Welcome to the realm of Jennifer Hyman’s insightful words, where wisdom meets innovation and entrepreneurial spirit. Jennifer Hyman is a renowned figure in the business world, celebrated for her pioneering role as the co-founder and CEO of Rent the Runway, a trailblazing fashion rental platform. With a vision that transcends boundaries and challenges conventions, Hyman has become a beacon of inspiration for aspiring entrepreneurs and industry disruptors alike.
As a visionary leader, Jennifer Hyman has not only reshaped the landscape of the fashion industry but has also championed the empowerment of women in business. Through her bold ideas and unwavering determination, she has demonstrated the transformative power of creativity and perseverance. Whether it’s navigating the complexities of entrepreneurship or advocating for inclusivity and sustainability, Hyman’s insights offer invaluable lessons for those embarking on their own journey towards success and fulfillment.
Below, you’ll find a curated collection of Jennifer Hyman quotes that encapsulate her wisdom, experience, and vision. Feel free to draw inspiration from these quotes, whether you’re seeking motivation, guidance, or simply a glimpse into the mind of a visionary leader.
As a female founder and CEO, it is important to me to support other women as they build their businesses. Jennifer Hyman
I sleep around 8 hours, but I tend to wake up several times a night with constant dreams, thoughts, and ideas related to Rent the Runway. Jennifer Hyman
When you don’t have to buy something, it allows you to try new things. Jennifer Hyman
Think about all of the non-entrepreneurial advice and resources you need when building a company. You need lawyers, accountants, financial experts. Jennifer Hyman
I can grow as a leader only if I’m willing to accept feedback. Jennifer Hyman
If I am looking to impress people, I’ll be in a Rent the Runway dress and great accessories. Jennifer Hyman
I’ve always loved artists – creative, spontaneous, laid-back people – but I wasn’t meeting these types in real life. So I figured that, given I run a technology company, I should also trust technology to help me find the love of my life. Jennifer Hyman
Fashion should be a daily convenience, not a daily chore. Jennifer Hyman
We learn about MLK’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. Take that same speech and put it in the voice of a woman. Would it be as inspirational? Would it have as much gravitas to it? Jennifer Hyman
You need to fail quickly and learn from those failures to continue to build along the way. Jennifer Hyman
People should think about their closets like they think about a stock portfolio. There are things you want to invest in; you make those investments, and those are your blue chips. So you should invest in a great pair of jeans, in a great cashmere sweater. Jennifer Hyman
I was sexually harassed while building Rent the Runway – propositioned, sent sexual text messages, harassed and threatened in person. Jennifer Hyman
Almost every one of us interacts with the experience or sharing economy every day, and I’m proud that Rent the Runway has helped to popularize and normalize this behavior. Jennifer Hyman
While it can be challenging for women with disruptive, technology-based ideas to acquire significant funding, in my experience, once I was able to raise that funding, I was met with droves of people offering to help me fulfill my dreams. Jennifer Hyman
Mentors don’t just have to be people who are older or more experienced than you are. Mentors are people who really care about you, know you, and want to offer feedback and advice to help you grow. Jennifer Hyman
When I feel like the day is great? Pasta. When I feel like I want the day to be great? Pasta. It’s just awesome. Jennifer Hyman
In the early years of Rent the Runway, our challenge was twofold: getting investors to buy into our vision for how the world was changing and getting women to understand that renting was a viable – let alone a smarter – alternative to spending hundreds of dollars on dresses they would wear just once. Jennifer Hyman
There are a lot of subtle things that are harder to stamp out of a culture in terms of male entrepreneurs being mentored more than female entrepreneurs… male entrepreneurs getting several strikes against them before they’re kind of let go, whereas female entrepreneurs, it’s kind of one strike and you’re out. Jennifer Hyman
We’re giving our customer access to things she wouldn’t have otherwise purchased, either because it wasn’t smart to buy it, or she couldn’t afford it. Jennifer Hyman
I didn’t wake up one day and want to become an entrepreneur. I had the idea for Rent the Runway and thought it would be fun to work on and also thought if it was successful, it would make women feel great about themselves. Jennifer Hyman
The first core value we have is that everyone deserves a Cinderella experience. And I have experienced a Cinderella experience. And I really believe that most people who’ve come to Rent the Runway have had a Cinderella experience. Jennifer Hyman
I’m an auditory learner, and if you put something into a song, I’ll remember it forever. Jennifer Hyman
I have the most eclectic music taste out there. I can be listening to an indie pop song just as easily as I could be listening to a Carly Simon song from the ’70s to a country song. Jennifer Hyman
I think layering is key for fall along with a really colorful scarf to bring spiciness to the outfit. Jennifer Hyman
As leaders, we’ve all seen the painful effects of team members not keeping pace with company growth – it’s called up-leveling, and it’s all too common when a company goes from zero to something to hopefully an IPO. Jennifer Hyman
One of Rent the Runway’s core values is ‘Trust in Everyone’s Best of Intentions.’ We trust our team. Jennifer Hyman
It’s amazing how much misinformation there is about pregnancy and how many myths are still ingrained into our culture. Jennifer Hyman
I think, so often, female cofounders are positioned in this competitive, catty way. It’s just awful. It’s not reality. Jennifer Hyman
I dream of a not-so-distant future in which every woman can wake up, decide what she’ll wear from the millions of styles in her digital dream closet, and have her outfit magically delivered to her before she finishes her coffee. Jennifer Hyman
Our company wouldn’t exist and wouldn’t be around without our warehouse employees and our call center employees. And these employees – not just at Rent the Runway but at tens of thousands of other companies throughout the country – are treated unequally. Jennifer Hyman
I don’t think of careers from a functional perspective or from a subject matter perspective. I think of careers as, how do you like spending the time in your day? What makes you happiest? What are you most passionate about? Jennifer Hyman
I’ve found that entrepreneurship only gets harder every year, and as your team gets bigger, the stakes get higher. Jennifer Hyman
When you buy something for $9.99, and you know that it’ll fall apart after you wear it once… you’re going into the shopping experience knowing that you’re renting. So all I’m doing is making the rental process more efficient. Jennifer Hyman
Industries that are chaotic are ripe for innovation. They are open to anyone who has an idea. Jennifer Hyman
I think sales is the most important skill set young people can learn. Understanding how to pitch an idea with confidence and secure a client are valuable skills that apply to every single aspect of business. Jennifer Hyman
In early 2011, I had the opportunity to meet and spend significant time with Alfred Lin, a partner at Sequoia Capital and co-founder of Zappos. Jennifer Hyman
I think if more people actually pursued what they loved, we’d have a lot more innovation and creativity. Jennifer Hyman
I think that life is difficult. People have challenges. Family members get sick, people get older, you don’t always get the job or the promotion that you want. You have conflicts in your life. And really, life is about your resilience and your ability to go through your life and all of the ups and downs with a positive attitude. Jennifer Hyman
I’ve always felt the connection between clothing and confidence, which is why I probably was such a shopaholic. Jennifer Hyman
The more time goes by, the more things will happen to you in your life. And the ability to be positive throughout and look for the good in people, look for the good in situations – it’s so important. Jennifer Hyman
If you spend your time away from work looking at emails and making sure your inbox went down to zero, that’s not an effective way to spend your time as a CEO or an entrepreneur. Often times, those emails aren’t that important. Jennifer Hyman
I had this thesis that we had entered the experience economy. People were getting married later and starting to value experiences like travel over owning things. Jennifer Hyman
Founders are often great storytellers because they’re in the business of constantly selling a dream against all odds. Jennifer Hyman
I actually think that self-expression comes, sometimes, from what you wear, and having the freedom to be able to wear whatever you want for whatever mood you want to wear it, but to not feel frivolous that all of those things that help you self-express have to be things that you’re committing to forever. Jennifer Hyman
At Rent the Runway, we rent designer clothes. We have a belief set that half of the closet over time is going to move into the cloud, and a portion of what we wear every single day will be comprised of things that we don’t own forever. Jennifer Hyman
As a leader, you have to have a vision that inspires people around you. Jennifer Hyman
Every single person around the world has this storage facility in their bedroom, and we call it a closet, and 80 percent of the stuff in that storage facility is worn three times or less in its lifetime. Jennifer Hyman
Startups, by their nature, are entrepreneurial – testing new things, launching new products, and disrupting themselves. That’s why you join a startup in the first place – to create, to stretch beyond your current capabilities, and to make an outsized impact. Jennifer Hyman
Clothing enables people to self-express, and that’s why variety, when it comes to our wardrobe, has become more and more important over time. Jennifer Hyman
I dream of democratizing the fashion industry by giving everyone access to feeling their most beautiful and powerful every day and, at the same time, using technology to modernize how we get dressed. Jennifer Hyman
I’m a very social person, and I like being in different kinds of environments. Jennifer Hyman
I’m obsessed with ‘New York’ magazine. Jennifer Hyman
Even though she’s my younger sister, Becky’s definitely a role model in my life. She’s the most genuinely positive person I’ve ever met. Jennifer Hyman
We’ve found that employees who live full, happy lives tend to be the most effective contributors. Jennifer Hyman
I studied social studies at Harvard, which makes it sound like I was in seventh grade. It was a choose-your-own-adventure major, where you could decide what you were going to focus on. Jennifer Hyman
People feel extremely comfortable with me personally. Jennifer Hyman
I have no desire to sell Rent the Runway. I have a 50-year vision for Rent the Runway, at least, to change consumer behavior and actually put the closet in the cloud. Jennifer Hyman
If you’re passionate about something, go for it, because people are great at what they love and when they’re the happiest. Jennifer Hyman
All that Rent the Runway has really done is we’ve opened up the technology and logistics to make it possible to have the customer decide how long she needs an article of clothing for. Jennifer Hyman
As women and men, we’re not primed and taught to feel that women are as inspirational as men. Jennifer Hyman
I’m a magazine junkie. I have 30 different subscriptions to various magazines, and I like old-school, real magazines. Jennifer Hyman
If your work isn’t mission-driven or emotionally resonant to you, it will be very hard to maintain passion and focus over a long period of time, which is critical in entrepreneurship. Jennifer Hyman
When choosing vendors for my wedding, I intentionally searched for women who were at the beginning of their own founder journeys. Jennifer Hyman
The way I inspire loyalty in my team is for them to see me more casually, to have lunch with members of my team, for them to see me with my family, my fiance, to see the real me. Jennifer Hyman
Because entrepreneurship is so hard and does take so long to build something great, you do have to build an environment that you yourself as an entrepreneur want to work in for the next 20 years. Jennifer Hyman
All early entrepreneurs fall prey to the same problem, which is everyone believes that if you are super intense in the beginning, work long hours, that you can create something quickly and that entrepreneurship is almost something that happens overnight. Jennifer Hyman
Be brave and take accountability for your thoughts and beliefs. Jennifer Hyman
When we launched, we had to figure out every problem – big or small – on our own. Jennifer Hyman
When I traveled around the country visiting women in their own homes and talking to them about their closets, every woman lamented about ‘settling’ for many of the pieces in her closet. Jennifer Hyman
My parents are both massive feminists and always led me to believe that I could dream big and do anything that I wanted in my life, almost to a delusional degree. Jennifer Hyman
I think it’s extremely important to think of your company as a series of chapters. Jennifer Hyman
I think about people like Jeff Bezos or Reed Hastings, and I really marvel at the stamina they’ve had to keep on trucking no matter what happens. Jennifer Hyman
As opposed to thinking about ourselves as disrupting the fashion industry, we’re thinking about ourselves more broadly – about disrupting the closet and how you get dressed. Jennifer Hyman
My contribution to Rent the Runway as the CEO is higher than the contribution of someone on my warehouse team, but my pregnancy is not any more important than the pregnancy of any single person who works at my company. Jennifer Hyman
We are helping women express themselves and feel awesome about themselves, and I think that does change the course of your day. Jennifer Hyman
I’m bad at hiding my emotions. Jennifer Hyman
Every single day, entrepreneurship has highs and lows, and you need to feel like you have a community around you. That is insanely important – to have a community of people around you lifting you up and who really know you. Jennifer Hyman
I’ve been humbled by the amount of people who have gone out of their way to reach out, mentor me on an ongoing basis, and devote time to help solve the problems Rent the Runway faces as a company – simply out of their own interest and kindness. Jennifer Hyman
Around the year 2000, businesses around the country went ‘business casual.’ Jennifer Hyman
Like any startup in hyper-growth mode, growth often brings change, and with it, evolution in the executive team. Jennifer Hyman
The most important thing to Ben and me was starting a family, so as soon as we got engaged, we booked Gurney’s in Montauk – which is just a few miles down the beach from our summer home – as our wedding venue a full year and a half out, and then we immediately started trying to get pregnant. Jennifer Hyman
In many cases, women are being harassed by people who are on their board or who are associated with one of their venture capitalists. Jennifer Hyman
In order to really believe in an idea being revolutionary, you have to truly understand how it’s going to revolutionize life. Jennifer Hyman
Taking the time to identify and infuse values certainly does affect outcomes and is one of the most important things to get right as the CEO. Jennifer Hyman
I kick off every monthly team meeting with ‘core value stories’ – team members stand up and recognize how another team member exemplified a core value. Jennifer Hyman
I want to put H&M and Zara out of business. Jennifer Hyman
Real-time feedback and coaching promotes learning. When feedback is connected to compensation, feedback is muted, distorted, and given less frequently. Jennifer Hyman
In the morning at home, I’m not functioning as an entrepreneur – I completely limit technology and any work-think – I’m functioning as a mom and a wife. Jennifer Hyman
I want to have an ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ experience where I drop off the face of the planet and move to Greece. Jennifer Hyman
We’re in the ‘100 percent return’ business. This is driving millions of new customers into brands; most of our customers are wearing brands they’ve never tried before. Jennifer Hyman
Building followership and inspiration around female leadership is quite difficult to do. Jennifer Hyman
Our goal is to teach young women who were brought up on H&M and Forever 21 that designer clothes are expensive for a reason. They’re works of art. Jennifer Hyman
I’m totally obsessed with Italian food and Mexican food. Jennifer Hyman
What’s interesting about the transportation market is that you’re often dabbling in multiple categories. The same person who might own a car is still using Uber, is still using a taxi, still might go to Avis on a business trip and rent a car. Jennifer Hyman
I’m constantly running to meetings outside of the office, and I think that you can’t go wrong with a great pair of Lanvin pumps. Jennifer Hyman
I think a lot of people might’ve and probably did have the idea of renting clothes before me. I was the only one who was crazy enough to attempt it. Jennifer Hyman
As a little kid, I would watch Oprah almost every day. Jennifer Hyman
We derive confidence as women from what we wear. Jennifer Hyman
I try to work with people the way they prefer. Jennifer Hyman
I can dance to Beyonce, sing karaoke, create strategy, go on dates, and build a multi-billion company and show the world that women can build big businesses. Jennifer Hyman