????今年新年前夜，許多手頭拮據(jù)的女性不約而同地登陸Rent the Runway，希望租賃（而不是購買）一件時尚別致的禮服。本文摘自《財富》雜志推出的新書《變焦：用令人驚訝的方式改變職業(yè)生涯》(Zoom: Surprising Ways to Supercharge Your Career)。珍妮弗?海曼和珍妮弗?弗雷斯和我們分享了她們的創(chuàng)業(yè)故事。所有這一切都始于海曼妹妹衣柜中一件價值不菲的禮服。

????2008年，正在哈佛商學(xué)院(Harvard Business School)讀二年級的珍妮弗?海曼回到紐約市過感恩節(jié)。她的妹妹貝基趁機(jī)炫耀了一番她剛剛購買的瑪切薩(Marchesa)禮服，她打算在那個周末穿上這件價值1,600美元的衣服參加一場婚禮。

????這個價碼遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)超出了貝基的預(yù)算。海曼發(fā)現(xiàn)貝基的衣柜里還有“數(shù)不勝數(shù)的其他衣服”，于是就問妹妹，為什么不能穿其中一件呢？貝基給出了三個理由：她不再喜歡其中任何一件；她已經(jīng)被拍到穿過所有這些衣服了（而這場婚禮的照片無疑將傳遍Facebook）；她無法忍受重復(fù)著裝。

????貝基面臨的問題非常簡單：一柜子的衣服，但沒什么可穿。她的姐姐從中看到了商機(jī)。她向自己的朋友珍妮弗?弗雷斯講述了這個故事，于是兩人后來一起創(chuàng)建了一家專門出租女士晚禮服的網(wǎng)站Rent the Runway，這家現(xiàn)在已經(jīng)大紅大紫的網(wǎng)站被人們稱為“服裝版奈飛公司(Netflix)”。

????兩條起初迥然不同的職業(yè)路徑最終引導(dǎo)海曼和弗雷斯在恰當(dāng)?shù)臅r機(jī)相聚在了一起。海曼在紐約市外的新羅謝爾長大，在那里上高中時，她的課外活動非常豐富，多得簡直有些可笑。每一場校園劇都少不了她的身影，她上聲樂課和舞蹈課，還是學(xué)校排球隊成員，戲劇俱樂部和辯論俱樂部主席，而且經(jīng)常在周末參加旨在幫助自閉癥青少年的志愿者工作。在新羅謝爾高中( New Rochelle High School)的畢業(yè)典禮上，她理所當(dāng)然地成為代表所在班級致告別辭的不二人選。

????在哈佛大學(xué)，海曼成為塞內(nèi)卡俱樂部( The Seneca)的首批會員。就像她和弗萊斯后來創(chuàng)辦 Rent the Runway一樣，加入這家成立于1999年的女性組織是她熱衷于解決問題的早期例證。那么，海曼認(rèn)為塞內(nèi)卡俱樂部解決了什么問題呢？答案是，一種男性占主導(dǎo)地位、洋溢著過時的陽剛之氣的校園文化?！靶@里有各種各樣的男性俱樂部，加入這些組織的男生相互聯(lián)絡(luò)，成為終身朋友，畢業(yè)后在職場上相互提攜，”她說?！暗蜎]有任何類似的組織。于是，我加入了這個小型女性團(tuán)體，和其他成員一起在哈佛大學(xué)掀起了一場社會運動，現(xiàn)在校園內(nèi)有幾十家女性俱樂部?！彼J(rèn)識的許多事業(yè)有成的女企業(yè)家都曾經(jīng)是塞內(nèi)卡俱樂部的會員。

????This New Year's Eve, women on a budget will head online to Rent the Runway in order to borrow, not buy, a chic ensemble. In this excerpt from Fortune's new book Zoom: Surprising Ways to Supercharge Your Career, Jennifer Hyman and Jennifer Fleiss share the story of how they created the company. It all started with an overpriced dress hanging in a little sister's closet.

????In 2008, Jennifer Hyman was in New York City on Thanksgiving break from her second year at Harvard Business School when her younger sister Becky showed off a $1,600 Marchesa dress she had just purchased for a wedding that weekend.

????The price tag was far out of Becky's budget, and Hyman, after seeing the "kazillion other dresses" in Becky's closet, asked her sister why she couldn't just wear one of those. The three-pronged answer: She didn't like any of them anymore; she had already been photographed in all of them (and pictures from the wedding would go all over Facebook); and she couldn't stand to repeat an outfit.

????In Becky's straightforward problem -- a closetful of dresses, but nothing to wear -- her older sister saw a business opportunity. She brought the story back to her friend Jennifer Fleiss, and together they created Rent the Runway, a now-popular website for renting women's evening-wear that has been called a "Netflix for dresses."

????Two different early career paths ultimately led Hyman and Fleiss to each other at just the right time. Hyman grew up outside New York City in New Rochelle, where her high school extracurricular-activity list was almost comically long. She was in every school play. She took voice lessons and dance classes. She was on the volleyball team. She was president of the theater club and the debate club. She did volunteer work with autistic teens on weekends. And, inevitably, she ended up valedictorian of her class at New Rochelle High School.

????At Harvard, Hyman was a member of the first class of The Seneca, a women's organization created in 1999. The group was an early example of her being involved in something that solved a problem, as she and Fleiss would later do with Rent the Runway. The problem that Hyman believes The Seneca addressed? An on-campus culture that was male-dominated and masculine in its outdated traditions. "There were all these male clubs where men would network with each other, become lifelong friends, and help each other get jobs afterward," she says. "There was nothing like that for women. So I was part of this small group of women who created what became kind of a social movement at Harvard, and now there are dozens of female clubs on campus." Many of the most entrepreneurial and successful women she knows from Harvard were in The Seneca.