For nearly two decades Jenn Hyman and Natalie Gordon have been on parallel tracks. Hyman cofounded the clothing rental service Rent the Runway 18 years ago and took it public, before stepping down about two months ago. Gordon, for 15 years, has been building the baby registry service Babylist, which has quietly come to dominate its category and is on track for $1 billion in revenue and an IPO.
“There’s very few people who can truly understand the journey that I’ve been on over the past decade-and-a-half of my life, and Natalie’s one of them,” Hyman says.
Now, the pair’s paths are officially intersecting. Gordon will step down as CEO of Babylist and Hyman, in her first post-Rent the Runway role, will take over as CEO, effective Sept. 9. Gordon will become executive chair of Babylist.
It’s a rare CEO transition between founders—and especially between female founders of separate businesses.
Gordon and Hyman only met for the first time last fall, and Hyman joined the Babylist board in January. When she announced her departure from Rent the Runway in May, Hyman says she hadn’t decided on accepting this job yet. “The decision to leave Rent the Runway was the most enormous decision of my life, and it was a separate decision,” she says. “I knew that I’m a builder, there was no concept in my mind that there wasn’t going to be a next chapter.”
While both Gordon and Hyman were coming up as founders at the same time, they had very different experiences. Rent the Runway was a media darling—a necessity for a consumer brand that was inventing the new category of clothing rental and had to persuade women to try it out. Hyman was only the 30th woman to take a company public when it started trading in 2021. But the clothing rental service was hit hard by the pandemic and also became a target of sorts, with much attention on the about 80% drop in its stock price since its IPO. Hyman spent years overhauling Rent the Runway’s originally capital-intensive business model, but with a host of new competitors in the category it created, Rent the Runway hasn’t quite recaptured its glory days.
Babylist, meanwhile, was quiet compared to other startups or female-founded businesses. Gordon was a former Amazon software engineer who at the beginning coded every line herself and didn’t naturally gravitate towards the limelight. The business became extremely well-known among new parents, but didn’t bother building much brand recognition with other demographics.
About 18 months ago, Gordon decided she was ready to find a successor. But Babylist went on to have one of its best years ever. It’s profitable and on track for $1 billion in revenue this year, and IPO rumors started to swirl. That’s about three times the size of Rent the Runway, which did $330 million in revenue last year. “It actually felt like this gift—I’m going to be able to find someone really great for this next stage,” Gordon says.
Gordon chose to step down as CEO before taking the company public herself. “I feel very satisfied,” she says of her achievements building Babylist to this point.
Babylist has already expanded from the basic registry, with new products including Babylist Health, which provides breast pumps via insurance plans, and Babylist Money, a financial services product built around the launch of Trump Accounts, allowing family and friends to contribute to a child’s investment account. Hyman sees even more opportunity “from pregnancy through when a child goes to college.” She has her eye on M&A; all she’ll say for now is she’s looking outside of ecommerce. Gordon, from her seat as chair, will focus on Babylist’s AI strategy.
Hyman is looking forward to building a business that is not struggling with customer acquisition; customers in the Babylist demographic often visit the platform as many as 100 times a year. “This is one of the most interesting customers because the parent is on the precipice of every major financial decision,” Hyman says. “Where am I going to live? Who do I want to be my new community? How am I going to start saving for the future and think about my financial health? How am I going to think about my own personal health, my child’s personal health?”
Hyman had a cofounder at Rent the Runway, but Jenny Fleiss left years ago and Hyman has been running the business solo since then. She’s excited to work as CEO to Gordon’s chair.
Babylist has 300 corporate employees and another 300 working in its showrooms and fulfillment centers. It’s a fully remote and distributed corporate workforce—a huge difference from Rent the Runway’s in-person culture.
Hyman gets to take over a business that’s playing offense, not defense as she was for so long at Rent the Runway. “Right now, Babylist is on top of the world,” she says. “There was a 10-year period where Rent the Runway was on top of the world. … You are constantly dealing with cycles of growth, adversity, and transformation. Businesses go through cycles, and being a leader is having the resilience to lead through all those phases.”
Stepping into a new business so soon after leaving the one she built, Hyman wants to prove what founders can do. Gordon and her board chose Hyman—not a professional CEO type—to take over.
“Founder-led companies can evolve without losing what makes them special,” Hyman says, “and two founders coming together is a powerful force to be reckoned with.”
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