Focus Deeply on That One Thing: Interview with Rob Schutz, Co-Founder of Ro

I recently went one-on-one with I recently went one-on-one with Rob Schutz. Rob is the co-founder of Ro and the founder of Snagged.com.

Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your advice. First things first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here? What experiences, failures, setbacks, or challenges have been most instrumental to your growth? 

Rob: When I built my Daily Deal website (called What’s the Deal), I had no idea how to really build a company. Things really took off, especially when Groupon filed to go public, and I was faced with a big decision: should I expand to other cities, hire more people, try to raise money, sell the company, or something else? I didn’t know which direction to take.

I chatted with a friend and he asked me if I thought the industry was going to get bigger, or if this was the top of the mountain. It just didn’t seem like daily deal space was going to get hotter (Groupon’s IPO and turning down a $5B acquisition offer from Google) and so I came to the conclusion that it was the perfect time to try selling the company. Luckily, I was able to negotiate a deal with a well-funded competitor out of NYC. What I learned from this experience is that sometimes reading the market is more important than your company’s trajectory. And knowing when to exit can be more based on the market conditions than the performance of your own business.

After I transitioned out of the daily deals space and finished my earn-out, I struggled to figure out what to do next. I was a generalist—I’d done a lot of things decently, but I wasn’t exceptional at any one function. I’d dabbled in everything but hadn’t specialized in a particular area. And that made it tough to find a job, because most people aren’t looking for a generalist, they want someone who’s great at something specific, like email marketing or SEO.

I then got some advice that changed everything: just pick a path. It wouldn’t have to be forever, but pick a path for now. Embrace it and live it. So, even though I was a successful founder, I decided to reorient my resume around marketing and became a marketing specialist, which eventually led me to becoming the first Marketing hire at BarkBox.

This might sound simple, but it’s something I often discuss with people when they’re trying to navigate their careers. Being specific about your skill set makes it much easier to get introduced to opportunities or get hired for a role where you’re truly qualified. 

Adam: How did you and your partners come up with your business ideas? What advice do you have for others on how to come up with great ideas? 

Rob: When my co-founders Z and Saman, and I were brainstorming business ideas, we knew we wanted to focus on men’s health. Initially, we considered hair loss, but as we got to know each other better—especially Zach, who had his own struggles with erectile dysfunction stemming from a side effect of heart medication—we realized that this was a space that was both taboo, but also ripe for disruption. It was something we could take from a shady billboard on the side of the road and turn into something legitimate, backed by science and help for millions of men.

One thing my co-founder Saman often talked about was the importance of being mindful of the problems you experience in your own life. Keep a notebook of the challenges you observe because those are often the ones that can turn into meaningful businesses. In an ideal world, you have a personal connection to what you’re building. I love that idea—I actually have a whole list of problems I’ve observed over time. It’s all about staying observant.

This is what has now led me to Snagged today. In my roles at Bark and Ro, I was always (happily) hunting down domain names/social handles, but found the process complex, opaque, and often unnecessarily confusing. Big names like GoDaddy have made it easy to find domain names that aren’t yet registered, but at this point, all good domain names are owned. There’s no simple, easy way to track down a domain owner given everything is now behind privacy. Let alone establishing contact to see if they’re willing to sell you the name. I started Snagged to make it easy for entrepreneurs, startups, and established businesses to buy domain names because it was something I so often dealt with in my own personal experiences.

Adam: How did you know your business ideas were worth pursuing? What advice do you have on how to best test a business idea? 

Rob: In general, it’s a good idea to start by building a lite version of your product. Build a minimum viable product  (MVP) and see if you can gain traction. The goal is to quickly determine if your idea is working or if you need to move on to the next one.

I learned this lesson firsthand after my experience after the daily deals site. I thought, “I’m a super smart founder, I can do whatever I want.” So, I built Chirp Guide, a platform that was meant to be a TV guide for live tweeting. The idea (which I still love) was that you could create your own live tweet stream with others who are watching the same sporting event, TV shows, etc. And you could choose to build a live-tweet stream with a comedian, an ex-player, a commentator, etc. If you watched the show later on DVR, you could go back and see what people had said in real-time.

I fell in love with the idea and ignored the lack of traction. I assumed advertisers would want to buy in, but I didn’t fully acknowledge that there wasn’t a good product-market fit or a viable revenue model.

This experience taught me to be wary of businesses where you need to build a large audience before you can start making money. In my opinion, it’s much better to build a business where you can generate revenue right away. Chirp Guide didn’t do this, and it made me realize that relying on everything going perfectly in sequence to make money is a risky strategy. I prefer businesses that only require one thing to go right versus needing to stack multiple wins together in order to make money.

Adam: What are the key steps you have taken to grow your businesses? What advice do you have for others on how to take their businesses to the next level?

Rob: I’m a big believer in the idea of doing things that don’t scale, especially in the early stages. When you’re just starting out, it’s all hands on deck, everyone has to do whatever it takes to make things work and get people to sign up. Right from the beginning, you need people using your service and giving you feedback on what they like and don’t like.

Back in my daily deals days, we hosted a free happy hour every Wednesday, where we’d bring a couple hundred people to a bar. To get in, you had to be subscribed to our newsletter. It was a super manual process, we’d even stand at the door and check people in ourselves.

This approach wouldn’t scale across 100 cities, but it was exactly what we needed early on to build a core group of users and understand what they liked and wanted. Once you have that initial user base, you earn the right to unlock other channels like paid search, ads, etc.

In fact, sometimes knowing too much can be dangerous. I’ve seen people launch a product and immediately spend $20K on search ads, social media, and other paid channels, without doing the hard work first. They just throw money at it. But I believe the real hard work is talking to customers in person, getting told “no” a bunch of times, and navigating the challenges of in-person events. 

People often assume that if they just plug money into these channels, growth will follow. But sometimes it’s more valuable to focus on the non-scalable things first, building that personal connection and understanding your audience deeply. Finding product market fit ahead of plowing money into paid channels is key, and usually that means finding ways to put in sweat for your first set of customers.

Adam: What are your best sales and marketing tips? 

Rob: When you find something that works––maybe it’s email marketing, maybe it’s meeting your customers in person––focus deeply on that one thing. In the early stages, it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of trying out multiple channels simultaneously, hoping one of them will take off.

Instead, identify an approach that’s gaining traction and double down on it. Pour your energy, resources, and attention into optimizing and scaling that specific aspect of your business. This doesn’t mean you ignore everything else, but it does mean you prioritize what’s working over the distractions of what might work.

Over the course of my career, I’ve learned that you have to earn the right to unlock other marketing channels. You can’t spend tens of thousands of dollars on a premium domain name or an out-of-home campaign before you’ve identified if people even want your product. Find who your customers are, what they want, and what’s resonating with them. Then, if it’s working, you can start to explore other channels to see if they, too, will resonate in the same way. You’re lucky to find one channel that works, don’t assume that there are dozens. 

Back at Bark in the early days, I was sitting at my desk the day that Facebook newsfeed ads launched. We ran a campaign for a few days and it was working incredibly well – I ran the campaigns myself for a few weeks then passed them off to a contractor so I could find the next “golden” channel, the next Facebook. In retrospect, I should have spent all my time, energy, and budget in that channel that was working and less time looking for others. Lesson learned!

Adam: In your experience, what are the defining qualities of an effective leader? How can leaders and aspiring leaders take their leadership skills to the next level? 

Rob: I’ve learned a lot about how to lead effectively, and one of the most important lessons is being clear with expectations and providing consistent feedback on performance to your direct reports. As a leader, it's your responsibility to ensure your team members understand how they’re doing, whether they’re excelling or where there are opportunities for improvement.

And if your team members aren’t receiving critical feedback from you, they’re likely not getting it from anyone else. I’ve had to let people go and they were completely shocked. It made me realize that, as their manager, I wasn’t providing the right kind of feedback and I’d failed them. I was disappointed in myself for not being honest or transparent enough to help that person grow or stay in their role and for sometimes being afraid to give the tough feedback that was necessary.

Being candid and constructive with feedback is essential, not just for your team’s development, but also for maintaining trust in your leadership.

Adam: What is your best advice on building, leading, and managing teams? 

Rob: One piece of advice I always give: hiring is one of the most important things you can do. Bringing in A+ talent, from entry-level to the highest seniority, is one of the best investments you can make. 

To attract top candidates, who are likely being recruited elsewhere, you have to go above and beyond. At Ro, we could have just passed that work to someone more junior or to someone on the People team, but we recognized the importance of making personal connections to candidates. As founders, we reached out to candidates personally, met them for coffee, sent thank-you notes after interviews, etc. You need to really go above and beyond to land top talent.

These folks usually have multiple offers and several companies actively recruiting them in parallel, so the way you treat them during the recruitment process can be the deciding factor. By investing time and energy into making candidates feel valued and appreciated, you increase your chances of landing those A+ hires.

Adam: What are your three best tips applicable to entrepreneurs, executives, and civic leaders? 

Rob: The value of relationships - I’m a big believer in maintaining great relationships with as many people as possible—clients, former employees, competitors, anyone you encounter in business. It’s easy to escalate tension when there’s disagreement, but I’ve learned that even when it feels like a weakness to stay calm, it pays off in the long run. People often come back into your life in unexpected ways, and making sure you haven’t left a bad impression is incredibly important. For example, the team at Bark did not want me to leave at first, but in the end, they became the first investors in our company. In business and in life in general, people often come back around in ways you wouldn’t expect, so it’s worth being proactive about maintaining those connections.

Embracing ambiguity - The best opportunities, especially in startups, are often ambiguous. You might not know exactly what your role will be or whether the idea will succeed, but the uncertainty is part of being a founder or an early-stage employee. I love working with people who are more comfortable with ambiguity than those who need everything laid out clearly. If you only pursue risk-free opportunities, your career is likely to be much more boring (and maybe not as lucrative). It’s important to get comfortable with the unknown.

Strong opinions, loosely held - You can be thoughtful and develop hypotheses about how things should work, but you also need to be open to outcomes that differ from your expectations. If you’re too rigid and dismissive of feedback that doesn’t align with what you expected, you are destined for a rocky path ahead. Being open to new perspectives and willing to change your mind when presented with strong arguments is essential for working well with others and running a successful business.

Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you have ever received?

Rob: When I was deciding whether or not to join Ro, I was struggling with the decision. We had just moved to New Jersey, bought a house, and were expecting our second child. Everything felt stable.

But, my wife simply asked me if I would look back and regret saying no. And for some reason, that really struck me. I realized that if I didn’t take the opportunity, I might regret it later. This helped push me down a path I wasn’t sure I was ready for but ultimately knew I had to take and it’s something I ask myself with every new opportunity that comes my way.


Adam Mendler is an entrepreneur, writer, speaker, educator, and nationally recognized authority on leadership. Adam is the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one-on-one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal-winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities, and non-profit organizations. Adam has written extensively on leadership and related topics, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. Adam teaches graduate-level courses on leadership at UCLA and is an advisor to numerous companies and leaders. A Los Angeles native, Adam is a lifelong Angels fan and an avid backgammon player.

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