The Next Web NYC - Piera Gelardi, Refinery29

Hello everyone! Welcome back, welcome back! Welcome back. So if you are standing at the door, race in, there's still spots here at the front. Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to know who here got some coffee and is feeling a little bit more awake than before? Excellent, that's quite a few people. And who here met somebody interesting? And who here caught up with an old friend? Good, there's some good old friends here. Excellent. So, come on, come in. Yes, you at the door. Come on, run. We're starting again. So, our next speaker, she's the co-founder and creative director of Refinery29. Her favorite thing to do to de-stress is karaoke and dance a little bit, which was what we were doing next to the stage, if you were paying any attention. She is... Her motto is Forever Forward. She's also an expert at scaling up businesses and keeping company culture, which is extremely important. Ladies and gentlemen, her favorite hobby is also creating very elaborate costumes. So, if we're lucky, we might see some in the slides. So pay attention. Let's welcome her up on stage, Piera Gilardi! Thank you. Thank you guys so much for having me. So, I want to start out in the way that I start out all brainstorms at Refinery29. So, if I can ask you all to stand up from your chairs. Love it. Okay. And now, we're just going to shake it out and give a big, loud... Ready? On your mark, get set... I feel better. How do you guys feel? So, I start... You can sit. So, I start things out that way because I think it's great to open up a brainstorm with some energy, with an energy cleanse. And because it's fun to disarm people, to bring playfulness into the workplace, and to have fun in what you do. So, today I want to talk to you about some ways that I've remixed leadership. Through the power of listening, through staying true to myself, and through taking a stance on things that I believe in. And I want to talk to you through how I've been influenced from an early age into building our business and in my own leadership style by taking in input and inspiration. So, I grew up in a small town in Maine. And my family's favorite pastime, and these are some of the costumes that were mentioned. This mom and dad, me and my brother, we all love getting into costume. So, growing up in my family, our favorite pastime was every night at the dinner table, we would sit around the kitchen table, mom, dad, my brother Pepin, and I. And we would brainstorm business ideas. Because that's what you do when you have small children. And it would be this really open forum. So, my brother would say, I want to build a teddy bear factory. And we'd say, oh. We love that idea, Pepin. And dad would ask, how would the teddy bears that you would make be different from the ones that you have in your room? And he'd answer. And mom would say, who else do you think would want these teddy bears? And so, through a series of questions and volleying ideas back and forth, we would develop the idea for Pepin's Teddy Bear Factory. And I have a picture of the Teddy Bear Factory that he had. And I have a picture of the Teddy Bear Factory that he designed in Mac paint just to date us as a family. And through this, I learned that business takes great imagination. That work is fueled by passion. And that any idea can be an amazing one if you just give it a little TLC. So, on one side, I had dad. A serial entrepreneur. Fiercely creative. Someone who sees a world of possibility and ideas. On the other side, mom. A strong feminist, a social worker, and someone deeply embedded in helping her community. She was my shero. And bedtime at my house was mom reading to us religiously. And our favorite reading material were feminist fairy tales. So, from a very early age, I had fierce female friends. I had fierce female protagonists ruling my dreams. And I was a child of the 90s. So, here's a photo of me at my junior prom with my girl dates. And as a teenager, I didn't rebel so much against my parents. Because as you can tell, they're pretty cool. But I did rebel against the patriarchy. I was obsessed with riot girl culture. Bands like Bikini Kill gave me a window into this world of feminism. Where feminism meant having an amazing girl gang around you. Creating badass artwork. And doing it your own way. And the walls of my room as a teenager were plastered with the pages of Sassy magazine. It was this alternate teen magazine filled with cool girls that you could imagine hanging out with. It really showed me that commercial can be cool. That radical can be relatable. And it opened my eyes to this new type of media that made me want to create content myself. And it was based in New York. So, seeing the staff there and the world and community that they were creating made me really want to move to the big city. In art school, I moved to New York. And went from a town of a thousand people in Maine to the big city. And I was completely overwhelmed in all the best ways. I voraciously consumed culture. Going from art school, I would go to my internship at an indie magazine. Then to a gallery opening. Then to a poetry reading. Then to an indie band playing in my neighborhood. And that mix and match of culture and the incredible diverse wealth of artists was so inspiring to me. A few years later, I got together with my co-founders. Phillip, Justin, and Christine. And we started Refinery29 as a digital destination to celebrate the new generation of artists. The independent spirit, independent designers, and the makers all around us that were doing interesting things and had a unique point of view. And our content quickly developed from independent designers to talking about individuality and talking about unique personal style. At the time that we launched, women's media looked something like this. A lot of headlines about pleasing your man, weight loss, and body shaming. It was selling a false aspiration of what we should want to be as women. That as a woman, I should aspire to be tall, thin, white, rich, young. Essentially the adult version of the princess fantasy. And that was not what we aspired to. We wanted to create content for a new generation of women. Content that empowered and inspired them. That was inclusive, supportive, that broke them out of boxes and celebrated their individuality. We wanted to fuel their aspirations. And those were aspirations of living big lives. Aspirations of being their fiercest selves. And my dad has an experience. He has an expression that if you want to catch a wave, you have to be in the water. So we were in the water at a really critical moment for our business. And that was millennialism. We were speaking this language. We were speaking about individuality at the moment when millennials rose. And that generation, our generation, is fiercely individual. So as a result, we were able to tap into that audience and work with brands that wanted to understand the audience more. And here's a look at the R29 woman. I'm here, kind of like a head crosswind. It's a little bit gusty, so maybe I'll be able to get a little, get this off. There's a bit of a crosswind over here. If it's windy where you're at, obviously, you don't need to jump. Definitely hear a call. This is a fish talk or squid talk. In your black bag. Go out and whatardeva. about. So one of the ways that we learned about this audience was through listening to them. We had a new platform and we were able to listen to them through their comments and through their contents. Not content, sorry. Through their through their comments and through their clicks. And through that mix of data and dialogue we were able to hear them. And one of the things they told us early on is that they wanted to see themselves reflected in our content. And as simple as that seems it wasn't actually an easy thing to do at the time because the stock images that existed, the runway shows that were out there, the modeling agencies that were out there did not represent the incredible diversity of our audince. So we took to the street and we had business clients working with our streets of New York City. And we cast women on the subway. We found women in the gym across the street from our office and in stores around the city. And we built up our own database of unsigned models that we could use in our images and in features like, oh, I don't have a presentation anymore. Nobody told me, guys. Okay. So we cast our own models for features like this one, which was called the month of hair. And because beauty had been a sea of sameness, we were able to represent a much wider range of women. And the millennial generation is the most diverse generation in U.S. history. Through that, we heard about the importance of women's beauty. We heard feedback from our audience. We listened to their responses. We saw how these pieces of content did. And it really shaped the way that we created images from that point forward. And I still actually keep casting cards in my purse for when I see someone amazing on the subway that I think would be great to shoot. Okay. Fun fact time. So did you know that our brains process images? 60 ,000 times faster than they do text? Or that Google says by 2020, 50% of the world's searches will be visual? Images obviously have huge power to shape the way we see the world and the way we see ourselves. So here's another statistic for you. 67% of women in the U.S. are size 14 and up. And yet media only represents them? 2%. When we heard that we knew we had to do something. Sorry. When we heard that we knew we had to do something, we knew that we had to take a stance and address that bias head on. So we launched the 67% Project. A project that meant to accurately represent this invisible environment, that's the world's visible majority in our content and our social platforms. And we partnered with Getty so that the hundreds of images of these women being the protagonists of their own lives could be used by anyone, anywhere. Aerie and Lane Bryant came on to be our partners to amplify this message even more. And we saw that when we marry our mission with powerful brand partners, we're able to make an impact. And we're able to create loyalty when we take a stand on tough topics. So here's a quote from our audience. Thank you for slowly but surely changing the world for women like me. You don't know how happy you made me. And I am sure women all over the U.S. and the world feel inspired by this gesture. That's the power of bravely tackling topics and showing our audience and our content. To keep momentum means always moving forever forward, challenging yourself, reflecting on what you're doing, and surprising yourself. It's always about taking it to the next level. And we surprised ourselves, our audience, and our partners for our 10-year anniversary when we put on a hugely ambitious event called 29 Rooms. We're a highly native brand. For our 10-year anniversary, we wanted to bring our brand to life IRL, create a physical extension where you could interact with us. And we came up with the idea for 29 Rooms, an immersive installation celebrating style, culture, and technology, brought to life in an 80,000 square foot warehouse. It was super visual. It was filled with brand messages. It was a body positivity, self-love, and celebrating personal style. And it was a huge risk for us. It's not something we had done before and not something we'd seen anyone else do either. So we had to listen to our intuition to do it. And the results were incredible. We had over 10,000 people come through this event in two days. We reached one in six people on Instagram worldwide. We got over a billion press impressions. And we brought in 11 new brands into the R29 family to help us put this on. By dreaming bigger, we allowed our audience to see a world of potential, and we created a transformative experience. This is one of my favorite quotes that someone sent us. I'm not sure if you've heard this one. But when I first started doing this experience, I realized it's time for me to start dreaming bigger. And growing our business and staying true to myself required me to create my own style of leadership. As we started to scale, I'm someone that is a maker. I'm someone that loves starting things. And as we started to scale, I was really scared. I was scared that scaling would mean sacrificing our ideas. I was scared that to grow, we would lose quality. And I was scared that to run this big company, I wouldn't be able to be my own playful self. I would have to become someone else. What I learned is that friction creates sparks. That indie and mass are not binaries. That quality and quantity are not binaries. And that art school girl in her pink power suit and executive leader are not binaries. That actually these things are equally weighted elements, and when you rub them together, amazing, magical new things can be created. Taking the time to listen has also been completely critical to our success. You know, starting with listening to my parents. And being open to input from our staff, from our partners, and from our audience has shaped us in really interesting ways that we couldn't have expected. One of my favorite meetings in my week is the Peach Pit. I have these brainstorms in my office, and my office is peach-colored. We have rosé, we have pink candies, and we have this crystal buzzer. Essentially what I do is I bring people in from all different parts of the company. Anyone can sign up, so it's different levels, different departments. And I put on music, we shake it out like we did earlier, and then I just open the floor. I open the floor to hear people's dreams, to hear about their ideas, to hear about their passions. I think so often we think as leaders we have to be the loudest voice in the room, or that we have to have all the answers. What I've learned in those Peach Pit sessions is that my role is not to speak up and voice my ideas. My role is as a supporter, as a question asker, as an embellisher. And that's been incredibly powerful. I walk out of those brainstorms so incredibly inspired by the people around me and by the ideas. And it's been amazing to see so many of those ideas come to life in our work, and to see them reach millions of women. I've also learned that my soul path is my goal path. That leveraging my identity, my beliefs, have led to us having a business that's rooted in mission and purpose. And that to scale, we don't have to sell out our ideals. In fact, we can grow them. We can create a bigger and bigger mission that reaches more and more people. I've learned that leaning into my strengths creates its own kind of magic. So the more me I am, the more things go well for me. I've learned that being a leader, for me, is about being 100% true to who I am. It's about speaking up for the things I believe in. But it's also about being quiet. It's about listening and passing the mic so that other voices can be heard. Thank you for listening. I'm going to pass the mic. Thank you so much. Mic to you. Thank you. That was great. Thank you. So our next speaker, if you're talking about momentum, he's really seen it all. He's built up a company, gained huge amounts of momentum with that company, sold it off to Google.