Jan 19, 2022 · 39m · 20growth
20Growth: The Biggest Lie in Startup Growth and Marketing, Why You Do Not Need To Diversify Customer Acquisition Channels in the Early Days & When and How To Build Your Growth Team with Rob Schutz, Co-Founder and Chief Growth Officer @ Ro
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of 20 Growth, host Harry Stebbings interviews Rob Schutz, Chief Growth Officer and Co-Founder at Ro, about early-stage customer acquisition strategies, structuring growth teams, and avoiding premature channel diversification. Schutz shares actionable lessons from BarkBox and Ro on hiring growth talent, evaluating acquisition channels, and aligning growth with product and engineering.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Harry holds 27.7% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Harry as informed peer 3.4 Guest teaching 5.4 Guest disagreement 2.0 Harry pushing back 2.4
speaking balance: gold is Harry, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 7:05 Rob rejects early channel diversification advice
Rob explicitly offers a contrarian view, telling founders to ignore early channel diversification and double down solely on what works.
Hardest push from Harry ▶ 8:06 Harry presses Rob on channel decay and single-channel riskHarry refuses to accept Rob's single-channel focus advice, arguing it leaves startups in a no-man's land when acquisition channels asymptote.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 9:38 Rob clarifies true growth versus spending money without retentionRob reframes Harry's question to teach that dumping acquisition dollars without retentive product-market fit is fake growth.
Harry holds his own ▶ 8:10 Harry proposes a 90-10 channel testing splitHarry demonstrates growth domain familiarity by proposing a specific 90-10 operational model for balancing core acquisition with new channel bets.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Harry as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Harry pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rob Schutz's Origin Story and Early Growth Lessons | 2 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Harry welcomes Rob and asks about his background entering the startup and growth world. Rob shares early growth stories from his daily deal site and BarkBox, detailing low-cost list building strategies. | |
| Paid Acquisition vs. Organic Growth and Premature Diversification | 5 | 6 | 3 | 5 | Rob offers a controversial take advising early-stage founders not to prematurely diversify channels if one is working well. Harry pushes back firmly, raising the risk of channel decay and advocating for a 90/10 channel testing split. | |
| Defining True Growth and Hiring the Initial Growth Team | 3 | 6 | 2 | 2 | Harry asks Rob to define true growth and explain how to begin building a growth team. Rob educates on why dumping ad money doesn't solve underlying product-market fit issues and recommends validating channels with agencies first. | |
| Organizational Structure: Aligning Growth and Marketing | 4 | 5 | 2 | 2 | Harry drills into organizational design and interview tactics for evaluating growth candidates. Rob details Ro's split between performance growth and marketing creative, alongside practical interview tests. | |
| Channel Testing, Postmortems, and Startup Stomach | 3 | 5 | 2 | 2 | Rob discusses channel testing philosophy, introducing concepts like paying for education, blameless autopsies, and evaluating startup stomach during onboarding. | |
| Cross-Functional Alignment and CEO-Growth Communication | 4 | 6 | 2 | 3 | Harry prompts Rob on cross-functional alignment and common CEO mistakes in managing growth expectations. Rob emphasizes setting unified company OKRs and maintaining candid dialogue around metric trade-offs. | |
| Non-Data-Driven Growth Bets and Learning from Failure | 3 | 5 | 2 | 2 | Harry asks about gut-based growth bets and recent failures. Rob highlights their Major League Baseball sponsorship bet and reflects candidly on the failure of their smoking cessation product Zero. |
Statements from this episode (15)
Stebbings: Ro raised over $870M at a $5B valuation
“To date, Roe has raised over eight hundred and seventy million dollars, with a last reported valuation of five billion dollars”
Schutz: BarkBox Hacked Instagram's Popular Page With 5:15 PM Posts
“At Bark, we found a way to hack Instagram's popular page back when that was a thing. Like, if you posted a funny dog picture at five 15 during the week, We would get every time on the popular page, and we just have explosive growth”
Schutz: Effective CAC Requires Blending Aggressive Paid Channels With Free Ones
“How do you supplement aggressive paid channel work with free and cheap channels, so your blended CAC Is really effective, right?”
Rob Schutz: Early startups should max working channels before diversifying
“It's actually one piece of advice I give to early stage founders, which is like, don't worry about diversifying. Like, this is maybe controversial in this day and age. If Facebook is working for you, and your LTV to CAC is good, and your payback is good, crank…”
Rob Schutz: Startups must build core retention tools before diversifying
“Everyone should build card abandon out as probably one of the first things they do. Everyone should build an email list. You should, how'd you hear about us surveys that can help with attribution. You should figure these foundational things out so regardless o…”
Schutz: New acquisition channels rarely fix core product or business problems
“Very rarely will entering a new channel or new types of creative fix underlying issues with the overall business or the value proposition.”
Schutz: Paid search failed at BarkBox but succeeded at healthcare startup Ro
“For example, at Bark, paid search was not a thing. It did not work for us. People were not searching for, like, monthly box of treats and toys for dogs. But at Rope, people are looking for all sorts of vacation or treatments for different conditions that they'…”
Ro splits growth and marketing into separate functions under its CGO
“I think for us, you know, we have kind of two separate but equal functions. We have growth, which is more of the performance marketing. They spend the media dollars. And then we have marketing, which owns creative, which owns messaging and insights, kind of th…”
Schutz: Ro requires a founder interview for every new hire
“We still have a founder interview everyone that joins the company.”
Schutz: Spending $50K Monthly on TV Ads Yielded No Definitive Results
“You know, I think that I look back to when I launched TV many years ago as my first channel. I tried to do it just like dipping my toe in the water. Let's spend 50 K a month, right? How do we test? Because it's a lot of money. It's a high ante to get into TV. …”
Schutz: Give New Growth Hires Three Weeks Before Expecting Changes
“I try to encourage folks to give these new hires as much space as possible to truly onboard. You never get that time back. After week three, you'll have plenty on your plate. You don't need to rush into week two immediately trying to jump into things. So letti…”
Schutz: 14% of Roman ED patients were heavy smokers
“14% of men that came onto the platform for ED were heavy smokers, and it played a large role in why they were experiencing issues with sexual intimacy”
Schutz: Consumers won't pay to quit habits they enjoy
“We learned people don't like paying to stop something that, while they know it is bad, they enjoy it, and they've been doing it for a long time.”
Schutz: Calm generated immense value sponsoring CNN's 2020 election coverage
“They were the sponsor of CNN's coverage for election night. Results. So it was like, election, 2020, brought to you by Calm. And it was like, hilarious, because people are like, of course, I'm freaking out mentally. It blew up on social, and I know they got li…”