Fashion Tech Startups Emerging From Harvard B-School Runway in Droves

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Rent the Runway — Often described as the Netflix for fashion, Rent the Runway comes from HBS ’09 graduates Jennifer Hyman (on left, and also a Harvard College alum) and Jennifer Fleiss (right). The startup, which allows users to rent designer frocks, is one of the earlier successes in the bunch, and is also a case study at Harvard Business School—where the Rent the Runway team is visiting this week. “Something like that just shows how ingrained we are at the school—it continues to buzz,” Fleiss says. What does she think about Boston and Harvard as fashion destinations? “Boston, in my opinion, is not a place where people typically focus on fashion on lot, but I do think there are some fun opportunities at HBS to get dressed up.”

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Author: Erin Kutz

Erin Kutz has a background in covering business, politics and general news. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Boston University. Erin previously worked in the Boston bureau of Reuters, where she wrote articles on the investment management and mutual fund industries. While in college, she researched for USA Today reporter Jayne O’Donnell’s book, Gen Buy: How Tweens, Teens and Twenty-Somethings Are Revolutionizing Retail. She also spent a semester in Washington, DC, reporting Capitol Hill stories as a correspondent for two Connecticut newspapers and interning in the Money section of USA Today, where she assisted with coverage on the retail and small business beats. Erin got her first taste of reporting at Boston University’s independent student newspaper, as a city section reporter and fact checker and editor of the paper’s weekly business section.