directly from our customers and putting them at the focal point of our company ties into community and having that as a really big focus not only for building the best product for them, but also having them help distribute and grow our product. So we're getting feedback. We're going to iterate on our product and app based on things that they are directly telling us. Instead of us acting like we're the expert, we're going to build a part that we expect people to use. They should just tell us what they would like and we can build that. That's great. And then when looking at, you know, what's the best way to grow a platform and leverage network effects and everything, it's going to be word of mouth and your community actually talking about your platform. The amazing experience they have 85% of our growth is all organic. It's women talking about their experience. And so that's another lever that you want to invest in the community. And so us going and you're investing in that upfront. It's really, really hard to measure when you're doing things at the beginning, when it's like an event that you have no budget for or you're putting a lot of time into something. And it's not like you go and you host a little community event. And especially in the early days, you see a huge spike in downloads. Like that is not the case. That doesn't happen. So you're investing in the fact that these customers, even if these these twenty women that you just talked to in person and got feedback from built a better connection with, they are five times as likely to go talk to their friends about Pickle and their experience. So you're kind of making this more organic ambassador that's going to help distribute your platform as well. That I think is what we ended up doing. I wouldn't say that that's that's something we've learned along the way. It's not something that I think we wrote the perfect playbook on the first day of of launching Pickle. We had to. We had to learn a lot of that along the way. Speaker 1 Yeah. And I mean, I think that's remarkable there like that 85% of your growth is purely organic. Like you said, very little marketing budget, don't spend a lot on paid ads. I'm sure as well. The relationships you have built with these influencers, you know, it started off very organically. You provide a service to them, they provide a service to you and it creates, like you said, just this community effect that builds a strong sense of recognition with pickle and and wanting to be a part of the pickle brand or pickle identity. Speaker 2 Yeah. I mean, it's, it's interesting. We're building something kind of similar to what creators are building with their own platform and they are building something where they are connecting with community. They're providing services, products, recommendations for their community and Pickle was something that they could provide as a recommendation. So there's 22 areas of value that we're also providing with creators. Well, three, really. One, we are providing a side hustle. It's great. They have a lot of these clothes that they're maybe only wearing one time or a few times. Now they can make some extra money on them. Great. Two, we're also giving them a new tool of where they're connecting with their audience. We got a lot of amazing feedback from influencers that when they are going on a trip or they just went to a wedding and they post this beautiful outfit, they're getting comments in DMS that say, oh, can you please add this to your pickle closet? I'd love to rent this from you, which is driving additional engagement to their platform. And also again, showing them that this item is in demand so they can go on. They could share an affiliate link, but they can also share this really affordable rental option that's tied to their closet where they're driving traffic. That way they're making some more money and they're engaging with their audience. And then because we are community centric, we do love partnering with different creators. Last week we partnered with Chanel on this pickleball event to kick off like the US Open kind of times. And for her, she is an amazing creator that has this cool lifestyle platform. She used to be a professional tennis player and she's really connected with her community around tennis, but she's been diving into fashion a little bit. And she was, she just was amazing at this event, connecting with these other creators and these women that are followers of hers and friends of hers. And we got to do that in a Co hosting capacity, which was a really, really fun way to be able to expand our community, expand her community and just like work with another creator as well. Speaker 1 Yeah. How do you, is there a way to engineer the sort of organic growth, whether it's through the platform, Certainly you're doing, you know, you're hosting tons of community events, you're partnering with creators, all of that, but is there a way to engineer the sort of organic growth? Speaker 2 Probably not because that's kind of the opposite of like organic growth, but but there's ways that you would be investing in things that would increase likelihood of organic growth. So it is ways that we are often meeting our customers exactly where they are and often that's not always hosting events yourself, that's not super scalable, but partnering with similar communities or other brands or platforms that have a similar target demographic, we can all grow together. So there's a lot of synergies there. There's ways that you can collaborate without it being in like a paid or expensive capacity. So we love doing that. It's a great way for us to also grow and expand in these other cities. And what it does is it helps your community feel invested in which again, that goes just a little bit further of not only do people want to talk about your service and the amazing experience that they had rental, but they also maybe really like your brand. They had a good experience, whether it was a collaborative activation that they attended as an event or they saw some digital campaign amongst another brand or influencer community member that they really love. That's a great way for us to be top of mind and hopefully increase the chance that organic growth is happening. Speaker 1 There yeah I mean all of the conversations that I've been having recently around you know with AI and fashion AI and you know any sort of big technology right now while it's making it easier than ever to let's say ship a product. The one thing that is indisputable is your community, that is your Moat in in tech speak and startup speak right that like that is your superpower being able to cultivate a group of people that are your super fans that are going to you know go use pickle. They can't think of a reason why they wouldn't access pickle once a week, right? Having that type of community and building it by exactly the way that you were talking about here, I think that's really what surcharges the growth of a platform and I'm sure has. Speaker 2 It's your it's your distribution. I think that's a big thing that we learned from version one of Pickle because Ryanair is such product minded and analytical people. There is no build it and they will come that it just doesn't work. You can't just build not be like where are the users? They're going to just show up. So unfortunately not how it works. That'd be cool if that happened. But the distribution aspect is really important and I think that is directly tied into your investment within the community. And that would have been something that would have been nice to learn earlier in that first version of the app. Not just the importance of building a really intuitive, seamless, fun product or whatever that adds a lot of value, but also that having a really strong strategy around the distribution of it. Speaker 1 Did you ever have a, for lack of better words and oh shit moment over these past three years building out pickle where you're like, I think we're on to something like we're we're really building something that people are enjoying. People are keep coming back. Like, is there a moment for that? Speaker 2 I think there have been many oh shit moments along the way. At the very beginning, the there was a very different feeling than when we were building the polling app. Then when we were building this rental marketplace, not only for just maybe just the extra conviction in that idea and the way that we've seen other successful companies build something similar, but the retention wasn't there in that first polling app. And the retention, although we might have had a really small number of customers at the beginning, was immediately there. We saw the product being sticky quickly and having 50 sticky customers means a lot more than having 1000 people that download an app and never come back to it. And that was a first oh shit moment of, you know, with the product market fit. And you ask yourself the question, like, would anyone care if your platform didn't exist? I very vividly remember thinking that to myself. And I even imagined, and these were like kind of in the days where we had no money, no resources, we were still doing all the pickle deliveries. And I definitely was like, Oh, my gosh, I would have to text and e-mail this person. I'd have to talk to this person. And I know they'd be really upset. I would be really upset. And when you when I was answering that question of like, yeah, people would actually miss it, even if it was a small number that show that we were on to something. And I think that was a good oh, shit moment that kept us moving forward even when we hadn't hit, you know, that traction to get the funding yet. There was still very early days. More recent oh, shit moments have been a few. This was probably like last summer where I was like out in the Hamptons and overheard people talking about pickle, not related to them at all, like kind of completely separate, just out in the wild. Love hearing about that experience. And then more recently this year, we celebrated our three years of pickle and we hosted this really cool fashion show that featured a lot of people and women in our community and these amazing items that are on the platform. And we had over 300 people there. And when looking at that room filled compared to where we were three years ago, that was that was definitely a pretty big ocean. Speaker 1 And then I'm sure like as anyone building a community, a company, whatever that sort of community of just even if it's fifty people starting off then now being thousands of people who are love using pickle that gives you a certain level of conviction of OK, I need to keep going, like I need to build for someone. Speaker 2 Yes, yes, even if it's your first 50 customer, your first 5 customers, you care about each person and you also, I mean we, you still you still feel that way every single customer, every person on the platform really matters. There are things that we still very much to you and go a far above and beyond if there is somebody something where there's a hiccup or something like that. And that was the mentality that we always had early days. And there were even times like I remember some girl was having an issue with a delivery or something and I intercepted the delivery in the middle of it, found the Courier like on the street to go and make sure I got to her because she was getting, I hopped on a city bike. She was going to the airport in 20 minutes and she was going to potentially have to miss her flight or miss the dresser. Two options and she wasn't going to miss her flight. So had to get the dresser. And there there's things like that where you would go above and beyond with the customer and that experience then that you then work really hard within the product, within your team, within the customer support and experience that you provide to try to scale that. And it's difficult because I'm not running around and able to talk to every single customer anymore. But if we can infuse that mindset and the value of each customer within our own team members within the product that we're building, hopefully we're we're still bringing that personal touch along the way. Speaker 1 Yeah. So we've talked about where pickle started, the reason why it's grown so much, kind of give us a layer of the land of where you are today. What is What is pickle in 2025? Speaker 2 2025, yes, it's been a really fun year so far. We were able to do our Series A and close that in around February, I believe, which was awesome. That very exciting new capital means we get to expand the team, which is great. We are heavily investing in additional engineering resources, additional aspects of the product itself, customer experience, new features. There's lots of exciting things that are going on. Something else that we're really thinking about is our expansion and distribution of of our community across the country. We have core markets right now that we're very focused on including New York, LA and Miami. But because the shipping method is available, anyone can rent on pickle. And so we are seeing pockets that are growing right now, whether that is Dallas or Chicago, DC, Boston, wherever it is. And we want to help grow those communities even if we can't go and hire a full time person there. Again, not super scalable, but something that we're really excited about. We want to put a little bit of fuel on set organic traction we're already seeing. So we're not doing anything in those markets, but they're growing, which is great. So we did just launched and this in the past, like two or three weeks ago, we launched this growth fellowship program, which is essentially a part time paid position where women in these communities are able to help, are able to get hands on operating experience at a startup and basically serve as like a market launcher within their specific community. And it might be on their college campus, it could be within their city itself. And those are going to be some amazing eyes and ears on the ground that are helping embed us within communities, meeting our customers where they are getting some of that really important local knowledge about what's cool to do in Dallas or where are the girls going and what are they wearing and that kind of stuff. So that's a really exciting initiative that we are working on right now that I think will be huge for us as we expand into these other cities without expanding our headcount massively. Speaker 1 Yeah. And as you grow, you talked about this idea of the customer experience and really focusing in on that. How do you maintain that? What are the pillars that as you continue to grow, as you continue to get better, whether it's around customer experience, whether it's around just people trusting the platform, what are those things that you want to make sure Pickle continues to adhere to? Speaker 2 I think the first one that we think about always is feedback, and that's the example I even gave of talking to users in person last week. That will always be a huge, huge, huge aspect of our platform, Talking to people in person in real life, not just asking them to fill out a survey or a form, but there's also ways that we are getting feedback through the product when they are leaving reviews, whether it's about their rental experience with the lender, their experience interacting with a Courier. That's really important and valuable data. So we're taking that not only like quantitatively, but also the qualitative data that we get from talking to users so that we can then go and implement different improvements into the platform and hone in on that customer experience. There are that those aspects. And then even just improving not only the product in the app itself, but the overall experience with the brand, continuing to invest in the community with these in person events. The ways that we do get a lot of feedback from girls like that they have made friends on Pickle that they have, you know, more deeply connected with somebody else in their city. Or that one of their best friends that they now go on like a monthly dinner with they met doing a Pickle rental a year ago or whatever there. That aspect is something that I think is still encompassed within the overall customer experience of being part of our community and our platform and investing in in person connection and events in ways that people are able to go and meet each other and bond over the fact that they also love Pickle or share about their experiences as a lender or renter. That will be another huge important part of the customer experience. Speaker 1 Yeah, and I find it really interesting. I was reading up on pickle before, just some of the crazy earnings that people have been able to to make by just the. Speaker 2 Great side hustle. Speaker 1 The great side hustle are utilizing their closets, some even being able to pay for their New York City rents with. Speaker 2 Pickle I paid the quote is I paid for my rent with my pickle earnings. Like that's amazing. I'm a really big renter on the platform. I don't have that great of a closet, so I can't say the same, but that's because I like renting from all the amazing women. But yeah, it's it's a very lucrative side hustle. I think there there have been women that have, you know, said, Hey, you, you changed my life because I didn't have this side hustle before. I didn't have this income stream and I'm now able to pursue a different passion or I'm able to explore this different Ave. of my life with this type of extra income. And then we also hear from people that are working in the finance world or the medical sales or something else. Like I am so passionate about fashion. I've never had an opportunity to really explore that. And that's what I'm doing with Pickle, which has been really cool too. Speaker 1 That's amazing. So as you expand into these new markets, what are you looking for to say? We're going to add fuel to the fire here. Like for the example of Miami, what did you see that you were like? We need to invest in the Miami market, We need to get down there. We need to have in person events. We need to partner with these influencers, creators. What do you see there? Speaker 2 We, we are always looking and measuring density of products in a market, density across both the products that are listed there, the density of users, renters, lenders, all of those metrics we're looking at consistently. And in Miami, when we were looking there, we were saying, OK, it's growing, it's growing. And then it was December of last year and it was leading up to Art Basel and there was a lot of organic demand happening for that. We're like, oh, people are using Pickle as their solution to get really cool outfits for this amazing and big event in Miami. We also then we're thinking about some of the other things that would be happening within that city in that market. And spring in Miami in my opinion is the greatest time ever to be there. There are a lot of things going on. There are music festivals that you lead into F1 and there's all these other things that are going on and not to mention the weather is perfect. So when looking at that as far as like timing of then thinking about investing it, we saw the product organically growing. We saw density there. We saw the users were growing and talking about it and then we could time that up with some of these other more like spark moments. And so we went and ended up doing one of our first activations, I think in March. And that was leading up to Ultra, which is a big music festival in Miami. And it was a perfect time to say, oh, we're here, we're activating right before Ultra. Think about getting your festival attire on Pickle, think about sharing your clothes this way. And really tying it into that, I think was a good way to lean into that market specifically at that time. Speaker 1 Yeah. And you've talked about investing into engineering and by way of that, the product itself. How do you see just ink these innovations in technology helping out Pickle whether it's better understanding, what inventory should we be prioritizing during certain events OF1's coming up in Miami. Now we know this is what we need to be focusing on or something else is happening across the country. This is what we need to be making sure we're showcasing our our renters on the platform. Speaker 2 Yeah. I think there's going to be a lot that we're going to do around data ideally from both third parties and internal data where we are able to see trends that are happening across different socials or Google search trends, things like that, where we would want to pair that with data that we're seeing on the platform. Because people are renting often for the same day or the next day. We're seeing that real time demand. We're not. There are people that are renting and reserving items in advance. You can run up to three months in advance. It's great. You can reserve that your favorite dress for a wedding you have in two months, but a lot of people are using it for today. And so with that real time demand, we're seeing search, search terms for example that are changing daily or weekly. And that is giving us a better indicator of the immediate demand right now that then let's us know, hey, we should be communicating with our lenders who are going to then need to increase this amount of supply or let them know that with Gene is having a huge moment this summer. And you should absolutely upload those products if you have those sitting in your closet, for example. So it's going to be a combination of the data that we're seeing externally and within our platform. And then keeping up with the different ways that consumers are starting to play around and like use technology, especially with AI and everything. People are getting more and more familiar of using Chachi BT as their Google and people are thinking about ways that you can search conversationally. That's little hint foreshadowing of something that we're rolling out very shortly. We'll. Speaker 1 Keep an eye out on. Speaker 2 That which is which is cool. So thinking of again, still just this theme of meeting our customers where they are and that might actually be with how they're adapting to technology and starting to think about search. Because why do you have to go up and apply a ton of filters if you can actually just tell the platform that you are going to a wedding in Cabo and love bright colors? Speaker 1 Yeah. And I think when we're talking about obviously this recent raise, for example, or just the organic growth the community has seen, the biggest thing is just the simplicity of the platform. Sure, there's technology behind it that enables renters and lenders to have a seamless experience, but it's in the background. But now as you've been able to build such a strong community, strong base around Pickle, now you can start adding in fun tech features, you know, whatever that is. But really the the core behind the product itself is the community and being this great service for them. Speaker 2 Right. It's it is not. And we've had a lot of people say they're like, I thought about something like this or oh, yeah, I can't believe someone hasn't done this before. It's not rocket science. You know, these items exist in our closets and homes, why not help distribute them and a lot of people to share them and better, even better monetize it for for people. So I, I completely agree. We want that base functionality and that really core kind of experience to be there. And now we're starting to be able to build on those additional layers of increasing speed of discovery and helping our lenders have better insights into the data and the trends that are happening. But those are all like a little bit of the extra things when at our core really making sure that rental experience is amazing is the number one focus. Speaker 1 Yeah. Well, let's talk about the recent raise again, $12 million Series A. A lot of great VC investors backing you, some that have experience in the marketplace, investing space as well. Talk about that experience of going out and needing to raise money this time around versus that first time. What was different and do you ever feel comfortable around the process? Do you ever get comfortable around the process of raising money? Speaker 2 I think most founders that are true builders, nobody really loves fundraising because that's not, you're not actually building something. It's important. It's really essential for fueling your business and everything in these relationships are amazing and you learn a ton from your investors and I'm I'm so grateful for them. But you're not building a business when you're out and you're just pitching or you're figuring out how are we framing this or you know, whatever, looking at these metrics specifically in a certain way. But what it does for you is it does. And we see this every time we have a board meeting or every time we're sending out an investor monthly update. It is a really nice accountability and forcing mechanism of doing a super deep dive into the metrics and better understanding your business. So we're always, always grateful for that. I think this time around with the fundraising, when you are looking at Series A, there's just different levels of numbers and traction where you should be. So it's just, it looks different from a seed round because even a seed round is a little bit still still an idea. It's still, yes, you have some traction, you have some of these numbers. But when you get to Series A, it's here, the benchmarks are more industry or market standards that you'd be expecting to hit. So that was probably the biggest difference there. We were very fortunate where we ended up basically getting preempted by our existing investors for our Series A. So the process, I can't really speak to it because I know it's a really tough fundraising environment. Our process was quite fast and and fairly seamless, but I would say that's not the norm. I've been talking to a ton of of founders that are having a hard time, especially if they're not specifically in the AI space. So I think it just depends. We have amazing investors backing us. They were really, really excited about that, what they were seeing and wanted to do the Series A. So we had Kraft and 1st Park come back into the round and then we're able to work with some other amazing investors that have great marketplace space, marketplace investor. Expertise like FJ labs and some other groups which are great. Speaker 1 Yeah, coming from your background as when you started Pickle 20 something year olds, yes, you're at Blackstone together, you know, But even at that point you were still pretty fresh, let's say out of college, for example. Speaker 2 I think I was 23. I was very young. Speaker 1 What is it about you and Brian as a team that you feel makes you 2 the right people to be building pickle, to be leading the sort of charge? Speaker 2 Just extremely stubborn. Just kidding. But part of that is actually true. I mean the when you were going and people ask me this, a lot of how did you know you were ready to leave black zone and start this business? How did you know Brian was the right Co founder? All this stuff. First of all, you don't really know when you're taking that leap in that big jump. Yeah, it's a huge risk. But Brian and I at our core, have very, very similar values in how a business should be run. We also have very similar values in work ethic and drive. We were both D1 athletes. There's a lot of that overlap and grit and perseverance that you just need as a founder. You heard about our huge pivot that we had. We did all these subway rides, like all this crazy stuff that you have to do sometimes to just get something off the ground in my even if I didn't know that's exactly how it was going to play out. I think I always knew that Brian was going to be the right partner to be able to go and persevere through a lot of these different challenges and end difficulties that have allowed us to stay really resilient to continue to adapt. I think it's also going to be really important as we continue to innovate and keep up with all the technology that's changing and the ways that we are seeing consumer behavior continue to shift and change. But that's what makes me really confident in us as the founding partners for the business. Speaker 1 And I'd be remiss for not mentioning this, but we often hear that female founders across tons of verticals, you know, they have a harder time raising money than their male counterparts. What's been some of your experience with that? And what gives you the confidence to step in the room and say, hey, I know my business inside out and I'm able to talk about this like no one else can? Speaker 2 Yeah. What I can confidently say is that our current investors and partners that we have on our cap table are amazing, incredible. And I've never had any sort of experience of, oh, I'm a woman in the room and I'm going to be treated differently, not even close. There have definitely been times where we've talked to investors before during pitching. We're like, they only ask Brian questions, things like that, whatever. But those are not the people that we're working with. Very fortunately, our investors are amazing. I think that regardless of if you're a woman or a man, the importance of being able to step in the room with confidence and the reason you can do that is going to because be because you're an expert in whatever you're talking about. It doesn't actually matter if you're a man or a woman in this case. I would say this for anybody, the reason I can walk in and be really confident about talking through our customer acquisition strategies or the different market strategies that we're leading in LA, Miami is because I am the expert and working on that. I've done it from the ground up. I'm working with my team very granularly on it. I am in and out of the data personally and that is what is going to give me the confidence because I know what I'm talking about because I'm actually doing it. I think with people are having someone else prep their materials or they're someone else is doing the analysis or they're not actually part of those strategic conversations, it would be hard to be confident on it. So if you are that expert, that should be what's going to lead you in confidence there. Speaker 1 Yeah, and I think we're in a really exciting time, specifically around the fashion tech space. You know, I think the business of Fashion magazine dubbed it as Fashion Tech 2 Point O or something along that lines. You know, we've seen huge investments from Daydream to Alta to Doji to many others, and hopefully this trend continues. But what gives you, I guess the, the motivation or just, you know what, we're on the right path here. Like the industry that we're working in. I'll be a, you have a marketplace model. It's a bit different than what some of these other, you know, partners are doing. But what, what do you think about this influx of capital? Sure, but just interest in this space as well. Speaker 2 I think it's a combination of keeping up with both trends in the market of what consumers are interested in across their behavior. I spoke about this a little earlier of just the way that people are really excited about exchanging goods and they don't have to be brand new to them and they can be secondhand. I think circulating items is going to be the a huge part of the future of fashion. There are a lot of people that are becoming more aware of overconsumption that is also driving consumer behavior. Many of these platforms that are getting invested in are tying in trends that they're seeing amongst consumers and users and also understanding how they can add that layer of technology on top. So whether it is like cutting down the time to discovering a second hand item, whether it's a platform closer to Thea or Benny, for example, or if you are getting styled through AI and that's just making it a little bit easier for you to understand what might look good on you. Those are all in this era of across not only consumer behavior of interest in some of these items, but also just the ease and convenience that is now expected when we have tools like Chachi BT or expect to have convenience of food delivered right to our door or whatever that might be that all of these platforms are thinking about and then presenting that offering and solution to. Speaker 1 Yeah, and you talked about your background, both US collegiate athletes. I think that especially amongst founders, it can often times be a lonely journey. A lot of UPS, many downs as well. What gives you both, if you can, the motivation? That's not externally right. That's not external good or external bad validation. What do you look for internally to say? You know what? I'm going to keep going. Speaker 2 Yeah, it's, it's super hard, right? And I think it's really telling when your early days as a founder, because you will get 0 external validation. You might not even have a customer yet. And then the less an investor or somebody externally saying, I'm going to back you with dollars or you have all this traction and customers and data and things. So it's difficult. And I think it takes someone who can be really intrinsically motivated and thinking about why you're getting up every morning to go and grind and work on something. So you need to be probably really passionate about what you're building and overall like the mission and vision. And for me personally, it's probably a combination of am I proud of what I did today? And it might even be just whatever it was on that list. Am I proud of that? Am I going to be excited at the end of the day that I did accomplish that? Or am I starting the next day like I can do better tomorrow? I think that's been like the day-to-day steps that I've taken, but it's difficult because you don't have everyone just giving you a pat on the back the whole time. So you really have to dig deep in and look internally for sure. Speaker 1 Well now let's get to the fun questions really quickly. So first, do you have an item on pickle that you love or your eye and that you want to rent out? Speaker 2 It's a great question. I would say there are some really amazing Poochie items on Pickle. It was Poochie summer. I think that these items can still be styled really creatively for the fall and I would love to be able to wear one of those for New York Fashion Week. There's going to be a few different events coming up in September. Speaker 1 Amazing. And as the Internet knows, as the news blew up yesterday, Taylor Swift, Travis Kelsey, they're engaged now. Speaker 2 Yes, it was a huge day for the Internet and. Speaker 1 For the Internet, yes. Have you noticed any spikes just even hours after that happening on people either looking at Ralph Lauren or just anything that they found from I'd have to those pictures? Speaker 2 Again, but I think stripes we saw that that was a trending search term yesterday, which is not surprising given her dress. We also did quickly share some wrecks around ways that you can rent a similar look to Taylor Swift Amazing on Instagram and it got some good traction. Speaker 1 So I'm excited to see what happens around wedding season and and what Spike's there. And last, are you having fun? You enjoy what you're building? It's. Speaker 2 Probably the most fun I've ever had, so it's great. Speaker 1 That's amazing. Well, thank you so much for coming on to the Tech Tour Podcast and thank you everyone for listening in. And for those of you who will be seeing this on social media, please give a like and follow to both Tech, Couture, Apparel, Innovative and Shop. Speaker 2 On pickle, please pickle. Speaker 1 So much. Thank you so much.