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Back to FIGS: Trina Spear and Heather Hasson. The $2.5 Billion Scrubs Brand That Investors Said Would Never Work, with Trina Spear & Heather Hasson.

Why Did Investors Reject Figs?

Trina Spear and Heather Hasson say investors turned Figs down about three to four hundred times. The raise was life or death for the company, so they treated a slow or unsure reply as a no and kept pitching.

The reasons were blunt. Investors said nobody cares how a healthcare worker looks, because the job comes with blood and liquids. They also said the market was not big enough. Guy Raz put their figure back to them as about 20 million people in the United States, and the answer was still that it was too small. Spear and Hasson say a market that size is the wrong business to back. The opportunity is to create the market.

The money that did come was from contrarian investors who believed in the two of them. The seed was $2 million, then a $1 million bridge, then another $2 million, then $5 million. That was $10 million in all.

Transcript

FIGS: Trina Spear and Heather Hasson. The $2.5 Billion Scrubs Brand That Investors Said Would Never Work ·

How I Built This with Guy Raz

More from this episode

  1. What Happened When Figs Stock Fell From 50 to 5?Trina Spear and Heather Hasson say they fell off a Forbes list of wealthy women the year after Figs stock went from $50 to $5.
  2. How Did a Trip to Kenya Lead Heather Hasson to Figs?Heather Hasson says a trip to northern Kenya is what led her to Figs. Her handbag business had collapsed after her partner died of lung cancer.
  3. How Did Figs Start Selling Scrubs?Heather Hasson says Figs started selling scrubs out of her car in emergency rooms, after a short path from a favor to a product.
  4. Why Do Most Medical Workers Buy Their Own Scrubs?Trina Spear says most healthcare workers buy their own scrubs because hospitals were not paying for them.
  5. How Did Trina Spear Sell Scrubs Out of a Car?Trina Spear says Heather Hasson told her that working together meant selling scrubs out of the car.
  6. How Much Did Trina Spear Invest in Scrubs?Trina Spear put $70,000 into the scrubs company, half of a $140,000 retirement account she liquidated while she was still paying off business school debt.
  7. How Did Figs Ship Its First Orders?Guy Raz says that in early 2013 Trina Spear left Blackstone, moved to Los Angeles, and she and Heather Hasson shipped Figs orders from the apartment they…
  8. Why Do Figs Scrubs Cost Only a Little More?Trina Spear says Figs spent about double what rival scrub makers spent on the product and still charged only about 15 to 20 percent more.
  9. Why Did Thomas Tull Invest in Figs?Trina Spear says Thomas Tull invested in the Figs seed round and the Series A, then in 2017 bought out the other investors.
  10. How Much Did Figs Spend Fighting a Lawsuit?Heather Hasson says Figs spent $40 million fighting a lawsuit she puts at $800 million, and that the money was worth spending because she and Trina Spear…
  11. Why Did Figs Go Public in May 2021?Trina Spear says Figs went public in May 2021 because the company should be a public company, not because 2020 was a year to cash in.
  12. Why Is Net Worth Not the Same as Self-worth?Trina Spear says net worth is not self-worth, and a founder cannot tie either one to a stock price.

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