Wayfair: Niraj Shah & Steve Conine (2018)

**Guy Raz** (0:00)
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So the How I Built This team is taking a much needed and very short break this week, but we will definitely be back next Monday with a brand new episode. As for today's show, well, some of you may remember a time not too long ago when e-commerce was supposed to be dead, like over. But today's episode is about two guys who never stopped believing in the internet or in the many things that you can buy on it. This one first ran back in April of 2018 Enjoy.
So, all right, I'm gonna read some of the websites that you guys launched. hotplates.com, I'm assuming that sold hotplates. Yeah.
allbarstools.com.

**Niraj Shah** (2:26)
Sold barstools. And what do you think that sold?
You're doing good. You're doing good, all right.

**Guy Raz** (2:29)
mydinnerplate.com.

**Steve Conine** (2:31)
Nice, that's a classic.

**Guy Raz** (2:32)
I love this one, everygrandfatherclock.com.

**Steve Conine** (2:35)
A very hot category online.

**Guy Raz** (2:37)
Who knew people were searching for that?

**Steve Conine** (2:41)
We did.

**Guy Raz** (2:48)
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. 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** (4:59)
No, we hadn't really kept in touch, so I think it was a surprise.

**Steve Conine** (5:03)
Yeah, pretty much. I was like, Hey, what's up? How have you been this past year?

**Guy Raz** (5:08)
So were you friends right away?

**Steve Conine** (5:10)
Yeah, we were part of it. You know, I think when you're freshman year, you sort of have a small group of friends that you sort of connect with and spend a lot of your time with. And we were in that group together. And then junior year, Niraj and I started, we got to be a lot closer and lived together that year.