Jennifer Hyman
Incoming CEO, Babylist. On 2 shows, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutive@Jenn_RTR ↗renttherunway.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
Jennifer Hyman co-founded Rent the Runway in 2009, pioneering designer apparel rentals and becoming one of a select few female founders to lead a company through an IPO in 2021. She has served on the boards of The Estée Lauder Companies and Zalando, and in 2026 was appointed CEO of Babylist.
2shows
1appearances
30statements
16resolved
8supported
5contradicted
50%fully supported
56said about them ↓ Everything Jennifer Hyman said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Hyman: Viewing private startups as special snowflakes hides bad financial metrics
“Don't Talk to yourself as a private company as if everything you do is different. The harm in doing that is then you can make an excuse for all of your metrics.”
Hyman: Rent the Runway will reach profitability exceeding industry peer margins
“So there's no reason why you shouldn't believe that Rent the Runway will be profitable, and in fact, should be more profitable than those companies, because we already have a 15 to 20 point gross margin advantage.”
Hyman: Great brands scale through organic virality, not paid ads
“The best brands on earth are brands that grow virally and organically. And the way that you do that is you invest in either delivering a much better customer experience, or you invest in building a brand that is so emotionally resonant with the consumer that t…”
Hyman: Effective leaders ignore employee weaknesses and focus entirely on accelerating strengths
“So Fabrizio is a huge proponent that you should spend almost no time thinking about someone's weaknesses and how to improve them. And you should identify What are the things that make someone great? What are their superpowers? And how do you accelerate those s…”
Hyman: Interviewers overindex on career history instead of personal resilience
“I think that people, when they interview, are focused way too much on someone's career experiences. You may have shown resilience in a career experience, but more often at the point when, you know, I'm interviewing someone, the resilience that has shown up in …”
Hyman: Employees cannot give 110% without personal life happiness
“Unless people are happy in their lives, they're never gonna be happy at work, and they're never gonna be able to give a 110%.”
Hyman: Demanding 24/7 work causes burnout and turnover within two years
“I think that people who put in twenty-four-seven just related to their job are just gonna burn out, and you might have them with intensity for a year or two, but then they're gonna be gone”
Hyman: Rent the Runway inventory costs are 30% versus 50-55% for competitors
“The cost of our inventory is about 30% of our revenue. And in most apparel businesses, apparel, the inventory cost is 50 to 55% of revenue.”
Hyman: Rent the Runway retains 100% of designer brand partners
“Yeah, so we have a hundred percent retention of all the brands who have ever worked with us.”
Hyman: Over 90% of Airbnb's traffic is organic
“Airbnb has said, let's forget everything about paid marketing. Let's take all of our dollars and invest it into the brand, into PR, into product innovation that's actually going to breed loyalty, and I think now, like, over 90% of Airbnb's traffic is organic.”
Hyman: Rent the Runway fulfillment costs are 30% of revenue
“Our fulfillment expense, which has two-way shipping, which has restoration of garments, which has cleaning, which has repair, still is only 30% of revenue, which leads us to that 44% gross margin.”
Hyman: Leaders must build teams of missionaries, not mercenaries, to survive crises
“Even 10 or 12 years into a business, whatever it was at that time, you still have to lead a team of missionaries and not mercenaries.”
Hyman: Over 99% of Rent the Runway employees act like missionaries
“I think that the team here is, you know, 99 plus percent missionary, and that's actually been the greatest privilege of my experience leading Rent the Runway, that over the past 14 years I've worked with people that really consider themselves to be founders of…”
Hyman: Managers must address hiring mismatches within 2-3 months, not years
“Being open about that earlier on in someone's tenure at the company is so much easier than waiting for, you know, 12 to 24 months in when they're already kind of set into the vibe and the culture of the company. So just like those early conversations when you …”
Hyman: Rent the Runway expanded gross margin from 30% to 44% year-over-year
“Q four of you know, 21, our gross margins were around 30%. Q four of 22, our gross margins were 44%.”
Hyman: Over 50% of future closets will not consist of permanently owned items
“I believe that 50% plus of the closet in the future doesn't have to be filled with items that we own forever.”
Hyman: AI will be the biggest business operational shift since the iPhone
“There are gonna be companies that are AI beneficiaries, and then there are gonna be companies and full industries that are just decimated by AI. I am of the mindset that AI is going to be the biggest change to how we operate businesses, you know, since, since …”
Hyman: Tech roles make up majority of Rent the Runway workforce
“The majority of my employees are tech. They're engineers, they're data scientists, they're product, they're UX, and that's always been the case at Rent the Runway”
Hyman: Average Rent the Runway subscriber spends $2,000 yearly
“My average subscriber spends about 2000 dollars with me per year.”
Hyman: 98% of Rent the Runway users rent brands they never owned
“98% of my customers say That they're renting brands on Rent the Runway that they have never owned before.”
Hyman: Fast fashion commands over 80% of $3T global market
“Over 80% of what's purchased in this nearly three trillion dollar global market is fast fashion now.”
Hyman: Rent the Runway acquires over 80% of customers organically
“Over 80% of our traffic and over, sorry, over 80% of our customers have always come to us organically.”
The other half of the tape: Jennifer Hyman's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 52 times in 18 episodes across the shows. 4 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Guy Raz 50Harry Stebbings 2
Statements about Jennifer Hyman, by other people (4)
Hyman aimed to build Rent the Runway into a $100 billion company
“Yeah, so I'm here to build a hundred billion dollar company, and To change the way we get dressed every single day all over the world, and to democratize what I think is one of the most elite industries on earth, and one of the most wasteful industries on eart…”
Hyman: Rent the Runway was conceived around renting daily wardrobes, not just gowns
“The closet would move into the cloud because people were valuing experiences over ownership, and that there would be a time where a portion of what we wore every single day would be comprised of things that we don't own forever.”
Hyman predicted Rent the Runway would reach 3,000 employees by 2019
“And before Rent the Runway, I had managed all of 10 people. And now my company has 1500 people and will likely have 3000 people by the end of next year.”
Hyman: Neiman Marcus president was my second pitch cold call
“The second person I cold called was the president of Neiman Marcus. And I decided that I would go straight into kind of the belly of the beast, the person who was most likely to destroy me. I cold called him, and I shared the idea for Rent the Runway with him.”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
How I Built This 50
20VC 2
2025 15 mentions in 1 episode
2023 2 mentions in 1 episode
2021 1 mention in 1 episode
2020 15 mentions in 6 episodes 3 per episode
- How I Built Resilience: Live with Jenn Hyman
- How I Built Resilience: Live with Sarah LaFleur
- Birchbox: Katia Beauchamp
- How I Built Resilience: Aishetu Dozie of Bossy Cosmetics
- Jo Loves: Jo Malone CBE
- How I Built Resilience: Live with Tobias Lütke and Jon Stein
- every mention in 2020, scene by scene →
2019 1 mention in 1 episode
2018 15 mentions in 7 episodes 2 per episode
2017 3 mentions in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Jennifer's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HOW I BUILT THISLEDGER | Incoming CEO, Babylist | 0 | 0 | 33% 2/6 | full record on How I Built This → |
| 20VCLEDGER | Incoming CEO, Babylist | 1 | 30 | 60% 6/10 | full record on 20VC → |