Julie Wainwright Quotes

You really need a unique selling proposition, and people need to care about that unique selling proposition.

I thought to myself, ‘What can I do that Amazon can’t replicate?’ I wanted to do something Amazon couldn’t do, and something that I absolutely loved.

Do not wallow in your failure. Spend some time grieving, learn from it, and then move on. Constantly replaying what went wrong will not benefit you. Get involved in another company, another cause, another relationship.

I had never created my own business before. I had always been the gun to hire… But I had to finally say, nobody is going to give me my dream job, so I better figure it out myself.

If you get a no, your best bet is to find out why. The more concrete your business gets, the more you’ll get yeses.

The reason we went into jewelry was we were trying to cater to our consigner base, who was saying, ‘Can you sell this for me? Can you sell that?’ And we said, ‘You can bring in your jewelry and watches; we have a gemology and a watch expert on site.’ And it just exploded our business.

Silicon Valley’s definition of luxury is a Tesla in every garage.

You tend to do deals with people you have an affinity with, especially at the beginning.

You have to have a unique product that Amazon just can’t source. It’s all about the product. Why is it important? Why is it different? Amazon are not merchants. They are technology platform guys.

Amazon has reported a loss of nearly $900M in 1999… because, guess what, ecommerce is a business of scale. And, the Internet bubble had burst… which meant that no one was getting funded.

Whenever people think of the dot-com collapse, they think of a handful of companies that epitomized the era, and Pets.com… is always up there, right?

I came from a family that loved what they did every day, and they never stopped.

I think if you’re out there trying to raise capital, and you’re a woman, and you’re in tech, I think what you need to do is find people to work with who know you and believe in you.

When I turned 50, I truly felt I was too old to work in Silicon Valley. No one said anything to my face, but when you can be the mother of some of the people you’re interviewing with, that says it all.

The truth is, Silicon Valley doesn’t like people who are older, and they’re not that much of a friend of the woman. I certainly was a woman, and I was older.

Why are people so obsessed with Pets.com? We shut it down and returned money to shareholders. Besides, there were plenty of other dot-com failures around then.

I said the only way I would join Pets.com was if I could get Amazon to invest, and I did. I knew that anything that could be sourced externally, Amazon could do better and cheaper than anyone else except Walmart. It was really obvious to me.

When you fail, things get real. In fact, they get real real. If your success was a high profile success, then your failure will be a high profile failure. Opportunities and ‘friendships‘ will evaporate. Failure shines a bright light on all relationships. The ones that last are pure and true, which is a true gift.