Failing BIG

You have received a lot of accolades, but you've had your fair share of obstacles as well. You were CEO of Pets.com, a company that folded. And for many, Pets.com Is still symbolic of the dotcom bust. What was that chapter like for you? How were you able to pick up the pieces and forge onward after that? Because it was so public when Pets.com folded.

Well, it was public and there's no question, and I sold the company to give money back to shareholders and I would say and also Webvan folded and I think over two thousand companies folded during that time. So when I and without a doubt, Pets.com became the poster child. So now it's just like if you drill down the time is right for that. We were way too early. I would also say that you look at the media scrutiny on that company and we in particular, and you have to... It is a little bit of a head scratcher which makes you wonder, was there negative bias against women? And I usually don't go there, but we certainly didn't lose the most money. We didn't do the most outrageous things. There was nothing we did except we created a really good brand with the puppet. But beyond that, we were one of many dotcom companies that went down. So I think there was some negative bias towards females looking back. And actually, when I reread some of it, because someone did me the gift of giving me every news clip that was ever written about Pets.com, I had an opportunity to pull those things out of the closet, they were buried fairly deeply, and dust them off. And when you're called the dumbest person in the industry and very really derogatory non-business terms, you sort of well, what's going on there? It's not about the business. There's something else going on.

So that must have been harsh. It must have been kind of a dark chapter. How did you pull yourself out of it? Because it's got to hurt, right? That it's you know, that it's just false. It's still got to hurt.

It was compounded by the fact that simultaneously I got a divorce, so those two are really linked for me and of course, it hurt. Even to this day I've had people meet me just because, not because of The RealReal, which is a billion-multi billion hopefully in the near term, but a billion-dollar company that's changed the fashion industry. But I've had people who wanted to meet me because I ran Pets.com and they want to talk about it. And it's, you know, it sort of puts you in the, like, weird phenomena. So, of course, it hurt. How did I pull myself out of it? Took a long time, too long. I really got back to doing things I love and I got involved with the arts. I sat on some arts boards and hung around with some artists. Magic Theater was one local one, Headland Center for the Arts, the San Francisco Art Institute. So during the time post Pets, I was on all their boards and that was very good creative process for me. Out exercising has always been good for the soul and for your mood. And then lastly, and I know this is going to sound hokey, but it's true. The more you go to sports games, especially people that play a lot of games, let's just take baseball as a good analogy. If someone's batting at point three five, you're like, wow, what a batter. Well, let's just talk about that for a minute. Sixty five percent of the swings didn't come through. You know, it's like, yeah, that's a great batting average, but you still miss more than half.