Wayfair: Niraj Shah & Steve Conine

**Guy Raz** (0:00)
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So, all right, I'm going to read some of the websites that you guys launched. hotplates.com, I'm assuming that sold hotplates. Yeah.
allbarstools.com.

**Niraj Shah** (2:42)
What do you think that sold? Yes. You're doing good. You're doing good.

**Guy Raz** (2:46)
mydinnerplate.com.

**Steve Conine** (2:48)
That's a classic.

**Guy Raz** (2:49)
I love this one. everygrandfatherclock.com.

**Steve Conine** (2:52)
A very hot category online.

**Guy Raz** (2:54)
Who knew people were searching for that?

**Steve Conine** (2:58)
We did.

**Guy Raz** (3:05)
From NPR, it's How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.
I'm Guy Raz, and on today's show, how an online search for bird houses led two college roommates down an internet rabbit hole that inspired what would become Wayfair, an e-commerce company that now sells almost $5 billion worth of home goods each year.
So pretty much everyone we've had on the show had a passion for a product that they needed to put out into the world. Lara Merican believed the world needed Lara bars. Jenny Britton Bauer was convinced that her ice cream was gonna change how people thought about ice cream. Even Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, thought everyone should have access to free knowledge.
But I'm here to tell you that that is not always the case. In fact, sometimes the product isn't what drives the founders. What really drives them is the challenge, or rather, solving the challenge. And that's basically the story behind Wayfair. Neither Steve Conine nor Niraj Shah felt that strongly about home furnishings. But they did feel like people should have choices, no matter where they lived. Because there was a time when, if you lived in, say, Evansville, Indiana, you couldn't easily get the same type of cool coffee table or sofa that someone in San Francisco or New York could get. Now today, this concept isn't particularly radical or new, but back in the early 2000s, it was a revolution. And today, Wayfair sells almost $5 billion worth of this stuff every year. Wayfair was actually the third company Steve and Niraj started together. They met as teenagers at a summer camp for math and engineering nerds in the early 1990s. They quickly lost touch, but then, almost a year later, as if fate herself was watching over these guys, they both ended up as first years at Cornell, assigned to dorm rooms on the same corridor. Did you know that the other one was going to Cornell?

**Niraj Shah** (5:23)
No, we hadn't really kept in touch, so I think it was a surprise.

**Steve Conine** (5:28)