Photo courtesy of The Grommet

The Grommet co-founder and CEO Jules Pieri wears her logo like a badge of honor

At a company’s early stages, investors aren’t looking for a list of accomplishments; they’re looking for grit. They need to believe an entrepreneur has what it takes to succeed. “I didn’t understand that,” Jules Pieri, CEO of The Grommet, which she co-founded in 2008, explains to Exhale.

When walking into pitch sessions with venture capitalists, she would say what she knew they were thinking: “I look like a soccer mom from Darien, Connecticut.” Instead, she realizes, she should have been telling them about her hardscrabble background.

What I know now is how much more forcefully
I needed to claim my story.

The VCs, typically male, would lob lightweight questions at her, such as, “Do you do this out of your home?” at a time when she and co-founder Joanne Domeniconi already employed 50 people.

“What I know now is how much more forcefully I needed to claim my story,” she says. “Maybe I didn’t understand that that part of me would fuel us and help us succeed more than credentials.”

Photo courtesy of The Grommet

Cruise control: It’s been quite a ride for Jules Pieri and The Grommet

The Grommet, based in Somerville, Massachusetts, is an e-commerce platform helping customers discover innovative products—made by individual entrepreneurs and small manufacturers (called “Makers”)—that are not typically available at other retailers. “It was an almost vaguely socialist vision of ‘power to the people,’” says Pieri of her business idea. The company has launched more than 2,800 products to date, including the now ubiquitous Fitbit, Bananagrams, SodaStream, and OtterBox. In 2014, The Grommet started a wholesale arm, and in 2017, it opened its first brick-and-mortar store in the Natick Mall.

Whatever one might assume from Pieri’s soft-spoken demeanor, she is a force to be reckoned with on paper. When The Grommet launched, she was coming off senior executive roles at retail heavy hitters Keds, Stride Rite, and Playskool, as well as positions at two start-ups. Pieri, who is married and has three sons, ages 23 to 29, earned a B.F.A in industrial design from the University of Michigan and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, where she has been an Entrepreneur in Residence for the past six years. In 2013, Pieri was designated one of Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs, and in 2014, she was one of Goldman Sachs’ 100 Most Interesting Entrepreneurs.

The daughter of a factory worker and the oldest of four children, Pieri grew up on the self-described “wrong side of the tracks” in Detroit. A trailblazer from an early age—she was the first female to ever wear pants at her elementary school—Pieri found guidance from a teacher with a similar background who told her about boarding school. A young Pieri submitted an application without telling her parents, got accepted, received a scholarship, and left home at age 14. “That’s probably the biggest accomplishment of my life,” she reveals.

That was also the first time she felt real fear: “I spent the first two weeks being nauseous,” she admits. Despite her placement in a remedial ninth-grade science class as a 10th-grader, Pieri embraced every opportunity available and graduated fourth in her class.

That first lesson in fear, and resilience, served her well when it came to getting into college and graduate school, creating and inhabiting jobs that never existed before, and then moving her young family to Dublin, Ireland, for four years with no financial safety net.

I would show up to work every day
for those first four years to fail.

In The Grommet’s early days, when Domeniconi was building the business and Pieri was raising money, fear was Pieri’s companion. “I definitely set a world record for venture capital rejections,” says Pieri, putting her total at around 250. “I would show up to work every day for those first four years to fail.” Emotionally, her worst year was 2011, when her husband’s work dried up, they had to take a second mortgage on their house, and they were forced to secure emergency financial aid for their son who was attending Carnegie Mellon University.

Pieri says even successful people experience fear, and everyone has a physical tell. Hers is a nervous stomach. “I still get it. I get it almost every week,” she says. “It’s learning to walk through it.” She’s taught herself to think, “It feels bad, but I’m in an interesting place.” She reminds herself that facing frightening situations has been worth it before and probably will be again.

In 2013, Japanese e-commerce juggernaut Rakuten invested a majority stake in The Grommet, calming the funding waters for a while. However, by 2016, Rakuten started exercising more oversight and wanted The Grommet to change its name to Rakuten. Pieri embarked on a mission to get the global giant to sell its majority stake even though the corporation had never done such a thing before.

Of the 250 VCs who rejected me, if they see those deals,
they realize they made a mistake.

“I risked death in doing that,” says Pieri. “But you have to know what matters to you. I knew that living through a slow death was way worse than a fast death.”

Pieri eventually triumphed, successfully negotiating the sale of Rakuten’s majority stake to Ace Hardware in the fall of 2017. With more than 5,000 independently owned stores, Ace is a more natural business alliance. Ace gets an innovative product pipeline, and The Grommet gets funding and distribution.

“I’m proud of navigating two large strategic investments,” say Pieri. “Of the 250 VCs who rejected me, if they see those deals, they realize they made a mistake.”