Operators Ep 26 Transcript
Delian:
Hi everyone, my name is Delian and I'm a principal at Founders Fund, a venture capital firm based in San Francisco. This is Operators where I interview non-VC, non-CEO, non-founder operators that make the startup world go round. Today, I'm interviewing Jennifer Burke, head of sales and account management at Faire. Prior to joining Faire, Jen worked in sales at ClassPass for four and a half years at Bain & Co, McCann Ericksons and Disney before that. I hope you enjoy the show. Cool, Jennifer, thank you so much for taking the time to hop on to the podcast today.
Jennifer Burke:
Thanks for having me. Excited to chat.
Delian:
You guys ready, yeah. As I mentioned an exciting couple months at Faire rocking and rolling in 2020, congratulations on that.
Jennifer Burke:
Thanks. Yeah, it's been quite a ride. Since I joined, I think the valuation is almost 5X in the last year and a half, I can't take credit for that, but it's still been quite a journey.
Delian:
Cool. Yeah, before we dive into Faire, I always like to start at the beginning of people's careers. At the beginning of your career, you worked at a couple of pretty large companies. You did a year at Disney, two years at McCann Ericksons, internship at Pepsi, two years at Bain. What did you like about working with various environments? Or How did you choose between those as you were jumping around? What was the maybe the longer term goal of what you're looking to learn from those various groups?
Jennifer Burke:
Yeah, I'll start with I guess how I even got into the big companies. To start, I wouldn't say that my decision to go to some of these larger corporations was particularly strategic or premeditated, at least early in my career. I grew up on the East Coast, I was born and raised there, went to school on the East Coast. And I was actually an English literature major, which while I loved, didn't necessarily provide me with a lot of strong marketable skills in business upon graduation. So Silicon Valley, while I was aware of it, felt very far removed from what I actually had the opportunity and potential to do, at least in the near term.
And so I gravitated towards some of these big names where I was at least a consumer, and so actually knew the brand from that perspective. So that's how I ended up at Disney. But to answer your question in terms of what I liked and what I learned from those experiences. I think what I enjoyed the most was being at these companies who had already found success, and starting to tease out what were the very specific things, like the building blocks and foundations of what made them successful.
And so a couple of examples. I think first was, all the companies I was at really invested in their people. They had the luxury of having big HR departments where there were levels for every single function, career ladders, competency frameworks, really formal feedback cycles. And I was fortunate enough to have managers who really invested in that. And so I always felt like I knew what I was strong at, what I needed to work on, and what my growth paths were. And for me, that was particularly motivating.
And so as I navigated my career, I always took that with me of both asking for feedback, but also investing in feedback from my direct reports, because I think that was a really important way to build and retain talent. I think the other thing that particularly Disney did really well, which was my first job right out of college, is having a really strong clarity on their purpose and vision, and then being really good about cascading that message down throughout the organization. And I think what I learned from that is, you have to do that and beat the drum right on the message in order to enable people at every level to make decisions effectively towards that North Star. And every company the structures and processes were a little bit different on how they did that, but I think the value around transparency and figuring out and being really intentional on how do you actually distribute information was really important.
And probably the last thing that I'd liked and learn from that I think helped me, particularly when I got into sales was around building really strong cross functional programs, and identifying who are the decision makers? Who are the influencers? Who are the gatekeepers to those decisions? How do you actually influence them? So how do you customize and cater content based on their goals and their motivations? And then how do you actually enable and execute them thereafter? And I think that became important to me as I was doing more enterprise level multi contact deals, figuring out how do you navigate that and create influence at the client so that they can create influence with the decision maker. And so in summary, I don't know if I'd go back to big companies but I certainly really appreciate my time there and learned a ton.
Delian:
Yeah, the saying that I've always said I don't even know where I got it from but like you the number one lesson I feel in sales is the sale only happens if your counterparty especially of a large enterprise thinks like buying your product-
Jennifer Burke:
Is their idea.
Delian:
Is their idea and it's going to make career, right?
Jennifer Burke:
Yeah.
Delian:
At the end of the day, companies are filled with people, people have their own personal incentives. The company's not going to buy it because the company wants it, it's going to be one very particular person that is going to buy it because if they think that it will make them better off at their company and it will make their career and that's the way to think about large enterprise sales.
Jennifer Burke:
Exactly. And I think I saw that at big companies of identifying who's your internal advocate, and then also in sales. Now I tell my team, "Try to find that person internally." And it might not be a decision maker, right? It might be their direct report, it might be their manager, and find them and have them influence the decision from the inside.
Delian:
And so your first role in the world of startups maybe the title doesn't perfectly indicate to everything that it was, but you ended up joining ClassPass as a GM to start relatively early on the company's history. It was two years old at the time. Can you walk us through a little bit about how you came across the opportunity, why you decided to join ClassPass and what that initial scope of responsibilities was and why you felt like it was something you wanted to do?
Jennifer Burke:
Yeah. So I went to business school at Stanford, and all of my friends post graduation ended up in Silicon Valley, and in the startup world, right? They were either in venture capital, they were starting their own companies or they were operators at startups. And I chose the non-traditional path for Stanford at least, and I went into consulting. And while I really enjoyed it, it was certainly intellectually challenging and I learned a lot there. I think I recognize really early on that I didn't have that same level of passion about the work that my friends did. And going out and grabbing drinks for them, 95% of our conversations were about their jobs. And they just felt so excited to wake up in the morning and work on whatever it is they were working on. And I missed that, I was like, "I want that."
And so I told all my friends, "I would like to pursue a startup," and they were all really connected in that world. And one of my good friends, [Anny Cadabby 00:06:46], she was at Charles River ventures at the time. She called me because she was leading the series A for ClassPass. She knew I was looking for that type of role, but I was in New York, and there weren't a lot of startups in New York at the time. And that I also was passionate about health and wellness. And I grew up as a dancer and Payal, who's the founder of ClassPass, was a dancer and was very central to her founder story. So she connected us.
And it was one of those like Kismet meetings where you just meet with the founders, there's two of them at the time, co-founder is Mary Begins. And we just hit it off. I very much aligned with the vision. It didn't feel like an interview, it just felt like a conversation. And I just was immediately drawn to it. And so a couple of interviews later, and a couple of interesting experiences where I'm sitting on the subway thinking about this and hearing two girls talk about ClassPass. I was like, "There's something there. I'm really excited about this product."
And so I joined. I was hired as a general manager. But when actually started, mind you it's been three weeks between when I sign my offer and when I started. I go and report to Mary who was the co-founder at the time. And she's like, "Actually, we made a decision that we're not going to do a general manager model. Feels too operationally complex right now, we think we can actually launch a lot of these markets centrally from headquarters. And so what we need you to do is actually sell and sign up studios."
I was like, "Um, come again." Just smiling, kind of like nodding through gritted teeth. And she's like, "Yeah, we need you to sign up studios, that's what we need you to do. And we need you to go to Chicago in two days and start." And my heart kind of dropped. I was like, "I don't want to do sales, I am not particularly extroverted." And the idea of cold calling a studio or just showing up at their door and trying to get someone to talk to me. That was terrifying to me at the time, and truly paralyzing.
Delian:
A good first 24 hours in the world of startup. You have a different job now, you have different location and time to get to work.
Jennifer Burke:
Exactly. Very different than a big company where you sign your offer, and the JD that you signed up for is very much the JD that you do when you walk through the door. And so I remember going home to my husband, then boyfriend at the time being like, "I was just totally bait and switched. They wanted me to do this GM job, which I was super excited about. It's like the mini CEO, ideal post MBA role, where you own a PA, you can hire out a team, now they want me to do sales." And I remember he was like, "Of course, they want you to do sales. Said, "What do you mean, of course? Where were you last three weeks?" He's like, "Well, isn't that the whole business. Isn't supply the product? The studios is the product. And isn't that the most important thing that the business needs is going and getting these studios to sign up for ClassPass."
And that reframe really changed my mindset about it. And I was like, "Yeah, this is why I went to a startup to do the most important thing for the business. And while I'm slightly terrified, I will just go ahead and figure it out." And so two days later, I was on a plane to Chicago with an iPad with a half baked pitch deck, a lead list and just a goal of sign up as many studios as possible and just figure it out on your own. So it was quite exciting and definitely different than my experiences at some of those bigger companies.
Delian:
I guess walk me through how that went. It sounds like as the company grew, that was largely the area that you focused on, you'd focus on partnerships, which I assume largely means even onboarding, supply in studios. Yeah, I guess walk me through the first year or two of going from landing in Chicago, to eventually I assume having success there, to I assume over time scaling your team.
Jennifer Burke:
Scaling your team. Yeah. So my first few months I was an IC, and I was launching markets. And as I mentioned, I started in Chicago. And there wasn't really a playbook at the time. When I joined ClassPass, it was just about to close it's series A, there was about 20 employees. We had launched in New York, and then started finding studios in Boston, but hadn't yet launched there. And so it was kind of like, "Let's figure out what this playbook is." And so my first six months I was doing just that. Traveling from market to Market, and they were long ass days. Getting up at 5:00 am, which I'm not a morning person. I have three kids and I still hate the mornings.
But emailing studios, going from Uber to Uber back and forth to different studios dropping in, trying to get the studio owner to talk to me, cold calling in the back of Ubers and then pitching them and ending my day at 8:00 o'clock taking a bootcamp class. Some days I was taking four, five classes, definitely in the best shape of my life. And then up until midnight, or 1:00 o'clock following up with the studios sending them contracts, building pages, and then wash, rinse, repeat doing it again the next day.
Pretty early on I was like I love this is very adrenalin generating for me. And I remember getting my first contract back and I was like, "This is awesome. There's such a fast feedback cycle here, where I'm having such a tangible impact. And I know that when we launch Chicago, I will feel like I built this on blood, sweat and tears." And so different than my experiences in some of these bigger companies. So I did that for a little while and was successful at it. And so I had a couple of just battlefield promotions, where we just needed people to do the work and Mary, the co-founder was like, "I trust you and believe you can just figure it out."
So over my four and a half years there, started as an IC, then was a frontline manager for our sales team. So we hired out maybe 20, 25 people. Then the first six months that I started that just focused on sales, then build out our success team. So how do we manage these studio relationships post activation? And then my last two years there just started acquiring different parts of the company under the supply go to market umbrella. So eventually oversaw sales and success for the entire US. Our B2B marketing and demand Gen team, our onboarding team, and then what I call content and community, but how do we engage our studio partners in a larger and bigger way? It was, yeah, a crazy journey, but really, really fun.
Delian:
And how did you think about success for these various roles? Whether is let's say, on the studio success or as you're starting to build out sales? I imagine sales into these types of studios and keeping them successful is quite different than most other, right? This isn't like enterprise SAS where there's just like contract, people don't really interact most, it is just pure software. I imagine both be like, sales are relatively well process of explaining the value proposition, but then also the ongoing success of keeping these people excited [crosstalk 00:13:40]. Why is this actually valuable to them? How does it actually positively affect their bottom line? I imagine it was complicated as well.
Jennifer Burke:
Yeah. So I guess first I'll talk about the KPIs I was responsible for, and then I can talk about how we actually position back to the studios both on the sales side and the success side. So then just start. I was basically responsible for the supply health in market. And there were a couple of things that were indicators of success for us in terms of supply. The first was just density. So having a ton of studios in each market. And it was a super hyper local marketplace where even if you had a ton of studios in Manhattan, it didn't mean that people in Brooklyn were going to join and so building out the density zip code by zip code.
Second is quality is a very branded marketplace. And so for us, we needed to have the top studios in every single market on the platform in order to have customer acquisition. And you saw that in terms of reservation volume when people join their first month, they tended to go to these anchor studios. Third was availability. So making sure that we had spots at times that people wanted to work out before work and after work and the studios were giving us sufficient inventory. And those were our three metrics of success in terms of launching markets.
And then in terms of how we actually got these studios onto the platform. Our pitch evolved over time. When we started, our value prop really hinged on lead generation. And mind you this was in Groupon was big, and Gilt City, and LivingSocial. So that value prop really resonated with the studios. The problem was that as we pivoted from our cut model to a subscription model, we actually didn't want people to convert to the studios.
And so we had this message to our customers, "Stay on ClassPass." And they were staying on ClassPass, and this message the studios that tried to convert them to full paying members. And that was just a very strong tension between those two sides. So we had to quickly evolve to what does resonate that's also true and many different iterations? But we landed in this place where ClassPass was the studios was an incremental revenue stream. And the reason it was that is because we tapped into two things.
One was we were able to tap into a different demographic than they were able to directly. Younger millennial 20 somethings that weren't willing to pay up for boutique fitness and wanted to hop around. So we're able to expand the TAM for them. And then second is we ended up being a utilization model for these studios where ultimately what they're trying to do, they're similar to Faire that right now is optimize the revenue or profit per square foot. And so for them, it was all about how do I just fill up these classes and maximize the revenue per class. And we enabled them to do that by allocating empty spots to us, and then trying to fill them with our members.
And so that's how we pitch them from a sales perspective. And then on the success side, we had to prove out that those things were true, right? And it was kind of combination of data and storytelling. Data side being like, "Here's how much money we're able to make with ClassPass. And how much incremental revenue we were able to drive." But then there's also a storytelling aspect, because the attention with some of our studios was, "Well, what would this look like if ClassPass didn't exist? Would I actually be making more money? Yes, I'm making more money on ClassPass and off ClassPass in a ClassPass world, but what about if you guys weren't here?"
And so that's where we had to weave the narrative of, "Here's how many people are in their 20s that are coming into your studio. And right now, in your market, it's pretty saturated in terms of supply, and we don't think that demand would have caught up without ClassPass in that world. And that's something that you just have to believe like that de facto alternative." And so sales side was getting them on the value prop, the least the evolved one, and then the success side, being able to actually show them that in data, and then with just good relationship that they built with the success person over time.
Delian:
Yeah, I'm curious, I'd love to dive into a little bit more of that tension and how you navigated that in terms of the ideal value proposition on the consumer side that leads to the best economics and largest growth there Versus I assume that that initial value proposition even if it wasn't like, "Perfectly true," or in your best incentive, it probably converted well, and resonated well and you had to maybe shift to a more difficult and more non-ideal narrative. How did the organization even navigate that? Because sometimes you'll see somewhat dysfunctional marketplaces where you actually have two different narratives that are better for either side of the marketplace. And they actually just decided to never be coherent, and sometimes that can lead to some pretty, let's say damaging decision making by the executives, because both sides have actually very different incentives in what they're looking for. Yeah, I've worked at places like that, it definitely get a little tricky.
Jennifer Burke: Yeah, I think that's what I actually really love about marketplaces is they're quite challenging, right? You have to generate value for both sides of the market and extract it for yourself. And there's this natural tension where consumers are always going to want lower prices, and your supplier is always going to want higher prices. And my job is basically just to navigate that so that we actually had unit economics. And we didn't raise our rates for our studios that high.
I think in terms of how we navigated it, I think there's a philosophical piece which is, now who are we building for, who's actually our core customer? And for us, it was our consumer side. Like we want to make sure that we have the best rates for our customers. And so we always tended to prioritize that side of the market over supply. And then on the supply side, it was what do we actually really need to be successful? And for us, like I said, it was a branded marketplace. So I'd say our secondary customer, it wasn't all of our studios, it was these top brands that drove high percentage of reservations and also helped from a customer acquisition prospective.
And so I'm not going to lie there was a lot of very tense conversations internally about who do we prioritize when, but I think once we had alignment, we're making this decision, this is going to be good for consumers, this is going to be painful for studios, then it became how do we actually execute this effectively? And what's the positioning? And so I'll give an example. One thing our studios absolutely hated but was good for us was they hated when we ran promotions. You can get two weeks free on ClassPass or your first month is $10. They were like, "I can't compete with that, I can't do that. I don't have the capital or resources to run a promotion for $10. And so you're just taking all of my customers now they're becoming ClassPass customers. And there's just cannibalization that's happening in the market as a result." And that was very difficult, as you might imagine to deal with on the studio side. But ultimately, it got both maybe some of their existing members, but new people into the market as well.
And that was the narrative that we had to paint. For them, it's like, "Look how many additional members we're able to get and how much revenue we're able to drive after we run a promotion like this?" And so I think that what I learned from that is you just have to be intentional and be really honest with yourself around who are you prioritizing when? And how do you make sure that that decision is really clear to the other side of the market that's going to hurt from it? And just being honest. At least that was my philosophy around it. And I think it was relatively effective.
Delian:
Sounds yeah, sounds like tricky, tricky tension to navigate. And then one last question on ClassPass before we start to dive into a bit more of your work at Faire. How is the ideal segment of studios that you guys pursued changed over time? It sounds like towards the end it started to seem like the more enterprise large studios were more of the focus, why did that come to be? And then how do they let's say company, your team, sales team in particular have to adjust around that, if that's our goal to become the higher priority?
Jennifer Burke:
Yeah, so I think in the beginning it was, not this is a strategy, but the spray and pray strategy of just reach out to anyone and try to get them on board, any sort of genre, any type of studio, doesn't matter how big or small. And that's what got us started is we just needed a sufficient number of studios to at least have a product to then go out to sell to consumers. But I actually, think pretty quickly we realized that if you didn't have those top studios, it was hard to acquire and then people would churn because they wanted these shiny names. We never got SoulCycle, but like a SoulCycle. I think that's probably a name that resonates with people.
And so pretty quickly, we shifted. But over time, I think the other thing that we realized was people just have cycles and fitness, right? Where they're really motivated to work out. And so we acquired so many people in January as you might imagine, and then they get injured, or they get pregnant, or they get tired. And so there's just natural attrition in the business. And so what we did pivot to from a supply perspective is, we need to complement fitness with other things that people can do during these down times. And so that we can cycle through these things, these highs and lows of working out with them.
And so maybe two years into my time at ClassPass, we started to actually onboard wellness providers. So you could use your credits at ClassPass to get a massage or to get your nails done, or to get your hair done given that it was a very similar demo of people we had, like I said, these young 20 year old woman who also probably wanted to get discounted prices on these other services. And I think that really helped from just an attrition perspective of just making sure we retain people when they're really motivated to work out, and maybe when they're less so.
Delian:
And so, yeah, I'd love to understand how you wrap things up a ClassPass and discovered this Faire opportunity, and the role that you have there, and somehow seems quite similar to what you worked on in ClassPass and that sort of Ed Faire similarly, the supply is the product and acquiring that apply and making it happy is a critical component to it. Yeah, I would love to understand how you found such a perfect fit for your skill set or maybe vice versa, how Faire found you?
Jennifer Burke:
Yeah. So I'll first talk about just my decision to leave ClassPass and then how I found Faire. So I had been at ClassPass for four and a half years. By the time I left, my team was pretty big, was like 150 people, the vast majority of them were in sales. And I just felt like I was ready for change. I felt comfortable and a little bit complacent in my role. And I had only worked at one startup. I was like, "I want to see if it's just ClassPass or if it's the startup world that really excites me." And so I was ready to leave.
And then the second factor that weighed into my decision is I had just an incredible team underneath me, like really an all star team that I had worked with basically my entire time there. But I think I just got to this point where I was like, "if I stay, I'm actually inhibiting their growth. And it's time for them to step up to you." And sometimes you outgrow startups or startups outgrow you. And I was just at that place. And so that's what led to my decision to leave.
Actually did not go to Faire right away. I wasn't sure if I wanted to stay on the sales and success path, I was thinking five to 10 years ahead. Like I would like to be a COO at a series C, or beyond company at some point in my career. And so how do I actually get there? And at the time, I thought, "Oh, maybe I need to do something that's more internal facing and more internal apps versus customer facing." And so I took a detour for a hot second and went to a masterclass where I had negotiated this like full time contractor role in business operations that was the more internal facing. And it was great. I loved the company, I really loved the team. But really early on I was like, "No, this isn't for me. I really miss that adrenaline and I prefer to go back into sales and success roles."
But while I was there I was having conversations with a bunch of people, and two different people introduce me to Faire. One was someone that was there, working there already and she knew my experience at ClassPass. The second was actually one of my bosses at ClassPass, who was thinking of investing in Faire. And so I was introd by two different people, and I was like, "Okay, probably should meet with this company as well." And again, it was just a Kismet meeting where I felt they hit all of the buckets for me. The role was perfect. It was on the go to market side overseeing sales and success in a marketplace business.
So I felt I could start day one, make an impact, but also continue to grow and learn because it was a little bit further along than where I'd started at ClassPass. The team was incredible, very aligned with the mission. And I felt the team had that rare combination of being incredibly smart and strategic, but also quite humble, and looking to hire people that were smarter than them in specific functions. And then sometimes I think that's really difficult to find, and they really valued diversity of thought at the top, and great ideas can come from anywhere. So I was like, "All right, culturally I'm aligned." And then from a business model perspective, they knew how to balance growth and sustainability. And I felt there's a path to profitability here. And it's a big market, and if we can tap into it, and grow it and take share, this is also financially really exciting opportunity.
Delian:
And I'm curious in comparison to ClassPass which again, as you said, similar marketplace dynamics, similar role, what were some of the things that immediately translated on day one versus I imagine, they're obviously aspects of Faire in that on both sides you actually have enterprise or SMBs on both sides of the marketplace versus there isn't really like a there's a bit of a consumer business, but not much of like a consumer business. And there's also obviously this financial services component to it as well, which is obviously very unique for most marketplaces. So I'm curious there, what translated immediately versus what took a little bit of orientation to start to realize how different it was than ClassPass?
Jennifer Burke:
Yeah, I think what translated immediately was the customer persona or profile of both the brands and the retailers. Vast majority of them were SMBs. And a lot of them, on both the brands and the retailer side there, the owner and the CMO, and the CFO, and also answering customer support emails. And so we're just stretched incredibly thin. And what I found at ClassPass, and I think resonated at Faire was a lot of them make decisions with both right brain and left brain where they're evaluating the ROI of this. Like what is the upside? How much time do I have to put into this? But also evaluating whether the company aligns with their values and vision? And do I trust this person that I'm talking to on the phone or that I'm meeting in person? And do I trust this company? Because they have just finite time in their day and are doing a million things. And so I think I had a lot of intuition already on how to pitch and position various things when I joined Faire.
In terms of what the differences were, I think two big ones. One, like I mentioned, ClassPass was a very hyper local marketplace. And we had to win in every single market. And there was a ton of competition. And so that was a little distracting or at least like it just required a lot of resources at the time. And because ClassPass you don't need not necessarily a lot of capital started, there was just a ton of little guys in every single market and with Faire there was a lot of competitors but they were so much farther behind. And we had so much supply already on the platform when I joined. And so I think that was pretty liberating to be like, "Okay, we actually don't need to be distracted, we can just focus on the roadmap and our own strategy."
And I think also a little bit less of a branded marketplace. Like there are some big brands that of course, we want to get on the market, but no one of them it's like a super high percentage of GMV. So that was also a little bit less stressful in terms of the marketplace piece.
Delian:
There's no soul cycle.
Jennifer Burke:
There's no soul cycle, exactly. The elusive unicorn that never joined.
Delian:
Yeah, I guess part of the benefit with Faire is like your equivalent of SoulCycle, like these large brands. Even if you don't have them, it doesn't necessarily cause churn on the demand side, because the demand has alternative paths to getting them and are totally fine continuing to stay within the platform from supply you do have versus imagine. For consumers, it's a little bit more of like one or the other. Like if they really want SoulCycle, they're going to do that, they're not going to go through SoulCycle and ClassPass versus [crosstalk 00:31:03]
Jennifer Burke:
This is a subscription model. So you're putting up capital in both places. Like I have to pay X amount of money on ClassPass and then pay X amount of money outside of ClassPass where here it's more true like ecommerce marketplace where it's much more of a transactional model.
Delian:
And then yeah, you have to understand one of the things it's funny to hear you talk about this dollars per square foot, like customer success. Because it's something that got hammered into the team in some ways in the early board meetings. I say it was probably maybe the sixth or seventh board meeting a year and a half in where I was like, "Okay, this seems like a great product, but you guys actually need to start thinking about wheelchair expansion. And the way to justify that is to show that you guys are actually succeeding for your end customers, i.e, optimizing revenue per square foot. And so I'd love to dive into that. [inaudible 00:31:48]So obviously, it's on the retailer side, maybe you could tell me a little bit about your customer success on the brand side. But I'd love to understand on the retailer side, how you guys think about calculating success for a particular retailer, how deeply you dive into understanding whether or not it's working for someone?
Jennifer Burke:
Yeah, I would say just to start that we're in the process of this now. So I wouldn't say we've perfected it. But for our retailers, what matters to them, right, is that they're turning over inventory really quickly at the retail prices. And so they don't have to mark down inventory. And they don't have inventory just sitting on their floor that's not clearing, because that's expensive to them. And so those are the things that we are focused on. Right now we don't have a retailer sales that is a success team but we did and those were the conversations that we had become sunsetted once COVID hit, probably will reemerge again.
But what we focus on right are benefits to the retailers are they have met 60 terms. So from a capital perspective, they don't have to pay for inventory before they can sell it. So that frees them up to take some more growth bets. And then they get free returns on their first order with a brand, right? So they can trial out, maybe I could increase myself here by trying X brand versus the Y brand. Is that true or not or do I want to go back to Y brand?
One of the things that I think we are focusing on in the future, is how do we actually provide more analytics to retailers to show them that we're doing that versus just they talk to a retailer success person or they talk to customer support. And they're again, storytelling but for them that this is ultimately the goal.
And we focused more, at least historically on the brand product side, and how do we provide analytics to the brands versus to retailers. But I think when we can do that, and quantify for them how much money they're making or incremental money they're making by being on Faire, and then start to provide recommendations to them of brands that could increase sell through even further. That's what makes the marketplace even stickier, right, on the demand side. I'm very excited I think to start to pursue that even further in a much more productize scalable way.
Delian:
You touched on it at the very beginning, but half your time at Faire has been during COVID, and obviously local retail has definitely had some dramatic effects of that and you guys seem to have navigated it quite, quite well. In relation to yeah, the work that you're doing, can you talk a little bit about yeah, it sounds like particular teams obviously got sunset when that wasn't particularly relevant but may come back up versus what were areas you started having to navigate? There were maybe new segments that you guys had to pursue because of this COVID reality?
Jennifer Burke:
Yeah, so when COVID first hit, I think we were all quite terrified to be honest. Maybe I shouldn't say that on this podcast, but we've recovered really well. So I think it's okay.
Delian:
As an investor, we were too. So we glad the team was terrified.
Jennifer Burke:
Yeah, but all the stores were closed. And then because we do financing, we had so much capital at risk, right? And we didn't know if these retailers were going to be able to pay us back. Or if we're going to get a ton of returns because they couldn't actually sell that inventory. And so I remember in the early days, we were like, "Every single transaction that's happening just adds to that net exposure. And like, do we want this GMV or not?" So very quickly we turned off all of our growth engines. We stopped reaching out to brands and telling them to refer retailers, we stopped doing paid acquisition.
And then something really surprising and comforting happened which is, we saw a pretty strong resurgence in our business six weeks to two months after everything was shut down. And what we learned is these retailers, they're the startups compared to these big corporations. They're really agile, and they can pivot quite quickly. And so many of them launch online channels or curbside delivery in order to still connect with our customers. And they were able to do that much more quickly than some of these big behemoths companies. And so we started to see the GMV pick up and go back to almost close to what we had originally planned. And then the question was, "Okay, how do we actually take advantage of this momentum?"
And our competitors aren't really these online channels, our competitors are a lot of these offline channels that no brands and retailers use today. So two big examples would be trade shows where brands go, they pay for booths and they bring all their merchandise, and they try to connect with retailers in person. And second are sales reps. So people that literally go door to door, driving with merchandise in the back of their car and trying to get retailers to buy from their portfolio brands. And both of those things weren't happening, right? So we had these tailwinds to our business of now people are actually they have the demand, they've figured out how to tap into the demand, how can we make sure that they think of Faire for their supply.
Some of that happened organically. But the things we did that were intentional is we started back up on growth, so turned back on paid, turned back on our success engine, which focuses on getting brands to refer retailers. And then we actually had some virtual trade shows, where we marketed them to our retailers, we got our brands on board to make sure they had their full catalogs live, got them to discount some of their merchandise and had these two or three day events where retailers could shop at discounted prices. And it was pretty incredible to see I think, I won't say the exact numbers but their GMV spikes during those days. And we were nervous, like everbody's just pulling forward or pulling back GMV and it looked like it was incremental. And so I think we were able to build share of wallet on the brand side and on the retailer side. Through this and I think I've put the building blocks in place to maintain that momentum even when things go back to normal.
Delian:
One other unique aspect that I really love about Faire is that, yeah, there is this financial component that makes it net beneficial for people to bring on pre-existing relationships onto the platform, because now all of a sudden as a retailer makers that I already had a relationship with can now offer me net 90, net 60, whatever terms Faire offers. I'm curious how that affects the sales and customer success strategy or how that plays into the value proposition, they end up giving them that isn't just the supply being the product but there's also interesting financial services layer to it as well.
Jennifer Burke:
Yeah. So on the sales side, we talk about our value props in two ways. One is this opportunity to connect with net new retailers and grow your business that way. And the second is streamlining your business through Faire. And in many ways also increasing your revenue because you could potentially increase conversion and your sell through by offering these terms to your retailer base.
So both of those things I think resonated particularly, I think with companies that don't offer terms at all. There are some brands that are bigger that offer terms or they work through third parties to do that. But for the brands that don't, it's a huge value prop.
On the success side, we actually comp our success team on the number of retailers that they can generate through their book of business. And so that is their primary goal. And it's good for us both from a retailer acquisition standpoint, but also an indicator of share of wallet. And so we want these brands to be doing all of their business on Faire, all of their online business and all of their offline business. And so they focus on educating them on that value prop, but also helping them actually execute on it. And so educating them on the different tools and ways they can invite retailers.
Now, if they invite retailers and they don't necessarily convert, making sure that they're following up with those retailers. And so there is a very strong success component of that flywheel. And then of course, product and marketing. Like we talked about it an onboarding process. There's a lot of marketing email triggers reminding them to invite, but the success team is really focused on the highest potential accounts. And then those areas that I would say are a little bit more tricky to communicate in product and marketing.
And so they'll reach out to brands that maybe haven't invited in 90 days that are churn risks for at least that that tool or platform. And it's been incredibly successful and I think brands see the value because they reach out to and ordered in 90 days. They give them terms and then they order on Faire. And obviously the zenith is they want to be able to streamline all of their business in one place, and we're trying to help them do that.
Delian:
And if you have anything to say unique position where you've gotten to do a very similar role but at two different places, I'd love to understand what would you say are the differences in ideal, like personality types or fits for either a customer success or IC salesperson so that both companies? What is that ideal profile look like at ClassPass versus what is the difference versus that versus an ideal sales I see at Faire? I'd love if you could articulate why and what causes those differences?
Jennifer Burke:
Yeah. So on the similarity side, there are a couple of things that we look for that are the same. I think the first is just the hustle and persistence. In both of the sales motions are more inside sales, high volume, high velocity, where you're calling a bunch of people every day. And so you need people who have that grit, and you know, five, 10, 20 times a day they're still going to go out there the next day and reach out to the additional people and call those people back in a few months. So I think that one definitely is the same thing.
Second, was this empathy piece. And I think that's particularly important in these marketplace businesses, as I mentioned around the customer persona. And so the ability to be persistent, but not pushy, and also paint the vision for the customer and not just talk about the features but also the benefits. And so testing for that too. I think what I didn't hire for as much at ClassPass and should have, I think I learned that over time and now we do at Faire, I think there's two pieces.
One is coachability. And we actually, in our interview process will give feedback and see how they react. And I think, my bias is I'd much prefer to hire someone who's a little bit more green, but open to learning than someone who has a great track record but they want to do it their way. And so testing for that in the interview process has been really helpful. And then I think the second is Faire right now is in the spotlight, it's a sexy company. And a lot of people are just trying to get their foot in the door. You'll see these people who've applied for three or four different jobs and they're quite different from one another.
And so one thing that we also test for is just the desire to do the job. And why do they actually want to come to Faire. Sometimes you hear like, "I'm just so excited about retail, and I really want to be on a rocket ship." And it's like, "Oh, well, you have to at the end of the day do sales." And so you want to hear people who are excited about connecting with these customers and have a passion for these small businesses and providing them technology and tools to succeed. That's what you want to hear. And so I think I've been better, I wouldn't say there's a ton of difference. I've been better about refining that profile of person over time.
Delian:
And yes, last question for the podcast. I'd love to understand your advice you'd give to somebody that's maybe where you were seven years ago, maybe somebody who's done a year or two of consulting, has a broad understanding of variety different businesses but wants to dive into startups. What would be your recommendation for sort of, you didn't necessarily know that you're going to love sales, but clearly seem to have quite some aptitude at it. What would your recommendation be to yourself from seven, eight years ago in terms of how to get into the world of startups and eventually discover the thing that you truly love?
Jennifer Burke:
Terms of how to get into startups, I think networking is just part of any job process these days, and not being afraid to reach out to people even strangers on LinkedIn. I do that to this day of trying to build my network of mentors and other people in the space. Like, "Oh, we know X, Y, Z person in common, would you be willing to connect on a Zoom or even get a coffee?" So I think doing that and doing the research of different companies that are out there and being really intentional about what types of companies you want and why versus reaching out to people and expecting them to give you the answer.
And then in terms of just how to succeed or navigate. I think the best thing that I did was to just let go of my ego when I started at ClassPass and just do every job that was needed. And really have the attitude that there's nothing above me and there's nothing below me. And I truly did everything like I built pages and onboarding, I wrote marketing emails and wrote blogs, I did the sales pitches, turn escalations, big negotiations. And I think if you just go in with that attitude that I'll do what's asked of me and also come to the table with things that I think the business needs that aren't asked me, you will find your niche and also people will take notice. And they'll be like, "This person's great, and I want to find a path for them at this company." And so I think that's my best advice is just do it all, enjoy the ride and be gritty and let go of your ego.
Delian:
Yeah, letting go of egos, the great analogy. I always like to say like, at the end of day if you're CEO, you're the janitor. Like the buck stops with you. There's no work that's below you because unfortunately, [crosstalk 00:45:37]
Jennifer Burke:
I like that, I'm going to steal that.
Delian:
Well, Jennifer, yeah, really appreciate you taking the time to hop on the podcast today. It was a great conversation.
Jennifer Burke:
Yeah. Thanks for having me, I really enjoyed it.
Delian:
Thanks for listening everyone. If you'd like to support the podcast, please sign up for a paid subject subscription, which we use to pay for transcripts, mics and other improvements. If you have any comments or feedback on what kinds of questions I should ask, who should come on the show or anything else, please do let me know. Have a great rest of your day.