The Exchanges

Q As a growth marketer in particular, I'd be fascinated here. Tell me about a decision that you've made without data. How did it go, and how did you get the confidence to take the leap without that data knowledge?

A I think as, as growth, uh, marketers, we like to think all of our decisions are, are grounded in data, of course, but, I think that there are plenty of times where it requires going out on a limb if you want to win or try something new. And the example I'll give you is our relationship with Major League Baseball. So Roman is a proud partner of Major League Baseball, and we have been for several years. But that started back in 2018 when we had some initial reads that there could be a good demo overlap, right? The average age on Roman is 46 years old. The average baseball viewer is in his early fifties. So we said, okay, there's something here. We'll try running some ads and seeing how it goes. It was good, but then we went in, we had conversations. Do we want to, like, do we want to become an official partner in Major League Baseball? Like, what is the value we get out of that? It's really, really hard to quantify. We didn't have that hard and fast data that said, like, Roman logo plus Major League Baseball logo equals 15% increase in conversion. You'd love to have that at your disposal, but you kind of need to make a leap. So we did, we said, let's do this. We think there's a lot of benefits outside of Even just the media opportunities when you think about reputation and legitimacy. It's something we kind of, uh, we followed our gut on and has been really, really powerful, and …

AI assessment note: “We didn't have that hard and fast data... we followed our gut on”

Q And then you haven't diversified at all, and you're in a no-man's land of having no new growth avenues, and you're stuck because you relied on this It's a very complicated strategy. So is it not better to do ninety-ten, nail working, and then spread a couple of bats?

A Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, you have to do it in a smart way. And again, as you become larger and more mature, you don't want to have your entire business reliant on a change to iOS. That's a terrible position to be in. I say that more so for early stage founders. Take it if it's there, and then you earn the right to get to diversify over the course of time. But I think there's plenty of things you can do at a foundational level that set you up for ways to diversify regardless of what your channel mix is, right? Like, 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 of where traffic is coming from, you're squeezing as much possible value out of a user that's come to your site as you can. And then over the course of time, you're You will begin to monetize those other channels, those social communities, et cetera, in a way that lets you diversify pretty naturally.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, you have to do it in a smart way.”

Q I don't know what to do. Do I hire a growth leader first who will bring in a growth team beneath? Do I start with growth engineers? How do I know whether to bring in a growth leader or more junior growth teams to place those bets? What's that kind of positioning?

A Yeah, I think that early on, it depends on if you have some of that traction already. If you are working with Let's say you, at a founder level, and you're not a growth person, but you know enough to be a little dangerous, and you can hire a freelancer, you can hire an agency. Once you get a sense of what's kind of working, that's a pretty good indicator of what direction to go in. You know, 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're experiencing, so it's highly intent-based. So we knew very early on, search is a channel. Paid search is a channel. So we went out and hired folks that were good at paid search. Then we saw that paid social was a channel. We went and hired people who were good at paid social. And once you kind of have that engine running, it does allow you to release a little of the pressure of like, we need this white knight head of growth that's going to come in and figure everything out because things are already starting to move. And given where the market is right now and how hard some of those more senior growth hires are, you want to be able to be opportunistic and find the right Person versus like, I'm going to plug this person in because we…

AI assessment note: “release a little of the pressure of like, we need this white knight head of growth”

Q So I feel good about this growth candidate. I think they're great, but I'm a first-time founder. I don't know what growth, good growth looks like. I have no idea what great candidates look like. Help me understand here. How do the How do they show themselves? What are the core signals, characteristics that suggest someone is or can be great in this growth role?

A Yeah. Just get one 10 X growth person, one 10 X engineer. That's really all you need, right? Yeah. Look, I think it depends, again, on the type of role you're hiring for. If you're hiring for a channel manager or someone that's going to run affiliate or paid search day in, day out, I think those are actually potentially easier roles to suss out and determine if that person is going to make sense, right? There's metrics you can go through. At Rowe, we walk people through a practical for like a hypothetical new care vertical that we're launching. What's the growth plan look like? What's media spend? What assumptions do you make around conversion rate and ROAS? And then team pokes around, we ask them questions. We get a sense, like, do they know their stuff on the data side?

AI assessment note: “we walk people through a practical... do they know their stuff on the data side”

Q I want to ask one final question on you before Quickfire. Taking you to a growth decision you made without data to back it up, how did it go, and what were some takeaways for you?

A I think as growth marketers, we like to think all of our decisions are grounded in data, of course, but I think that there are plenty of times where it requires going out on a limb if you want to win or try something new. The example I'll give you is our relationship with Major League Baseball. So Roman is a proud partner of Major League Baseball, and we have been for several years. But that started back in 2018 when we had some initial reads that there could be a good demo overlap, right? The average age on Roman is 46 years old. The average baseball viewer is in his early fifties. So we said, there's something here. We'll try running some ads and seeing how it goes. And it was good. It was pretty good. But then we went in, we had conversations. Do we want to become an official partner of Major League Baseball? Like, what is the value we get out of that? It's really, really hard to Quantify. We didn't have that hard and fast data that said Roman logo plus major league baseball logo equals 15% increase in conversion. You'd love to have that, but you kind of need to make a leap. So we did, we said, let's do this. We think there's a lot of benefits outside of even just the media opportunities when you think about reputation and legitimacy. We followed our gut on and has been really, really powerful and continues to be something we invest in and MLB has been a great partner.

AI assessment note: “The example I'll give you is our relationship with Major League Baseball.”

Q Can I ask, when you think about, like, the best, I think a really important part is what we said before, the cross-functional element. What can you do to deliberately manufacture and structure cross-functional communication, collaboration between growth, product, marketing, customer service? What can you do strategically to make more of it happen?

A Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of that starts with having a common north star. Like, there's a lot you can do to get people working together in meetings and social events and Donuts through Slack and all of these things, but the reality is, if your incentives are not aligned, and you're not working towards a common set of goals, there is always going to be inherent friction. For example, selfishly, I will bring things back to Roe, but you know, that's why I'm here. We'd set OKRs on per six-month basis. We do that at a company level. Here are the metrics we are running towards. Here are the quality and safety metrics we are aligned on. Then from there, each of the teams will build their sub-OKRs against that. And those all need to ladder back into the company goals, and so, whether it's engineering, or product, or design, or growth, everyone should be laddering up into similar metrics across the board, and that's a really important foundational piece, because then, from there, great, now let's have coffee. Let's force a coffee between, like, a new hire, or a new team member, or a new acquisition. Let's set up one-on-ones and get people talking, because what I found more and more is human people like interacting with other human people, and in a lot of cases, and If you can do that in a way where you're also grounding the conversation around common goals, and you're bringing in the …

AI assessment note: “starts with having a common north star... set OKRs on per six-month basis”

Q Absolutely love that. I do want to touch on that as the starting point, though, because that was your first, like, dedicated head of growth role. What do you think were, like, it was a four and a half year journey as well. It's a meaningful amount of time. How did that time impact your mindset to moving to Rowe today, do you think?

A I mean, my experience at Bark was pretty fantastic. I still find five years later, I'm like, Still using dog puns and day-to-day conversation. It's a hard habit to break, but Bark, I got an opportunity to come in. There was no team there. Got to launch new channels and, like, learn the nuts and bolts of, like, how do I run search? How do I run paid social? You know, there's a lot of parallels into some of what we've done on the row side, but I still even think back to, like, some of the channels that require sweat. I remember 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, sort of, like, charted, and what was the reaction of the engagement, the type of picture, and we were able to, like, just grow that account by putting sweat into it, and so always looking for those opportunities where you can out-hustle people by being really obsessed with a specific platform, and I think I've been able to parlay a lot of those early experiences at Bark into what we're doing with Roe, like, how do you supplement aggressive paid channel work with free and cheap channels, so your blended CAC Is really effective, right? The importance of creative, the importance of testing and optimization. I think, well, it may n…

AI assessment note: “parlay a lot of those early experiences at Bark into what we're doing with Roe”

Q Before we move to the more senior hire, what questions do you ask when referencing to really understand the true character of the candidate you have?

A I love to ask people about their failures. I love to say, tell me about a project that completely blew up, that looking back, like, you are not proud of. And sometimes people, they don't have anything. Everything is pretty great. And that's just not, one, probably accurate. Two, you want someone with a level of both humility, and then I would say on the business side, who's pushed enough and tested enough that they're comfortable with failure. That is a big part of growth. I've gotten very comfortable. Our teams are very comfortable with trying things that do not work. And so I want people who Come in with that mentality. We talk about things that don't work as more of paying for education. It's not failure. It's actually, like, getting to an understanding of where you should spend time and where you should not spend time more quickly, and that's a really important quality for folks joining the team.

AI assessment note: “tell me about a project that completely blew up”

Q And then you haven't diversified at all, and you're in a no-man's land of having no new growth avenues, and you're stuck because you relied on this It's a very complicated strategy. So is it not better to do ninety-ten, nail working, and then spread a couple of bats?

A Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, you have to do it in a smart way. And again, as you become larger and more mature, you don't want to have your entire business reliant on a change to iOS. That's a terrible position to be in. I say that more so for early stage founders. Take it if it's there, and then you earn the right to get to diversify over the course of time. But I think there's plenty of things you can do at a foundational level that set you up for ways to diversify regardless of what your channel mix is, right? Like, 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 of where traffic is coming from, you're squeezing as much possible value out of a user that's come to your site as you can. And then over the course of time, you're You will begin to monetize those other channels, those social communities, et cetera, in a way that lets you diversify pretty naturally.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, you have to do it in a smart way.”

Q Say we're in this first 90 days, we're getting into the org, we're finding our own fit, what are some red flags that actually this candidate is maybe not what you thought?

A Yeah, I think that there's a phrase we use at Row. It's, it's called the startup stomach. This person has startup stomach. How are they dealing with maybe some of the ambiguity that comes along with a startup? I think folks listening probably would agree that early stage, of course, you want things to be set up in a perfect way, but that's not the reality of an early stage company. It can be a little bit more chaotic than that at times. Is this person at your early stage company in a position to be able to thrive in that environment? You might see, and you might hire an amazing person from a bigger company who's done a lot on paper, and maybe they have done a lot, and they're very smart, but they might come in, they say, like, what's our plan for implementing multi-touch attribution? And you're like, we're just trying to figure out how Facebook ads work. Like, what team runs customer insights, right? Where do I pull the MRI data from? Where they might just be used to a bigger company with different sets of resources versus, like, I need someone who can come in, they can deal with ambiguity, they know that things will get better over time, but, like, Here's where we are, and let's buckle up.

AI assessment note: “what's our plan for implementing multi-touch attribution? And you're like, we're just trying”

Q Absolutely love that. I do want to touch on that as the starting point, though, because that was your first, like, dedicated head of growth role. What do you think were, like, it was a four and a half year journey as well. It's a meaningful amount of time. How did that time impact your mindset to moving to Rowe today, do you think?

A I mean, my experience at Bark was pretty fantastic. I still find five years later, I'm like, Still using dog puns and day-to-day conversation. It's a hard habit to break, but Bark, I got an opportunity to come in. There was no team there. Got to launch new channels and, like, learn the nuts and bolts of, like, how do I run search? How do I run paid social? You know, there's a lot of parallels into some of what we've done on the row side, but I still even think back to, like, some of the channels that require sweat. I remember 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, sort of, like, charted, and what was the reaction of the engagement, the type of picture, and we were able to, like, just grow that account by putting sweat into it, and so always looking for those opportunities where you can out-hustle people by being really obsessed with a specific platform, and I think I've been able to parlay a lot of those early experiences at Bark into what we're doing with Roe, like, how do you supplement aggressive paid channel work with free and cheap channels, so your blended CAC Is really effective, right? The importance of creative, the importance of testing and optimization. I think, well, it may n…

AI assessment note: “I think I've been able to parlay a lot of those early experiences at Bark”

Q Before we move to the more senior hire, what questions do you ask when referencing to really understand the true character of the candidate you have?

A I love to ask people about their failures. I love to say, tell me about a project that completely blew up, that looking back, like, you are not proud of. And sometimes people, they don't have anything. Everything is pretty great. And that's just not, one, probably accurate. Two, you want someone with a level of both humility, and then I would say on the business side, who's pushed enough and tested enough that they're comfortable with failure. That is a big part of growth. I've gotten very comfortable. Our teams are very comfortable with trying things that do not work. And so I want people who Come in with that mentality. We talk about things that don't work as more of paying for education. It's not failure. It's actually, like, getting to an understanding of where you should spend time and where you should not spend time more quickly, and that's a really important quality for folks joining the team.

AI assessment note: “I love to ask people about their failures. I love to say, tell me”

Q Okay, so I check in with my new growth team member a month in. What would please you if we sat down for coffee and you said, what have you been working on? What would please you with my answer?

A I would love a rundown of the folks they've met across the teams, their impressions, and kind of the relationships they've started to build. I think I would also love a high-level understanding of, like, Have you taken a look at the data and the reporting and the tooling? Like, are we set up in a way that we think we will be able to measure things appropriately? Is something working? Is something not working? And then maybe just a high-level thought on just existing channels. Like, what do we think is looking good? What do I think is looking bad? I don't expect or even want at that point, like, here's my action plan. You know, we do a pretty clear 30, 60, 90, where we say, here are the expectations coming on board. The end of 30 days is like, have you met Do you have a lay of the land? Have you met your direct reports or your manager, whatever it might be, and then now you're ready to take off a bigger bite going into your next 30 days? I'm just that big believer in, like, one, building cross-functional relationships, and then a high-level audit of, kind of, like, what is going on. Do you know what is going on in this function?

AI assessment note: “I would love a rundown of the folks they've met across the teams”

Q But so let's start with this then. Growth, we've just said organic, paid, affiliates, partnerships. What does growth Actually mean to you? And what is ahead of growth?

A Yeah. You know, I think that, you know, healthy growth, I would say really comes back to finding ways where with product market fit, you can bring more people onto your platform. I think that there are a lot of ways, as you mentioned, you can plow money into channels and get people to come to your website or your app and to sign up for things. But unless there's actually retentive properties in there, unless people are willing to come back and vote with their wallet and say the value you're providing, I want more of it. That's not true growth in my mind. There has to be product market fit. And so I think that actually, even as you get into thinking about how to hire from the first part of your question, I think that's a really important part that has now been added to the list of requirements as you think about a growth leader. Someone that can understand is what is necessary to dump more fuel on the fire is about channel diversification. We go do TV, or is it actually saying like raising your hand saying, I don't think we're there yet on the fit side. Let's go back, let's retool, let's think about messaging, let's think about product features, and we'll get there on the channel side, but very rarely will entering a new channel or new types of creative fix underlying issues with the overall business or the value proposition. So that's actually the one piece that I think is newe…

AI assessment note: “healthy growth, I would say really comes back to finding ways where with product market fit”

Q So how do you set collaboration skills with other parts of the org? What questions tease out whether they do have that kind of cross-functional ability?

A Yeah, some of it is spending time with those folks and understanding how they interact, how open they are to new ideas. I like to test people by pushing back on something that they've presented and, like, actually disagreeing with it and see how they react to that. Are they going to be a collaborative partner? Are they going to stick to their guns? Like, do they have an ego? Are they pretty egoless when it comes to, like, wrong opinions loosely held? That's really a philosophy that we take. Like, Strong opinions loosely held all the way through. You need to test and suss that out a little bit, even through the interview process to understand, is this person going to be good to work with? Are they going to be, like, kind to work with? And are you going to be able to get along and, like, get through the inevitable ups and downs that come with building a company?

AI assessment note: “I like to test people by pushing back on something that they've presented”

Q Got you. Okay, so we've done that on the junior side. On the senior hiring side, how do you structure that when you think about the right execution plan to hiring the senior growth leader?

A Yeah, look, I know I alluded to it before, and I'm sure as your listeners know, they're trying to hire senior folks. It's a competitive market out there. It is a competitive market for senior growth folks. And I think the first call or Two, sometimes it's very much selling, getting them excited about the opportunity and making sure they want it. I will, even from some of our more recent hires who've been incredible, like I still do a lot of sourcing personally, and I'll take the first call. And I think as a founder, you have to be willing to throw yourself into these things, like hiring across the board is tough. This is a role that's probably one of the tougher ones. And so making sure that's actually a part of your job that you're taking seriously, you're building lists, you're tapping investors, you're tapping friends, you're having conversations. And it starts with probably selling somebody and getting them excited, and they get off the call, and they're like, oh my god, I want to work at that company. It sounds amazing. From there, you can then move into a bit more of a traditional interview process, but you've got to get them really jacked up to start so that they're excited. Everyone's getting countless LinkedIn messages every day to move to different roles in different companies, and so you want folks that are really engaged in the process. From there, I think similar i…

AI assessment note: “first call or Two, sometimes it's very much selling... From there, you can then move”

Q Can I ask, when you think about, like, the best, I think a really important part is what we said before, the cross-functional element. What can you do to deliberately manufacture and structure cross-functional communication, collaboration between growth, product, marketing, customer service? What can you do strategically to make more of it happen?

A Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of that starts with having a common north star. Like, there's a lot you can do to get people working together in meetings and social events and Donuts through Slack and all of these things, but the reality is, if your incentives are not aligned, and you're not working towards a common set of goals, there is always going to be inherent friction. For example, selfishly, I will bring things back to Roe, but you know, that's why I'm here. We'd set OKRs on per six-month basis. We do that at a company level. Here are the metrics we are running towards. Here are the quality and safety metrics we are aligned on. Then from there, each of the teams will build their sub-OKRs against that. And those all need to ladder back into the company goals, and so, whether it's engineering, or product, or design, or growth, everyone should be laddering up into similar metrics across the board, and that's a really important foundational piece, because then, from there, great, now let's have coffee. Let's force a coffee between, like, a new hire, or a new team member, or a new acquisition. Let's set up one-on-ones and get people talking, because what I found more and more is human people like interacting with other human people, and in a lot of cases, and If you can do that in a way where you're also grounding the conversation around common goals, and you're bringing in the …

AI assessment note: “starts with having a common north star... set OKRs on per six-month basis”

Q Got you. Okay, so we've done that on the junior side. On the senior hiring side, how do you structure that when you think about the right execution plan to hiring the senior growth leader?

A Yeah, look, I know I alluded to it before, and I'm sure as your listeners know, they're trying to hire senior folks. It's a competitive market out there. It is a competitive market for senior growth folks. And I think the first call or Two, sometimes it's very much selling, getting them excited about the opportunity and making sure they want it. I will, even from some of our more recent hires who've been incredible, like I still do a lot of sourcing personally, and I'll take the first call. And I think as a founder, you have to be willing to throw yourself into these things, like hiring across the board is tough. This is a role that's probably one of the tougher ones. And so making sure that's actually a part of your job that you're taking seriously, you're building lists, you're tapping investors, you're tapping friends, you're having conversations. And it starts with probably selling somebody and getting them excited, and they get off the call, and they're like, oh my god, I want to work at that company. It sounds amazing. From there, you can then move into a bit more of a traditional interview process, but you've got to get them really jacked up to start so that they're excited. Everyone's getting countless LinkedIn messages every day to move to different roles in different companies, and so you want folks that are really engaged in the process. From there, I think similar i…

AI assessment note: “first call or Two, sometimes it's very much selling, getting them excited”

Q But so let's start with this then. Growth, we've just said organic, paid, affiliates, partnerships. What does growth Actually mean to you? And what is ahead of growth?

A Yeah. You know, I think that, you know, healthy growth, I would say really comes back to finding ways where with product market fit, you can bring more people onto your platform. I think that there are a lot of ways, as you mentioned, you can plow money into channels and get people to come to your website or your app and to sign up for things. But unless there's actually retentive properties in there, unless people are willing to come back and vote with their wallet and say the value you're providing, I want more of it. That's not true growth in my mind. There has to be product market fit. And so I think that actually, even as you get into thinking about how to hire from the first part of your question, I think that's a really important part that has now been added to the list of requirements as you think about a growth leader. Someone that can understand is what is necessary to dump more fuel on the fire is about channel diversification. We go do TV, or is it actually saying like raising your hand saying, I don't think we're there yet on the fit side. Let's go back, let's retool, let's think about messaging, let's think about product features, and we'll get there on the channel side, but very rarely will entering a new channel or new types of creative fix underlying issues with the overall business or the value proposition. So that's actually the one piece that I think is newe…

AI assessment note: “healthy growth, I would say really comes back to finding ways where with product market fit”

Q I don't know what to do. Do I hire a growth leader first who will bring in a growth team beneath? Do I start with growth engineers? How do I know whether to bring in a growth leader or more junior growth teams to place those bets? What's that kind of positioning?

A Yeah, I think that early on, it depends on if you have some of that traction already. If you are working with Let's say you, at a founder level, and you're not a growth person, but you know enough to be a little dangerous, and you can hire a freelancer, you can hire an agency. Once you get a sense of what's kind of working, that's a pretty good indicator of what direction to go in. You know, 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're experiencing, so it's highly intent-based. So we knew very early on, search is a channel. Paid search is a channel. So we went out and hired folks that were good at paid search. Then we saw that paid social was a channel. We went and hired people who were good at paid social. And once you kind of have that engine running, it does allow you to release a little of the pressure of like, we need this white knight head of growth that's going to come in and figure everything out because things are already starting to move. And given where the market is right now and how hard some of those more senior growth hires are, you want to be able to be opportunistic and find the right Person versus like, I'm going to plug this person in because we…

AI assessment note: “release a little of the pressure of like, we need this white knight head of growth”

Q How do you approach and structure postmortems? Do you do it on success and failure? How often do you do them? Who do you invite to the meeting? What do they look like?

A Yeah, I mean, we do postmortems for regularly, both for things that went great and things that did not go great. We call them our blameless autopsies. Sometimes, you know, things that did not go according to plan or things that outperformed expectations. And there's a lot of different ways to run those. The way that I have run them in the past with my teams is essentially we use a tool where people can submit, you know, what worked really well, what could we do better next time? And then you do that asynchronously. And then when you all get together, you basically bucket them together. What are some of the themes that have come out of this? What are the two or three themes? And let's commit to a process point forward that incorporates some of the themes that have come out of it.

AI assessment note: “we do postmortems for regularly, both for things that went great and things that did not”

Q I know, it's lovely to see your good-looking face, but I do want to start with a little bit of context. I love some stories. So in terms of, like, your entry into the world of startups, how did you make that entry, and how did you come to lead the formidable growth team at Rowe today?

A Yeah, my indoctrination into growth really started, I'd say, in When I left healthcare consulting, I started a daily deals website with a friend back when those were a thing. It was really interesting. I started without really knowing anything about growth tactics or marketing or e-commerce. We didn't really have money. We raised VC from bank of mom and dad. Really had to figure out how to grow that business without any money and relying on super cheap or free ways to kind of build a list. So there's nothing like being thrown into the fire to figure out how to make it work. So that was a time where in the deal space, there were a lot of big companies raising hundreds of millions of dollars, and we had many less of hundreds. Hundreds of millions of dollars, and we just had to figure out how to be scrappy, and some of that through partnership, and kind of figuring out ways to just build an email list. One of those was actually, we would throw a free happy hour every week on a Tuesday or Wednesday. It was the slowest night of the week for bars. We'd say, like, give us a keg. We'll bring a hundred people. You just have to give a free drink, and the ticket to entry was you have to join our email list, and so we did that over the course of years. We were able to build up, you know, a list of tens of thousands of people who were, like, in the area. They were looking to try bars and re…

AI assessment note: “When I left healthcare consulting, I started a daily deals website with a friend”

Q I know, it's lovely to see your good-looking face, but I do want to start with a little bit of context. I love some stories. So in terms of, like, your entry into the world of startups, how did you make that entry, and how did you come to lead the formidable growth team at Rowe today?

A Yeah, my indoctrination into growth really started, I'd say, in When I left healthcare consulting, I started a daily deals website with a friend back when those were a thing. It was really interesting. I started without really knowing anything about growth tactics or marketing or e-commerce. We didn't really have money. We raised VC from bank of mom and dad. Really had to figure out how to grow that business without any money and relying on super cheap or free ways to kind of build a list. So there's nothing like being thrown into the fire to figure out how to make it work. So that was a time where in the deal space, there were a lot of big companies raising hundreds of millions of dollars, and we had many less of hundreds. Hundreds of millions of dollars, and we just had to figure out how to be scrappy, and some of that through partnership, and kind of figuring out ways to just build an email list. One of those was actually, we would throw a free happy hour every week on a Tuesday or Wednesday. It was the slowest night of the week for bars. We'd say, like, give us a keg. We'll bring a hundred people. You just have to give a free drink, and the ticket to entry was you have to join our email list, and so we did that over the course of years. We were able to build up, you know, a list of tens of thousands of people who were, like, in the area. They were looking to try bars and re…

AI assessment note: “When I left healthcare consulting, I started a daily deals website with a friend”

Q Thanks, man. I'm positivity right here. Yeah, Mr. Happy. But like, what is the option? Optimal onboarding process look like for growth roles in your mind? Like, how should we start them? As me as the founder, what should I do?

A Yeah, you know, I actually think that if it's growth or other roles, like the first two, three weeks are really, really critical. 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 letting folks get contextual Meet lots of people. Leaders build cross-functional relationships early on. Get comfortable, you know, with existing tools and get comfortable with the channels, but there isn't the pressure, and I don't think there should be the pressure over the first couple weeks to come in and make massive changes. That's where you build context and you build relationships. Once folks are up and running, of course, there's going to be time to dive into all these different areas, but you never get that time back. You get so busy, you're never going to be able to go around and, you know, if Meet the head of customer care and have coffee together for 45 minutes in a way that you might over the first few weeks before you're completely overloaded.

AI assessment note: “give these new hires as much space as possible to truly onboard”

Q to the team that growth is everyone's responsibility? Yes, growth is, you know, the sole function of the growth team. But, you know, I think a lot of growth teams feel pressure. They're this silver bullet of you're just going to come in and make everything great. And how do you communicate to the rest of the team? Yes, they're here for growth. But this is still a team sport.

A Yeah. I mean, I think that comes back to, again, having common goals, right? There should be new member goals that the design team is thinking about, and new member goals that engineering is thinking about, that unite everyone working towards this common, larger company goal. Yes, it is a team sport. It is not somebody goes off in a corner and rips Google search campaigns, and everyone's job is done. Those days are kind of gone, where you could just Plug into a channel and you're all set. But I think more than ever, it requires everyone being aligned around common goals than making sure you're catching up and you're tracking against those goals and understanding, hey, we need to make some changes across these different areas if we want to go ahead and hit this OKR. Having folks aligned, I think, is the number one thing you can do there.

AI assessment note: “I think that comes back to, again, having common goals, right?”

Q So I feel good about this growth candidate. I think they're great, but I'm a first-time founder. I don't know what growth, good growth looks like. I have no idea what great candidates look like. Help me understand here. How do the How do they show themselves? What are the core signals, characteristics that suggest someone is or can be great in this growth role?

A Yeah. Just get one 10 X growth person, one 10 X engineer. That's really all you need, right? Yeah. Look, I think it depends, again, on the type of role you're hiring for. If you're hiring for a channel manager or someone that's going to run affiliate or paid search day in, day out, I think those are actually potentially easier roles to suss out and determine if that person is going to make sense, right? There's metrics you can go through. At Rowe, we walk people through a practical for like a hypothetical new care vertical that we're launching. What's the growth plan look like? What's media spend? What assumptions do you make around conversion rate and ROAS? And then team pokes around, we ask them questions. We get a sense, like, do they know their stuff on the data side?

AI assessment note: “do they know their stuff on the data side?”

Q So how do you set collaboration skills with other parts of the org? What questions tease out whether they do have that kind of cross-functional ability?

A Yeah, some of it is spending time with those folks and understanding how they interact, how open they are to new ideas. I like to test people by pushing back on something that they've presented and, like, actually disagreeing with it and see how they react to that. Are they going to be a collaborative partner? Are they going to stick to their guns? Like, do they have an ego? Are they pretty egoless when it comes to, like, wrong opinions loosely held? That's really a philosophy that we take. Like, Strong opinions loosely held all the way through. You need to test and suss that out a little bit, even through the interview process to understand, is this person going to be good to work with? Are they going to be, like, kind to work with? And are you going to be able to get along and, like, get through the inevitable ups and downs that come with building a company?

AI assessment note: “I like to test people by pushing back on something that they've presented”

Q Too much content. How do you know when's the right time to cut a certain exercise channel activity? Because you've got to give it enough time to get enough data, but when- Do you go, enough's enough. It's not working.

A Yeah. Again, it comes back to that concept of paying for education. I'm a big believer in, you've only got so much peanut butter. You don't want to spread it so thin that at the end of the exercise, you don't even know what you got. Metaphor didn't carry all the way through. Something about a peanut butter sandwich, though. 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. The reality is we did 50 K a month for probably six months, and then we still didn't know if it was a good channel or not. We hadn't really put resources into it. Then you have this graveyard of channels that you've kind of tested, but you, in the back of your mind, know if I put more money and time into it, maybe it could work. That's the worst position to be in. I would much rather people align on here are two, three tests we're going to make for the quarter. Let's go deep on it. Let's put budget against it. Let's test it. And if it works, Great. And if it doesn't work, great. Because now we won't spend more time on it. And we're not going to have this feeling in the back of our head that, like, if we had just done a little bit better, it would work. No, you say, I'm going to revisit that in two years…

AI assessment note: “here are two, three tests we're going to make for the quarter. Let's go deep”

Q Speaking of alignment, there's one final element I want to touch on in terms of, like, the cross-functional element, which is, like, I'm the CEO and founder. You're my new head of growth or growth team member. How should our relationship look? How should we check in? You've just started. What should that cadence of communication be? And how would it be ideally structured?

A Yeah, I think there's somewhat of a dependency about around how the org is set up, right? If that's reporting to the CEO, if it's reporting to the growth officer, if it's reporting COO, whatever that is, right? There needs to be, regardless of who that is, there needs to be really, really clear alignment around goals and company narrative, right? Depends on what stage you are as a company. If you're a founder, and you're out fundraising and investing, And telling a story, and at the end of the month, your numbers come in, and they are not telling that story. That's not going to work so well. Making sure that you're having these continual discussions around like, hey, the metrics we cared about last month, do we care the same amount equally that we did last month as this month? Is growth in new members more important right now to show that graph? Are we trying to slow down growth in a way to show more financial discipline and show a tighter CAC? It really just needs to be aligned. There needs to be that level of alignment. If that's a weekly check-in, if that's a monthly check-in, whatever that might be, but that alignment between growth in the executive piece and the growth folks kind of raising their hand to saying like, Hey, we aligned on this thing. It's not going exactly how we want. I need you to be aware of that. We're obviously pulling all the levers and trying all the t…

AI assessment note: “If that's a weekly check-in, if that's a monthly check-in, whatever that might be”

Q Where does the CEO most often mess up communications with growth teams?

A I think there is an expectation sometimes that a growth team can land the plane perfectly every time. That makes sense, right? We got to hit this new member number, we have to hit this CAC, and retention has to look like that. Those are all very hard to do, and so I think communicating that is very important, but then understanding that there might be reasons why one or several of those metrics get a little bit muddled is really important, and understanding the context behind Why? Allows a CEO to more adequately explain some of these deviations from maybe what an anticipated plan works like. For example, everyone's going through a lot of the same struggles right now with the changes to iOS and paid social. That is a universal thing that is happening. That should be something that growth team and the CEO are working on really closely. They understand what is happening. And here are the three bullets of our plan to try and overcome that. Really making sure that there's constant discussions and there's kind of constant understanding alignment around What's happening, we're going to try, and what we expect it to look like, it's pretty critical.

AI assessment note: “expectation sometimes that a growth team can land the plane perfectly every time”