Ready for Trouble

What advice would you give other entrepreneurs or business executives who are struggling now to lead through an economic downturn?

Boy, it's absolutely hard. One of the things we did do right away is we did go into cash conservation mode and we raised incremental capital. So there were a couple of different things. I would say... you know what? I'm going to backtrack on what I told you. I did do something differently with this one. I have raised capital at every opportunity I could. And with Pets.com there were a couple of times that, of course, we don't want to take on more capital. We don't want to get more diluted. Who knows if the company would have made it through the darkness if we were to have more capital. I don't know. I know that when we needed it, the capital wasn't here. So The RealReal went public, nice capital raise. We did another capital raise during the COVID time to make sure that we're well financed to get us both to profitability and keep growth going. So keeping the company incredibly well financed, also driving to really strong unit economics. Absolutely. That's different. And making sure that we have more than enough. So when you look at what companies are doing now and we have to take out the restaurants and the really small businesses because really, honestly, they were operating in such small margins that it's really going to be hard for them to get through it. But I would say cash is king right now. Conserving your cash is really, really important. Cutting expenses - we cut fairly deeply during our furlough and twenty five percent of the staff was either laid off or furloughed. Huge numbers. And we're slowly bringing people back, we're not doing anything crazy, but we are seeing growth, starting to see growth again. I would say that actually the balance sheet and high sensitivity to having the capital and not waiting for when you needed it, but ahead of when you need it, so you're prepared was something that I absolutely did learn and took to heart here.