TIMOTHY JORDAN: Hello, I'm Timothy Jordan.
And this is the Developer Show.
I'm standing here with Susan Koger
who is the co-founder and chief creative officer of ModCloth.
Susan, welcome.
SUSAN KOGER: Thank you.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: How are you?
SUSAN KOGER: I am wonderful.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Me, too.
So we're going to talk about entrepreneurship and maybe
some advice that you have for startup founders that
happen to be watching.
But first, and I know you've told this story like a billion
times, I'd like to talk to you about the origins of ModCloth.
Is that OK?
SUSAN KOGER: Yeah, of course.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: OK.
So here's my very specific question.
You're sitting there in 2002 with Eric, your then boyfriend,
now husband and co-founder.
And you're thinking to yourselves, wow,
Susan's really good at antiquing.
Maybe we should spend all of our free time
making this into a business.
Like how do you cross from one idea to another.
How did that happen?
SUSAN KOGER: Yeah, I love it.
I built ModCloth while I was an undergraduate
at Carnegie Mellon.
Just for me and my style of leadership,
and what I know about myself, I lead very instinctually.
And I think we did a lot of things, just me and my husband
being in the business.
Almost like having a beginner brain kind of approach
to things.
So you do have to-- so I think it
was very instinctual at first.
You do have to codify those things
and actually step back and think about them,
and think about what's working.
These are the things that we've kind of just done.
What's working from this list?
What can actually scale and what doesn't?
What needs to go away?
What new things need to be added in?
For me it was-- starting ModCloth,
like deciding to work on it full time once I graduated
from CMU, because I did it part time while I was at school.
I was at the stage where I was like, man, if I can just
do this and I can support myself and maybe
hire a few people to do the stuff that I don't enjoy
doing so much, like packing boxes is really fun,
but you don't necessarily want to spend four hours a day
doing it, which is kind of what I was doing
when I hired my first employee.
Yeah, I was like, man, if I can just
support myself, and create this job,
and let's see where it goes.
And it's just continued to go and grow.
And yeah, I feel really fortunate to be able to do it.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: OK.
So here's a question based on what
you were saying about having this job for 14 years.
I can't imagine it's the same job.
And I have some data to back that up.
In 2012, 50% growth to $100 million in sales.
And in 2015, $150 million in sales.
There's no way that you can get that growth
and still be doing the same thing every day.
But I'm curious what the rate of innovation is?
How often does your job change?
And how often do you have to find new strategies
to grow even bigger, or to deal with that growth?
SUSAN KOGER: Yeah.
It's a really interesting question.
And I think-- I mean, there's been so many phases.
And I used to feel like my job was changing
almost every quarter, because honestly, it
is just like we were growing so quickly.
I want to say in 2010 we hired-- we
had 100 people at the beginning of the year,
and we hired 150 that year.
So we went from like 100 to like, I think,
225-ish by the time the year was out.
But it's so different.
And there's no way that you can hit the level of scale
that we've gotten to, or hit any scale at all, without being
able to let other people in and empower them
to do the things that they do really well.
So part of the process for me has been
learning how to be a leader.
As much as we've gone from nothing to where we're
at today, with 350 full time people across three locations,
the sales numbers that you referenced,
we're still a small fish in the big fashion sea.
Like it's a huge industry.
And one that is ripe for innovation.
And we're doing things differently
and in a very cool way, I think.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: OK.
So clearly you've been at this a long time.
And you've used a number of different ways
to really help keep the spirit of the company alive.
Let me just kind of tag a few of them that I think I heard.
One is that you had to be really innovative
and you approached it with this beginner's mind.
That's such a cool idea.
It's like, what's the company we want to work at?
And you put that into ModCloth from the beginning.
I think other big thing that I heard
is that you built that into the culture
so that throughout, it wasn't just like a list of rules,
but something people carried with them as part of ModCloth.
Does that sound right?
SUSAN KOGER: Yeah, definitely.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: That's really cool.
OK.
I have one more question for you.
And this is an advice question.
There's somebody out there who was where you were in 2002.
They have a passion for something
that they think they can make into a successful startup.
Where do they start?
SUSAN KOGER: I think the first thing that I would say
would be to ask for help.
And do it all the time.
And be very concise and know what you're
looking for at all times.
Right?
You know, if you're doing something for the first time,
if you get better your taste is going to get better.
And you're going to look back on that stuff that you did early
and you're going to cringe at it.
I look back at the first logo that I designed for ModCloth,
at our first website, at our first photo shoots.
And I'm just like, oh, my god.
It looks so bad to me now.
And I didn't think that when we launched it.
Obviously, like I cared deeply about it.
It was the best I could do.
So I think that sometimes we get scared to just put something
out there, because it's scary.
It's vulnerable.
You're putting something out there.
People might like it.
They might not.
It's like, oh my god.
But here's the thing.
If you're going to succeed, you're going to get better.
So you've got to start somewhere.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: OK.
So don't be afraid to ask for help.
And you've just got to get out there.
SUSAN KOGER: Yep.
You've got to get out there and put something out
into the world.
And you know what, it's probably going to suck.
And that's OK.
Or it'll be great, and then you'll
look back at it five years from now
and you'll say, wow, that kind of sucked.
And then you'll look back at it and you'll be like,
oh, this is actually kind of cute and retro.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Susan, thanks so much for joining me today.
SUSAN KOGER: Yeah, thanks for having me.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: For more information about ModCloth--
and maybe we can put some of your favorite blogs
and blog posts in the notes as well.
SUSAN KOGER: Amazing.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Check out the show notes below.
See you next time.
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