05: Building a Rental Marketplace From Scratch with Ross Richmond of Arrive Outdoors

This is Dan Hightower with Product Market Misfits talking about the exploding outdoor activities market and an amazing company in this space founded by Rochelle Snyder and Ross Richmond called Arrive Outdoors, which you can find at arriveoutdoors.com. With Arrive, you can rent just about anything for your outdoor adventure and have it delivered anywhere in the US. So it's the easiest way to experience the outdoors. Arrive is seed stage and has raised $4.8 million from some amazing investors, including Science Inc., ThredUp, Freestyle Capital, Alpaca VC, and AVG Basecamp. So I'm incredibly excited to welcome Ross to Product Market Misfits today. Ross, thank you so much for hanging out with me today. How are you?

I'm great. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

I am super excited to have you on the, on the podcast. Can you Start off by just telling us how you got to where you are today.

So for me, it was, I think, kind of a realization at a younger age. Not that I wanted to start a business, I had absolutely no idea that that would be a thing, but it was really around kind of loving— I was just such a curious person growing up, coupled by finding from a young age that I didn't want to work for other people. That was like the thing that kind of kept poking its head up, and I didn't even know when I was young that like there is another— what the options were if you're that kind of a person. But it was absolutely like maybe a little bit of an anti-authority thing, but really a lot of like I kind of thought that I could maybe do something better, or I was just always more passionate when it was self-guided or self-driven. And I was pursuing a question that I had or something I was really interested in. So I started out thinking that that was going to be actually in activism and public service and public life. And something that still really kind of calls to me to this day. But it's— so I kind of started by thinking about kind of getting involved in my community and thinking about starting nonprofits and doing that kind of a world. And that's what I really focused on in college, actually ran for office at one point.

In college?

In— after college in Somerville, back in Boston where I'm from.

Oh, cool.

And that was a path that was really exciting to me. That didn't happen at that time, and it drove me to then think about some of the issues in schools, and a lot of what I was really passionate about was hunger issues, so I went and started a nonprofit, which was like me kind of doing the tiptoe towards where I think I would eventually end up here. Loved that side of things and kind of Starting something from nothing, taking an idea that also had a mission or a value and kind of running with that. But I think all along I knew that I wanted to try to do something that could move even faster than that. And so really at the end, it was what kind of a problem can I solve and what kind of a business— what kind of solution can I, can I find that has a way of like major growth? And that's really a startup.

That's so cool. I mean, I've heard that story so many times where the founder, the now founder, had political aspirations, and I'm curious if you are like them in that you, through that experience, learned that the government can actually move a little slower than you desired it.

Yeah, 100%. And I think I always took a patient approach to it. Like, one of my things, like my mantras growing up, was always that like Peter Parker, Ben, like with great privilege comes great responsibility, and I still hold that today for whatever I'm doing. And so it felt like, well, that to its truest form is really public service. So like all of the patience that's required is like part of like, okay, I'm doing the thing with my privilege and power to be able to like make this change, and this is kind of the way to do it. And I just didn't have a lot of business role models around me growing up. My mom is a Boston Public School principal, now retired. So it was very much that like public service was the way to do that. And so yeah, so that's where it was, but you know, it was slow and it was tough.

So who did you initially draw from in the, I guess, business or tech world to get you moving in this direction for like role model, you know?

Yeah, great question. I think it was really Guy Raz in how I built this. Because what he did there was say an entrepreneur is anybody, right, and it's like it's you and me with a good idea and a lot of grit and then some combination of hard work and luck, right.

Yeah.

And so, it wasn't like a famous figure that kind of— I think I looked more towards the famous figures when I was doing more political aspirations, but it was really more about kind of the everyday person who's solving really interesting problems, and they just were obsessed. And that really appealed to my brain type, I think.

So was it a love for the outdoors that, that took you up to today with Arrive?

Yeah, so with Arrive Outdoors, it was really a problem that we faced. So my co-founder and I— and also my co-founder is my wife, Rochelle Snyder— That's a thing.

I love that.

Yeah, it's gone surprisingly amazingly well, and we actually kind of first met working together in college, so we'd already known our working styles, and then like said like, okay, now later down the road here, several years later, we're like, let's give this a try again, and worst case scenario, we just kind of like save our relationship and don't, you know, just let this not happen, but, you know, after the first year or even more. It's just been amazing. And so, where was I there? Oh, so the problem, right? So we were trying to solve this problem, and we moved from Boston to Los Angeles, and we kind of shucked all of our outdoor gear at the time. It wasn't in great shape. We were definitely in the occasional outdoor kind of person category. So we weren't this like hardcore outdoors person who you see in a magazine, like hanging from a rock cliff. You know, you're like, oh yeah, that product is inspiring me because I want to be that person. We were much more of the like, let's get some beers, let's get a fire, and like, let's camp out there, you know, or like, let's go on a great hike in this interesting place. Maybe let's make it a backpacking trip, but definitely kind of what we would call the outdoor dabbler. So our gear, like so many people in that category, is only used occasionally, and you never really know what kind of like shape it's in. It's always a little bit of a mystery when you're like, okay, I guess I'm going on another trip now, so let me think, you know, where— Right. So it wasn't in good enough shape when we moved out here to Los Angeles, and we moved out here with Rachelle's job. She was working for an edtech startup at the time. And so we got out here and there was so much to do in Los Angeles. It was like we could go skiing one weekend, camping the next. We could like go to the beach and try to learn how to surf. which was a hilarious adventure. And so all of these different things were available and we realized that like, one, we had a 600-square-foot bungalow, so there just wasn't a place to put a new surfboard. And two, like, why isn't there something that allows us to do this as an experiential consumer and not as somebody who's trying to accumulate all of this stuff? I feel like—

Yeah.

When I would see Outdoor Magazine growing up, I never felt I never felt— I felt like the activity spoke to me, but not necessarily the, you need to get all of these things in order to do it. And maybe that's because I like didn't feel I had the money to do it or whatever, right? But so we wanted to do all these things and we thought, you know, we do this with other services. When we want something, we can get it delivered to us. And oftentimes those services, there's some rental ones where you can deliver it right back when you're done. Why doesn't this exist for the outdoors? It seems so obvious for an occasional thing. That you do and don't have a ton of storage if you're a young professional in the city. So that was kind of the problem, I guess you'd say.

So can you tell me what Arrive Outdoors does?

Yeah, so Arrive Outdoors allows you to experience the outdoors without having to own any of the things to do it. So all— whatever you need for a camping trip, a backpacking trip, if you need ski gear during the winter, We will take all of that gear. You rent it on our platform, arriveoutdoors.com, and it gets placed into a box with craft paper. It's a really beautiful and delightful moment when it arrives at your door and you open it and it's like Christmas morning and all your stuff is available. And it's in great condition and it's ready for your trip, all the things you need. And then when you're done, there's a return label and tape that's included. Put it back in the box. ship it back to us.

Oh my gosh. I mean, I needed this like 2 weekends ago. We went camping in— oh shoot, where were we? Somewhere in the middle of nowhere Virginia with some friends out of DC, and everyone had price tags still like on their gear.

Yeah, we see that so many times. We've even had people call us In the store, these were like moments at the beginning when you know you're onto something. We like had somebody call us from within a retailer and they like, they were having sticker shock from their basket and they were like, I was invited by my coworkers to— on a camping trip and I have like all of this stuff in my cart and I don't know if I need it or when the next time I'm gonna use it. It's okay. You know, like you can, you can step away for a moment and we can like help you get to this thing that you need. We have a solution for you. We're here for you. And that was kind of the moment where we realized there were so many people just like you just described, right? Who just kind of like still have the price tags on.

Yeah, I mean, there's the, I go camping frequently and I know where I go camping and I know the weather, right? 'Cause like, if you buy one sleeping bag, it's not, gonna work for like all situations. So now you're, you're talking about like 2 systems or like, you know, a bunch of gear. Right. And I've, again, another city dweller story is my girlfriend's friend was like, hey, can you come over and help me hang some things? And I was thinking like pictures in her apartment. It's a 1-bedroom apartment in DC. It's like 600, 700 square feet.

Right.

No, it was that she wanted me to hang her mountain bike, her snowboard, her skis, and then figure out a way to like ceiling mount her surfboard.

Wow, that is gonna be an interesting looking up at the mobile of outdoor gear. I mean,

it's a statement about your lifestyle, which is, I guess, pretty cool. Or you could like rent this gear for the I was like, how often do you mountain bike?

Right. So that's such an interesting thing, right? It's like, for the outdoor enthusiasts, they're actually— a lot of them are really well served with the outdoor marketplace right now. They want to have that stuff in their house. It's inspiring to see it, like a mountain bike in their small room, or like a snowboard on their wall, right? Or like in their closet when they open it. But for most people who only go occasionally and don't That's not a part of their lifestyle, they actually don't want to open their closet every day and see a snowboard because they know that—

Yes.

In San Francisco, they actually could calculate the square footage they're paying for their closet space and realize it's actually pretty significant.

And that the bike or the board is taking up like half of their closet.

Yeah, absolutely.

Or it's just like a sad reminder that you have to go to the office that day. And every day.

Yeah, true, true.

I love it. Okay, so easy for me to understand and experience the problem. If it were me, I would— it's easy for me to see the problem. I'm curious how you went from, I see this like market opportunity, to I'm launching this company. That would be great to hear about.

Yeah, so we, I think we were reading kind of the Lean Startup literature at the time that was still popular, but popular, very popular when we were launching. And it was like MVP, MVP, MVP. So it was, what can we do? We have this idea. What can we do to just test that there's a there there? And we've really been kind of testing if there's a there there. Since the founding of the company, you know, you're always kind of trying to find product-market fit to figure out what exactly you're doing that delights to the level of real scalability or whatever it is, right? So we, I think we threw up a Shopify site that like you could kind of put some products on a site and we didn't even have the products bought yet when we Launched it, got our first order, and had to run out and buy the thing, put it in our CR-V, and like pretend to be the courier for— the company at the time was called Cozy Camping. And we were like this courier for Cozy Camping. And it just so happened that like somebody in our neighborhood actually rented, even though the map of our business on Google Maps showed like all of Los Angeles. So it was like, oh my God, is our neighbor gonna recognize us? It was like just a total coincidence that it happened to be near us, I think, right? So, and anyway, like the first person we did this to, they came back, we picked up their gear, we were like couriers again. And we were like, so how was your trip? Just like trying desperately to get like market research insights.

Yeah.

Any kind of data point. And they were like, oh my God, I'm never buying gear again. Like, that's it, period. Like slam dunk. And that was kind of the light bulb moment. Now, did that mean like we had a scalable business? Did we have like all these—

So we raised $50 million.

Yeah, no way, right? Like, we— I was clean— hand cleaning the tents in our yard at the time in between rentals, and we were like running around the city for the first couple months just like taking this one or two, and then we got another camping set, and we're just like running it around and delivering it all over the city at night. And we were actually new to Los Angeles, so I got to know the city really well.

How many— okay, so how much gear did you own before thinking, this is like, this is like a real, a real business that we may want to consider supporting with either more people or money?

I think the answer to that is too much gear before we realized that. I think we always knew that we wanted to create a true economic alternative to owning things. And to really kind of make it equally as convenient or even more convenient to rent it than to buy it. And that's kind of our whole overarching assumption is like, yeah, it's nice to do things that are good for the planet, you know, consuming less, but it really has to feel very convenient. And so we kind of got this to— we had this idea that we really, from the beginning, wanted to raise VC money and we wanted to be able to grow this to scale. so that it could really be a, a player, quote unquote, in the, like, e-commerce environment. So, like, as we all started using Amazon more, we were like, we really also wanted this to be a, a real alternative and something that anyone anywhere could access the things that they need. We didn't want this to be like a lifestyle business or whatever. So we— I think the one thing we might have done earlier, or kind of like in that category of we wish we had known is probably gone out and raised sooner and quicker. We got a lot of gear and we want— and we, you know, essentially the 5-star reviews kept kind of piling in. But when you— and it was like amazing. We like had listened to this 11-star experience with Airbnb and we kind of were like, kept imagining ways to get better and better 5-star reviews. But at the end of the day, like Yelp only has up to 5 stars and like— It has up to 5 stars. And people would write these paragraphs about how great it was and they'd be like, oh, Courier Ross was so delightful, you know, and I'm like, please stop mentioning my name because people are gonna realize that I own this. So I started making up names like, you know, like just like coming in with like Mike and like Steve and like all these different—

Oh my god.

We switched it up on our Yelp reviews. But essentially, like, you know, when you're going out for VC money, you can have 50 5-star reviews or 30 or 200. Obviously, all those data points help, but we I think we would have gone out earlier because the idea was, we thought was great. And the kind of, we needed the additional capital to really kind of like do the things you want to do as a startup, like, you know, just bring it to the next level as a business.

Yeah. Was there a metric that you hit that, you know, was the switch in your mind from, We're a bootstrap company to, uh, we need money company.

I think we were always kind of limited by our own personal money. So this was the way we kind of— and that was kind of like once we tapped out of our personal money, we were kind of like, we can't go any farther with this thing. We had like a little bit of savings and we called up our student loan company and told them we weren't going to be making payments for a while. We kind of took that money and like Used it for the business, and but but we couldn't really like grow into these different areas or test out like AdWords in the way that actually would put you know putting $100 behind Google AdWords was like a big deal for us. But like you know sometimes you need a little bit more than that to really be able to prove certain metrics. So I think we kind of knew right away that our little pile of cash that we had we could generate revenue. So it was like it was like it would. return the money because it was a cash-generating business, although a tiny one, but we needed actual capital and support, I would say, was the next big phase that we needed of— this isn't our background, we don't come from B-school or not even, you know, business school, you don't necessarily learn some of this stuff either, but kind of the how you test, the kind of the A/B world of startups was what we recognized quickly as the next phase and what we wanted to kind of get into, and that was— Both with funding and then also for more kind of that community and space.

Did you hear any objections, like common objections in the fundraising process?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, a ton. And I think what it came down to was kind of the outdoor space in general is not necessarily a traditional space you think billion dollars right away. It happens to be just massive. And then the economic kind of ripples of it are just way bigger than we actually even imagined going into it. But the expertise level in the startup community on the VC space is not something— you just don't see that many outdoor startups talked about in the blogosphere of the startup world. Yeah. So I think that there was a little bit of a thing there. And then, you know, rental actually wasn't as big as it is today when we first started. So there was Rent the Runway, a few others. Now there's like furniture rental, there's like this rental, there's that rental. But when we started, it was still kind of like, is this going to be a thing? And so there just wasn't as much experience with the rental market in general. And it wasn't like a pure tech kind of SaaS product, or it wasn't a pure CPG, like we're just selling something that already has an established market. It's like kind of a— New market, new idea in an outdoor space. So we had to really find the right folks who understood the size, the opportunity, et cetera.

So did you try in the pitch to like abstract away the outdoor nature of it and come up with this like vision for, we're gonna be a platform for renting things, Or do you know what I mean? To like try to make it more appealing to the investor world.

Great question. I think we always steered away from that, and we always felt that that's kind of like the Silicon Valley-ification version, where you think you're supposed to do that show, you know, that's just, that's hilarious, like vaguer means bigger means like, oh, like there's almost a mystery to it, and then you get the like FOMO, like what are they building there? I gotta get on that train. Right, like that. To me, we wanted to say— we wanted to draw a discrete line around what we were doing, or like circle what we're really going to own here. And that is providing it like actual amazing rental experience with outdoor gear. So we said like, look, the whole outdoor space is really, we think, is primed for this. And the experiential consumer is getting outside and people in cities That's one of the top things they want to do, and they don't have the space and all the other value props that we had. But the vaguer you get, the more— I think a good VC pokes holes in that, and it's kind of like an antiquated way, or not antiquated, like it's a little bit of an old-school way to think about it. It's more like now you want to do something very specific really well, because there's just so many people doing it that you really have to know what you're doing. Otherwise, you kind of lose yourself to—

Yeah, it's funny because you try to paint the big, huge market opportunity picture with your story and unfortunately, in turn, your product is vague to the point of nothingness. It's just kind of funny. So whichever one you want to solve for.

And you can still have those big ideas, right? Like Amazon started with books.

Yeah.

Dot, dot, dot. Right, like, so you can still kind of like internally pitch really, or internally have those really big ideas of where your business is going. When you're raising your first initial seed round or your Series Seed, you really wanna define the market that you're going after and the problem you're solving and the customer you're solving it for, and hopefully have some metrics and some data that show that that customer has that problem and here's how many of those customers there are, instead of, you know, like, We're going to have everything possible in the world shipped to you in 2 days.

So, I mean, like, who thought— who would have thought eBay would be like a huge car, used car market, right? Right. What's the craziest thing that you rent on your site?

Craziest?

Like the car equivalent to eBay.

I have to admit, we really keep it very practical for the consumer who's not a super outdoors person.

So— Okay, okay, okay. Have you gotten any weird, like, requests, emails that are like, you should rent me this?

Oh yes, all of the time. The number of people who are like, okay, here's the deal, if you rent playpens for children. I swear that will be the biggest— like, every time I go to my aunt's house, or every time I'm like— someone was like, I'm going to Hawaii, I need my pack and play, but I just can't find it. Do you guys happen to rent that? And like, clearly on our site we just don't do—

No, we don't have that.

And they're like, okay, we'll think about it. Because I think that could be, you know, the people who are like, oh— especially when we were a smaller company at the time. Now we're larger and we We don't get as many of those questions, but when we kind of were positioning ourselves as more of a startup at the beginning, people could kind of see that, and then they wanted to give us a lot of advice.

It's funny that things you hear in request form today, which are so obviously not on target for you, back in the day they were like a consideration. Like, they're like, well, maybe we should have baby gates, I don't know.

Should we just do a major pivot and just go all baby products?

We're just Baby Gates now. Yeah, I mean, data points that up and then you can start seeing more clearly the direction, right? It's pretty cool. So you did end up convincing some investors to join you on the journey, which is amazing. Congrats. How long did you spend in the fundraising process? process, or was it more rolling?

It felt rolling. It was shorter than it felt. It was several months, I would think, if I'm thinking back on it several years ago, a few years ago now. I'm not sure how many actual months, but it felt like a long time. And it was, it was a lot of nos for sure. Definitely over 50 nos. And of like major funders. And we just kept believing that there was a market there, and that this was a problem that needed to be solved. And that if it wasn't us, someone else would come along and do this, but let's just make it us. And we really believed that this was a need. And, you know, eventually maybe that was contagious enough, or what have you. But when you're really at that beginning stage, and you're selling a dream, you know, unless you have like— just the metrics out the door or crazy revenue coming in. You know, you're really trying to ask someone to invest in you as a founder, and there's that passion that they can see in your eyes. And finally, as much as we sometimes felt like we might wanna give up, we just kinda kept going. And I think that strength is what actually kind of like helped us realize like, oh, if we can get through this process, kind of helps set the stage for how, you know, like the challenge— look at the challenges we can kinda surmount. So I think there's like a, a real strength that you get from the fundraising process, but it was months, it felt like longer, and, you know, sometimes the folks are nicer than you think, the VCs, but they, you know, will say things really bluntly and you're like, oh man, you know, you just kind of have to pick yourself up and go to the next meeting and— Oh,

well, I mean, better blunt than, yeah, we'll get back to you in a couple weeks, sounds great.

And we, I think when we were first starting, we thought, oh wow, that might, you know, Yeah, this is great, but really, that's, you know, for those who know, that's a sign of— that's a no. Maybe is a no, and it kind of took us a little while to figure that out.

Kudos to the VCs out there who just lay it on you bluntly.

Yeah, and I love blunt people. They're like my jam. It's like, great, let's— and then I'll say something back and maybe we'll figure, you know, like hear each other's side, and then it's like, okay, cool. You know, but people tend to let it roll off pretty quick too, I think.

Yeah. So moving away from the fundraising aspect of it, what was a particularly difficult part of building and growing the business? Anything come to mind in particular?

Yeah, I think on the personal side, there's a lot to kind of unpack there. I think really understanding how you set yourself up for success. is kind of a valuable thing to share. So each business is gonna have its own challenge. You know, if you're a CPG business, you're gonna really have to figure out your acquisition strategy and how to get the customer for a certain price and what have you. Our business is a little different, but every business has some similarities. But I think the real kind of nuggets that have helped me over time is figuring out in a startup environment where it's really just you and a founder or you and a really small team, is figuring out early on how you set yourself up for success. So thinking about kind of where your strengths are, trying to put the resources to counterbalance that, whether it's hiring somebody. Some startups right at the beginning, I know, especially if we're talking about some of those really early-stage companies, you know, you can't just go out and hire somebody to fill a gap or whatever opposite to the founders. But really thinking through what are those resources or what are those things that allow me to be successful, or even how you structure your business. Like, some of the challenges for me was like how I really do my energy throughout the day. Mm-hmm. And I do a lot of my hardcore thinking or like really focused time in the morning, and then I do my meetings in the afternoon. And when you're kind of a new founder or your first time not working for somebody else or another company, it's kind of like it helps to really step back and think about some of those components, because I think at the end of the day, energy levels is like really what helps you kind of get through, break through some of those challenges and goals and kind of set yourself up for success.

Yeah, and you and your co-founder and spouse, Marcel, are either of you technical?

We're not technical founders.

Can you talk a little bit about how you go from 2 non-technical co-founders to building an amazing website?

Yeah, I think especially at the beginning, it's about bringing on the right people. And then it's also about selling those people because talented people, you know, you only, if you only get one developer, Yeah. you want that person to be a talented developer, especially if they're building your whole backend or like, you know, doing the frontend or do it full stack or what have you. Right. You're bringing in a design contractor. contractor, it can mean a whole matter of talent spectrums, right? And convincing talented people, we're kind of bringing them on and sharing with them what you're building and getting them excited. I think we were fortunate to have a company that is really tangible for folks. So they're like, oh my God, I could have used that 2 weeks ago, right? And where they're like, or they're like, oh man, like I had this idea at one point and it was like, great, that's awesome. Like, you know. You You face this problem too, you're excited about it, right? So I think we use that, a lot of that, to our advantage to find really talented folks, have them kind of join the vision that we were building, and using our people skills, our EQ, our experience as a manager, experience kind of selling things to bring in a really rockstar team, even though we were really small at the beginning. to kind of develop those components for our website. And then I think the other thing too is, you know, your networks, someone has done it before, and that's so key, right? Like asking around who's already done this better and who can help us cut our learning curve and always thinking like, we don't want to be the smartest person working on this issue. We want to find that really smart person and work with them to build what we're looking for.

Yeah. And that's— so your first hire was probably technical, I would imagine. And at the time you were on the Shopify site still, and it was time, you saw some reason to transition off of Shopify. What was that decision-making process like?

Yeah, so I think, you know, for any founder, you really kind of like look around and see what's out there. So how long can you bootstrap on a thing until it breaks, and then that becomes the thing that you spend resources on. If there is a solution that'll get you to the next phase, it's probably good enough. We always use the term stage appropriate. And at early stages, stage appropriate looks, you know, pretty kind of like amalgamated. And, and as you go later, you start thinking about what is the core of this as you scale? What— where are our weak spots? And what do we need to bring in-house or what have you? When it comes to a circular economy business like ours, where things go out and then they also come back in. In that rental space, there's just not much that's out there, and most companies that have come before us have built it homegrown. So we always knew on our roadmap that that would be where we were going. We just needed to kind of decide when that would be. And part of that is at what stage you raise. After we raised our seed round, we knew that was the time, but— and then we kind of made it work until then.

Got it. That makes total sense. So you figured it out and it did work, and then you started growing. In terms of driving growth, you have an incredible site with a ton of content on it. I imagine that's not a coincidence. I imagine there's a play there for SEO. I imagine you could have great relationships with gear manufacturers, for example. I have no idea if you do or not. I'd love to hear about how you leveraged either content partnerships to drive growth?

Yeah, so we really started off by taking stock in what we were good at as founders and really made that a core part of our growth strategy from the beginning. So building partnerships was a key component to our— both our growth strategy and defensibility, and really thinking about how that's gonna kind of propel us forward forward for kind of into the marketplace. So partners are a great way to kind of leap lily pads on exposure, both on the brand side and on the kind of marketplace side. So where you book your campsites or what have you, it's different for everybody. And so we, we really went after kind of providing this as a service to the consumers of the folks in our industry. So this is something that consumers really It really delights them. Partner with us so that you can provide this amazing experience for your customer, whether that's a state park that is, you know, providing campsites for people in their state, a brand who's looking to access the experiential consumer. Let us work with you to delight. And I think, and then using their networks and the SEO that they've already built and kind of to really position yourself or ourselves to be in front of the customer in that way.

That's so cool. I mean, the content on the site is awesome, like, by itself. And then, so you're reading about these amazing campsites or even parks you can go to, and it's all within the context of like, well, the gear is right here, all you have to do is go. And it's so great, I love it. And

it should be that convenient, right? Like, that's exactly when Wouldn't you want that? That's how we built it.

I mean, just go. It'll be great.

Yeah.

So my sister worked for many years at Outside Magazine. Yeah. And the content in Outside is like, it's like the last place I feel like I can go for like long-form outdoor writing. It's like super high quality and I love it for that reason. I got to visit her at work several years ago, and because they write such amazing content, these gear manufacturers just like— they'll write like editorial about gear. They have like a gear section. There's a cage in the basement of Outside Magazine's office that's just full of the coolest gear, like prototype stuff, and if you work there, you can go pick out— I think it's like 1 or 2 or 3 things For Christmas presents each year as like an employee perk.

So

I'm not sure if you want to take that little nugget and turn it into an employee perk, but I think you could.

Yeah, love that idea. We do get, you know, companies reaching out to us all the time, you know, saying, hey, would you consider this or that, or, you know, can we send you a sample? And we do have some of that stuff. So that's a great idea. What we really do, you know, like our, our team Gets free rentals, right? Delivered right to their door whenever they want. So, so part of it too is about like, you know, helping our folks get outside, and I love that idea. But there is something delightful about finding a, like, that esoteric product that you think is going to fit directly into this kind of vision you have for something you're going to do. Yeah,

so, so tell me about it from the, the poor tent's perspective. How, when do you, when does the tent get to retire and go to And go to tent, like, retirement?

Yeah, so we really kind of take the approach, would I be happy if I was using this tent? And does this feel quote unquote like new? Obviously nobody expects it to be actually new, but the idea is that you should be just as happy getting in the tent that you own, or maybe even happier getting in the tent— happier getting in this rental tent than the tent you own. You know, a lot of folks' tents are kind of like seen better days, but you should be happier getting in this rental tent or this sleeping bag because that's a real alternative. We don't want it to be this old kind of model of rental, which is something you do when you don't care or you expect this lower quality. And I think that's kind of the secret sauce of what some of these newer companies that have come around, these startups who have really kind of revolutionized— not revolutionized— these newer companies that have come around that are changing the paradigm of how we think about rental. From maybe kind of like a 4-letter word before to now like something that's a premium experience. So basically we provide a really premium experience. One of the things that we see when people post to Instagram or what have you, they do these like unboxing videos and it's very fun. Awesome. The first time somebody did that, we were like, oh my God. And now it's like, it happens very frequently and it's still exciting. And, you know, it's like you open it and they take it out and they almost always say like, wow, this is in great shape. And that's when you start to make the switch between, oh, I don't necessarily— if I only use this occasionally, I don't need to own this thing because there really is something that's equally or even better to what I would expect if I was to buy this.

That's super cool. I mean, for me as a potential customer, hopefully customer soon, If I can get a camping trip on the schedule, there is a— I would be willing to trade some quality knowing that this $400 tent is now like $50 or whatever it is on the site. Like, I would make that trade-off, but I'm curious, like, I wonder if the average American would be like— they know they're renting something. I'm curious if they are cognizant that it'll have like used characteristics. But it's cool that you just blow past that expectation with like, no, no, it's going to be just like new. Yeah.

And that's the idea. Like, it has to be, we think, to really have that viral coefficient or to really kind of have that word of mouth spread, that buzz. You really have to kind of exceed the expectations of what people think when they think of rental. And then all of a sudden it flips a switch like, oh wow, I'm never doing it any other way again. Yeah, not just when I'm in a tight bind or, oh, I don't know, the next time I'm going to go backpacking. It's like really thinking of it as your first option. Like, I want to get outside, I'm going to Arrive Outdoors. That's my first and my last stop.

Heck yeah. Okay, so along the journey, are there any one or two mistakes that you've made along the way? I know you mentioned that you, you probably would have Fundraised a little earlier in the process, but I'm curious if there's anything else.

Yeah, that's the one that really comes to mind. I was thinking about this the other day and I can't really think— I don't have a great one for that. There's certain— what? You're

just crushing it.

Yeah, that one, I just, you know, really, it's also, I think, part of a mindset. Of, you know, there was learning experiences, but I wouldn't call them mistakes. I think, you know, we've really kind of like trusted our gut when we've made decisions, and that's— we know the decision was made right, and it was made strategically, and we spelled out the path to success by going down that route. While there was a fork in the road, maybe 20/20 hindsight, the other fork would have been more successful. Of course, we'll never know, but it didn't feel like a mistake because the strategy was right. We trusted our gut, we talked with experts, or we talked with people we trusted, and then kind of moved forward. It's all— I think making decisions and doing them strategically brings confidence, and then it kind of erases that big worry.

Yeah, and then more recently with COVID You can read all about how, you know, state parks are— and the reservations for a campsite are just like skyrocketing. And other like gear is just selling like hotcakes. I'm curious, have you experienced the lift in outdoor activity?

Yeah, absolutely. This past summer was like the renaissance of camping. It was the Kind of like car camping summer or the car trip summer. So we definitely experienced that. We went from, you know, what's happening here to, oh wow, this is really going to be— you know, what's happening here with COVID can happen with the business and becoming really cautious. And once we saw that people really wanted to get outside and were feeling trapped and that outdoors was essentially deemed on the safe list. We redid our systems internally within our warehouse, our SOPs, to ensure that we were providing safety first and foremost for our people, and then just as importantly for our customers. And, you know, brought in the CDC-recommended guidelines for cleaning and treat it very seriously within our own operations so that we feel confident. And then we were able to— kind of turn up the dial and kind of start to meet some of the pretty incredible demand that started this past summer and is continuing.

Okay, so last, last question. You are married to your co-founder. What are your— what's your top rule that you share with your co-founder and spouse about how to, how to manage this unique situation? For me, I would, I would probably feel weird scheduling like a co-founder meeting at 4 PM to 5 PM and then like cooking dinner together at like 5:15. So how do you, how do you do it?

I think in your question there, Orey, is an assumption that at 5 PM you stop thinking about your partner. The reality is it's always about reading your partner, and I think that's true in life, whether that's A team member, a coworker, a co-founder, it's kind of like reading their energy level, reading their ability to talk about a certain subject. So some, some are bigger, thornier issues, some are lighter issues, some are like, let's get in and dream up the future conversations. And then some are kind of like those, like, oh, this is a persistent issue. And you kind of just figure out when and where is the right place to talk about those. Whether that's at lunchtime, during lunch, or first thing in the morning, or late at night, we're both always thinking about the business. Yeah. And, you know, at this point we've got a bigger team and we're managing separate people, and I— and there's kind of a divide in terms of what Rachelle's responsible for and what I'm responsible for, and we have our folks that report to us and that we manage, and so it's It's really kind of about thinking through, is this the right time to talk about this thing? Yeah. And I think that's true, you know, when I'm having a one-on-one check-in now over Zoom with a team member, you know, you ask yourself the same question based on everything that you know is on their plate, everything that's going on with the business, kind of, did we just celebrate a success? Are we in the middle of a push? Are we, you know, kind of all of those calculations that you think about all the time. I think it's just as important as a married founding team. And I actually think we're really good at that because that's what makes our partnership successful and has been before we started the business. We were pretty good at that, and then it kind of carried over into the business.

So Ross, I heard you, you mentioned to me earlier before we started recording that you are a huge believer in coaching, and that's coaching for you as a founder. And I'd love to unpack that and hear about that from you.

Yeah, absolutely. This is something that I advise to everybody, like friends and whoever, right? It's just like one of the questions I was bringing up earlier, one of the things that I was getting at was really how, as a founder, you set yourself up for success. Because like so many professions, there are many out there, but people know this about founders, it can be incredibly isolating. Like you're thinking about your business all the time, one moment, especially in the beginning, talking to younger founders, or not younger, first time, You know, in the beginning, you're thinking, like, is this— this could be amazing, this could really succeed, and the next day you're like, this is never gonna work. This is the stupidest idea. If this was a good idea, someone already would have thought about it. Like, or you realize just how hard it is to do one aspect, and you thought, like, oh, I'll just deal with that later with scale, and then, like, you realize that, like, actually you have to have that absolutely answered before you go on to the next stage. So anyway, so, like, setting yourself up for success as a founder is so key. Obviously, having a network around you is like tried and true. Being— meeting other founders, talking, you know, is so key. But really kind of doing the work with a coach really helps you kind of dive into the areas that you know you need to strengthen. What it really helped me sort through was kind of focusing on doing the things that I do well, like, like almost doubling down on my superpowers. Mm-hmm. being okay with the things that I'm not. Everyone has things they're really strong at and they know it, and that makes them really confident. And then they have things that they're not great at, and those things have a varying degree of effect on you. Yes. And I find that coaching can do— and varying degree of effect depending on the day or the situation— and what coaching can help you do is really kind of like just be okay with those things that you're either going to work on or you don't need to work on, because actually when you double down on what you're good at And you like hire somebody or you kind of like figure out a hack to, to get around those, those components that you're still working on or just aren't what you're good at inherently, that a coach can really help you kind of sort through those things and really become the successful version of yourself just by defining what those are and sitting with them, being comfortable and kind of figuring out what works for you.

Yeah. And it's crazy that this is even a conversation, right? That we're talking about how Most founders go at it alone for a period of time at least. Whereas if you're like, like you were saying earlier before we started recording, like if you were a nurse and you didn't have like a head nurse or like someone to help you, then it would be crazy. But here founders are like out in the wild running around.

Yeah, absolutely. Like therapists have therapists, right? Like of course they do. Could you imagine they didn't, right? Yeah, that's so key what you're saying there in terms of going it alone. Even though you're like, I have a co-founder, or like, oh, I'm close with my investor who gives me a lot of advice, having somebody who just sits and works with you on your things is so key because it allows you to work on those things without any guilt of showing your cards too much or what have you. It's just like, let me just work on— and you already know the things you need to work on and you know the things that you're really good at. So it helps you kind of like see the field really clearly. And of course, it's crazy that we have to talk about this when like every professional athlete has a coach, right? Like the best in the world, like, you know, are working with the best in the world to allow them to get to the next level. And I think for me, I always thought that coaching was a luxury, and it costs money, right? So there is a certain luxury to it, or it kind of— it feels that way. But I have found that every kind of dollar I've spent there, I would have done so much earlier in my career if I had just known.

Okay, Ross, to wrap up, let's talk secret weapons, the one or two things that give you an unfair advantage in work and life. So what is your secret weapon for Managing your time?

For me, it's a really personal exploration that has made me kind of figure out how to be the high-performing version of myself. And I am like a high-energy person, but I need to manage that energy. And so for me, it kind of starts out with what I do in the morning. So getting a quick workout in, followed by a A really light breakfast and not too much coffee. And I find that like those kind of, I think like several podcasts might call them like hacks or like blog posts. Right. But it's really just kind of my secret weapon is figuring out how my body works and ensuring that I'm— the inputs that I have are kind of going to make me fire on the right cylinders at the right time.

Do you track anything?

I do track things, not as religiously as some might. I think it's been kind of an exploration over my life of like, okay, what if I'm waking up really early and working in those early morning hours? What happens if I'm working later? And kind of just doing these like little A/B tests. I don't necessarily make sure there's a statistical significance. I just kind of choose the one that over time Builds a better kind of outcome for me. And then I think the other thing is flexibility. So like some days, like, I'm just not gonna do the workout, or like some days you just, you just get terrible sleep and it just— the thing that you did yesterday is just, it's different today. And then so kind of like making sure that it's not too rigid, but that it's, you know, doing what I know works well for me.

And then what is your secret weapon for Managing stress.

So for me, stress comes when I have too many spinning plates and I feel like I can't control them, and/or that some are about to drop because there's just too many of them, oftentimes in my head or on my planner or what have you. So for me, 2 things. One is an input, and that's less coffee. That really helps me, especially as I've gotten older. older, found that those things affect me more, and so I cut some of that out. And then the real secret weapon for managing stress is delegating effectively. And that's helped me take some of those plates down and assign it to people, and then working with those team members to establish trust so that I know when I delegate something, it can get done, and they'll— the responsibility will be for them to get it back to me. So So that I can take that off and it'll come back when it's ready to re— when they're ready to reengage with me on that issue with a solution or a question or what have you. That, and being— I really like delegating. I really like working with team members to kind of help us achieve common goals.

Yeah.

The

delegation thing, do you, do you find yourself struggling to like actually delegate and not then go back after and redo? That's what I'm— I'm terrible at.

That's what you're— yeah. No, I think it's really about finding the right working relationship with your team members, and when it's there and it's clicking and there's trust and you're— you kind of know each other's style and you put in the time and the effort to get there. I'm not trying to set them up for success by just like tossing them a spinning plate that I know that they've never tackled before or what have you. It's if that's a new issue, then let's put time on the calendar to actually like come up with the structure of how that might get done. So it's, I think it's more about setting them up for success and vice versa, them setting me up for success by telling me and having those communications where you can say like, hey, this is new for me. I'm going to put 15 minutes on your calendar so we can set expectations and go over what the outline of this should look like before I dive in and come back to you. And then you're just going to redo it, right?

Do you use any project management software like Asana or something?

Yeah, so as a team we use Asana. What's that?

I just like guessed.

Yeah, yeah, we do. We love Asana. And then we also do what works best for each individual. So everyone has a little bit of a different style, and, you know, some people— everyone has their own things that they do as like their— I think you use the project management tool and then they have their side kind of like ancillary or auxiliary, you know, type of things that feed into it. So working with each person to find out what's going to be the best recipe for, for that, for them.

Cool. And that's a good segue. So last one, secret weapon in your tech stack. This can be productivity. This could be engineering.

Yeah. Mine is back to the energy internal input side. It's doing focused work in the morning. And meetings in the afternoon. So I really, I get energy from meeting with people. So when I have team members that I'm talking with, it's, I, that's an energy-giving activity for me. So when I have less energy in the afternoon, that kind of boosts my energy and it allows me to be really productive in the later afternoon. And then the stuff that requires more focused individual work, I'll put in the morning when I have that kind of thing. So the tech stack behind that is really my calendar. And it's putting meetings in the morning, meetings in the afternoon, and deep work in the morning, and trying to keep that sacred. Obviously, for other— for some people, you know, their boss is putting stuff on their plates and whatever, but I think one of the things that we try to do with our team members too, not just for myself but for them, is figuring out how they like to be most productive, and coming up with kind of a balance of what works best for me, and what works best for them, and and kind of ensuring that it works well for everybody. So we, we all move the ball down the field as quickly and effectively as we can.

Are you a Google Calendar devotee?

Yes. Like, we're a G Suite company, I guess, at this point.

Awesome, Ross. Thank you so much for spending time with me today. And thank you so much for listening. Please subscribe for more amazing conversations with venture-backed founders like Ross. And you can find the newsletter at productmarketmisfits.com.