The key moments, with employee sentiment along the way.
2009
π±
2009
Founded to rent the runway
Harvard Business School classmates Jennifer Hyman and Jennifer Fleiss pitch designer dresses by mail β borrow the gown, skip the price tag.
Wikipedia
2019
π¦
2019
Joins the unicorn club
The subscription 'closet in the cloud' pushes the valuation past $1B.
TechCrunch
2020
2020
Lockdowns empty the closet
A business built on weddings, offices and parties meets a world with nowhere to go.
CNBC
Oct 2021
π
Oct 2021
The peak: a $1.7B IPO$1.7B
Lists on Nasdaq in October 2021 at about a $1.7B valuation β a level the stock never sees again.
CNBC
2022
π
2022
Slips out of the club
Subscriber churn and heavy losses sink the shares within months of listing.
stockanalysis.com
2022β24
π¬
From the inside Β· Glassdoor reviews, 2022β24
Glassdoor reviews from the post-IPO years described a hire-then-layoff rhythm β some rounds announced on company-wide video calls β with pay frozen for two years or more. Remote customer-service staff wrote of tightening hourly quotas and days spent talking members out of canceling.
2023β25
2023β25
Grinding toward $0.13B
The market cap settles around $130M β roughly 8 cents on every peak dollar.
stockanalysis.com
Today
Today
Still in the club β and still trading
Live Β· RENT Β· NasdaqGMas of 2026-10-23
$2.30β² 30.68% todayβ $78M cap Β· β95.4% from peak
π¬ entries paraphrase anonymous, unverified reviews posted publicly on Glassdoor β; dated facts carry their source.
How it happened
Rent the Runway is a fashion-rental subscription service that reached a roughly $1B+ private valuation and went public in 2021 at about $1.7B. Pandemic disruption, subscriber churn, and heavy losses sent shares down sharply after listing, cutting its market cap to around $0.13B (~-92% from peak).
