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AARON EASTERLY, CEO, ROVER - LESSONS IN BUILDING THE WORLD'S LARGEST PET CARE MARKETPLACE

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SEASON 2, EPISODE 14

AARON EASTERLY, CEO, ROVER -
LESSONS IN BUILDING THE WORLD'S LARGEST PET CARE MARKETPLACE

 

 

Our pets aren't just furry friends, they're family. And the pandemic brought this bond into focus for millions of Americans, with one in five households adopting a new dog or cat. But like any family member, pet parents need to care for their pets – and many of them turn to Rover, the world’s largest online marketplace that connects pet owners with pet sitters and dog walkers. That wasn’t always the case. Back in 2011, when Aaron Easterly and his two co-founders started Rover, they faced two big challenges: building trust with customers and convincing investors of the market potential. Back then, the pet care industry was haunted by the failures of companies like Pets.com during the dot-com boom, leading to negative perceptions of tech in the pet space. Furthermore, pet owners were relying on friends, family, and neighbors to take care of their dogs and cats – would they really trust a stranger? Aaron, Rover's CEO, joins the podcast to reflect on the company’s early days and share how Rover used data-driven decision-making and patience to build and grow the world’s largest online marketplace for pet care.

“The first thing you need to ask yourself is what type of marketplace you have. Is the thing you're surfacing in the marketplace differentiated at a micro level, or is it all about standardization? With Uber and Lyft and DoorDash, the consumer doesn't really care who's driving the car as long as it gets to them on time, if they drive safely, and they're not treated poorly. In other marketplaces, it's all about mass customization -- I want to help find the exact right thing for you. Those two marketplaces are wildly different.”
Aaron EasterlyCEO, Rover

LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE TO LEARN:

  • How Rover unlocked the hidden potential of a pre-existing “shadow market” of pet owners in need of overnight and daytime pet care 
  • The concept of “constructive friction,” and how you can use it to your advantage when creating a marketplace that’s built on credibility and trust
  • The difference between standardization and customization in online marketplaces, and why that matters (or doesn’t) to users
  • Why you should not rely solely on raw scale to measure performance, but rather use data science to analyze and predict where the network effects are coming from
  • How Rover’s business nearly collapsed at the height of the pandemic (with negative sales!), and what Aaron told his employees to rally and motivate them to carry on
  • Parallels in the pet care / pet tech space and the child care industry, and why we’ll see continued pet industry growth in the years ahead
  • Why, when growing a tech business, it can be worth it to make hard, counterintuitive bets and buck the norm, even in the face of frustrated investors and skeptical grandmas

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