Advice Line with Niraj Shah of Wayfair

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/fa0bfeed16d5e91a

Hello and welcome to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Raz. This is the place where we help try to solve your business challenges. Each week I'm joined by a legendary founder, a former guest on the show.
Who will help me try to help you. And if you're building something and you need advice, give us a call and you just might be the next guest on the show. Our number is 1-800-433-1298. Leave us a one-minute message that tells us about your business and the issues or questions that you'd like help with.
Alright, let's get to it.
Joining me today is Neerj Shah, CEO and co-founder of Wayfair. Near, welcome back to the show.
Guy, thanks for having me. Excited to be here.
You were first on the show back in uh 2018, a long time ago. Um, and his amazing story told us about how you and your college roommate Steve.
co founded like uh all these businesses together out of college when you guys are in your twenties, and then you came up with the idea
Of launching hundreds of separate websites. You had uh dinnerplates.com.
You had racks and stands dot com, you had just shag rugs dot com.
You even told us about a website w that you had where you sold birdhouses, only bird houses, and then grandfather clocks. Amazing. Just all these different
Businesses selling just those things.
Exactly. That's kind of what led to creating Wayfarers. We sort of ended up working our way through all of home goods one category at a time. We ended up with, as you said, over two hundred websites.
And then we thought the big opportunity would be to be known as a destination for all those categories rather than having them in separate sites. Yeah.
Then that's when um
You know, ten years into the business in twenty eleven, we launched Wayfair dot com.
And if you guys haven't heard that episode, we will put a link to it, uh, the original episode from twenty eighteen in the show notes. It's really, really an awesome episode. Um Nirj, we have not talked, I don't think we've talked to you since or checked in with you in a bunch of years. Um
You are still with Wayfair, you're still the CEO.
Steve.
Your co founder is also with the company's co chairman.
How do you guys make your twenty seven years of working together and you I think you first met each other like a summer high school program, right? Like
Uh a long time ago.
Yeah, so it was a it was a program actually at Cornell where we went to college between our junior and senior years of high school. Crazy.
Yeah.
What's the secret? I mean, why you know there's so many we uh we've done a bunch of co-founders, we've done co-founder splits and
You know, what do you think it is that makes it work?
Well, I think what we found is that we've both always been drawn a little bit to different areas of the business. So Steve's always uh been very involved with the technology side of our business and we've always been very technology oriented as a company.
And then I've always been drawn a little more to the business side.
But then we both really respect each other's business judgment. And so it's been a very easy partnership as that you know as we got into it.
Ultimately, you know, you need to find s somebody who's just a great partner, meaning you have to be interested in doing complimentary things, but then you really need to trust each other's judgment and be a team that way.
And
I don't know that there's always a s entire science in figuring that out. It's an art and science thing both.
And there's luck too.
Exactly.
I wonder how you mean your big brand, Wafer is huge.
How do you stay ahead of
the competition, even not just from the big retailers and online, you know, giants, but from startups that are
Starting to scale.
So we try to combine what I'd say is the best of two worlds. So one is
We have enough scale to have, you know, a two thousand five hundred person technology team.
And we have enough scale to have a twenty five million square foot logistics network that's warehouses and transportation delivery operations and how many warehouses all over the US? In our network, I think we probably have something like seventeen or eighteen warehouses that are like a million square feet each. So these are really, really big facilities. Then we have
Something like seventy five smaller buildings, which are the transportation terminals from which the trucks that would deliver the large items to someone's home go out from every day.
So I think what we're trying to do is combine the benefits of scale. Those are like two examples of the scale. The third would be the fact that we spend over a billion dollars on advertising a year. Right.
with what is a much more entrepreneurial
And sort of startup type.
mentality in how we drive the business. And so when you can couple sort of the resources of a bigger business, but with the agility and the ambition of a smaller business.
I think you can get sort of the special thing which just lets you move fast.
And do big things both.
And then we stay focused on home goods. So what we don't do is let ourselves get distracted by starting to do too many things because home goods is over half a trillion dollars between the four countries we operate in.
And so then all of a sudden we have the specialist benefit versus the uh Amazons and the Walmarts of the world. And we have the scale benefit versus the upstarts who maybe are focused on the same exact market as us, but they don't have the ability to do the same things for the customer when you talk about technology resources or you talk about, you know, the logistics needs, et cetera.
You've done something interesting in the last, I think, year, which is you opened your first brick and mortar store in Illinois.
outside of Chicago, I think. And then you're planning on opening another one in Atlanta and
New York and Denver. I mean you were early online retailers back in the day where people were still scared to give their credit cards, you know, in the internet back in like two thousand five and six.
Tell me about
going into physical retail stores.
We're super excited about it. And you're exactly right. We opened our first uh large format wave store a year ago in May.
It's in Wilmette, which is in the northern suburbs of Chicago. It's a hundred and fifty thousand square feet.
So to give you a sense like that's a very large format store.
And what it's what we're able to do there is showcase all the product categories so that for customers when they come there and they can see the entirety of what Wayfair can offer. Yeah. I mean it's like just to put it in perspective, that's like the size of a Costco.
Yes. It's enormous. Yeah, it's very big.
But that's kind of what it takes to really showcase all the categories we're in. And for the customer, they want that type of experience because if you're if you're buying a sectional, you need to see a variety of sectionals. And then if you're looking at bathroom faucets, you need to see a variety of those. And what we found is that the store works great because people know who Wayfair is.
from the fact that we've been around for a while and we have scale and we advertise and but the ability now to work with someone who can help give you design guidance or, you know, if you want to pursue financing for a project, or if you want to work with a kitchen cabinet designer, we can do all those things in person.
It so it makes the brand come to life in a whole new way. And that's why, as you said, we we have a pipeline of additional stores coming.
Yeah.
Narge you ready to take some calls?
Absolutely. Excited to. All right, awesome. Let's bring in our first caller. Welcome to the advice line. You're on with Nerd Shaw, co founder of, of course, Swayfair. Uh please tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just uh one line about your business, please.
Hi Guy and Nerish, I'm Valerie Zweig. I am calling in from Washington, DC. I'm the co-founder of Cook Sticks, which is a new way to stock your pantry.
Our instant stock sticks replace wasteful cartons and chemical laden bullion with a clean, convenient, and delicious stock option for home cooks. All right, welcome to the show, Valerie. So cook sticks, what is it? It's a
Chicken stock w describe it.
Yeah, it's dehydrated chicken stock. So we're calling it an ingredient line because while we are starting with chicken stock, we will expand into other ingredients. It's really just it's we're starting with three dehydrated chicken stock. Okay, so instead of buying the like box of chicken stock if you if you do use that, you just buy yours and you mix it with hot water and you've got the stock.
Exactly. We uh my co-founder and I, my cousin Terren Pelicone and I started a chicken soup business about nine years ago in DC. We have a chicken soup delivery business called prescription chicken. We have uh chicken soup in national grocery stores as well, and through our time
We spent a lot of time shipping liquid across the country. Yeah, it's heavy, expensive. All of that. Not good for the environment, right? No. And we happen to also be avid home cooks and we know the importance of Florida great chicken stock, but we, you know, we have a busy life and
we would sometimes lean on those boxes of chicken stock and you know we would sort of talk and both open our fridges and say, gosh, like there's yet another box of chicken stock that I used most of it and it's wasting in my fridge. And we said, you know, there's gotta be a better way for this.
And so we said, You know, why does it have to come liquefied? Why can't we just provide a product that you add water, use exactly what you need and uh cook sticks was born. And then make your risotto or or make your soups or whatever.
And you can season vegetables, you can make vinegr high protein vinaigrette, like there's sort of all sorts of things that you can do.
Well, I'm a a chicken stock maker and I would use this product'cause in a pinch I but I always have in the freezer'cause I always take a chicken carcass and put in my instant pot with water and and then I've but this is a great
solution for a lot of people if if you do especially'cause that stock is sitting on the shelf and those cartons
You know, for who knows how long.
And you know
Yeah.
It's watery. It doesn't really have great flavor. And bouillon, right, is a light format product, but it's chemically and it's salty and it's not actually leaning on flavor. Yeah, it doesn't taste real.
Um all right. What's your question for for Nearage?
So cooksticks is an instant cooking stock, but we're discovering that retailers and shoppers are misidentifying how to use it. So we'll hear people say, Oh, is it a protein beverage? Or oh, you should have more protein in it. Now, despite having the word cook in the name.
They don't seem to get that this has been created as an ingredient for cooking. And so we're we're a little stumped and would love tips on how we can message and educate both consumers and retailers that cook sticks is an innovative ingredient. So a new format for a sort of a classic product and a replacement for the standard carton of stock.
Mm-hmm. Interesting. Okay. Near, before we answer
Ballery's question.
Thoughts, questions, uh for her?
Well one question I have is
Are there some specific things you tried that didn't work to help convey what it is? Or is this a new problem you're just discovering now? It's new problem. We just launched the product, so we just got to market in late June. We hit sort of uh Mid-Atlantic Whole Foods stores and Amazon.
And it is it is an interesting you know, reading a lot of the Amazon reviews and feedback, you know, you start to sort of pick up things and it's like, Okay, our initial sort of Amazon marketing, right? You know, we we miss the opportunity to communicate to people, oh, this is
equal to a box of stock. And so we sort of went back to square one and made an ad that said, you know, one stick equals one box of stock. And that has helped in sort of the the understanding of the product. But the sort of default is like, oh well
This is a beverage. And it's like well
It can be, but it's not.
That's a byproduct, that's not the main point.
I have a question for you.
S there are these packets, right, that are
more like protein broths. And I have used them because I
You know, trying to get more protein in. This is not the direction you are headed in or wanna head in. Or or is it?
It's not. So um really we are competing against the box of stock. So the powdered protein beverages that are out there, they're not conducive to cooking, right? They have to be something that you want to drink, right, to get your protein. And so it has to be something that has sort of more of an aggressive flavor profile. As you and any sort of person who cooks knows
Chicken stock is uh not meant to be sort of the leader, it's meant to be sort of that strong foundational cooking like salt, right? It's gonna help sort of elevate the rest of it. And so we wanna create something that is a better box of stock, that is that thing that everybody uses in, I mean, every dish, right?
Alright, I have some near sh I've got a bunch of thoughts. I but I you are so creative with what you guys do. I please I want to hear from you first.
So this is gonna sound uh very rudimentary, but um one thing we've seen over the years sometimes when something is novel
The um best way to communicate it is to be literal.
You know, on the front of it just saying, you know
add sixteen ounces of water and you know your chicken stock's ready to go or add thirty two ounces or what whatever. Because the literal what we found with marketing sometimes when something is novel, the literal explanation is the one that's just becomes intuitive to people and then you can then go with the imagination after that. But if you don't start with the literal
It's hard to grab. It can be hard to grab.
It's so true. And it's funny, you know, when you start we you work so hard on the branding and we want the the imagery and we wanna catch the eye, but the reality is is you know, we need to shrink the cute little chicken on the front. We need to increase the instant chicken stock. So you're right, literal is the way to go, simple.
Just communicate clear.
And your packaging does say cooking stock, instant cooking stock on it already. It does and it does have that there. I mean, look, you know this. You're you we've had this too with lots of products where
people introduce something new and they have to educate people. I mean I remember we did a
Guayaquil, okay, which is now a massive brand. It is a national distribution, uh hundreds of millions of dollars in sales. They had to for like twenty years, literally, they were going around door to door to
festivals to try to get people to drink yerba mate, right? Until they just they hit a tipping point. This is easier because people know what chicken stock is, but maybe
as Nearj says, you have to hit people over the head with it, right? Because you are
You're teaching people how to use it every time they see it.
Maybe your tag you create a tagline like your carton of chicken stock now in a stick or you know like Well it's funny we were saying our tagline is think outside the stock box. Which is nice. It's cute. But again, is that
Too clever. It's might be too clever. It's very clever. I mean think like I'm not as clever, I'm dumb, so just g I'm gonna give you like literally like cook stick, instant stock for cook well, you say that on the package, but just something like that. I also have you guys been doing anything on social media around
You know, how to use it or how you use it.
We have, yeah. So we've been doing a lot of social media. And it's it's interesting, right? So we need to work more on us as founders doing our own
You know, education. Yeah it's funny, I mean, as a chicken soup product, we always sort of said, like we don't want it's not about us, right? Like this is about you and what you need. If you're not feeling well, we have chicken soup for you, we're not gonna make it about us. However, in this type of product, it is a little bit more
cooking focused. And so we do need to lead the narrative in terms of this is how you use it, this is what we use it in, because it is about like just showing how easy it is to use and and getting people to also adopt it and and sort of communicate that with them.
Yeah.
Valer Zweig, uh co founder of Cook Sticks, thanks for calling in. Good luck.
Thanks so much, guys.
Awesome. Thank you.
Narge, do you do any co d who does cooking at your house?
Well, I dabble, but I would say my wife
definitely is the much better cook.
There's really no debate on that.
Yeah.
Telling you chicken stock is like
It's like critical.
It's like a critical ingredient.
Seriously I you may may may have experienced this.
If you just boil rice and water, it's just rice and water. And if you just boil it in chicken stock, it's like
Twenty levels better. Exactly.

We're gonna take a quick break, but when we come back, another collar, another question, and another round of advice. I'm Guy Raw, stick around, you're listening to the Advice Line on how I built this lab.
Welcome back to the device line on how I built this lab.
I'm Guy Raz and today I'm taking your calls with Nira Shah.
Co founder of Wayfair, uh Nirish, you ready to take the next call? Absolutely.
Awesome.
Alright, let's bring in our next caller. Welcome to the advice line. Please tell us your name, where you're calling from, and um just a line about your business, please.
Hi, I'm Bray Van Lewen. I'm calling from Orm, Utah.
And I'm the founder of Daily Shade Sunscreen.
Daily Shade is redefining what true mineral sunscreen can look and feel like.
So we launched last year in 2024 with our flagship product called Babe Shade. It is designed for kids and it's the first true mineral sunscreen for daily use.
that disappears like magic on their skin. So no little white ghosts running around here, guys.
Brie, thanks for calling in. So a brand's called Daily Shade.
And I know this is a pro I mean, I use mineral sunscreen on my face every day, and I have
a brand that does a pretty good job, but it's hard because
You know, the chemical sunscreens are great. They just dissolve into your skin, but of course a lot of people are c increasingly getting concerned about well, do you really want that absorbing in your skin?
And the mineral sunscreen sits on top of your skin, right? And that's the difference. It doesn't get absorbed by your skin as much.
Yeah, you know a lot about this, which is great.
So you're exactly right. My daughter had a reaction to a very popular chemical sunscreen that was marketed for kids, quote unquote.
And she just oh it was a terrible, terrible response. She got blisters and it was awful. So I started using, like you're saying, true mineral sunscreens, but either
She would still react because it was a little bit of mineral, a lot of UV chemical filters and boosters which the FDA doesn't require them to list.
Or
I would put on a natural zinc product and the the more natural, the more zinc it had, the whiter she got.
And I knew I wanted her to wear it daily and I just I couldn't send her out the door looking like
Cast for the ghost, right? Yeah. So I knew I had to fix it. And the challenge is that if it's a true mineral sunscreen, it's like
You know, it's like that fi it's like a fifties like beach movie, right? Where your face is just like you know, or the you got the white nose or whatever. So it's hard it's really hard to make it disappear. So how to tell me how you started this business. I do.
Yeah, I'm a physician assistant by professional training, so I practice medicine. I've been practicing for fifteen years.
I actually worked a little bit in facial plastic reconstructive surgery and these young girls would come in with these awful, awful scars on their face that we were trying to do some reconstruction on from melanoma, the most dangerous form of skin cancer.
Utah's the number one state in the whole nation for melanoma, actually, and it affects a lot of young girls. It's common cancer in women age twenty-six to thirty.
So when I saw this, I I knew I wanted my kids to be protected because such a large portion of sun damage happens during childhood. Some studies even say as high as up to eighty percent of someone's sun damage during their whole life happens when they're little before the age of eighteen.
So I wanted my kids to wear something every day and protect their skin from the sun, but
The options were
Terrible to be honest with you, mainstream sunscreens, the UV chemical filters did not work for my family.
And I couldn't find a cosmetically pleasing one that didn't make them look just completely silly.
Wow, so all right, so you went in, you decided to s to launch your own brand, which you launched when did you launch it? Last year, but it took us four years to create our product line. So four years of of development and R and D sunscreen is a drug, so it has to go through the FDA. And you finance this yourself?
Yes, self funded.
Super fun.
And tell me about w where and mostly
direct to consumer you're selling through your website or do you sell in stores too?
Yeah, we're all we're all on our website and we also sell on Amazon as well.
We're in about twenty eight doors across the country, but nothing in a regional or national distribution quite yet.
And tell me how the business has done so far. I mean, you're small, you don't have the budget for mass advertising yet, but how are you doing?
We're to increase.
We sold through our first production run, uh, just about. We have a few bottles left, which is great, great place to be in. We'll be producing again this fall. And we have two new product lines coming out, a sport line and a women's line, so we can protect the whole family.
And so have you broken like fifty
thousand dollars in sales yet? We have, thank you for asking. We have, yeah. Nice. Okay, great.
And before I forget, what's your question for us? Okay, my question is I am fortunate enough to have an in house cosmetic chemist.
That allows us to come up with products quickly and I have a whole bunch of products I'd like to deliver to the world.
The challenge is the cost of production is very high and
at our current growth rate, I can only sustain maybe one or two product lines a year. And then because I'm being I'm self funded,
The marketing budget is of course lower than I wish it was.
So my question is as a founder, what are the key indicators I should be looking for to know when it's time to seek investment and give up
Maybe some equity, which I really don't want to do.
versus continuing to bootstrap and grow a little bit more slowly.
All right. Great questions. Um, Neraj, I want to bring you in. What do you think? I mean, what I mean, she wants to expand this thing, but she needs cap she needs the money to do it.
Yeah.
In terms of us selling the items, you you mentioned you sell directly on your own website, you sell on Amazon.
Have you discussed with any major retailers potentially carrying it? And what I was thinking there is, you know, potentially if you have someone who likes getting in early, they might be willing to give you a purchase order for, you know, the kind of quantity they want, even if it's a modest test rollout in their sense, it could be quite a decent volume.
And those purchase orders from the larger companies you can get financing against.
That sometimes is a way to
You know, kind of to get financing, but to your point you're not selling equity.
You're not selling equity for that.
Yeah, that's a great idea. I haven't explored and national distribution quite yet, because I frankly can't afford it quite yet.
I'm hoping my business plan is for twenty seven. That would be the earliest I would hope to be in some regional and national distribution.
And at this point, yeah, I would have to to either finance, take out a second mortgage, something like that bet on myself.
Just a a scary thing to do.
Or
Find someone
who's willing to do it f with a small, small piece of equity, which is
Pretty hard to find.
Yeah, and there's also I mean I I completely agree with Nirich here. I mean there there's uh
you know, there are also ways to
Like revenue based financing that these some of these lenders I can't remember ClearCo is one Shopify actually is one.
They make small loans, right?
against a predictable sales.
And then SBA loans. But back to something that that Nirj asked, which I think is critical.
If you want to scale.
you know, when you want to get into the targets and the Sephora's, that's when you really need to raise money. And if that's where you're headed,
Then it may be worth thinking about a seed round.
of friends and family now, a small seed round, you know.
three, four hundred thousand dollars.
five hundred thousand dollars to
see w w w what you can do with that money.
to sort of get you closer to the next level, which you where you would n need to raise a lot more money.
At that point.
Yes, this is a good idea. Something that's crossed my mind on a very regular basis.
And with seed rounds are you
You're not giving equity necessarily, or just giving interest, or you can choose. I mean, there are many many ways to do it. You can get convertible notes, you can pay people back. I mean there's a bunch of ways to do normally convertible notes just translate into stocks, but Nirij, what do you think?
Yeah, I think a convertible note is is what I have heard of and seen as most common. What that is is you instead of deciding at what value
those investors are buying equity from you. They're giving you the investment. They hold a convertible note. And what that means is that when you raise your next round of capital,
their money converts into equity, but at a discount to what that round ultimately gets priced at.
So if you're able to take the money from them now.
you're able to invest it very productively and grow the business nicely and then ultimately raise around at a good price.
These investors get the benefit, they're converting, you know, 20% less or 30% less than that. So they're they're getting that value for being early. But you're also not necessarily having to price the company based on your current sales and where you are now, because that that would be hard if you just do it off your current revenue. And if you start talking about the product pipeline and the vision you have, it becomes maybe a big debate as to what the price should be. So
A convertible note, I think, is often a easy way to do it. And ultimately those investors in the friends and family round, they are gonna get equity at a good price, but it makes it an easy way to raise the money quicker.
Okay, great. And I know that you bootstrapped for a long time. You guys didn't take investment money
For a while, if I'm remembering correctly. Do you have regrets? Are you glad you did?
No, so so we're glad we did. So we what we were able to do
And I I do often recommend to folks, don't take the money until you're really ready to. And what I mean by that is
For some reason there's a lot of prestige in raising money, but the truth is you'd rather not raise money if you can get to the next level without it.
And so even if that means you might move a little slower, often that's a better decision.
And when the time is right to raise money, it'll be because that money, you have a very clear use for that money that you know will get you to the next level. And without the money, you're gonna be unable to do the thing you want. So in our case, we were able to bootstrap the business.
the big use of of money that we were able to avoid in our case is we didn't buy the inventory and instead we drop ship the orders from suppliers
using their open stock inventory. So we didn't buy the item until we had already sold it. That's what let us kind of go a long way.
And then the reason we raised money, it was ten years in, was we wanted to launch the Wayfair brand.
But we didn't have the ability to fund building a brand with the amount of cash we were generating for the business. And so we then raised equity. And so I think that's the trade off you need to balance. Yeah. And I like the idea of waiting for the POs. I feel like I can carry it until the POs come in, but say I got a PO for fifty thousand units, though.
that would be probably the time to jump in and find some help.
Yeah, and you mentioned that you were in some stores, right? And what about just seeing if you can get the product in front of
A whole foods buyer, for example.
Guy, I would love that. You know anybody? Send them my way. Well, I mean they've got you know regional buyers.
It would be worth cold, you know, going on LinkedIn and just finding someone's name and just cold emailing them because
That's their job. Their job is to find interesting locally made products. We just did uh an episode on Poppy.
You know, poppy soda. It started out as a as a vinegar soda at a farmer's market in Dallas and it was picked up in the Whole Foods in Dallas.
That really does happen. And part of it is finding we've had so many episodes in the show where
People go to a Whole Foods buyer.
And uh a a regional buyer and then it gets into two, three, four Whole Foods and and Whole Foods will work with you.
You know, to they want you to succeed. Oh yeah.
you know, when w whether you can get purchase order financing. There all also, as you know, they're right there these
groups that will lend you money if you've got the orders.
Yeah, for the right percentage of return they sure will. Yeah. There's plenty of people willing to give you money at just as
Trying to find the smartest way to go about that, yeah.
I think the issue here you got a bit on yourself. That's the right you're scared, you're worried because it's scary. But you but you got great it looks like you have a great product. You get so you've got an in house
chemist, I mean somebody's working with you to develop this stuff.
You cracked the code on the
The white, you know, residue on the face. I I mean it sounds really promising. Thank you. Yeah, I quit my job. I mean, I was a professor in the PA department here at my university.
at Utah Bell University and I quit my job in January and
I'm all in on this, so
Yeah, betting on myself for sure.
Yeah.
Um, any final words, Nearge, for Bree?
You know, I would say that just figure out what your next step is and and don't worry about four steps at once, you know, and
I wouldn't be scared of some of these larger uh national chains because a lot of them, they want to find new innovative product and test it in a small local way.
And that could be a exciting thing to try while you're growing the existing distribution you already have with your two new products. And and so
You can take things one step at a time.
Yes. I love that very much. I would
Yeah, that's the dream that's on the gold board, right? Whole food, sprouts.
Sephora all the places, yeah.
For sure the brand's called Daily Shade Brieve and Lewin. Thanks so much for calling in. Uh good luck. Thank you. I love your show, by the way. I think as a founder it's so scary.
And so hard and sometimes when I'm in my dark moments I turn on how I built this and
It does, it helps you get through it and push through when you hear the story. So thank you for all you do.
It's why we do we do, and thank you for saying that.
Good luck. Thank you so much.

Alright, we're gonna take another quick break, but we'll be right back with another collar. Stay with us, I'm Guy Roz, and you're listening to the Vice Line right here on how I built the F Lab.
Back to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Roz, and my guest today is Nero Shaw, co-founder of Wayfair.
And we're taking your calls right here. Hello, caller. Welcome to the show.
Hi Guy, hi Niraj, thank you so much for having me on. My name is Tess Milhovan. I am based near San Antonio, Texas, and I'm the founder of her house.
Her house is an app community of solo women travelers who are background checked.
who host each other for free, creating safe, affordable stays and a supportive network of women around the world.
Wow, cool. Tess, thanks for calling in. So okay, so this is a
website and app and it's basically designed for solo female travelers
It's like a network where if you're in it, you can connect with a somebody somewhere around the world who's in this network who will let you stay at their home when you're traveling around the world.
Yeah, you got it, guys. So we have three ways to stay uh with each other inside of her house. They can connect with other members and ask for accommodation while they're traveling and they're in a new city or a new country. Um we also have opportunities to home swap.
with others and then uh home sit for each other as well. So there's three ways to stay.
But we really have a wonderful, beautiful community of solo traveling women who are just looking for adventure, but they don't want to be totally alone when they're out abroad.
Yeah, and obviously I'm sure the like safety and all kinds of things are are a big part of it. Tell me how is it my I mean, what's your business model? How do you make money?
Yeah, so we are membership based. So we have a monthly and a yearly membership, and that gives the user like full access to the community and uh unlimited free accommodation within our community.
So y basically if you are a member, you also have to be willing to provide
free accommodation for a a solo female traveller.
Ideally, some of the women are like nomads and they actually don't have a home base and they're on they're not able to host at the time or but a lot of them are still willing to get together with you if you're come into their city, you know, grab a coffee, go to the beach,
So that like when you're solo traveling, you can go to another country and you know, have an immediate connection and an immediate girlfriend in the area.
Nice. How many um members do you have right now?
So currently we have around a hundred and fifty members across uh twenty countries. And when did wha how did you get this idea? I'm I'm assuming it started with your own travels.

Yeah, so I solo backpacked through Australia in twenty seventeen after I got out of college. And while I was over there, I
I'm kind of a natural networker. I'm really good at making friends, so I was able to connect with a lot of women while I was over there.
uh find accommodation and I found that as a solo woman traveler, people just opened up their homes to me.
all the time. It was like this amazing experience. I'm like I didn't even know that people do this. And I had all these amazing experiences with local people. Like I really immersed myself in the culture. And so when I got back to the States
My friends were like
How did you do that? How did you find these people? How did you know that they were safe? And I was like, oh wait, like
It was easy for me to do this, but maybe it's not that easy for everyone else. So it's like
Wouldn't it be great if we had
An app.
You know, a space where we could all
connect and we're all background checked, it's all safe, because safety's the number one concern for solo female travelers. So that's where it all kind of stemmed from.
All right. Interesting idea. Um tell us your question.
Yeah, so um I am a solo founder and I've been building this on the side of a full-time job in software sales.
And I'm starting to realize that I cannot do both while also being a mom and a wife. And my question is, when should a new founder make the jump to running their startup full time? Is there a specific income threshold or signs of a healthy business that will give me the confidence to make that jump?
All right.
Interesting questions. Um
So by the way, do you travel for that job?
Uh not not a whole lot. I work remote, so I handle all of my my sales calls and stuff remotely at my house.
All right, so you got a full time job, software sales.
This is really your sounds like your passion.
But you need to know, like, if you're gonna do this full time, when w what signs should you be looking for near age um
Wanna bring you in any questions before we tackle Tess's question?
Well, I have I have one question which is Tess, say the scenario was such that you could focus on her house full time.
Do you have a vision as to the activities you would then focus on full time that would kind of
fill all that time and you feel like would have a high return?
Or is that one of the things you'd have to figure out is like, you know, what what would I then you know, instead of spending X amount of time I can now spend a multiple of that.
What would I go do?
That's a good question. I think that
So I get up super early in the morning to work on her house, like
For a few hours before I log in for
my regular day job. And you know, whenever I need to
you know, stop working on her house. I'm like, I feel like I have like so many things to do. And you know, I my
to do list is just keeps compiling. And I was like, man, if I could
spend more time on this, would it really move more of the needle? It's hard to say.
Like I feel like it would, but it's not financially in a place where I feel comfortable, like putting my family in the place to
I can't depend on it quite yet.
Yeah, I mean I would sort of start out by saying
I don't think there's any quote unquote right.
income threshold. It's it's really
It's such a personal
Decision, right?
I mean I'm assuming you you know, as a software sales rep you're probably getting commissions
You probably get benefits as well. It's probably a pretty good job from that perspective. Am I right or wrong or
No, you you are right, guy. Like, and that's also the hard thing. Like I have a really good job and it's well paid. I have great benefits. So that makes it even more scary to try to like let go of something that I actually have worked really hard to achieve.
And I do like my job. It's not like I don't like my job and I want to quit it, but I'm just feeling
So stretch, so thin.
Between
my passion and my love for her house and wanting to see it grow.
and then a very demanding job.
on top of it.
Yeah, Nearch, I'm curious, when I mean, there's really no universal answer for when
to jump ship. I mean there's some things I think people should pay attention to, but
Like if people say, How do you know? How do you know when?
It's a leave a day job.
Do you ever know?
You know, what what occurs to me is there's sort of like two questions in there. You know, so one is
Have you been able to progress her house to a point where you feel like it's it's worth the risk and the effort of making it your full time vocation, where you feel like
you know, you have a vision of what you want to do and the odds of it working is high enough that you have that conviction that it would be a good use of your time and that it would progress things in the way you want.
And the second is that pragmatic financial question, you know, are you in a position financially where you can afford to take that risk?
And if you can't
And you still want to, then you know
through a friends and family round or through some method, can you financially bridge it somehow where you could sell some equity and and and get enough and maybe it's not the same amount of money as you're making now, but it's enough that you feel like it it's worth doing. So I would try to break those two apart.
and how you think about it and
you know, focus on the first where you're not thinking about the money side. You're just saying, like, hey, how much conviction do I have that that this, you know, if I put myself at this full time, I'm gonna be able to get this where I want. And I And if you say you're very convicted, then I would kind of try to think through the money piece and figure out if there's a path
that makes it, you know, I think of it as a no regret decision, meaning even if it doesn't work, you'll be happy that you tried it.
you know, can you can you get to a scenario where
that would be the right answer because y often if you don't pursue something you want, you'll have regrets.
But obviously if you do something reckless, you could have different regrets. So you want to make sure it's not reckless as well. But can she do that?'Cause I I agree with you, but I would say she should really try to do that while keeping her job. As tough as that's gonna be.
Well, I think y you gotta start there and then if you're like, Hey, I just need X amount more time, I think one of the other questions I have, which I was gonna get into is
you know, is there an in between? So often in something like software sales where it's uh you know commission driven and it it's outcome based
you know, if you're doing a great job for the company, if you say, Hey
you know, is there a halftime role or some such thing? You know, if it's like that kind of variable comp type thing, they they might say, Hey, we don't want to lose you, so we might be willing to do that or something like that. But yeah, I I wouldn't give up the job too quickly for sure. And then I what I would
Guy to your point, like given the flexibility you have, it's remote, you're not traveling for it, you know, can you do both? And then to agree you can't do both, is there is there something different than an all or nothing?
There's a thought I had, um
'Cause I mean, again, there's some things that they're they're sort of quote unquote green lights, right? Like
Uh do you have recurring revenue? Are the what do the renewals look like? Like I do think it's worth asking those questions. Are
you know what what kind of growth are you looking at, right? Is what kind of validation are you getting from the outside.
But is there a way that maybe you hire a part time community manager?
To do some things
That you want to do.
You know, that may be a a modest investment of an hourly person helping you.
Is that something you've looked at or or thought about trying?
Yeah, it was it's actually interesting you bring that up, guy, because I actually did hire um a community and social media manager this year. Uh actually within this past like month, because I was just like, I can't do all of this, and I'm not at present on social media and I just don't have time. So she's been helping me quite a bit.
And I'm really trying to figure out ways to
take these things off my plate that I don't really need to be directly involved in. For sure.
Is that person also in San Antonio or are they remote?
She's remote, yeah. She was a referral, but she's based in the Philippines.
I mean look it's a first step, right, is bringing somebody in because
Again.
I think that
You want to keep
one foot in your day job as long as possible because the f the money and the benefits
are gonna be really helpful.
And it may mean you're gonna have to grind a little bit more on the other side, but
Again, with somebody helping you out part time.
It could be a game changer.
Yeah, exactly. And especially with with my current situation, you know, I can afford to have someone help me out with that, but I I really can't afford to let go of my job.
But I really like your idea, Niraj, about potentially going f half time or something in the future.
And I I also think, you know, you mentioned the person you hired in the Philippines through referrals in just the last month or so. So I think it's probably early in figuring out what type of leverage you might get from that.
There's things that as you're working on this, I think you might
the you might start seeing how do I get some leverage while not spending more money than I can afford
But get the growth trajectory of uh her house up.
uh move in the right way.
And then uh to Guy's point, you know, can it grow to a size where it can support what you need and whether that's half time or or what have you eventually full time.
Awesome.
The brand is called Her House Tess Mill Holland. Thanks so much for calling in. Good luck.
Thanks, guys.
Thank you, yeah.
Um
Yeah, sure.
I mean it's kinda crazy because you're you guys are running such a big business, right? But it I mean there was a time
Where you're, you know, you and Steve are just grinding it out, just to getting through the day. I mean, you s probably still have long days, but it's different. It's a different kind of experience at this point in your life.
Yeah, I remember those early those early years, you know, we were working
effectively nonstop in the early years.
But you know, it was interesting when Tess described, you know, she's not balancing just a full time job and her house. She's also balancing being married and and having a young child, I think she said. So that's a lot you're balancing. And so I think we had the good fortune, uh, you know, we ended up starting early, but there's all these all these things you gotta balance in trade offs. And I I do think the ability in her case where
remote that gives you some flexibility.
Yeah.
And so can you organize in a way that does give you that leverage to kind of advance it. So that it does, you know, lend itself sometimes to creative options.
New York, um
before I let you go, if you could go back to when you and Steve were just starting out, you know, building
These like just one product web pages. And you could go back and say, All right, you know, given what you know now.
what do you think would be helpful f what would you say, what would you tell that person, what would what would have been helpful for you to know back then?
I think
You know, nothing's ever linear and up to the right. So d you know, sometimes when stories get told, you know, it's like all the high notes get told. And so you just feel like it jeez, it should just string right along. And I and I think
When folks tell you the details of the story, you realize there's real ups and downs and a real journey that ensued. And I think that's the reality.
And so often I think folks can be in a rush to get to that success point and
I think the journey y this is why you need to do something you enjoy. So that hopefully the the highs and lows are still you're pursuing something you really love. But I think um just taking your time and how you go about it and just being very disciplined and how you pick your priorities of what you do.
That's the key, and you just need to keep going and um learn the things that don't work well. And often those learnings lead you to the next aha moment. And so because I think if you if you kinda go in with that mental model, it becomes clear why you need to pick something you love.
And also from an expectation standpoint, you know, trying to rush your way to the big win, that's really not a thing, I don't think.
Yeah, for sure.
Naraj, thanks so much for coming back on the show.
Thank you, guy. It was great to do it.
Nice to see you.
You too. That's Naraj Shah co founder of Wayfair and by the way if you haven't heard that episode
Go back and check it out. We'll put a link to it in the show notes. It's so good. You've got to listen to it. Here is one of my favorite moments from that episode.
So all right, I'm gonna read some of the websites that you guys uh launched,'cause I just think they're amazingly
Straightforward name. Hotplates.com. I'm assuming that sold hot plates. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, okay.
All Barstools.com
I always think that's sold. Yes, you're doing good. You're doing good. My dinnerplate.com. I'm nice. Dinner plate?
Yeah, I love this one. Every GrandfatherClock.com. A very hot category online. Painful to ship. Who knew people were searching for that?
We did.
Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week, and by the way, please make sure to check out my newsletter. You can sign up for it for free at guy.com or on Substack.
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This episode was produced by Alex Chung with music composed by Routine Air Bluey. It was edited by Andrea Bruce, our audio engineer with Cina Lafredo. Our production staff also includes Chris Massini, Jasey Howard, Casey Herman, Sam Paulson, Carrie Thompson, Catherine Cypher, Ramel Wood, Neva Grant, and Elaine Coates.
I'm Guy Roz, and you've been listening to The Advice Line.
Right here on how I built this lab.