Time to Get Real

How I Built a Billion-Dollar Business That Rocked the Fashion Industry

By: Julie Wainwright

Narrated by: Julie Wainwright

Part tell-all memoir and part entrepreneur crash course, the founder of The RealReal offers an emboldening story of perspective and triumph

When she was 52, a recruiter told Julie Wainwright that her failure as CEO of Pets.com made her unemployable. But she proved him—and Silicon Valley—wrong and built her company from an idea into the world’s largest resource for authenticated luxury resale. Since its launch in 2011, The RealReal has changed the world of fashion forever, making luxury items more accessible and sustainable.

Time to Get Real spills the tea on the entrepreneurial journey from a woman’s perspective and includes all the lessons learned and mistakes made along the way to a billion-dollar business and public company. This is the book Julie wished she had when she was in the trenches—one that shares the whole exhilarating, stressful, glorious, messy truth about success.

Time to Get Real isn’t just about Julie’s wild ride through Silicon Valley; it will also show you how to:

• Build a business from the ground up
• Hire for startups while avoiding common oversights
• Overcome workplace bias and adversity
• Be a shark—and create a unicorn

With Julie’s inspirational story and hard-earned wisdom, this is the perfect read for anyone who has ever imagined starting a company, loves fashion, or wants an uncensored glimpse behind the scenes from a woman who succeeded in spite of it all.

©2025 by Julie Wainwright. (P)2025 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

A refreshing book for female entrepreneurs!

I love Julie’s humor and honesty. As someone who is in year three of their business and feeling the growing pains, both good and bad, this is a great listen and has truly inspired me!
Stay Rad,
Taylor Rae Archer

Informative Read

A good informational read about what it takes to start a tech business and what's it's like to be a woman founder and high level executive in business. Also a good peek into the fashion resale market.

The Real Deal

Julie Wainwright achieved what very few men and even fewer women have been able to achieve. She founded a business from an idea, took that company public and grew it to over a billion dollars in revenue. Her story is real, impressive and powerful. There are so many lessons herein to be learned, taught by someone in a unique position to share them.