Walking Away (Reflections on Yishi)
(Thursday, March 27, 2025)
I’ve really gotten to know my host, Valérie, over the past week and a half. She’s a beautiful woman in her fifties—tall, with a model-like figure, shiny, flowing brown hair, and an ever-elegant smile.
Every morning and evening, we spend a couple of hours chatting at the dining table while we eat.
Unlike Louis’s mother, who turns her home into a Michelin-worthy experience, Valérie doesn’t care much about organic ingredients or culinary perfection. She’s a casual home cook—raising three children on her own may have been her culinary and life training. Her food is simple but cozy, homey, warm, and relaxed.
Over breakfast and dinner, we talk about everything—starting with Lyon, the news, our work and travels, and expanding into our families, our pasts and future plans, even politics. (Thankfully, we’re aligned—and we’re both very open-minded.) I enjoy being around Valérie more and more. I feel like we’re on the same emotional wavelength.
This morning, she started a training course to become a leadership coach—someone who helps leaders grow not just in tactics, but in emotional intelligence. Before she left, we talked about leadership—the disconnects between feeling and thinking, between capabilities and EQ—and how those gaps often lie at the root of ineffective leadership. EQ, we agreed, can be developed endlessly. IQ? Not so much, but it doesn’t matter.
I took a spoonful of cereal, and my mind drifted to my experience building Yishi—my Asian-inspired oatmeal and pancake mix brand that, at its peak, was trending in 5,000 grocery stores nationwide, including Walmart and Whole Foods.
Until last July, when we shut down—right in the middle of rapid growth.
The mistakes we made. The mistakes I made.
Yes, we were deeply unlucky:
Endless supply chain delays and price hikes from COVID
Labor shortages that caused our co-packer to cancel production without notice
Oat prices skyrocketing in 2021, just as we launched nationally
Two major manufacturing accidents, each resulting in six-figure losses and PR nightmares
An unreasonable co-packer contract locking us into dangerously high volumes and frequencies
Sky-high costs from all sides—sometimes just to make a basic improvement (the final UPC change killed us)
But the mistakes I made as a leader—those may have mattered more:
Hiring the wrong people, believing hard work and eagerness could substitute for readiness
Paying team salaries we couldn’t afford, while I took just enough to survive
Saying yes to ideas I didn’t believe in, just to support the team
Letting tension with my co-founder get to me
Being too optimistic. Too bold. Then, crashing into doubt and losing confidence completely
Just to name a few.
Of course, we did many things right. And whenever someone made a mistake, we’d say, “This is education. We paid to learn. We won’t make that mistake again.”
But those lessons came with real, lasting costs. And I couldn’t raise the funding we needed in 2022 or 2023.
What followed was a string of layoffs, painful cost-cutting, and a daily grind of trying to raise money while inventing new, creative ways to grow profitable revenue.
Every day, I was at war. I didn’t allow myself to feel, or reflect. No yesterday. No tomorrow. Just execution. Do. Don’t think.
The last three team members—including me—worked without salaries. We built the most efficient model we could. Our bank accounts dipped below zero weekly. Still, we clawed our way to real progress.
In our final 12 months, we doubled sales while cutting costs in half. We were almost profitable—a rare feat for a tiny 7-figure business in national retail.
But it was just a little too late.
The early mistakes had already pushed away investors. The co-packer contract penalized us for not producing. And we had no inventory left.
Products, money, time—we ran out of all three.
In the final few months, my family sent money to help pay vendors. I got cast for a food entrepreneurship TV show—to win funding—but had to drop out because of debt collections. I nearly begged the investors who never liked us. (Side note: begging rarely works. FOMO works better, even for the exact same business.)
Some people were on the phone with me every day, trying to help.
But after countless sleepless nights, I decided: it was time to throw in the towel.
You have to know when to walk away.
After five years building Yishi, I missed my family. I couldn’t stand seeing my boyfriend stressed anymore. I wanted to relax on a Friday night. And embarrassingly, I was broke. After never paying myself a meaningful salary and only pouring more and more money into the business.
Practically, I told myself: We had no product left, only a mountain of co-packing liabilities. It’s time to walk away.
And honestly, it might be the best decision I’ve ever made.
Because in choosing to walk away, I finally began to ask: What do I want in life?
Not—how do I prove them all wrong?
Not—how do I fight to the bitter end?
For the first time, I realized:
Maybe this isn’t what I want anymore.
Maybe I don’t have to be the “oatmeal girl.”
My Simple Takeaways from Being an Entrepreneur
Last night, I read a brief story by a French adtech startup co-founder about how they launched, built, and eventually sold their company in just two years. The advice they shared resonated deeply with me, especially because it touched on some mistakes I made with Yishi.
After tossing and turning for most of the night, I felt compelled to jot down some of my takeaways. Someday, when I’m ready, I’ll write more about my journey with Yishi. But for now, here’s a quick snapshot of my reflections:
1. Team - the Most Important Factor
I believe that the success of the a startup is largely dependent on the founding members. Ideally, you find co-founders who:
Have extensive and complementary experience and skills in the field of the business + in early-stage startups,
Have worked together and know each other well, and
Are people you genuinely like and trust (do not ignore red flags in their personal lives).
Looking back, I didn’t have all three. Starting with myself, I lacked firsthand experience in CPG and startups, which led to some expensive mistakes.
2. Product
1) Pick an attractive market you know well:
I made two critical mistakes here:
I analyzed the market after I picked the product, and naturally, I did so with a biased perspective.
I chose an industry I knew little about.
Be brutally honest about your market. Make sure either you or your co-founders have relevant experience. Without that, no amount of resourcefulness can truly compensate.
2) Have a killer product:
I believe that deep down, founders know whether their product is the best product solving the problem they set out to tackle. While the product can and will evolve, it needs to start from the right category. This is one of the things Yishi lacked before we decided to shut it down.
3. Money
1) Do not raise money (if you can avoid it):
For me, having investors created immense pressure. Subconsciously, I felt obligated to push for faster growth to make my investors happy. That constant need to deliver can cloud your judgment and shift your focus away from what truly matters.
Most importantly, without raising, you will be forced to grow revenue and profitability as fast as you can so you can live off the profits. This is the best incentive to ensure the financial health of the business.
2) Be as frugal as possible:
The adtech company sent thousands of cold emails per day manually using free Gmail accounts and the free version of HubSpot. Their resourcefulness stuck with me—sometimes, scrappiness and creativity can go a long way.
4. Be True to Yourself & Embrace Change
If, 2-5 years in, you start questioning your decision of starting the company, don’t be afraid to evaluate all your options. Life is meant to be lived fully, and that includes embracing the uncertainty of change.
The reality is: most startups fail, and that’s completely normal and should be your expectation from the very beginning. The mission from Day 1 is to overcome failure by working hard and doing all the above.
Many founders talk about the “scary moments” when they felt their business might not work. After Yishi, I’ve learned there’s nothing to be scared of—difficult business decisions are normal. Embrace the changes that align with your true desires at that point in time.
Personally, I believe all change is good. It shapes who we are and adds vibrant layers to the limited time we have on Earth.
The Next Chapter
As I like to call myself, I’m an experience collector. I feel extremely lucky to have the full experience of being a Founder—building, growing, and exiting a startup. All the ups and downs are invaluable gifts that helped me learn and grow, and I’m truly grateful for every bit of the journey.
My next chapter—working at a large retailer HQ—will bring experiences I’ve never had before. It will lead me to a new part of the country, potentially to many other countries around the world. I’ll see and touch the results of the work I help create (the main reason why I left consulting), and I’ll be growing and learning more within a large and complex organization.
I’m excited to embrace this new phase with open arms. Every twist and turn along the way is a step toward a richer, fuller life, so enjoy!
How Yishi Survived (Again) — A Brief Fundraising Story
As an entrepreneur, I often get asked what challenges I’m faced with, and sometimes, if my business has almost died before. There have always been challenges since I launched my business two years ago – the pandemic, supply chain disruptions, ingredient shortages due to a rare drought and an ongoing war, an economy that flipped overnight, a cold funding environment, and now bank run fears. Being a small business owner has certainly not been easy, but those challenges never scared me, and I never thought my business could die, until August last year.
In August, I started our second round of fundraising as planned, to raise $1.5M to extend our runway. Knowing that the private capital market was tightening, I felt some stress but remained optimistic because I thought that early-stage investment might remain relatively resilient and that the good relationships I had with existing and interested investors would make this round quick and easy.
Oh, how naive I was.
This round could not have been slower and more difficult: the passionate interest from investors turn to “a conservative strategy”, the cross-sector investors went back to stick with their own sectors (mostly tech), and the investors that committed $1.5M and turn cold feet last minute before signing the document. It was obvious—everyone was nervous about a confusing future or even faced financial challenges. I was able to raise a fraction of the initial goal over the course of three months, during incredibly busy daily nitty-gritty and exhausting travels to trade shows and conferences, and the fundraising difficulty was only getting stronger as time went on.
Mid-November, I was under deep stress. As the only person responsible for fundraising, it was my job to get new capital to cover our high cash burn (even though it was reducing) of over $100K per month. We would run out of money soon.
I felt stuck. I felt hopeless to close the funding deficit before the holiday season (investment is usually quiet from November to January) and our cash reserve will be depleted by January. What’s more, I hated the idea of telling my team that I couldn’t raise money. We had a team of ten employees who were passionate and loyal. We see each other as family and the company is the baby of all of us. How can I fail their trust?
After depleting every investor lead, I put together all my courage and made a difficult, but I believed the right decision to aggressively cut costs. With the support of my co-founder and investors, I first talked to my team, explaining our business performance (even though we were growing, some of the challenges we went through did financial damage), fundraising progress, and finally, the decision to lay off employees. I had one-on-one meetings with every team member. There were tears, confusion, and deep frustration; but they were all understanding and express trust in me and the remaining team to continue our mission. After laying off half of the team in December, we further cut SG&A expenses such as our downtown office, some nice-to-have software tools, and any non-core marketing activities.
These changes saved us. We were able to keep the light on, keep shipping products to retailers, and we even launched new products and made strategic improvements to our products and supply chain. Most amazingly, we are on the path to profitability and our top line continues to grow at an accelerating pace. It was only six months ago when we were on the verge of shutting down the business. Well, we survived another challenge, and I will be ready for the next one!
This morning, I was reading about all the SVB-related fiascos and saw a closing comment from a WSJ journalist: no one saw it coming. That’s not an answer or a solution; always being prepared and acting quickly is. Never feel comfortable, and maybe you will never be surprised.
Do You Believe In Stitch Fix?
Stitch Fix has been in the headlines a lot in the past two years. A few weeks ago, on January 5, Stitch Fix announced that it will cut 20% of the company’s salaried jobs, its second downsizing in the past year and that its founder Katrina Lake would return to lead the personal shopping and styling service.
What does Stitch Fix do?
Stitch Fix is a personal styling service that uses data science to personalize clothing items. By paying a monthly styling fee, customers fill out their styling profiles online and a Stitch Fix stylist chooses five items to send them. Once received, the customer has three days to choose which items are worth keeping and which ones to return. If the customer keeps all five items, she gets 25% off the total cost.
A few news articles that can provide context:
The Unraveling of Stitch Fix (WSJ, Jan 25, 2023)
Stitch Fix to Cut 20% of Salaried Jobs, CEO Stepping Down (WSJ, Jan 5, 2023)
A brief history of StitchB2 Fix: how a personal styling service merged fashion with data (B2, Nov 10, 2020)
Stitch Fix shares retreat after IPO pop, close at $15.15 (CNBC, Nov 17, 2017)
I have not always followed Stitch Fix, because as someone who rarely spends money on clothing or shops online, I don’t truly understand Stitch Fix’s mission and market, and I don’t know anyone that is actually using its service or that even mentioned Stitch Fix on social media or directly to me. However, after learning about the company's history, I have a few observations and thoughts.
1. Shifting consumer trends.
Consumer behaviors and preferences are always changing. How, and to what extent, a company reacts to these changes is another topic. But this makes me wonder if Stich Fix was born out of a trend too and if its subscription-based, “data science-based” styling model has a limited market that seems to be declining these days.
According to this WSJ podcast, after finding success in women’s apparel, Stitch Fix expanded into Men and Children – neither succeeded and they are faced with a lot of excessive inventories that they actually own.
Another question I have is that if the world is truly moving to an increasingly environmentally-conscious future, will e-commerce eventually decline? What do the investors that invest in both food delivery and sustainability think about their contradictory natures? How does that affect personal travel? I’m not proposing aggressive changes. I’m just thinking about the good and the bad that all the changes or revolutions brought to our society and the people – e.g. Amazon Go stores don’t mark down the products even though they don’t incur as much labor expenses as traditional stores. Where did the extra profit go and did it make our lives better?
Something that I believe never changes in the consumer world: the mass market, most people that are not the 1%, always care for value. Good products, low price – that’s always a winning strategy.
2. Is Stitch Fix’s data science positioning a solid part of their business model?
“Stitch Fix claimed to track body dimensions, pattern preferences, and which clothing customers kept. They could also compare customer data to track patterns and similarities. With all of this info, Stitch Fix was able to deliver very accurate predictions.” Fundamentally, I believe that data science presents a historical picture and should be used simply as a reference, instead of as a sole input, for future predictions. Saying that these data provide very accurate predictions is a red flag. I have watched a retail data science startup fail closely – they had many issues, but one major issue that I questioned was is what they were building truly that much more valuable than all the priority data that retailers and brands have and the public data out there. What additional, critical insights can they provide that answer any unanswered questions?
As of July 30, last year, the company had about 7,920 full- and part-time employees, including about 3,400 stylists and 3,100 fulfillment-center workers. When a company is positioned as a data science and tech company, why do they still have many stylists? To me, they sound like a tech-forward retailer - which is what Stitch Fix aims to replace.
3. Startup companies need to be rigorous and cautious about what they say.
“In 2018, a number of class action lawsuits were filed against Stitch Fix, claiming the company violated federal securities laws by making misleading statements about its prospects for growth, plans for advertising on television, and overall profit. The class action complaints were filed on behalf of company shareholders. That June, the company announced that the client base had grown by 30% in Q3. However, the next quarterly report in October revealed that its client base had only grown by 25%.” Stitch Fix won the case in 2022 because the judge believed that the statements were broad and not misleading.
A reminder, after watching Stitch Fix go through this legal battle, is that founders and startup companies need to be rigorous and cautious about what they say, even though it might not be in their nature. Lies, once created, tend to pile up. We do not need another Sam Bankman-Fried or Charlie Javice.
4. Leadership seems to be a serious problem.
Read what the employees are saying on Glassdoor about senior management in the past year under Elizabeth Spaulding’s leadership:
“Horrible C-level management, Low accountability”
“CEO is not qualified to run a tech company, makes bad decisions, and talks like she's trying gaslight the company”
“CEO is a deeply insecure career salesperson from consulting; she is completely unqualified to lead the company and resists self reflection on every opportunity”
“CEO has created many toxic dynamics/politics at the company”
“Before Eric, Brad, Mike, and Katrina left, this organization was influential and impactful. Each month, another high level departure is announced, and with it, the org goes further downhill. The most obvious problem is the terrible management. The management issues are so bad that they are now referred to out in the open during all-hands by Data Scientists. We've recently had two entire teams leave the company of their own volition because things are insufferable. Levels make no sense, managers are incapable of feedback, and most ppl in leadership got there via politics. Now they are asking data scientists to make dashboards, and they ignore the experiment results because they're obsessed with pushing garbage features to look like we are making progress. It's a real shame. Look at the attrition and ask yourself why.”
I do not know much about Spaulding. She seems to be a capable strategist - she is a former partner at consulting firm Bain; she joined Stitch Fix as president in early 2020 and took over as CEO in August 2021. But there is obviously a problem.
Was the leadership transition too fast? What are the reasons why Lake handed her baby to Spaulding? Would Lake be able to save the downward trajectory of Stitch Fix? We will see.
5. The stock price has been declining after its pandemic surge.
According to CNBC, Stitch Fix’s few venture-capital investors include Baseline Ventures and Benchmark Capital, which invested in the company at a $300 million valuation in 2014.
When Stitch Fix went IPO in 2017, they had an opening price of $16.90, valuing the company at roughly $1.63 billion.
In January 2021, stock price peaked at about $100 per share due to the pandemic e-comm boom.
Yesterday (Friday, Jan 27, 2023), its stock closed at $4.94 with the market cap being $547.39 M.
What a fun ride. I'm curious about when Stitch Fix’s pre-IPO investors and its leadership sold their stock, if they did.
Inside the Sudden Rise of China’s Mysterious $15 Billion Fast Fashion Retailer - Shein
I read some stories about Shein's success, at least marketing and financial-wise, on Dec 13, 2022, when there was news about Shein exploring the online marketplace business model. I’m not sharing my opinions of whether the potential business model would work for them in this blog article (that could be another article), or whether we should boycott Shein because of its negative environmental impact and controversial working conditions.
Today I want to share my initial learnings on their lightning-speed business success.
Here are two helpful articles. I especially enjoyed reading the Wired one.
Fast, cheap, and Out of Control: Inside Shein’s Sudden Rise (Wired, May 2022)
Shein: Is China’s Mysterious $15 Billion Fast Fashion Retailer Ready For Stores? (Forbes, Feb 2021)
My high-level takeaways: Growth drivers: Product + Channel (maybe + Master of Consumer Behavior)
Products that the target market wants (the competitive advantage can be low price, technology, or economy of scale, for us - Yishi’s founding story) +
Channels, of both sales and marketing, that are mainstream and can scale fast in a relatively low-touch way.
Some smaller, specific notes:
Mid-size influencers are their influencer marketing sweet spot now but they started with small influencers and used a site called Lookbook.nu to find small-time influencers in the US and Europe and started sending them free clothing.
SEO helped early days too
Low working capital: "only when an item began selling did they place a small bulk order with a given wholesaler."
Software and automation make they work better and faster - their decision-making process, product optimization, loss cutting are all faster
"Under an international agreement, it often costs less to ship small packages from China to the US than from other countries, or even from within the US itself."
Overall, its business model is unique and may not be the "role model" business by all standards, but I do think there are many things we can learn from its success to date.
I hope you find something useful in Shein’s story.