Rob Schutz: Founder of Snagged

Meet Rob Schutz: Growth Expert and Serial Entrepreneur A lot of growth is testing, tracking and trying to understand what is working, what's not, and learning what's not working a lot of times is almost more important. I don't think I'm particularly great and have superpowers in lots of different areas, but I do pride myself on like being able to identify really good people that I think are going to build big things. Great investors are much more accessible. I'd say right now like being able to just like tweet at somebody or slide into somebody'd DMS, but you know, a lot of this stuff is still relationship based and so like working hard to build relationships with people that can introduce you to other people. Speaker 2 Welcome to Trail Blazers, the podcast where we sit down with contrarian tech leaders who found conventional success in unconventional ways. All right, so today on the show, I am so excited to be joined by Rob Schutz. Rob is a serial entrepreneur, operator and growth expert who has spent his career building and scaling technology businesses that challenge outdated systems. He's the founder of Snagged, where he helps entrepreneurs, startups and established companies acquire premium domain names. And he's also the Co founder of Roe, the digital health platform that's transformed how millions of people access care and was last valued at $7 billion. Before Row, Rob was employee number 7 and later VP of growth at Bark, where he helped take the company from 0 to $100 million run rate and ultimately to the public markets. Earlier in his career, he worked in healthcare consulting, helping hospitals transition to digital Emrs, and even founded and sold a daily deals company called What's the Deal, a move that set the stage for his long term focus on marketing growth and scaling consumer tech. At Roe, Rob played a key role in building a vertically integrated digital clinic combining telemedicine, pharmacy and logistics to make healthcare more accessible, Sigma Free and User first. His work has helped redefine what modern healthcare can look like, especially in areas like men's health, mental health, and chronic care. Rob is a Penn State grad and currently lives in New Jersey, which we were just discussing with his wife, two young kids, and his dog. Let's welcome Rob. Speaker 1 Hey, thank you. What a what an introduction. Thank you for that. Speaker 2 You've done quite a few things. Speaker 1 It sounds like it when you read it like that. Speaker 2 And they've all kind of gone well. I mean, I have to ask the obvious, like have there been any failures? Speaker 1 Yeah, you don't put the failures into the bio. Speaker 2 I know, but sometimes you do. Sometimes you put like the mediocre thing, but all these things kind of. Speaker 1 There's plenty of mediocrity in there. Don't worry. That's that's followed me in my whole life. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, a lot of it is you try things, right? You try things and some of them work and you lean into what's working and some things don't, and then you decide what to do next. So I'm happy to talk about failures if that's if that's the theme for this. Speaker 2 I mean, the theme will be whatever we want it to be. I think, you know, it's it's really you don't. What I always like to say is like really special, successful people can build big things multiple times. Not to say that it's luck building anything big is hard, but for someone to be able to do it like an Elon is a good example of someone who's like touched many different fields and built something big in many different fields. And I feel like you're an example of that. Like Bark Row and Snagged are kind of like 3 very different companies but you found success with all three which is very. Speaker 1 I appreciate it and people, you know, compare me to Elon all the time. Speaker 2 Yeah, especially in person. You guys have a lot in common. Speaker 1 We. Yeah, we share the deep, dark eyes. Yeah. No, I think, you know, I've been very fortunate and I attribute a lot of that to honestly just surrounding myself with good people. Like I don't think I'm particularly great and have superpowers in lots of different areas, but I do pride myself on like being able to identify really good people that I think are going to build big things. And as I've had the opportunity to kind of partner up, whether it's Co founder level, whether it's joining early stage, whether it's trying new stuff to surround myself with really good people. And I think, you know, if you can do that, you're setting yourself up for a good shot at it. Speaker 2 Totally, totally. And I mean, you can't go that far alone, right? It's always the people that carry you and build something great alongside you. So I appreciate the humility. I'm recognizing that's great. Navigating Career Pivots: The Hardest Part of the Journey OK, so we start every podcast with a bit of an ice breaker, OK? I hate ice. I love ice. Speaker 1 Well. Speaker 2 Yeah, different ice. Eating ice, or like gliding on ice? Speaker 1 Oh, I thought we were talking about the immigration. Oh, ICE, yeah. Speaker 2 Oh, that's the, that's the third ice there's. Speaker 1 So many ices. Speaker 2 There's so many ices. Yeah, that's the actual ice that's currently relevant. Not ice skating. That's right. But anyway, OK, so ice breaker. But I hear you want on the ice part. So I want to hear from you. What has been the hardest part of your journey so far? It could be personal, it could be professional. But you heard your bio, you heard, you know, it's been a journey. What was the part that almost broke you? Speaker 1 It's a really good question. I want to say it's like an ice breaker. That's kind of. Speaker 2 Fun. OK, so here's the thing. The. Speaker 1 Ice Breakers Like what's your favorite ice? Speaker 2 Cream correct flavor, you know, so I like I think most like interview one O 1 like stuff is you should start with a soft question, you know, give them what's your favorite color? So tell me like, well, how did you grow up? But I'm like I just want to go right for it. Speaker 1 No, I appreciate that. No, it's a great question. I mean, look, there are a lot of there are a lot of challenging moments along the way. Like for me, I think back around my trajectory and how, you know, different decisions you make can lead me down different paths. Seemingly small decisions, right? It's like butterfly effect. Great film. Ashton Kutcher, by the way. Haven't seen it. Well, for the list, but you know, I after I had, I had a daily deal site in Washington, DC, it was called What's the deal? It was super small as me and my friend and my parents gave us like $10,000. See if we could figure it out. We launched it right around the same time that Groupon and LivingSocial launch. We're kind of like right in the mix of all these big, big companies. And I'll Fast forward, we got super fortunate wind up selling that company to a competitor right as things got really big. But that moment was actually, well, very exciting, very confusing for me because I was very much like not great at anything And I hadn't fully transitioned into the startup world. I'd come from like consulting and I didn't really have a great network. I didn't really know what I wanted to do. And I thought I was going to be the Super smart entrepreneur that would create all these businesses. Lots of failures to talk about in there by the way, but then having to pick a path was really tough. And that's something I also, as I'm talking to people have seen as a theme where if you're trying to pivot into something new, it's really hard. It's really hard to figure out like, what am I doing? What do I want to do? And so for me, I remember that being a pretty pivotal moment where that was the actually point in time where I got some good advice. And I, I wound up pivoting more into like performance marketing before that was even really a thing. It was called like growth, growth marketing, demand marketing. And I think about that moment a lot because could have gone a lot of different ways, could have gone back into consulting, could have joined, you know, I don't know, join someone more on the investment side. Like there are a lot of different types of opportunities. But I, I feel like that was a pretty critical moment for me where I said, all right, I'm just going to go try this new thing. And then I met the dog guys at Bark and we hit it off and got an opportunity like really, really get into something new and and get some new reps, but I think could have gone a lot of different ways and so have to be retrospective about it. Hacking Growth: Early Days at Barkbox and Facebook Ads Totally. And who gave you the advice to do some of like the growth marketing, performance marketing stuff? Because I mean, you've been a founder, you've done consulting. It's kind of a random thing. I mean, it's a little more popular now and a little more known. But I mean, especially like, you know, post Facebook ads and all this AEO stuff. Speaker 1 This is pre. This is pre Facebook. Speaker 2 Yeah, this is like a while ago. So like, who even pointed you in that direction and whose advice did you seek at that time? Speaker 1 So it wasn't actually, I remember the exact guy who gave it to me shout out lele where his advice wasn't like, go down this path. It was to pick a path. Because I remember we had coffee and I was like frustrated. I was meeting with lots of people. I was, you know, interviewing for different jobs, but it was all over the board. It's like, do you want someone that does, you know, finance? Do you want someone that does sales? Do you want someone that does marketing? And it's like hard for people to help you unless you're a little more specific. And so he's like, you just got to kind of pick something, man. And at that time it was actually through my whatever, my wife's cousin's ex fiance, blah blah blah. She was doing a bunch of work at General Assembly and she was like, you should just help out at this class and happen to be like a performance marketing class. And I was like, Oh yeah, I can help ITA for the class. And then I was like, this is fun. I could just kind of do this. And so, you know, sometimes just that nudge of like maybe less on specificity, but more of just like strategically just pick something. It doesn't have to be forever, but it could be for right now. It's super helpful. Speaker 2 Yeah, but that that in between is so excruciating when you know you need to decide something, but you don't know what it is. Like I get a lot of people like should I do venture? Should I operate? Should I do consulting? Should I start something? It's it's so overwhelming. And especially for the folks that want to join an early stage startup, they don't even know where to begin. Like they don't even know where to start. So like you said, you got that crazy opportunity, I think employee 7 at Bark, right? Very early. Speaker 1 There were a bunch of dogs in addition to the people, but human employee number 7. Speaker 2 OK but like real employee humans and dogs like 20? How many dogs are? Speaker 1 There probably about 20. Speaker 2 Or so that's so fun. Was it one of those great cultures where like everyone brought a dog and it was fun? Speaker 1 It was, it was actually, I mean, early Barkbox days were were very silly. We had this office in Chinatown. You had to take an elevator. A man operated the elevator. Mr. Mr. Lou would come down. You have to tell him what floor. There's big. I remember there's big signs. Had no spitting when he walked in. That was like the tone setter for like walking in and you walk in with your dog. You pass all these. I don't know that they were sweatshops, but people were certainly sweaty in there. And then you go up to the 6th floor and it's kind of like this little tiny startup incubator with little dogs running around and people trying to figure out how to honestly focused on making dogs happy, which was super fun. Speaker 2 It's a good mission, yeah. I mean, dogs deserve to be happy. They. Speaker 1 Do you know? Speaker 2 Yeah, they really do. They. Speaker 1 Want for a lot. Speaker 2 They do. Speaker 1 But yeah, those are those are fun days. Speaker 2 That's awesome. And so you ended up doing growth marketing there. And from just very briefly like zooming out, you've done that through your whole career. You've been kind of like this growth guy. And it sounds like you really liked it. Yeah. Tell me about that fit. Like you picked it and it worked. Did you make it work? Did you just have a knack for it? Tell me a little bit about like those early growth days and what you learned at Barkbox. Speaker 1 Well, yeah, Bart, I mean, bark was really kind of where I cut my teeth on all the growth stuff. Like again, it was pre Facebook ads and that was a big unlock for us was, you know, I was literally sitting there the day that Facebook ads launched in the news feed with money to spend. I was like, I should try those and they went very well and it was cheap. And it's like, let's do more of that. So I do think that was a bit of a cheat code. You know when. Speaker 2 You can and it's the perfect product for Facebook ads. I mean, couldn't be better. Speaker 1 Could perfect. It's a visual product, right? Pictures and videos of dogs on the Internet. That's already what exists. Now you're putting a. Speaker 2 Call, I mean, I already follow a bunch of accounts that yeah, I don't even have a product attached that same stuff, yeah. Speaker 1 I mean, that was also part of the fun too, is it was so early days for like Instagram and dogs having accounts on this. You would have these accounts that had like millions of followers that were just a dog on Instagram. And so I'd be able to go in and be like, let's work together, Affiliate basis should come to office, take pictures. And it was so wild, called Wild West back then. It was really fun. Like obviously Fast forward 15 years and it's a lot more complex and grown up. But I remember we figured out if we posted like a cute picture of a dog and like a sassy comment at like 4:30 Eastern on weekdays, we would make the Instagram popular page every time. And then we get like 2003 thousand followers a day. So it became a thing. It's like, you lock that in, cool, that's a thing we're going to do that that's going to help grow Instagram that we have like paid ads. And you basically are just trying lots of stuff. And then things that work, you do more of that. You hire people to do that better than you. You turn that into a program. Things that don't work, you say right now, I know that doesn't work. I won't do that. I won't spend time or money on that right now. Maybe we'll revisit it later. So that was kind of the initial, like my initial learning of just how to approach some of this stuff. And a lot of growth is testing and, you know, tracking and trying to understand what is working, what's not and learning what's not working a lot of times is almost more important. So whenever I'm talking to, you know, companies I'm advising or folks around my boards, I talk about like paying for education. You're, you're paying to learn that something works or doesn't. It's better to accelerate that so you don't spend 6 months thinking maybe TikTok shop ads work, you know, and you're spending all that time and energy versus switch your budget, get a no quicker and move on to something else. So yeah, it's a lot of lot of learnings from the dog days. From Facebook Ads to AI: The Changing Growth Landscape Totally. Yeah, the dog days. It's got a pun to it also. It's funny even hearing you, I think. Speaker 1 It out of dog puns. It's a big. Speaker 2 Part of my life, still hearing you talk about some of this growth stuff, it's actually reminding me a lot that so much of the role of being in the growth world is experimenting and testing and iterating, and so is the role of being ACEO and a founder. Like I think there's actually not enough conversation and I'm a little biased about this, but there's not enough conversation about how that skill set, like the go to market growth marketing skill set is actually often quite similar to like the founder skill set where you have to constantly be like trying new things, testing, taking action, go, go, go. You know, I'm kind of leading the witness here. But like, what's your take on that growth profile as a founder? Because like you've done that now a few times. I think ventures obsessed with like the more technical founder, but I actually think the growth founder has a lot of skills that are very relevant and really important. So what's your take on that archetype? Speaker 1 Yeah. I mean, look, there's definitely a lot of people that have come from like the growth and performance background that have got on to build really interesting and successful companies. I think regardless if it's at the founder level, not that is a function that is usually tightly tethered to the CEO or to the founders, because especially early on, it's so important, like your narrative, your trajectory, how you're going out and fundraising, how you explain that because especially early on, you know, investors, you know, super smart VCs would be like, oh, I see, like, you know, in month two we had a dip in, you know, month 2 retention on the curve. Like what you have to be able to speak to that really eloquently and have a reason why this happened. What are three pronged plan is for addressing down the future. So very rarely can just have like a good technical Co founder or good just like, you know, overall management Co founder who's not deep in the weeds with growth. And then I think there's plenty of opportunity for for folks with that background to step into those types of roles. And I think we've seen a lot more of it over the last couple years. Yeah, which is, which is lovely to see. Speaker 2 Which is exciting. Represent your own kind. Yeah. So you have obviously, I mean bark is 1 journey. Then you had Roe for quite some time and obviously now with snagged, you've been building these businesses and responsible for the growth of these businesses for many years. How is the growth marketing world changed? I mean, we're talking like pre Facebook ads now there's a lot of wild stuff with like AEO answer engine optimization, you guys row, you guys been doing a lot of like celebrity influencer stuff. So I'd love to hear your take on like what's different now with like the growth marketing landscape versus when you started? Because I think there is it's like night and day, at least it seems to me. Oh, absolutely. Speaker 1 Yeah. I mean, again, if you take the example of like running Facebook ads for Bark and you think about like the cost per million impressions of CPM or you know, it was probably 100 X cheaper back then. It is now like all of the platforms and the opportunity to like arbitrage those platforms has mostly been removed. Like they're just so many people that use that are doing Google ads, that are doing Facebook, Instagram tick acts, etcetera. If you're early to a channel, you get the benefit of, you know, cost savings and cheaper impressions overall. But as those channels mature and more people jump into the auctions, like it kind of just becomes a, you can always optimize and try to get better, but you're also at the mercy of the algorithms a little bit. I think where things have changed even more recently and with AI and where everything is moving with like creative iterations through AI and putting that on meta, like something we, you know, some of the team, I know, talked about it Row is, you know, thinking more about these real human stories, the things that you can't really replicate. If that's celebrities, if that's everyday Joe's, but like capturing that in a way that's really authentic. That's not something that AI can really do. Like you can't take a Charles Barkley. You're not allowed to take a Charles Barkley and and you know, put him in AI and say, Hey, he's taking GOP ones. Like those are authentic relationships that are differentiators. And you know, certainly a lot has changed, but I think the underlying mentality of reiterate test work on attribution, cleaning up conversion rates like CRM, all those pieces are still building blocks. But from like a paid perspective, it's it's certainly got more competitive. Speaker 2 Totally. And I love this like human authenticity piece. I think that's so much of it. Like when we ask ourselves what cannot be replaced, it is that trust and excitement and loyalty we've had with humans for a long time. And that's that's never going away. What's the next we'll find out. Sometimes you think it's a human and it's not a human and that's really scary. What's like the next frontier that you're so excited about that you guys are spending time thinking about, let's say someone's a founder listening right now and they want to be thinking more thoughtfully about their growth engine. What is something that maybe you've been tinkering on or you've been thinking about that you think maybe he doesn't yet have that? You know they can get that 100 X cheaper advantage if they're listening. Speaker 1 Yeah. I mean, I don't know if I have any secret channels. I have been tinkering a lot with Open Claw over the last couple weeks, just getting more comfortable with how to kind of kind of trained that agent and how to have it ingest data and connect APIs and like do a lot of work that used to be a lot more manual. So I think there's certainly opportunities there. We can get smarter on like a per channel or per reporting basis where you can identify if it's arbitrage opportunities, if it's efficiencies, if it's things that are going to really poorly much more quickly than maybe you could have in the past. So I think that's all very fun and I think could have some interesting practical implications. Speaker 2 Totally. It's just about tinkering and like seeing what platforms you like, what platforms are most interesting, because like Open Claw is just one of so many that are doing really cool. Speaker 1 Totally. I don't. I can't even keep up. I. Speaker 2 Was like, that's all of us. Speaker 1 One thing and just see if I can figure out what the heck is going on. Building Ro: The Power of Complementary Co-Founder Skills Totally. OK, so you were at Bark for a while. Obviously, this company scaled really fast and at some point you decided we're in start row. So talk to me a little bit about that transition from, you know, dog world to men's health care. What made you want to start it and sort of those, like, early innings? Because I think a lot of people don't know this. You guys are having a big moment now, but this company was started like almost a decade ago. 2017, yeah. Yeah. Nine years, yeah. Speaker 1 Yeah, that's so bring. Yeah, I mean, you know, I, I guess the back story on that is I had been at Bark for about 5 years, starting to get a little itchy to do something, work on something myself. I've been introduced to the two guys who've become a Co founder, Zach and Saban actually through Bark. Bark shared an office with kind of like a startup incubator and is. Speaker 2 It still around to the startup incubator. Speaker 1 It is is one of the one of the cofounders of Bark, Henrik Werdelen also had this start being a better called pre hype and. Speaker 2 It's a good name pre hype. Speaker 1 Pretty good. I don't know they have the.com but I'll check on that. Speaker 2 Yeah, you can help them out. That's a good. I'll call someone. Speaker 1 I'll send a text and Zach had had been hanging around at pre hype. He had a startup that went through Y Combinator and then he shut it down for his sister got sick and he wound up returning all the money and was kind of like just looking for something new. And then Simon, who had been helping out at bark. But then he he left me. He started a company called Manage by Q out of New York, which is the smart office cleaning company sold the we work. But then he was kind of back and he was poking around and they wanted to start something together. I always wanted to stay close to Saman. He's a very, he's a very special brain. He's like a design slash product slash tech guy. You don't always find people that are like great at design and great at coding. And so we took some blocks. We talked about different things. They were like, pretty excited about this men's health opportunity. This is where I said, like, I think these are special people. Yeah, referencing our kind of illusion from earlier. Like, I don't think you run into these types of people before. I really like Zach. We spent a lot of time together and, you know, I was on the fence whether I joined them full time. They knew lots of things about lots of things, but they did not know a lot about marketing. They would always come up to 5th floor on bark and they'd be like, how do we do ads or like, how do we build these landing pages? And so I liked both their experience and the fact that we were very complimentary skill set. Like Zach knew a lot about the healthcare space. His dad was a very well known sexual health doctor, Doctor Michael Reitano. Shout out Doc and also had gone through, you know, YC knew a lot of investors had great relationships, smart had built companies, product design, etcetera. I was able to bring like marketing brand comms to the table performance. And so it felt like between three of us, we could do a lot of the things. And that is that's, I would say one of my bigger learnings about starting company was just the importance of complementary skills. And you see this a lot where like 2 engineers will join up or like 2, you know, people with finance backgrounds will join up and be Co founders. And that's great and it can work. But when those circles overlap too much, you're kind of like, well, we we can handle this piece, but then we're just need to find really good people who can do marketing and really good people who can do tech versus like ideal. You can cover off on a lot of that yourself. And then you supplement that or you bring in people that are better than you later. Speaker 2 It's a constant tension though 'cause like when you start a company, you want to be people you worked with before. And often it's like, oh, we both come from consulting and we both come from Google. And like, I totally hear you. I think that's a lot of what I see too, is like balancing complimentary with we've worked together totally. And that's a hard thing, 100%. Speaker 1 Attention and that's not I don't think that comes together all that often and you know, there's like these founder dating and whatever, whatever, but. Speaker 2 I'm not the biggest fan of those. I'm like, you really don't know this person. Speaker 1 Yeah, no, we had coffee one time. Speaker 2 Yeah, exactly. Speaker 1 Love is blind, exactly. But yeah, that's why I felt like this was pretty unique where we kind of knew each, like we knew each other enough and we had a lot of common mutuals and we spent time together and the skills were complimentary. That felt like a good mix. And I remember actually, because I was on the fence, we had just bought a house in New Jersey. We just had our second kid. I was coming up in five years at Bark. You get a, you got a paid 3 months sabbatical at that time, Bark and I was like very much looking forward to that. And then I had to make a decision. I was going to join the guys. We're going to build Roman at the time and I sat I remember sitting down with my wife who is very smart and as a therapist and. Speaker 2 Oh, what a great thing for a wife to be. I mean, you're lucky you get free therapy. Speaker 1 I mean, like I am lucky for many reasons. I will agree, I will agree with that. But she's, you know, she sat down and, and we were talking it through and she was like, do you think you would look back at this and regret not doing it? And I was like, that's a really good way to frame it. I definitely would like if they went and built this company and I was not a part of it and it was successful, I would be very disappointed with myself and so. Speaker 2 I mean, imagine seeing the $7 billion headline now and, you know, knowing you could have, well, I mean, maybe I wouldn't have gone there without you. Speaker 1 I would have only been 6. Speaker 2 Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, You were the secret sauce. Speaker 1 No. And we talked about after and they're like, I don't think we would have started it without you. And I felt the same way, like I don't think we could have done a lot of things we did early on without each other. And so yeah, that was the early days is like I was still kind of transitioning out of bark, but I would take the subway down to our rink and ink office outside of Union Square. And we actually built the first pharmacy there because we needed a license accredited New York pharmacies that got built out first. Actually, remember the first one of the first pitches I went to might have been with David Tisch at box when and had a breakfast and they were like just come to the breakfast and I was like, I don't know that I'm in yet. And they're like just don't say that. And so they like started putting my like name and on on like some of the decks that they were sending out. I was like uncomfortable. And then she was like, all right, I'm just gonna. Speaker 2 We're gonna. Speaker 1 Just let's just go do this. Supporting Trailblazers: Brex and RocketReach Sponsorship So yeah. So then in Bang Bong and next thing you know we're we're building Roman. Speaker 2 On Trail Blazers, we spotlight founders who succeed by doing things differently, not by following the playbook, but by rewriting it. Many of those unconventional builders and the VCs backing them run on Breck's because it helps them scale with speed and focus. From smart corporate cards and high yield banking to AI powered expense management, Breck's give startups the financial stack they need from day one so they can spend more time building and less time managing back office operations. More than 30,000 companies from breakout startup like Anthropic and Cursor to global leaders like DoorDash and Plaid, trust Brex to help them spend smarter and move faster. That's why we as a venture firm and also the podcast run on Brex 2. Sign up at brex.com/trail Blazers pod to get started and acclaim exclusive rewards. That's brex.com/T RAILBLAZERSPOD. 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Insider Tips: Navigating Fundraising and Investor Relations What was the calculus, if there was any, on like New York versus SFI? Mean, I know you obviously had like the wife and now the second baby in New Jersey. I imagine they also had some roots in New York. Was there any poll to say, OK, we should go to the heart of, you know, venture company building all that? Or was it like we're going to build a New York? Speaker 1 Company New York, 100%. I mean, we're just at that point in our lives. Simone had three kids at the time. I had two. We just bought like there was no real that wasn't even really a discussion. I think we again, we were fortunate that, you know, Z had Zach had investor relationships already. We had, you know, some precede funding, so the need to like be in it and like walking down Sand Hill Rd. every day was not as pressing versus like, this is kind of where we are and there's a good ecosystem here. There's good engineering talent. Like there's enough, there's enough here where we can really make it work. And then, you know, we'd go out there occasionally for meetings and talk to investors and stuff, but that was never really a part of the part of the calculus. Speaker 2 Yeah, well, that's also the beauty of having so many relationships already, right? It's like you kind of got to pick. And I'm sure a lot of SF folks were like, are you who you were and could come here to schmooze you? I. Speaker 1 Didn't know who I was and. Speaker 2 Who Zach were? Speaker 1 And who some of the other guys were but. But yeah, that was that was definitely exciting to get to be part of that. I've never really been part of pitching and and all and the whole investment life cycle, which I got very familiar with. Speaker 2 Very. Yeah, It's, it's an interesting world, I will say. Oh, it's just lovely. It's just so lovely so. Speaker 1 Much value that investors are able to add. Speaker 2 They're just so valuable. I am for them. I know they just, they're all, all they're doing is building the company themselves basically. Speaker 1 Basically, you're just there to, you know, be a figurehead. Speaker 2 Exactly. Exactly. Speaker 1 Yeah. We, we have and continue to have incredible, I will say an incredible group of investors. Yeah, very, very fortunate with that. And part of that is because the guys had been through this process before and so like sorting out who would actually be helpful, who would be annoying? Like, is this good money to take? Should we include these guys in a round because they could follow on with the growth round later? Like, I don't know any of those things. So getting an education on that piece of like company building was. Speaker 2 Very valuable and what's your advice now? Have founders listening and they're trying to figure that out. Maybe they don't have as many relationships or maybe they do but they don't know who to pick. Is there one tidbit you have in terms of fundraising or even like board building that you think is important I. Speaker 1 Mean it's a good question. I don't know that I have like a great banger for you. I mean, I think it's a lot like great investors are much more accessible, I'd say right now, like being able to just like tweet at somebody or you know, slide into somebody's DMS. So definitely more accessible. But you know, a lot of this stuff is still relationship based. And so like working hard to build relationships with people that can introduce you to other people. Like I get hit up a lot from just people who I'm connected with on LinkedIn. They're like, could you introduce me to X? Could you introduce me to Y? And like, I don't always do that. I want to like qualify it a little bit, but I'm happy to pass along if if there's like good people building good stuff. And so I think similarly, like putting in the sweat to build the relationships is where it's where it's going to pay off because really what you want is like just a way to get your foot in the door. And like, even if you have an amazing relationships, if the business is no good or, you know, there's not traction, like it doesn't mean people are going to give you money. But if you can get your foot in the door and, and, you know, tell your story and prove out some of what you're trying to build, then, you know, got a good shot. Ro's Evolution: Tackling Stigmatized Conditions with Roman Totally, and these relationships compound too. I mean, like you were saying, you know, your Co founders had done other businesses and how these relationships. So you know, maybe that one company doesn't work out, but maybe the second one does or maybe both do in one of the Co founders cases, you know, that's not bad. So tell me a little bit about how Roe has evolved. So I think everyone knows Roe now for GLP ones, that's like your big your big swing that is hitting, but you didn't start there. So tell me a little bit about how it's evolved and then maybe also that like GLP, one moment that helped you guys really take advantage of this, this big swing. Speaker 1 And full caveat, I'm not part of the. Speaker 2 Day-to-day, yeah, Yeah. Speaker 1 Bored and you know. Speaker 2 But you see a lot, you know. Speaker 1 You know. Speaker 2 Just the display, yeah, I can't take credit for it, but I'm on the outside, but I'm. Speaker 1 Still not no. When we launch, I mean, and some folks will remember when we launched it was Roman and we were just focused on erectile dysfunction. That was like a strategic decision for us to focus on highly stigmatized condition because it was interesting like this happens where people like companies come out in pairs, but it was us and hims. Speaker 2 I was going to say. Speaker 1 Keeps what's? Speaker 2 Happened to keeps. Speaker 1 They, I think they're still around. They, they merged with Nurik's, the birth control company, and I'm not 100% sure what's going on there, but I know that certainly in the earlier days, you know, we ran into them a lot. But you know, hymns and keeps both started with hair loss and we didn't know this at the time, but we started with erectile dysfunction and that was for us. I think a really good decision. One ZS dad is a very well known sexual health doctor. He knows all of the top urologist in the world who came in and consulted with us and built the Truman protocols and like really gave us credibility. Like when Google shut down our ads and we bring in like the top doctors in this field to help have a conversation. That was valuable, right? Probably less so if we were talking about hair loss or other things, but we loved leaning into the stigma. Speaker 2 The fun was. Speaker 1 Totally fun, challenging to do it in a way that is not like crass and it's not like off putting because again, with erectile function, you're really mostly talking to half of the population. And this was a it happened to be a moment in time where there's a lot of weird things going on in the world that, you know, we couldn't control. But with like me too. Speaker 2 I was going to say. Speaker 1 It wasn't like the ideal timing for this stuff, but we approach it in like, I, I think a way that we're pretty proud of, which is it's healthcare conditions is, you know, something affects, you know, men and their partners and bring it out of the back. You know, the backroom, you know, his dad would talk about this is like a, a door handle problem where people would be, they come to the doctor because their knee hurts. But then as they're leaving and they grab the door and all they'll be like, by the way, could I get a Viagra script? And so something people just like, of course they don't want to talk about. They don't want to look a doctor and I talk about it a little more comfortable doing it online in this coincided with, you know, a change to the regulatory environment across the country where you could actually do a lot of this stuff legally and safely online. So we love that and we loved leaning into this is something that we're taking from a shady billboard on the side of the road now into like the mainstream. And so it's exciting. And I got to like really very quickly flex a lot of the like, honestly, the bark growth playbook, which is like, we're going to run TV spots, we're going to do, you know, social ads, we're doing search, we're doing all of the things. Speaker 2 What works the best? Like, was there any? I mean, I know I keep asking for like the secret sauce, but like, what? Was there a thing that really cracked it? That was that balance between, you know, saying what it is but not being too cross, you know, because it's such a tough balance. Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, well, there's a messaging piece and then there's a channel piece. I'll say like from a messaging perspective, I remember we played around with a lot of different types of kind of campaign and messaging. And then we realized we just need to say what this is. It doesn't need to be cute, doesn't need to be like, you know, we had a, it was like you're like your friend wants to know if they can go online and get access. This was just like Ed meds prescribed online, delivered to your door. And I think that was actually a really big learning for me. When an industry is new, just talking about what you do is new enough to people versus like we're better on price and our shipping is better and we have all these features. You're not in a grid being compared. People are like, you can do that online, you know, So like leaning into the simplicity of the model first and then applying that to the different channels, right? So we did, we did social search. I'd never been part of a business that had such a large, like high, intense search. Speaker 2 I was going to say because this is also a very like discreet in the middle of the night on Google. Please help me our dysfunction meds you know. Speaker 1 And and it's always nice if there's high intent search exists for your. Speaker 2 Product, yeah, it's hard. Most, most folks don't have that. It's like you type in one vague word and we're all trying to compete on SEO. Speaker 1 100% and that was way was with like Barkbox toys, right, dog toys, like, you know, people weren't searching for like a monthly box of treats and toys, you know, so that was good and that least was validating. We're like, OK, something here like people are it's good if people are basically looking for exactly what you sell and then they go to your site and then they sign up for your service. But we were hot out of the, I mean, we were on, we were running TV ads couple months in. So I feel like we're able to accelerate a lot of the like, how do we tinker and how is it? I knew there was a product market fit. We all knew there was product market fit. It was like the most popular profitable drug of all time. Now it's about, you know, a model fit for people willing to do this online. We felt pretty good that people are going to be comfortable doing this online versus talking to somebody in person and looking them in the eye. And it was, it was super, you know, important that this was also like clinically safe and backed by science and get all these doctors behind us and advisors. And so that felt good and it allowed us to really grow very, very quickly. And you know, then eventually we would roll into some of these other products, but that was the that was the initial hook. Ro's Strategic Growth: GLP-1s and Master Brand Equity Yeah, I, I mean, it sounds like it was a profitable business. It was going well. So then at what point do you decide to do the GLP 1 stuff too? And like was there kind of like a lull at any point like profitable business, we sort of like gobbled up a lot of the market. I mean Hims went public also, by the way. So they they own like a piece. At what point were you like, let's try this like new line of business? Speaker 1 Yeah. Well, first of all, non profitable, OK. I mean a very overhead intensive business, yeah, but we raised money for that's what venture. Speaker 2 Venture subsidizes on profit businesses, yeah. Speaker 1 Absolutely, yeah. Speaker 2 Then you get there eventually. That's the trick. And then you switches 100. Speaker 1 Percent, Yeah, it's very hard to to be profitable and grow very, very quickly from day one. But yeah, I mean, look, we, we, you know, we start with Ed, we added hair loss. Our second big product was actually smoking cessation. It was a product called 0 where we had this insight that 18% of men who signed up for to be seen for erectile dysfunction challenges smoked. That was a big reason why. And so there was like an app, there was a medication that was helpful and that just absolutely bombed. It was a like to the point where we launched that day and like no one had signed up. And I like went through the flow. I'm like, something was wrong with the flow. And I signed up and it like went through and people were like, oh, we got one. I was like, no. Speaker 2 That was me. Speaker 1 That was me and it was a good learning for us. Learning's the best as discussed, but you know, people are not as enthusiastic about stopping doing something even if they know it's bad for them. It it's like, I know I should quit, but I don't really like, I don't really want to and I certainly don't want to pay money, stop doing something I kind of like. And so, you know, it was a good guiding principles. We thought about new products like people want more immediate gratification. They want something that helps improve a portion of their life tangibly and it's harder, it's harder to be successful. Some of these products that like people, even though they're bad, they bad for them. They they like it. It's. Speaker 2 The same reason habit formation is so difficult. It's like it's hard to stop a habit you have and it's hard to form a new one that you want to have. It's like the drinking water thing. I'm like you. Someone can tell you till you're blue in the face to drink more water. Great job. Thank you for drinking your water brought by the podcast studio. But you know you're not going to drink more water unless it really makes you feel good. And it's hard to get people to experience it feeling good if they never drink it at all. Speaker 1 Totally. It's the same thing with like we played around with this a little bit, but like, you know, longevity supplements. It's like, maybe this stuff works but you're not going to know for like 30 years. Speaker 2 Yeah, we'll find out when we're 80. Do we live to 80? Do we live to 81? I don't know. Speaker 1 Yeah. Oh, it's from that supplement. Speaker 2 Exactly. Speaker 1 For 20 years exactly. But yeah, I mean, we rolled out a skin care line. We rolled out a menopause line called Rory the Connective Tissue, by the way. Speaker 2 I was going to say tell you all. Speaker 1 Of 0 Rory, there was always a row in it. And so we always kind of knew over the long term, Roe would be the master brand. Speaker 2 That's really smart. Speaker 1 And then as we moved into these other areas, we knew we'd already spent half a billion dollars getting people to know Roman as an erectile dysfunction company that wasn't going to work for a menopause company or for weight loss or for skin care. So then it became like this transition to Roe is the overarching brand. And now team has done a really good job. It's like it's a row. Everything there's like Roe for men's health, there's Roe for fertility, there's row for, you know, a bunch of different areas for weight management. Speaker 2 So the brand equity you built with ROW can kind of stay across the board, but you now sell separate it by it's. Speaker 1 Kind of like going into a, It's kind of like going into Mount Sinai. Mount Sinai is the brand, but you can go to the urology department and go to fertility department and you can go to the. Speaker 2 But you trust Mount Sinai. Speaker 1 Exactly. Speaker 2 So you'll you'll trust whatever they put together. Speaker 1 Right. And you build brand equity from the reps you're getting on ads as well. So like it's wasteful if you're trying to build 3 or 4 different brands. And that's where some people also have a challenge in this space and others where like if you have too many brands that are specific to a gender or specific to a department, it doesn't accrue in the same way that does to like a single a single entity. But yeah. And to your question about weight management, we were very early weight management. We actually initially launched with a different product that was a natural product. It was actually a pill you took called Planitate that created a hydrogel when you drank water. Just filled you up. Speaker 2 Same concept like the fill you up. Speaker 1 Yeah, you have less, you know less, you're less hungry etcetera, less caloric intake. But we were very bullish on GLP ones very early. So we launched well before Hymns or any of the other guys on GLP ones. And and yeah, that was that was as I was, as I was getting ready to leave, that was like the big push around GOP ones. And, you know, obviously that has grown tremendously and is big part of the zeitgeist these days and a bigger part of the business. But it's, you know, it was pretty wild that we didn't know that we'd ever have, you know, another home run like erectile dysfunction and then seeing what, you know, weight management has been. And I think a lot of that is due to the infrastructure that we built along the way. Like at one point, I think we had 11 physical pharmacies across the country, licensed doctors in every state. We've built a lot of the infrastructure itself, which then lends itself very well to if it's weight management or if it's fertility, if it's blood testing and whatever these things, whatever these functions might be. So, so yeah, very early to that. And the team has done a tremendous job executing against the the opportunity and it's been, it's been fun to watch from this from the sidelines. Speaker 2 Here, yeah, cheer them on, be like, yeah, you keep going. You keep increasing my equity. That's so epic. Yeah. And I think like you said, I mean, you're also making the case for, I know you guys weren't necessarily an incumbent at the time, but you had so much infrastructure already built that there's a lot to be said. I think especially in this AI wave where, you know, a lot of the incumbents are already prepped and ready to go and can like jump on an opportunity. And so it sounds like that was really you guys like you know you hadn't started as a GLP one business, but you were ready to go because you had enough of that built out. Speaker 1 I mean the same as actually true during and again, I'm pulling this from the from the archives of my brain, but remembering back when COVID hit, we actually were set up to do. Speaker 2 Mask stuff or something. Speaker 1 Well, we actually helped set up to do in person vaccinations for like underserved populations. So the time we'd also bought a company that like a mobile phlebotomy company and we had a workforce and we were working with the city of New York and a bunch of different areas. So like for folks that couldn't get to the clinics right, how to get them inoculated. So it was like a great example of we've built this infrastructure. It can be applied in a bunch of different ways. And I think that definitely holds true today where like, you know, the team has done an amazing job building out really solid relationships now with the drug companies. And the drug companies are thinking about, wow, this is actually a different way to think about distribution versus, you know, sending out a million sales reps to the doctor's offices to talk about things like go direct to patients, tell patients directly, you know, what the benefits are. So that's been that's been really exciting to watch. Speaker 2 Yeah, and it's so cool that there's so many examples you can point to. Rob Schutz's New Venture: The Wild West of Domain Names So you've stepped away from Roe around this time and now you're working on snagged. Give everyone like a little teaser. I mean, it's a very cool concept. What made you want to start it? I mean, I'm sure your margin on that's got to be pretty epic. You know, you take a little piece of all these crazy domain sales, but give us, give us. Speaker 1 The ramp I mean the the context on the transition was also. I've been there for about 6 years. I've been at BARK for about 5, 2 little kids. I love building from zero to 1 and one to 100 felt like it could be a nice time to take a breath. Like I was very thankful and continue to be very thankful that like Zach and Simone, they they're great and love building really small companies. They're great and love running really large companies. I felt like there's never a good time for anything, but I love the idea of being able to like take a step back, stay on the board, keep relationships like, you know, have everything on the up and up and be able to let them run, you know, run the show. So that's been fantastic to watch and definitely keep in touch with the guys. And that's been great. And the whole purpose of set me back was like, I'm not going to go do the same thing somewhere else. I don't at this point in time have a strong desire to like build another high growth VC backed company. I kind of just like, I kind of have focused on gravitating things that I naturally enjoy. And one of those weird things has always been domain names for myself, for my businesses, for my friends. People would always come to me and they're like, how does this work? Like who do I even, I want to get this name? Who even owns it? How do I? And so after I step back, that kept happening and I had more and more people reaching out. I'm like, you know what, maybe I'm doing, maybe I should just do this for a little bit. And so Snag is just me and I brought in my partner Brian, who's my best friend from elementary school. I taught him how this works. And it's kind of just an excuse for us to, to hang out. But it's been fascinating there. The, the world of domain names is still very much Wild West and, and kind of like the VC startup venture back folks very rarely intersect with like the major players in the domain space. And so I've kind of got the opportunity to like be the conduit between these two worlds. And so I'll get brought in if board members or investors, whatever they're like, if we're going to buy this thing, you should talk to Rob and like I'll help them think it through. A lot of sometimes I will know the sellers as well and I can help negotiate better deals. Sometimes it's going super deep on like really gnarly complicated deals. Like one example give you, I wrote a blog post on where we had to drive down to Appalachia. My partner and I, we had to meet a guy in person and he would only get paid in gold coins. So we had to negotiate this whole in person security, the gold, the transfer process. You just get into all these weird and wacky situations and I, for whatever reason, my brain is wired where I just love getting those things done. It gives me a lot of gratification when it's very complicated. Speaker 2 And talk about like two different worlds, like the guy in Appalachia who wants gold coins and like the venture backed startup founder that wants the domain name yesterday. And like that is quite the two different customers. Speaker 1 Absolutely. And so being able to like speak both of those languages has been very helpful. And again, there aren't a lot of like trusted entities in this space. It's traditionally been very opaque where it's like, why do I have to like WhatsApp, this guy in the UAE at 3:00 in the morning about a domain name, like who are these people? And so I've gotten the chance to meet a lot of those people and I've started like I've gone to some domain name conferences and like really started to meet folks. It's just been, it's just kind of fascinating to me. And so that's one of the things I'm like, this is something I naturally gravitate towards. There's a lot of opportunity. I've met, you know, we did like 467 deals last year and it has been opportunity to like meet so many founders, meet so many people. I get I want to investing in a in a handful of those taking equity and a couple like I did not realize how much overlap there would be in like my previous life. But anyone who's raising like a lot of people who are going through rebrands like we help name a lot of companies now, like. Speaker 2 What's available? You know, you're like, I'm thinking these five things. What's the easiest domain name to get? Speaker 1 Totally. Or people will say like, you know, a lot of YC companies, they'll come to us and they're like, we're pretty open on like a name, but we want a really good domain name. So like, and these are criteria. We want to dot com our budgets, you know, whatever, 50 KA 100K. We want to have this kind of connotation. So we'll build what's from them, some from random people's names, some from lists that we maintain, some from investors, some of our names. And it's been fun. We probably named like 10 companies last year. And I just love seeing them out there and like the post on their LinkedIn. I'm like, I knew you before you had that. Speaker 2 Name you like. It's OK, You don't have to give me credit. Speaker 1 But I'll take yeah, no, it's fine. I mean, I'll comment and I would like you to, I would like you to to like it. But yeah, no, but I just find that really gratifying. And it's nice to also like, well, of course, you know, we want everyone to be successful and build big companies. It's nice to be in a position of like just helping people get the thing agnostic of are they going to be a billion dollar company or are they going to need a pivot? Are they going to need to do whatever? Like we kind of help help people. We sell like the shovels and the pickaxes, you know, we're not the gold diggers, but we we help people get the tools they need to go to go do that. Speaker 2 And also smart like to, you know, align yourself with a business where the cost of a domain is typically on the higher end. Like I know someone who bought friend.com, which you might may have seen a little bit of that. Yeah, Avi, exactly. And maybe you helped with that one. But you know, I think the cost is so high that it's also worth your time. You know, like I think that that's also really fun is like when there also was a payout. You, you know, it's like I always have like the Jesse Itzler story where like he had a jet company, you know, and he's like he only needed to sell, you know, a few dozen jets to be a billion dollar company. You know, like it's kind of nice that The Jets are so expensive. You know, every hour you put in, it's like, I'm still going to make money on this. Yeah, although it's nice calculus. Speaker 1 I agree, but I I've also found I get an equal amount of gratification on the really small ones. Like there, there are so many that like we have so many deals that are like earlier stage, maybe they can only spend 25 grand but no one can figure out who owns the name and how to get a hold of. Speaker 2 That and you figure it out. You're like a CIA agent or. Speaker 1 Something I like to think that I want to get AT shirt that says something cool on it. But yeah, we're like we we get to be the heroes in those cases. And people are like, Oh my God, you know, we had to launch on, you know, try coffee.net. And now we're like coffee.co. That's so cool. You know, it's like it, it feels good to come through because there also aren't a lot of people that are like, willing to wade through the shit, if you will, in order to figure out how to get those things done. And I really just like taking on the complexity. And I'm like, Yep, we got it done. And then be like, oh, cool, how do I pay? Like literally, literally, I've been, you know, Telegram messaging this guy in Brazil for three months to try and get him to sell. It's cool. It's I don't know if this is my forever role, but it's it's pretty good for right now and it allows me a lot of flexibility. And a couple startup boards. I'm on the board of baby formula company called Nara that just launched. That's crushing it. And then I'm the board chair of a homeless shelter in New Jersey. Speaker 2 Wow, what's it called? Speaker 1 It's called Isaiah House, isaiahhouse.org and so. Speaker 2 You help them get that domain or they already had it. They already. Speaker 1 Had it OK, I'm working on an upgrade from that. Speaker 2 Isaiah.org. Speaker 1 Yeah. But this type of work is also allowed for flexibility to get pretty involved with that type of stuff. And so that's been a nice mix of, you know, it's not a venture back startup, it's as busy as we want to be, but it allows us to kind of get involved in other stuff that's important as well. Speaker 2 I love that you can have some diversity in your your day-to-day. Essential Tools for Founders: Quo and Gusto Sponsorship Yeah. Speaker 1 And I get to see so much of my children. Speaker 2 Yeah, which is so nice, So nice. I mean, you know, you want to be around and, you know, you spend so much time at row building, it's nice to know. Be present, take them to school, go to the games, all that. Speaker 1 It is. It is. 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More soon, but it's a great reminder that you can use voice AI to stay top of mind of your customers needs. Quo is trusted by over 90,000 businesses and rated number one on G2 for customer satisfaction. You can get 20% off your first three months at quo.com/trail Blazers. That's Quo dot COM slash Trail Blazers. So I've actually used Gusto at three different companies, and every time it's been such a relief. It's simple, it's reliable, and my paycheck was always on time. No drama. And unlike the big clunky payroll systems out there, Gusto is online payroll and benefit software specifically built for small businesses. It's all in one remote, friendly, and incredibly easy to use so you can pay, hire on board and support your team from anywhere. For smaller startups in particular, I have found that it's the most affordable and easy to set up option, and it's the one that we recommend to all of our startups at our firm. Try Gusto today at gusto.com/trail Blazers and get 3 months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months of free [email protected]/trail Blazers. One more time, gusto.com/trailblazers. Lightning Round: Rob Schutz's Entrepreneurial Trade-offs OK Rob, it's time for our Lightning round. Are you ready? We call them trailblazer trade-offs. We love alliteration. Speaker 1 I who doesn't? Speaker 2 Who doesn't? OK, book in hand or podcast in ears. Speaker 1 Book in hand, do. Speaker 2 You have a favorite favorite recently? Speaker 1 Yeah, I actually by the way it to merge those two together. I love doing the Kindle book and the audio book and they'll sync up so you can listen. Speaker 2 You know that was possible. Speaker 1 It's called Whisper Sync. You can listen. So like I was listening a book on the way in here and then I'll go home and I'll pick up my Kindle in the same spot. So that's pretty cool. It's pretty big. Speaker 2 Wow, wow, you're. Speaker 1 Blowing my mind. What's one I'm actually reading? What am I reading right now that I think is good but I don't know yet? Hail Mary. Speaker 2 Is a big project to Mary, that's what. Yeah, yeah. Speaker 1 Yeah, so that's good. I'm I've gone through like a kind of like a sci-fi, sci-fi fantasy kick more recently. Speaker 2 So fun. And honestly, if nothing else, it'll be great to prep you for the 27 awards season because apparently that movie's like winning everything. That's what I've heard. Speaker 1 Well, I'm, you know, a big awards guy, so. Speaker 2 Yeah, I I actually am a big awards girl. Are you? You were joking. Speaker 1 I was, but are you happy with the results? Speaker 2 Yeah, I would say for the most part, I don't think I saw enough of the movies this year to give like a really confident opinion. Speaker 1 I saw sinners. Speaker 2 Yeah, Sinners, Sinners is great, Sinners is good. Surprising Hamnet the drama. Did you see Hamnet Wild? Hamnet good, Hamnet good. And Jessie Buckley's performance, Mind blowing will be studied in future. Speaker 1 I do want to see what Marty Supreme. Oh, so good. Speaker 2 I mean, I love it. OK? It's fun. It's quirky. But I love Timothy Chalamet, to me, is so dedicated to his craft. I'm like a big fan of him. Yeah. So I don't know, It seems great. Yeah, it seems great. But I think next year's gonna be a really good line up. All right? All right. Yeah. Especially for you with Mr. sci-fi, you're like next year, all right. There's a lot of good ones. Speaker 1 I'll pencil it in. Speaker 2 Yes. OK, morning person or night owl? Speaker 1 Night Owl. Speaker 2 OK. Speaker 1 I mean, I'll get up early out of necessity, but everyone's grumpy in the morning. Speaker 2 Yeah, I get it. Not everyone. One time I recorded a podcast here at 7:00 AM, he was it's like he didn't really start. OK, listen, it helps me, you know, kind of know my day, but. Speaker 1 Did you and were you able to rally for? Speaker 2 Him. I mean, it was, it was a lot. You know, I'm used to like doing my workout, easing into the day. Now we just really started. Speaker 1 You know what, just could you tell me for about 45 minutes about what's going? Speaker 2 On with you, Yeah. And then we can start with like at 8. No, he was lovely. But definitely it's a lot. But I hear you, night owl for sure. Cooking dinner or ordering in? Speaker 1 Ordering for sure. We're kind of like doing a mix right now. We're trying like a lot of these like kits and pre made things. Neither Jamie or I, my wife, are like huge cooking people, but we know it's something we should do. Speaker 2 I get it. That's how I feel. What's the what's the meal kit you like the most? Is there like a wreck you have or like a person you know? I have these friends, especially in the city where they make meals on Sundays for people and it's not like a whole company. They're just like a one off. Speaker 1 Yeah, we're doing a couple of those more like neighborhoody type of things just. Speaker 2 Like a good chef that'll just, like, drop it off, yeah. Speaker 1 We have a bit of a we have a lot of different dietary needs. My wife is vegan with a nut allergy, my daughter and I both eat everything, and my son is a vegetarian with a nut allergy. So we wind up usually doing like 3 different meals. Speaker 2 Yeah, that's fair. But that's where these chefs are so great because you can tell them these are our little specific things, and they can be really. Speaker 1 Yeah, I want to get one of those just that comes to my house and makes the food. Speaker 2 Yeah, all the time. Ideally, you know, just always cooking. Speaker 1 That would be great and cleaning as well. Speaker 2 Yeah, a lot of things. It's OK, AI will do it exactly. We'll find robots VC or bootstrapping because you've done both. Speaker 1 Yeah, this is, this is what is my preference. Yeah, probably VC. Speaker 2 OK. And what? Speaker 1 Help accelerate things less. More opportunity to grow more quickly, Scale more quickly when you have some money behind you. Speaker 2 Yep, I hear you. Networking dinner or big conference? Speaker 1 Probably networking dinner, but maybe not right now at this stage of my life. I kind of like, I've been to some of these conferences more recently and I like the autonomy you have there to kind of just like do whatever you want. Like you want to go to a session, you want to go to dinner, you want to take a nap? It's up to you. Speaker 2 Yeah, the networking dinner is kind of spotlight. You can't really like, tune out. You gotta be. Speaker 1 You gotta be really zoned in. Yeah, yeah. Or else you're like, I have to go to the bathroom and then you're on your phone for like 45 minutes, OK. Speaker 2 So it sounds like your answer might be conference. Is that right? Speaker 1 It might be. I don't know. I don't know, it might be. Speaker 2 OK, we'll say you're split. Speaker 1 Yeah, let's go right down the pedal. Speaker 2 OK, hire slow or fire fast. Speaker 1 Both. I think that's. Speaker 2 OK, I'm gonna make you pick this one. Well, I mean, which matters more? Speaker 1 Which matters and. Speaker 2 You can think about the alternative. Is it better to hire faster, higher, slow? Speaker 1 Well, it's definitely not better to hire fast. You can hire fast if you're finding great people, but I think probably let's go with higher slow. It's especially earlier on. It's so important to get those early hires right because very rarely you're going to move on for them very fast because it's such a critical need. You know, it's like we hired somebody to run tech and if they're bad, that means we have to fire them and then we can't build anything anymore. You know, versus later on in your stage you can, you have some redundancy there. So I'd say higher at a higher at a the pace at which you're able to keep the quality really high. Speaker 2 Yeah, I think that's a mistake a lot of people are making now because they're raising so much venture and they're just like let's scale, let's go. But you're right, you have to kind of make sure you don't have those. It is very. Speaker 1 Very like off boarding people is very painful. Speaker 2 For everyone. Speaker 1 For everyone and you know, quick aside, but like we went through a scaling phase and I feel like probably 70% of my time was just interviewing people and hiring people. And remember, I think, I think I interviewed like close to 30 people to find our comms person who's great still there. Shout out Meg, but that's just kind of part of the job and it is time consuming and soul sucking. And then if you have to let that person go and go through the process, you've not only wasted your time on the hiring side, but like getting them up to speed and building out that function. It's just like very, very, very painful to have to go through that. Speaker 2 Yeah, it's funny. I find that a lot of folks that are just getting started are so surprised to hear what you just said, which is I spend most of, if not all my time hiring because, you know, you, it makes sense in theory, right? You want to make sure you get the right people in place who can scale you and scale all these other functions. But I think a lot of people don't realize that, like, even if you are, you know, chief growth officer, it's a lot of it's just people management and hiring, you know, that's so much of the job. Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, all in. In addition, you know, in that in that role at row, like at the founder level, felt like it's very hard to pass that off to anyone else. Exactly. Speaker 2 You have a pulse. Speaker 1 Yeah. You have to keep like the quality high. And a lot of times that comes from like the founders and their philosophy and how they're kind of calibrating. Speaker 2 Totally amazing. OK, ten small wins or one big moon shot. Speaker 1 Moon shot. Speaker 2 Yeah. Speaker 1 I think, I think about that in terms of like almost like growth and performance, like step functions, right? Like you very rarely get a step function up and growth from a very small optimizations, right? 1% here, 2% here. That's great and you need to do those things. But like, what's gonna 100% grow your business, your viewer, Very rarely is that from like tinkering. Speaker 2 Yeah, love that. That's a great analogy. Speaker 1 Thank you so much. You're welcome. I just came up with it. Speaker 2 It's great. We're gonna like clip that and use it being early or being right. Speaker 1 Is there context for that? Speaker 2 Nope. It could be anything from like a deal, it could be on a market, it could be on anything. Speaker 1 I mean, I think early is pretty important. Being early to something also gives you the flexibility to pivot into being right, if that makes sense. Like you don't just have to be 100% right out of the gate if you are market leader or very early to an industry. And I think there's a lot of examples of that. Speaker 2 Yeah, totally. First mover advantage. There you go. OK, never post on social media again or never fundraise another dollar again. Speaker 1 I like the idea of not fundraising again. That sounds pretty good. I'll pick that one. Speaker 2 OK, so you want to make sure you stay on socials? Speaker 1 And I don't really care as much about social but I just like the idea. You're anti fundraising. Again, I'm not an anti fundraise. I just. Speaker 2 Not. Not at this stage of your life right now, yeah. Speaker 1 Yeah, absolutely. Speaker 2 Well, you don't need to. It's. Speaker 1 A great game. Yeah. Love that game. Also looking at different games. Speaker 2 Totally totally season of new games. Is AI Overhyped? Rob Schutz's Take and Episode Wrap-up OK, the last question and the ultimate OK is AI over hyped or under hyped? I. Speaker 1 Was gonna say appropriately hyped, but that's not. Speaker 2 You know I don't like a split. Yeah, you gotta pick. Don't like? Speaker 1 That so I gotta I gotta man up here, I'd say I don't know, over hyped, over hyped. I mean, there's so much investment in there right now. There's so many companies building every version and variation. I think it's incredibly important and will be a big part of the future of work and the future of company building. But right now I think especially in like the tech Twitter bubble sphere, it feels like it's absolutely everything and feels and smells a little bubbly from from other cycles. But that's not to discount how important and impactful I think it'll be. Speaker 2 Got it, hear you. Sounds like it's split slightly overhyped. Speaker 1 Well, I wouldn't say split that was Those are your words because I don't split things anymore. I was chastised from earlier. Speaker 2 This is true. OK, OK, OK, fine. So it's firmly overhyped. Speaker 1 So, so firmly overhyped. Speaker 2 Rob, thank you for being here. This was so much fun. Oh my. Speaker 1 Gosh, thank you for having me. This was lovely. Appreciate it. Speaker 2 On Trail Blazers, we're always talking about multiplying your impact and that's exactly what Athena helps you do. Athena pairs you with a world class executive assistant who becomes a true force multiplier for your business and your life. Working with my Athena assistant has been transformative. Gab was instrumental in raising Park Rangers Capitals Fund in ways that I could have never imagined an assistant could contribute. From closing 6 figure checks to identifying new LP's we should meet, to matching my tone perfectly and follow up emails, he's elevated my capacity as a founder by giving me more time to focus on the highest leverage work. Athena isn't just about scheduling meetings, it's about unlocking leverage. Hundreds of founders, investors, and executives trust Athena to free their time and scale their impact. Athena is offering our listeners $2000 off for their first year of service and priority onboarding. And you want that. Trust me, there's a very long wait list. When you're ready to multiply your impact and free of time for the things only you can do, go to Athena. Go dot me slash Erica hyphen Wenger. That's Athena. Go dot ME/ER I CA-W ENGER thanks so much for listening to the Trail Blazers Podcast. If you enjoyed this conversation and be sure to follow the show so you never miss an episode. You can also support our work by sharing it with a friend or leaving a quick review. It helps more contrarian builders find us. For more on Park Rangers Capital and our community of Elephant founders, head to Park Rangers cap.com or find me online at Erica under score Wenger. Until next time, keep trailblazing.