Katrina Lake Would Have Joined Stitch Fix Rather Than Founding It
Katrina Lake · 20VC: Stitch Fix Founder Katrina Lake on Growth vs Profitability, Her Biggest Lessons From Working with Bill Gurley at Benchmark and The Importance of Mental Flexibility as a Leader · Dec 3, 2020 · at 3:13
Katrina Lake, founder and CEO of Stitch Fix, discusses the origin of the company and how she realized no existing startup was solving online personalized apparel discovery.
0:00 / 0:25exact quote · 25.4s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“Candidly, I would have been perfectly happy working at Stitch Fix, but when I spent a lot of time in the landscape and understanding what are companies doing, and, like, who is at the forefront of what's going to be the future of shopping, I really didn't see any kind of opportunity that I felt like represented that future, and so, you know, I kind of, by, I guess, process of elimination, really, arrived at the conclusion that if I wanted to be part of that future, that I could start a company myself. And so, so that was really kind of the way that I arrived here.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Katrina Lake
Katrina Lake: Disproportionate Capital Gives Male Founders More Chances to Succeed
“Raising hundreds of millions of dollars, like it's such a huge advantage. And like, I think it was really hard to watch a lot of, you know, like mostly male founders, many who are bombastic and, you know, have these big visions. And I felt like my vision was b…”
Katrina Lake: Growth Is Most Important if Unit Economics Work
“Growth is almost always going to be most important, predicated on the fact that, you know, this is a healthy business and one where the math works.”
Katrina Lake: Imposter Syndrome Is Caused by Exclusionary Tech Environments
“Historically people have talked about imposter syndrome as being Something that individuals deal with, like that you or I are wrangling with, but actually this is something that like the environment is creating. Like the technology ecosystem is, is excluding p…”
Katrina Lake: Silicon Valley Decision-Makers and VCs Are Far Too Homogeneous
“They are far, far, far too homogeneous. We need much greater representation in decision makers and boardrooms and, you know, people who are the ones making decisions at VC funds. We need much, much greater diversity and representation.”
Katrina Lake: Traditional Retail and Early E-Commerce Failed at Apparel Discovery
“The store's world is broken for obvious reasons of just putting every single skew on the floor and expecting people to sift through it. But what was interesting was just, you know, kind of e-commerce and online and all of the kind of new technology to me still…”