Technology

The RealReal founder Julie Wainwright has a startling new memoir

Julie Wainwright has taken two companies public, a pretty incredible feat by any standard. Yet in her new memoir, Time to Get Real, she offers readers something even more valuable: a blunt look at the messy realities of leadership. Wainwright shares the kinds of tough truths that many high-achieving CEOs can relate to but rarely discuss publicly, including the aftermath of what many would consider her first major setback, which was shutting down Pets.com during the 2000 market crash.

If you’re of a certain age, you definitely remember it. The online pet supplies startup had become instantly recognizable thanks to its memorable sock puppet mascot and catchy slogan, “Because pets can’t drive.” But what seemed like just a fleeting moment in the dot-com bubble’s burst would cast a shadow over Wainwright’s career for nearly a decade. “When I would talk to recruiters, it was like, ‘No one’s going to hire you anymore,’” Wainwright said in an interview with this editor earlier this week.

It came as a shock, given that Wainwright’s career trajectory initially seemed unstoppable. After cutting her teeth at Clorox, she rose through tech companies in the ‘90s when female leadership in the sector was exceedingly rare. As CEO of Berkeley Systems and later the online video store Reel.com, she worked “tons of hours” but was happy and, by her telling, succeeding, including growing Reel.com’s revenue from $3 million to $25 million — a time during which the company was sold to Hollywood Video. “I just operated better without a boss,” she said.

Then came the collapse that would have permanently derailed many careers. In 2000, Wainwright took Pets.com public, only to shut it down later that same year during the dot-com bubble burst. The professional blow was exacerbated by a personal one: she says that on the very same day she informed employees of the company’s closure, her husband asked for a divorce.

“My work is gone, I’m getting a divorce, and I don’t have children,” Wainwright, then 42, recalls thinking as she faced what felt like total life collapse. Making matters worse, the media coverage was “incredibly negative and intrusive,” to the point that she says days after the company’s closure, reporters showed up at her doorstep.

Wainwright describes what followed as a kind of long winter, where she was only offered roles leading turnaround efforts at failing companies. But that crossroads led to a remarkable second act. In 2010, she founded The RealReal, helping in the process to pioneer the luxury consignment market online. Like a lot of founders, Wainwright first set up the company out of her own home, but it soon outgrew her living room, and today, it processes many hundreds of thousands of different luxury items each month that it aims to sell within 90 days out of its more than 1.2 million square feet of warehouse space and operations centers. It’s also a publicly traded company; in her second trip to Wall Street, in 2019, Wainwright took the outfit through the traditional IPO process.

Unfortunately, this triumphant comeback has its own harsh chapter. In 2022, Wainwright was abruptly pushed out of The RealReal by board members she had recommended – another twist she doesn’t shy away from sharing. Instead, she names names in the book, and earlier this week, she described the move as a “power play” by an investor who “didn’t get his money out of the company and thought he could run the company better.”

Wainwright — who fully supports the company’s current CEO (she was the company’s first hire) — is still pissed off. She noted in conversation that “no founder is ever going to say they need to be shot and removed,” and it’s that honestly that makes the book – and Wainwright herself — so refreshing. In the corporate world, where people often spin narratives to make themselves look bulletproof, Wainwright is a straight shooter; if she doesn’t like something, she isn’t going to hold back her punches. If someone spins the story differently than she sees it, she’ll call it out. Where she messes up, she says so.

Even better about this memoir — in this reader’s opinion — is Wainwright’s ability to offer not just personal revelations but practical wisdom. She walks readers through her decision to bonus her sales staff a certain way, and shares her learnings about a leadership-evaluation quadrant she gleaned from McKinsey executives, including the realization she had hired one of the worst types: a “dumb aggressive” exec, meaning, in her words, someone whose “need to bully and coerce and to be on top supersede their abilities.”

There’s also an interesting new chapter unfolding. Wainwright is continuing her entrepreneurial journey with Ahara, a nutrition company that’s developing personalized dietary recommendations based on genetics and individual needs.

You can find our full conversation here, via TechCrunch’s StrictlyVC Download podcast. In the meantime, if you’re interested in a compelling read that’s both memoir and manual, offering founders something far more valuable than idealized success stories, you can pick up the book here.

Said Wainwright when we spoke, “I personally wrote it for entrepreneurs to give them a realistic view and hopefully inspire them and, you know, maybe they’ll think twice and not make the mistakes I made.”

Technology

The Case for Custom eLearning Platforms: Why Organizations Are Making the Switch

aloe vera plant on grey pot on table with MacBook Pro and iPad

The corporate eLearning market has exploded in recent years, growing over 800% since 2000. As the demand for eLearning continues to accelerate, more and more organizations are finding that off-the-shelf solutions cannot keep pace with their training needs. This has led many companies to make the switch to custom-built eLearning platforms tailored specifically for their requirements.

There are several key reasons driving the demand for customized eLearning tools:

Greater Flexibility and Scalability

Generic eLearning software packages often impose rigid constraints that limit their ability to adapt to an organization’s evolving needs. Meanwhile, the “one-size-fits-all” approach fails to support the personalized learning critical for employee development. Custom platforms provide flexibility to add and modify features to match ever-changing business goals. As companies scale training across global workforces, custom solutions built on cloud infrastructure can scale seamlessly to handle growing demand.

Deeper Integration Across Systems

Smooth integration with existing HR, LMS, and other business systems is critical for optimizing training workflows. However, off-the-shelf tools rarely integrate well, creating data and process siloes. Custom platforms can tightly integrate role-based learning paths with core business applications, sync user profiles, enable single sign-on, and more. This level of integration catalyzes more impactful training function.

Better Data and Analytics

Generic software severely limits access to data insights that drive improvement. Custom platforms unlock a trove of analytics on content consumption, learner progression, platform adoption, and real-time feedback. Integrated analytics dashboards and APIs allow businesses to derive deep visibility across the learner lifecycle. These insights help continuously enhance learner experience, target development gaps, and demonstrate direct training ROI.

Enhanced Learner Engagement

For modern learners accustomed to consumer-grade digital experiences, poor platform usability quickly erodes engagement. Custom designs allow companies to incorporate familiar features from popular apps and websites while optimizing for their audience. Adaptive learning approaches further personalize content to individual styles and needs. With modular component architecture, custom platforms stay on the cutting edge of new modalities like AR/ VR to captivate learners.

Brand and Culture Alignment

Off-the-shelf tools impose a generic and often disruptive experience that clashes with existing brand identity and culture. In contrast, custom platforms allow organizations to carry over familiar styling, voice, and workflow patterns. Consistency in experience preserves brand recognition while smoother onboarding leads to wider adoption across all employee groups. Over time, the platform can evolve alongside cultural changes as well.

While custom elearning tools require greater upfront investment, for enterprise training needs, the long-term benefits far outweigh the costs. The ability to mold platforms to current and future needs results in greater leverage from learning spend.

As businesses demand ever-more from their learning technology, custom solutions provide the agility needed for true scale. Rather than forcing training functions into the constraints of generic software, custom elearning development keeps the focus on nurturing talent and capabilities. For any organization looking to drive workforce transformation through learning, custom elearning represents the way forward.

Technology

Pintarnya raises $16.7M to power jobs and financial services in Indonesia

Pintarnya, an Indonesian employment platform that goes beyond job matching by offering financial services along with full-time and side-gig opportunities, said it has raised a $16.7 million Series A round.

The funding was led by Square Peg with participation from existing investors Vertex Venture Southeast Asia & India and East Ventures.

Ghirish Pokardas, Nelly Nurmalasari, and Henry Hendrawan founded Pintarnya in 2022 to tackle two of the biggest challenges Indonesians face daily: earning enough and borrowing responsibly.

“Traditionally, mass workers in Indonesia find jobs offline through job fairs or word of mouth, with employers buried in paper applications and candidates rarely hearing back. For borrowing, their options are often limited to family/friend or predatory lenders with harsh collection practices,” Henry Hendrawan, co-founder of Pintarnya, told TechCrunch. “We digitize job matching with AI to make hiring faster and we provide workers with safer, healthier lending options — designed around what they can reasonably afford, rather than pushing them deeper into debt.”

Around 59% of Indonesia’s 150 million workforce is employed in the informal sector, highlighting the difficulties these workers encounter in accessing formal financial services because they lack verifiable income and official employment documentation.

Pintarnya tackles this challenge by partnering with asset-backed lenders to offer secured loans, using collateral such as gold, electronics, or vehicles, Hendrawan added.

Since its seed funding in 2022, the platform currently serves over 10 million job seeker users and 40,000 employers nationwide. Its revenue has increased almost fivefold year-over-year and expects to reach break-even by the end of the year, Hendrawn noted. Pintarnya primarily serves users aged 21 to 40, most of whom have a high school education or a diploma below university level. The startup aims to focus on this underserved segment, given the large population of blue-collar and informal workers in Indonesia.

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“Through the journey of building employment services, we discovered that our users needed more than just jobs — they needed access to financial services that traditional banks couldn’t provide,” said Hendrawan. “We digitize job matching with AI to make hiring faster and we provide workers with safer, healthier lending options — designed around what they can reasonably afford, rather than pushing them deeper into debt.”

Pintarnya Founders Press Kit — image credits: Pintarnya (Founders of Pintarnya Ghirish Pokardas, Nelly Nurmalasari, and Henry Hendrawan)

While Indonesia already has job platforms like JobStreet, Kalibrr, and Glints, these primarily cater to white-collar roles, which represent only a small portion of the workforce, according to Hendrawan. Pintarnya’s platform is designed specifically for blue-collar workers, offering tailored experiences such as quick-apply options for walk-in interviews, affordable e-learning on relevant skills, in-app opportunities for supplemental income, and seamless connections to financial services like loans.

The same trend is evident in Indonesia’s fintech sector, which similarly caters to white-collar or upper-middle-class consumers. Conventional credit scoring models for loans, which rely on steady monthly income and bank account activity, often leave blue-collar workers overlooked by existing fintech providers, Hendrawan explained.

When asked about which fintech services are most in demand, Hendrawan mentioned, “Given their employment status, lending is the most in-demand financial service for Pintarnya’s users today. We are planning to ‘graduate’ them to micro-savings and investments down the road through innovative products with our partners.”

The new funding will enable Pintarnya to strengthen its platform technology and broaden its financial service offerings through strategic partnerships. With most Indonesian workers employed in blue-collar and informal sectors, the co-founders see substantial growth opportunities in the local market. Leveraging their extensive experience in managing businesses across Southeast Asia, they are also open to exploring regional expansion when the timing is right.

“Our vision is for Pintarnya to be the everyday companion that empowers Indonesians to not only make ends meet today, but also plan, grow, and upgrade their lives tomorrow … In five years, we see Pintarnya as the go-to super app for Indonesia’s workers, not just for earning income, but as a trusted partner throughout their life journey,” Hendrawan said. “We want to be the first stop when someone is looking for work, a place that helps them upgrade their skills, and a reliable guide as they make financial decisions.”

Technology

OpenAI warns against SPVs and other ‘unauthorized’ investments

In a new blog post, OpenAI warns against “unauthorized opportunities to gain exposure to OpenAI through a variety of means,” including special purpose vehicles, known as SPVs.

“We urge you to be careful if you are contacted by a firm that purports to have access to OpenAI, including through the sale of an SPV interest with exposure to OpenAI equity,” the company writes. The blog post acknowledges that “not every offer of OpenAI equity […] is problematic” but says firms may be “attempting to circumvent our transfer restrictions.”

“If so, the sale will not be recognized and carry no economic value to you,” OpenAI says.

Investors have increasingly used SPVs (which pool money for one-off investments) as a way to buy into hot AI startups, prompting other VCs to criticize them as a vehicle for “tourist chumps.”

Business Insider reports that OpenAI isn’t the only major AI company looking to crack down on SPVs, with Anthropic reportedly telling Menlo Ventures it must use its own capital, not an SPV, to invest in an upcoming round.