From Constraints to Innovation: How Kaitlyn Allen is Building MendIt® on Her Own Terms

This week I’m happy to feature another friend of mine, Kaitlyn Allen . She was introduced to me last year by Peter Small(of Trove- thanks Pete!) and what a gem she is. Over the past year she has helped me find my way with consulting, sharing what she knows and sending me countless voice memos about how I could approach different situations with clients. She did all of this with no expectations, just to be helpful. She has an incredible amount of sustainability and business knowledge, and- my favorites- is kind and funny. Have a read below and check out her businesses!

Kaitlyn’s Story

I filed the paperwork to incorporate MendIt® in 2019. I had no plan, no business partners, no capital. But I did have an idea that wouldn’t leave me alone: a marketplace for clothing repair. It was one segment of the economy that hadn’t yet been disrupted by a marketplace (e.g., AirBnB, Uber, Doordash). I thought this could be an opportunity to show that disruption could actually be positive for the impacted businesses–in this case, tailors and menders–instead of hurting them. The idea kept me up at night for over a year prior to incorporating. Yet I didn’t feel like the right person to do it — I knew nothing about the tech startup world, or about the fashion industry. 

My days were rigorous at that time. I had two toddlers in daycare who’d only recently begun sleeping through the night, leaving me constantly waking to the sounds of imaginary crying. The corporate sustainability consulting firm I’d founded was growing rapidly, demanding all of my time during the precious daycare hours. But despite the rigors of my endlessly exhausting days and nights, I’d be up in the middle of the night writing notes about MendIt®, or researching the shocking sustainability issues in the fashion industry.

I’d already founded a consulting business, but for MendIt®, there were so many things I didn’t know how to do. The things I didn’t know how to do felt like the most important things—the tech speak, the VC slang, and buying into the seemingly odd concept that someone might invest in you before you had a product. 

So, I found business partners and a development team, I invested my own capital, and raised a small friends and family round. In my precious “part-time” (which was additional to my actual full-time and family), we slowly built and launched our B2C marketplace product (which is live nationwide today). 

If anyone was committed and hungry, it was me. 

But venture capital professionals seemed to see me differently–not hungry enough. “Well, we can’t fund any founders who aren’t committed full time.” I’d try to help them understand: “But I have a consulting firm. It’s not a job I can just quit, it’s my business and my clients! If you fund this concept we can hire a team; I just want the idea to be born!” This frustrating loop was exhausting, too. I felt deficient, like I wasn’t the right person to do this—fueled by the fact that I was running MendIt® on the fumes left over from my daily grind. 

After many years, which included selling my first business and then working on that company’s senior leadership team, I reached a breaking point. The news of Renewcell’s apparent demise in Q1 of this year hit me hard. If Renewcell—backed by brands and venture capital— couldn’t make it, how could we? It seemed the whole world of “tech startups” in fashion was crashing down. Tearfully, I bought out my then-partners and tried to reimagine a way to return some money to our SAFE note investors.

Then the second breakdown happened - the one many of us are familiar with -  the mental one related to running on fumes for many, many years. I had to make a choice: kill MendIt® for good, or leave the job I loved to pursue MendIt® full time. The entrepreneur in me won. 

In a way, I understand now what the VC’s meant. It wasn’t that I wasn’t hungry or committed, it was that there were literally not enough hours in the day to move this forward at the pace required for a VC model. And now that I am full time, the bar to get funding has moved--it’s far higher than it was five years ago. For that reason, we made a decision this summer to pause fundraising and focus on product-market fit for our B2B product, which we have been working on for years. 

After a many-weeks-long detox, I began to see things more clearly. I have worked for over a decade on sustainability issues for companies ranging from Fortune 10 corporations to mid-cap to small, privately held companies. When I thought about product-market fit for our B2B product as working on another sustainability challenge for companies, I realized that, actually, I do know how to do this. I had built a profitable business and a solid reputation for doing just that. 

Turns out, I didn’t need to know how to build a tech product, or have had a “technology exit.” Those things may be necessary to raise venture capital on an idea or MVP nowadays, but they aren’t the most important things needed to build a great business that solves problems for its customers. The most important thing is something I’ve had all along: to be obsessed with finding a solution to a problem you care about–and to believe you will do so. 

Ironically, as a coach and mentor to others, this is one of the main things I help others see in themselves. I just hadn’t had the mental space to see for myself that the framing of MendIt® as a tech startup—trying to squeeze it to fit the venture capital model—was actually quite limiting. What we really are is a passionate, creative team attempting to enable the repair economy at scale and invent new business models to do so.

We may yet require venture capital to grow. But I’ll be returning to those conversations with something very different—the confidence that comes from letting go of trying to follow someone else’s playbook. 

Kaitlyn Allen is the founder & CEO of MendIt®, Inc. (www.mendit.app) and offers career and life coaching through Excava Coaching (www.excavacoaching.com). 

Have a listen to the podcast this week- it’s about tech and service providers in the resale space and features Beni and Ribbn. Listen on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you consume your podcasts.

Cynthia / cynthia@moltevolte.com

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