{"id":10558,"date":"2017-02-21T19:24:16","date_gmt":"2017-02-21T19:24:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.prd.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/?p=10558"},"modified":"2017-02-28T14:50:43","modified_gmt":"2017-02-28T14:50:43","slug":"big-dog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/big-dog\/","title":{"rendered":"Big dog"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vanderbilt MBA graduates are helping lead Rover on a path of quick growth, but it\u2019s not always easy to keep up<\/em><\/p>\n

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(Left to right) Rover Vice President Megan Teepe, MBA\u201911, Chief Operating Officer Brent Turner, MBA\u201999 and summer intern Sarah Eaton. Photo Credit: Brett Israel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When you walk into Rover\u2019s<\/a> office in Seattle\u2019s Belltown neighborhood, the first friendly face to greet you belongs to Dublin. She\u2019s a 6-year-old Chiweenie (part Chihuahua, part Dachshund), whose owner smiles from behind the reception desk in the lobby. It\u2019s a nice welcome to one of the hottest companies in tech.<\/p>\n

Rover, whose business involves matching dog sitters, walkers and caregivers with dog owners, might seem a little canine-crazy to outsiders; a lap around the office reveals about a dozen dogs of various breeds displaying various levels of enthusiasm for office life. Yet, the office is quieter than you\u2019d think it would be for a space filled with dogs. There\u2019s little barking or roughhousing. For the most part, dogs lie on pillows near their owners\u2019 workspaces. The humans, for their part, are focused on computer screens, perfecting Rover\u2019s code or resolving issues between sitters and owners.<\/p>\n

Rover has pioneered the on-demand dog sitting business, and propelling the company forward are graduates from the Vanderbilt University Owen Graduate School of Management. Led by Brent Turner, MBA\u201999, Rover\u2019s chief operating officer, Owen alumni are shaping Rover\u2019s culture on the fly as the company grows at breakneck speeds.<\/p>\n

Rover works like this: Dog owners set up a profile for themselves and their pet on either the Rover website or the mobile app. When they need someone to watch or walk their pooch, they search for available sitters in their area who can either drop in for a quick visit, take the dog for a walk, or watch the pet overnight in either the owner\u2019s house or at the sitter\u2019s house. Sitters can send updates to the owners throughout the stay, including text messages and pictures, or report any incidents to Rover\u2019s support team. After the stay, sitters and owners give each other starred ratings and can provide further feedback.<\/p>\n

Anyone can sign up to be a sitter or dog walker for Rover, but Rover requires background checks, screens potential candidates for red flags, and spends a lot of time educating sitters on how to be successful while pet-sitting. Sitters set their prices, preferences and availability. Anyone familiar with online dating services will quickly recognize Rover\u2019s user interface; it\u2019s a matchmaking service, but for dogs and caregivers.<\/p>\n

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Pet pictures abound at Rover\u2019s Seattle headquarters. Photo Credit: Brett Israel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Since its founding in 2011, Rover has become the largest marketplace in the U.S. for pet-sitting services, with over 65,000 registered sitters. It has raised $90 million in total venture funding after closing an investment round in October that was co-led by Foundry Group and Menlo Ventures, whose other investments include Uber, Siri and Roku.<\/p>\n

Rover has also been shaped by Vanderbilt grads, with Turner leading the way as COO. His job is to make sure Rover pursues its annual plan. On any given day, he attends to the business rhythms of Rover, checking in on the company\u2019s teams, which include sitter success, marketing and operations among others. The Rover annual plan is broken down into a set of key performance metrics that departments and individuals are trying to hit. Turner can quickly see who is ahead and who needs help. He then turns his attention to pursuing his own projects in support of people on his team or his boss, Rover\u2019s CEO.<\/p>\n

Rover is a five-year-old company, and Turner has been COO for the last three, during which time Rover has made a name for itself on the tech scene. The company has experienced greater than or equal to 200 percent growth in revenue every year that Turner has been COO. \u201cIt\u2019s the first legitimately hypergrowth business that I\u2019ve been a part of,\u201d Turner says. \u201cWith past businesses, my role had been to get everyone aligned in the right direction to push the company uphill. At Rover, it\u2019s more like holding on for dear life and trying not to let anything come apart.\u201d He\u2019s focused on looking at the demands of Rover\u2019s steep growth curve and identifying potential hurdles.<\/p>\n

\u201cBetween March 1 and the end of July in 2016, our business doubled,\u201d Turner says. \u201cWhen you\u2019re looking up at the start of March and you say our company will be twice the size in terms in terms of revenues at end of July, you have to start thinking about what we need to work on now to meet those scale challenges.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the moment, Turner is focused specifically on the marketing challenges facing the company. For example, most tech companies rely on the power of search engines to drive customers to their platforms. The problem for Rover is that not many people actually search the internet for dog sitters; they\u2019re more likely to call a friend, neighbor or nearby kennel. So, instead of search engine advertising, Rover relies on mid-funnel or up-funnel channels, such as their blog, Facebook videos, TV and other local ads. That leads to many channels, so Turner is trying to tackle the complexity of this kind of marketing approach as the company grows.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou hear a lot of people talk about not boiling the ocean, meaning you can\u2019t work on all of your problems at once,\u201d Turner says. \u201cBut when you\u2019re growing so fast and all your known problems are going from immaterial to material so fast, and in the meantime unknown problems are coming out of the woodwork, you have to boil the ocean.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first person Turner hired to help him chart Rover\u2019s course and define its values was fellow Vanderbilt grad Megan Teepe, MBA\u201911. Today she\u2019s Rover\u2019s vice president of sitter success and safety, charged with building out Rover\u2019s junior and midlevel leaders. That means helping them develop the skills that will help Rover scale up by staying focused on performance and outcomes\u2014and helping these leaders maintain their humanity at the same time.<\/p>\n

At Rover, Teepe tries to identify with a strong set of soft skills that are harder to measure on paper. She\u2019s looking for aptitude. \u201cOne of the most important things I\u2019ve learned is how important it is to get the right people in the right roles from the beginning, and to learn your lessons quickly if you didn\u2019t,\u201d Teepe says.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt Rover, if I\u2019m hiring you for a leadership role where you\u2019re going to be managing people, I want to know if you live and breathe leadership,\u201d Teepe says. \u201cI see that in the way you talk about why you want to lead people. Can you articulate that or is it just something you think you need to do to build your career? I\u2019m eagle-eyed about that.\u201d<\/p>\n

And more Vanderbilt MBA talent may be on the way to help Rover grow.<\/p>\n

This past summer, Sarah Eaton, MBA Class of 2017 and Owen\u2019s student government president, interned at Rover, helping shape the educational aspects of the company\u2019s sitter success program. She was charged with developing videos for social media that help explain to sitters what to do in in potentially sticky situations that arise during dog sitting. Hiring the right people is so important at fast-growing Rover that the company has painted its core values on a wall in the office. One of Turner\u2019s most important values is a ban on personal agendas in the workplace. Pathological honesty and bias toward action are others.<\/p>\n

\u201cErrors of inaction are always unacceptable,\u201d Turner says. \u201cIf you\u2019re trying to solve a problem and you make a mistake, that\u2019s OK, but don\u2019t be intimidated by failure. If you don\u2019t screw up something every month, I\u2019m going to wonder if you\u2019re trying hard enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Owen student Sarah Eaton poses with a pooch during her summer internship at Rover. Photo Credit: Brett Israel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

These values are especially important to Turner in his role as COO. He\u2019s talked about them during a recent Taco Tuesday series held at Rover where a different employee presents to the team on a topic of their choosing. His main responsibility, after all, is to keep Rover plowing ahead without losing the characteristics that helped the company achieve success in the first place.<\/p>\n

\u201cDefining and living our values is important to me because Job No. 1 is to get the right people in the right roles,\u201d Turner says. \u201cWe\u2019re doing that here at Rover.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the next five years, Turner thinks $1 billion in revenue across the platform is realistic, along with a multinational presence and a rollout of other services. \u201cWhen I got here almost three years ago, the idea that Rover would have revenue of $200 million across the platform seemed like it would be so amazing,\u201d Turner says. \u201cNow, we\u2019ll roll right through that, and who knows where the top is?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vanderbilt MBA graduates are helping lead Rover on a path of quick growth, but it\u2019s not always easy to keep up When you walk into Rover\u2019s office in Seattle\u2019s Belltown neighborhood, the first friendly face to greet you belongs to Dublin. She\u2019s a 6-year-old Chiweenie (part Chihuahua, part Dachshund), whose owner smiles from behind the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":408,"featured_media":10562,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,15,1,64],"tags":[88,89,87,90],"class_list":["post-10558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cover","category-features","category-general-topics","category-homepage-highlights","tag-brent-turner","tag-megan-teepe","tag-rover","tag-sarah-eaton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/408"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10558"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10618,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10558\/revisions\/10618"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}