Ro’s co-founder and Chief Growth Officer Rob Schutz is stepping down from his current role and will remain involved with the digital health company in an advisory capacity, businesskinda.com has learned. The shift comes just weeks after Ro cut 18% of its workforce to “manage spending, increase the efficiency of our organization and better align our resources with our current strategy,” the leadership wrote in an e-mail. mail obtained by businesskinda.com and confirmed by multiple sources.
“Ro has reached a scale where I can now confidently pass the baton to the teams to grow, innovate and build the business from here,” Schutz wrote in an email sent to staff today. businesskinda.com reached out to Ro for further comment, but had not heard back at the time of publication. Schutz confirmed his departure on LinkedIn, providing a copy of the memo received by businesskinda.com.
He is not the first executive to leave the company after Ro’s entry into the growth phase. In February, Ro announced that it had raised $150 million exclusively from existing investors at a valuation of $7 billion. A week after the fundraiser, businesskinda.com learned that Ro Pharmacy’s Ro COO George Koveos and Ro Pharmacy’s GM Steve Buck were leaving the company. In May, Afton Vechery, co-founder of Modern Fertility, left Ro about a year after her company, built alongside co-founder Carly Leahy, was sold to the company for more than $225 million. Schutz is the first co-founder to leave the company, as CEO Zachariah Reitano and chief product officer Saman Rahmanian remain with the company.
Schutz wrote in the email that after Labor Day, September 5, 2022, he will step back from day-to-day operations. “What I’ve realized on closer inspection is that the areas where I use my superpowers for smaller-stage companies,” Schutz wrote. He also hinted at partnering with some of Ro’s investors — including FirstMark Capital, General Catalyst, Seven Seven Six, BoxGroup, Altimeter Capital, Baupost Group, Initialized, TQ Ventures and TCG — to advise early-stage startups.
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