Gilt Groupe

How Gilt Groupe started: a long line outside a Paris flash-sale store

Sam tells the origin of serial founder Kevin Ryan (20th DoubleClick employee, made $20M personally), who created Gilt Groupe after seeing a long line outside a Paris women's store running daily noon-only deals and deciding to bring the model to America.

“He told me that he was walking down the street in Paris and saw a long line outside of a women's store. He asked a woman, "What is this thing?" They go, "Well, they do these deals every day only for an hour at noon. They're starting to do them online, but they still do them in person." He goes, "Oh, cool. I'm going to do that in America." And that's how Gilt started.”