REACTION: Away CEO Resigns and then Reverses Course (Will They Live Up to Their $1.4B Valuation?)

Okay. So today we are going to talk about Away luggage and their CEO returning. So just in case you don't have context on this, basically Away is a luggage company that's valued at $1.4 billion. So they are a unicorn. And, but before we do, don't forget to hit the subscribe and the bell button if you enjoy videos on growing both personally and professionally. So let's talk about this. Let's look at this article over here. And, you know, this article is actually from The Verge. And if you just Google The Verge Away, A-W-A-Y, you can see that— you can see the entire thing here. So I'm going to give you a quick summary of what happened. So Away as a company, you know, their luggage— they were kind of a forward-thinking luggage company in the past where they They would give you a— you can have a charger on top of your suitcase and they're relatively cheap, I believe, and they created a movement around them. So I see a lot of people, I believe even employees at Single Grain, which is the ad agency that I have, they use Away luggage. So what ended up happening was The Verge uncovered a story where Away as a company, as an organization, is actually— seems to be fairly toxic. So you can see over here. Where the screenshot over here where it says Steph Korey, so I can— but you can see what she's saying. So, this is the CEO, Steph, and she's kind of in her early 30s right now, just so you have some context in terms of age. So, can we ask some— can we ask some ops account managers to send us photos of all gold monogram luggage, blah, blah, blah. Okay, look at this right here. So, if whoever is doing these luggage tags is brain dead enough to package up and send a tag that clearly has incomplete letters, It seems extremely unlikely to me that a training, a retraining on SOPs is going to be sufficient, a sufficient set of next steps for us to ensure blah, blah, blah, right? But, you know, what you don't do as a leader, what you shouldn't be doing is you shouldn't be calling people brain dead. Like, what message does that send to your entire organization, right? So, yes, I get it. As a leader, there's a lot of things going on. You have to maintain, you have to keep finances in the bank, you have to maintain the vision, you have to be recruiting all the time. Sometimes you're dipping your hand in product, in design, in marketing, in sales. You're doing a lot of different things and there's a lot of stress. And then in addition to kind of holding, helping everyone around you, you're basically supporting them, right? You're supporting their livelihood and their family. So there's a lot of responsibility there, sure. But what you don't want to do is you don't want to call your soldiers brain dead, right? These are the people that are working with you. These are people that are in the trenches with you. And to be doing that shows that you don't value them as much. So that can be, you know, really toxic, right? So a couple things too. You know, one of the co-founders of Away, Jen Rubio, is actually engaged to Stuart Butterfield, which is the CEO of Slack. Slack is a chat tool and they're a publicly traded company right now. So they do well. And so Away, you know, as a company, they use Slack to chat, right? This is how they use communications. One of the rules that Away has as a company is that you shouldn't be using direct messages. Everything should be transparent. They're trying to be a transparent company. But by doing that, it actually slows things down. So, you're actually hamstringing your company by not allowing for these private chat rooms or just private direct messages. Like, you're slowing down your organization using this chat thing and everything's becoming public. But yet, when you're public, you're calling people brain dead, right? So, that's— sometimes transparency is not exactly the best course of action. So, as we come down here, you know, we can— here's one other thing that I want to pull up over here. So, they— what I think they did well was they created a cult movement, right? So, you are joining a movement and, you know, that's kind of what you want to do when you're creating a culture, cult is kind of in there. So, not necessarily like cult in like a bad way but you are creating— Yeah. A family of people, people that are kind of, you know, rowing in the same direction. So, you know, all this to say is that this piece went out and, you know, Away was basically requiring people to work during the holidays. Like, people were super stressed out and, you know, you can see over here, Happy New Year's. And then, so you can see over here, I'm not gonna read the whole message here, but what I'm highlighting, one of the customer service people were like, hey, there's 2 scenarios here. You can either take the day off plan or— Yeah. But if you do that, the team's gonna fall even more behind, or you can work for 6 hours and get a month off as a reward, but the problem with that is the month off as a reward actually didn't happen and you can see here this person burst into tears. So, it's like they're overworking people, they're not being transparent, they're not allowing people to communicate. When you're— it's almost like an authoritarian thing when you're not allowing people to gather into their own private channels and communicate privately. You want to foster that transparency. And then also you're calling people brain dead too, right? And then let's see over here. Oh, so she's sending a message here at 10 PM. So you don't— ideally you want your people to rest. You want your people to— this is why we do a 25-day vacation policy after someone has stayed 2 years. PTO, they get 2— well, they don't get 2 years. They get 25 days after they've stayed 2 years because we think it makes sense for people to rest. And that's why we always give— I think, I believe we give at least a week off for For Christmas and kind of work during the holiday break, December time. Sometimes it might even be a little longer than that. All that to say, even though you're the leader of a company, let's say you're starting a company, sure, you might be working. I love working, but you can't have that expectation for your people too. So that's another lesson here. And you can see her saying here, I know it's late, but 10 PM. So she's saying, hey guys, I need help. I need people working. I see people active on Slack. She's basically policing people, right? So, basically, The Verge came out with this story and you can see, like, it's just, like, walls of text. Ideally, if there's any issues, you talk about it with people or, at minimum, you do a video chat or you talk on the phone, right? So, there's just a lot of things going on here that I think could probably be improved. Now, here's the thing: after this piece went out, the CEO, Steph, she actually stepped down and they hired the Lululemon Chief Operating Officer to become the CEO, I believe. And but what's interesting is this was supposed to happen January 13th, which is yesterday. And so, look at this. This is a Wall Street Journal piece over here. She resigned and then guess what happened? She comes back and she's like, we're gonna be co-CEOs. And she said, you know what? You know, the social media mob came out and we did it. And, you know, she let some inaccurate reporting influence the timeline of transition plan that we had. But here's the thing, like, look at all this stuff, like, is this inaccurate? Like, but the thing is she apologized for this afterwards and she stepped down but now, all of a sudden, it's inaccurate, right? So, you know, the thing here, like, you know, the Away is, like, demanding, you know, corrections to The Verge so they're, like, I'm sure they got lawyers involved and they're telling The Verge that, hey, you got to take this stuff down, this is the exact working arrangement, but the problem here is you're not consistent with your message. I think stepping down was the right move but now you're coming in as co-CEO so not only— you're gonna— Demotivate the people that were already like they didn't really, they weren't really you know keen on following you. But the new person that you just brought in, you're going to be co-CEOs. Like how's that going to work with the other person? Like that's not going to work out well because usually you want to have one person. And obviously if it's if it's one person that that's leading the things, one person that's driving the vision, one person that that that's you know recruiting, keeping money in the bank, financing the company. Like that's what's that's what that CEO is there for. But when you do co-CEOs, it has worked in the past. But Usually, like, what happens is this person's not a co-founder, this person was a hired gun. So, who's gonna have more of the say? It's actually not— it's actually demoting— demotivating for this to happen. So, all of a sudden, she reverses course and she comes back and, you know, the final thing I'm gonna call out here is if we do Glassdoor which is where— which is where a lot of people review their comp— working at a company, you can see here, Glassdoor, they're rated a 3.4 over here. But check this out: December 5th, I left because of a toxic culture. Sad but true, right? All the things that— all the bad things that are going on, good and bad, you just— there's just so many things going on. Look at this: disgusting truth, grass isn't always greener. So, employees are honest, they're very honest and they put their— their reviews on Glassdoor so we can— we can know— we can know that from the screenshots from The Verge and her resigning and then the negative reviews on Glassdoor that most of this stuff is probably true. And then the fact that she's coming back and she's trying to twist it into her own advantage and doing this co-CEO thing, I don't think it's gonna go over well for Away. Sure, they rallied at $1.4 billion. You know, at the end of the day, the way I've seen it is I thought it was a wave where, you know, everyone's like, oh cool, Away, you know, they have all these like neat, you know, gadgets that they add to a suitcase. And to me, it's maybe like a 5% or 10% improvement. I don't know if it's a movement or not, but I think a lot of this stuff is really going to hurt the company. I don't know, you know, if they're really going to, you know, I hope they actually live up to the $1.4 billion valuation. I don't think it's going to happen just judging by, you know, if the CEO is going to still stay. But that's just my general reaction to this. I think, you know, with this whole like, this is drama. You know, this is business drama, startup drama. And yeah, just let me know what you think in the comments in terms of, you know, this entire situation. Do you think Away is going to be around to live up to the $1.4 billion valuation? Let me know in the comments. And also, if you're coming from YouTube, don't forget to again, or any platform, rate, review, and subscribe because it does help us grow. And if you're on YouTube, check out the next video, I think over there or over there, and we will see you tomorrow.