Thirty Minute Mentors Podcast Transcript: Fetch Founder and CEO Wes Schroll

I recently interviewed Fetch Founder and CEO Wes Schroll on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview:

Adam: Our guest today founded and leads a company valued at more than two and a half billion dollars. Wes Schroll is the founder and CEO of Fetch, America's leading consumer rewards app with more than 17 million users across the country. Wes, thank you for joining us.

Wes: Adam, thanks for having me. Excited to be here. 

Adam: Excited to have you. You started your first business at 14 years old, and you came up with the idea for Fetch when you were a freshman in college at the University of Wisconsin. Can you take listeners back to your early days? What sparked your passion for entrepreneurship and what propelled you to push forward and to pursue your different business ideas?

Wes: I think so much of it was being surrounded by people who were encouraging of a path that I think most people would traditionally look at as being high risk and something just not very typical. So I had amazing parents who were very, very supportive of me going out there and trying to figure out different entrepreneurial activities that I was doing. I even had, though, teachers and I can even think of one of my sports coaches who was very encouraging of it. So I think first and foremost, there was just the environment that I was given was something that allowed me to explore. I was fortunate enough to find out I was passionate about it very early on. I think my first ever business I was trying to do was going to the golf course that was nearby where I grew up and collecting a bunch of golf balls and trying to sell them back to golfers. And I think early on, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, you can create something that creates value for others that they're willing to pay for! That's really exciting.’ And it feels very much like a game that you can actually measure. It has the ability to track how you're doing and progressing. And then over time, I started to realize that if you come up with big enough ideas, you can actually start to build a team, which was another thing I love doing, working on really high-functioning teams. So I think that got me to start thinking bigger and bigger in terms of the concepts, which is why by my freshman year of college, I was looking for a really big idea. And grocery shopping happened to be where it lived within. But yeah, I think those were some of the things that were encouraging me very early on to explore. And there were lots of little failures. That support network was the ones that kept saying, oh, yeah, go try it again.’ But there was an innate part of me that just really enjoyed doing it. So I do think it’s that classic ‘nature versus nurture.’ It's tough to say because with my specific case, I think they were both evenly there. And I was really fortunate to have the nurture piece.

Adam: We're going to talk more about the power of having great support networks. We're going to talk more about mentorship later on in this conversation. But I want to ask you, how did the idea for Fetch come together? And how did you actualize it?

Wes: Yeah, I mean, as we were talking about, I had been out there working on business ideas for a number of years at this point. And going into my freshman year, I was actually finishing up a previous one. I was wrapping it up. It was too much work for me to keep doing at the time and it wasn't really progressing at the speed I wanted it to. So I was folding up shop there, and I was starting to look around me for this ‘next idea.’ I always think that the inspiration that is the most impactful and means that you'll be able to impact the largest industry is the stuff that you just experience in your everyday life. It was actually in between my freshman and sophomore year. I was moving out of the dorm where I had been fed every meal in the cafeteria and into an apartment. So for the first time ever, I'm introduced to grocery shopping on a weekly basis. Not only grocery shopping, but also starting to do more with restaurants and things like that. And I was always trying to figure out how I could save money with that. I almost viewed that as a game. And I started to realize, though, it was a lot of work if you wanted to actually save money, and I didn't enjoy that work that you had to put into it. I thought it should be easier. So I became pretty obsessed with this concept of ‘If these billion dollar companies, whether it's the retailers or the brands, really care about me as the customer and want to earn my loyalty, why are they making me do all the work then? Shouldn't they come and prove their loyalty to me and then I'll happily turn around and spend more with them?’ And as I was obsessing over that idea, I started to formulate the business plan around creating a platform that would give consumers a single module to be able to interact with and then our job as the company was to go out there and (our name) Fetch value for them from companies that wanted to win with those consumers on one singular platform. And it was off to the races around that core idea and lots of pivoting and trying to figure it out, but that was always the central idea and where the inspiration had come from.

Adam: What were the keys to growing and scaling Fetch? And, from your experience, what do you believe are the keys to growing and scaling any business?

Wes: Yeah, it really depends on the stage of business. Early on, prior to product-market fit, one of the keys is relentlessly being open to trying different things, and trying to systematically go through and test so many different variables to figure out what are the key variables that might move the needle towards getting to product-market fit. One of the key things there is you obviously have to be comfortable – people always talk about that you have to be comfortable with the failures or getting no’s, when you're out there pitching an idea for the first time ever. You get a lot of no’s up front: that's table stakes. You have to be comfortable being told no and dusting yourself off and going and trying again. But the other key thing you really have to optimize for is speed. Because, if you think about it, there's so many endless permutations of how you can put a product together, how you can put a pitch, together all these things. And, we were talking about baseball earlier, it's all about getting swings at the plate. In this case, if you're not constantly iterating, then you're going to have fewer swings, and then the probability of you hitting the right one for product-market fit is much lower. I don't think there's any magic bullet of how to go from the idea to product-market fit, but you're always going to be racing against the clock because you're running out of money or your team's always wanting to see progress. So the clock is constantly ticking, which is why being comfortable moving really, really quickly in that structured fashion, where you're scientifically testing each of these different variables to see what works and doesn't work, is really important. I've seen a lot of entrepreneurs go out there and fail, because they'll just go out and they've heard that feedback of ‘all a lot of people will say no, it takes 99 no’s and just one yes to make it all happen,’ but what they miss in the nuance there is that they just tried the same exact pitch 100 times and they got 100 no’s. The key is that I'm constantly evolving; I'm picking up new feedback that I'm getting. I'm trying and tweaking different things. So really, by the end, by the time you get the yes, you got a yes within only a couple of times of using that specific equation of how you're telling the story and what the product is, and everything like that. It's like a constant evolution. So you have to work smart alongside working hard. So, I'll pause there. That's, at the early stage, what I think is the key to success.

Adam: Get comfortable with hearing no. You used the word ‘table stakes.’ I love that. If you're not comfortable hearing no, you're not going to be able to be in the game. That's the point of entry. Once you have that comfort, it's about understanding that you're on the clock. There's only so much time that you have. Optimize for speed, iterate, continually evolve. Understand that what's working for you today might not work for you tomorrow. You have to always change, tweak, learn. That's what it's all about.

Wes: I love that. And by the way, it just gets me thinking, hearing you say that you have to constantly tweak. So essentially, it’s what we're seeing with machine learning going on right now. The systems, all those are doing is that they're going through lots of iterations and twisting lots of different variables one at a time to eventually come out with the right outcome. Unfortunately, we're humans. We can't do it a million times in the course of 24 hours, so you’ve got to be smart about it. You’ve got to test certain areas, and you're going have to figure out that equation, but it's no different. You're constantly learning through that experience, and you're doing the human version of machine learning.

Adam: And Wes, your mind goes immediately to machine learning, my mind goes immediately to the point you brought up about baseball. As we were chatting about off the air, and as you brought up when you were talking about the importance of both optimizing for speed and iterating: when you think about the best hitters in baseball, it's not only a matter of understanding that you need to have more than one swing, you need to have more than one at-bat, but in every at-bat that you have, you're analyzing your swing, you're analyzing what went right, what went wrong, constantly tweaking, constantly trying to figure out ‘what can I do to get to that place where I have as perfect a swing as possible for me?’ And for entrepreneurs, when you're creating something and when you're selling something, what works for you might be different than what works for the next person. But it's ultimately about getting to that place through a lot of testing where you're able to understand ‘How can I get to this point where I'm at my absolute best, most-optimized self?’

Wes: Exactly. 

Adam: How did you build those early relationships? Those key relationships with major retailers, defining relationships? And what tips do you have for anyone listening on how to develop and cultivate key business relationships?

Wes: I think first and foremost, you have to believe that you have something valuable to offer that warrants them spending the time with you. We always get intimidated by these big companies that are billions and billions of dollars. They're all just made up of people, though. So you're getting the meeting with the person that you think's the right person, that you want to convince to be a partner. You have to understand that you got to bring something to the table that's valuable to them. That could be a different perspective that you have. For me, early on as a 21-year-old kid walking in there, I'm giving them a perspective of an age group that they just came from a board meeting talking about how they have to go and better interact with. And yet, then I show up as a 21-year-old talking about how me and all my friends at college are really frustrated by the coupons that they're giving us. I knew I deserved to be there because I represented the exact person that they're talking about on their earnings that they need to win with. So I believe that my ideas are just as valuable as anything they're coming up with in a room at their offices. And by doing that, in having that belief in that confidence and creating the story that then highlights ‘here's how we think about it, here's what would be better,’ and we then offer up an actual idea. I think everyone hates when you can go in there and just point to all the problems: the problems that you're having connecting with his demographic, but you have to come up with a solution to. And that's where it's like, again we then were excited to go and show them the solution. And we were honest with them that ‘Hey, look, this is going to constantly iterate. This isn't going to be perfect, but we think that this general direction is the solution, and we want to invite you to be an early partner with us to develop this with us. What you're going to get in return is access and insight to the exact demographic group that you're wanting to win with, and what we're going to get is a marquee partner that is going to help us accelerate and develop a real business that then will deliver real sustainable value for you too.’ And it's a win-win. If you don't believe that you're actually delivering a win-win, you're just trying to get something out of it, you're just trying to get revenue, then it's never going to work. It might get you a small deal, but it's not going to get you anything that lasts a long time. So, for us, what got us the long-term partnerships – I think about Kimberly-Clark, we've been partnered with them since day one, still, they're still one of our biggest clients – that's because we were honest with them early on, we heard what they wanted, and we focused on the long term. We never were trying to optimize for a short-term fix or flash in the pan, like to sell them something that looked great for a month, and they figured out two months later doesn’t actually work. We were all about understanding what our partners needed and then creating win-wins that could actually be sustained.

Adam: Wes, you shared so much great stuff there and I want to highlight a few key points you made. It starts with having confidence in yourself. Believe in yourself. If you don't believe in yourself, who's going to? Separate the brand from the person at the brand. You're not talking to Kimberly-Clark, you're talking to an individual at Kimberly-Clark, who is then leading to some other individuals at Kimberly-Clark. But they're human beings, just like you're a human being and just like I’m a human being. What is your unique value proposition? And how does it help them? How does it solve their problem? Identifying the problem, but also coming in with a solution. How do you identify a problem? How do you tailor a solution to the problem? It starts with listening. You said it very clearly: a focus on understanding what your partner’s need is. You can't get there without being an active listener. Play the long game. Look for win-wins, but don't look for win-wins that are going to last just in the short term if you want a long-term relationship. It's about understanding that you have to take the steps that are going to allow you to win sustainably: win not only today but win tomorrow and win going forward.

Wes: That was a good summary. I’m impressed by your ability to distill down me rambling for five minutes into a punchy takeaway sheet. Wow, that was really well done! No, those things are exactly how we think about it. The final piece that honestly I didn't learn until too many years into the journey (I should have figured it out): Transparency with your team, and with your clients, in honesty, is what builds those long-term relationships. Having the hard conversations when you know about the stuff upfront is always better than trying to sweep it under the rug and hoping it will magically get fixed down the road. I think people always appreciate it more than you'll ever expect. I think there's two things I've learned about people. One is they want to help more than you would ever know because they're actually just people. They've been in the position that you’re in before. Maybe they have a kid who's your age who's thinking about doing it, that's what I experienced early on. And then the second thing is people respect when you treat them like another adult across the table and be like, ‘look, everything's not perfect. Here are the three things that we're seeing are going wrong, right now. Here's the action plan of how we're addressing them. And we're gonna move forward.’ What they care more about is that you have a firm hand on the steering wheel. That yes, you know that there are problems going on, but you have a plan of attack. That plan of attack is reasonable and well-thought-out. And you're now going to report back to him on how you're going to improve that. Sometimes, you get lucky and you can skirt by and you can solve the problem and it never comes up and you're like, ‘whew, dodged the bullet.’ But how many bullets do you really want to have to dodge? Instead, why don't you just get really good at being able to fully deflect them upfront? That will lead to a long-term sustainable business that doesn't get shot by a self-inflicted wound. That's another thing I figured out towards longevity: that is being kind. My executive coach would say, ‘what is the decision today that will be kindest to my future self?’ And that's never going to be the easiest decision. But the more you start to do that, the more you start to realize those are the decisions that are actually building longevity into the business.

Adam: Some very powerful themes there and we can spend a lot of time on each of them, but the one that I want to ask you about is something you said right off the bat. ‘Don't be afraid to ask for help. People are always willing to help you a lot more than you think they are.’ How can you ask? How do you get there? For a lot of us, it can be challenging. What advice do you have?

Wes: Take an interest in something that they care about. I was talking with a young student. He was in seventh grade, and he was interested in entrepreneurship. And he had an idea for starting a pizza company. And I was like, ‘Great! What are you doing to learn more about it?’ He’s like, ‘I don't know. I don't know where to get started.’ I was like, ‘What's your favorite local pizza place?’ And he instantly knew of a place. I was like, ‘Have you talked to them?’ He’s like, ‘No.’ I was like, ‘I guarantee you if you go in there, and you ask to speak to the owner and say, Hey, I'm XYZ, I'm 13, and I'm passionate about pizza and I want to learn about the business from you. Can you just walk me through…’ I was like, ‘That person will take you under their wing because they've been doing it for years and years and years. This is their line of work. They've chosen to invest their life and their career and therefore a lot of their self-identity into that business. So if you just come at an angle from being interested in something they've spent years and years doing and hopefully becoming very good at, everyone wants to talk about that! They want to share that knowledge. They want to help out the next generation of pizza owners that's coming up.’ And he later reported back to me that he's now done that with like five local pizza places. They've brought them into the back room so he can understand the accounting of it. They've talked about how they ordered all their products, how they do quality control. So he’s like a pizza expert as an eighth grader now. So I think the weight in there is: don't just think about it as self-serving. Think about it as, again, you are showing passion for something someone spent a lot of time on. Respect that. Show them that you care and that you're genuinely interested in it, and then the human reaction will be to want to open up and help you out. Now 20% of the time it will fail and someone's just a jerk and slams the door in your face. That will happen. That's fine. I've found that 80% of the time you catch them on the right day, they're going to be ecstatic. It will probably be the thing that they go home and tell their significant other about from their day at work – the young, excited (doesn't even have to be younger!) excited person who came in to talk with them about something that they're clearly also passionate about. That opens the door right up.

Adam: Great advice. Identify what it is that the other person wants to talk about. What fuels them? What gets them going? What gets you going? If someone approaches you and asks you about whatever it is that you want to talk about, what are you going to do? You're going to talk about it. You're going to engage, you're going to go all in. Wes, you want to talk to me about baseball? We're going to be here all day. This 30-minute episode is going to be 30 hours if we start talking about the Angels and the Red Sox and the recent sweep. I wasn't going to go there, but we just did… We'll talk about another topic and that topic I want to ask you about is an area you've had incredible success in. You've raised more than half a billion dollars. Your last round was for $240 million. What are your best tips for anyone listening on how to raise capital and how to raise capital most effectively and strategically?

Wes: It really does depend on the stage. In my opinion, it depends on the stage and what you should be focused on. I think early, early on, when you don't have a product yet, or maybe you just got product-market fit, it is all about showing qualitative information to give people reasons to believe why there's a fit there and then painting the picture of the vision. And then also confirming for them why you're the team to have the grit to go and make it work. Early Stage, that's what you're doing, because you just don't have data to back it up yet. So, it's much more about ‘Why should I believe that you're the right team to execute on this? Help me understand that it’s a big enough market, that even if you have to pivot around 10 times, it's a huge market, you're going to figure it out.’ And be comfortable to also say ‘I don't know,’ if they ask certain questions that you just haven't gotten to yet. Again, that will build trust and respect from them. And then be open to the fact that they'll probably say no upfront, and then just keep giving them updates, though. Go out earlier than you need to raise and then just keep them in the loop. Keep them in the loop and give them updates and let them know how your business is progressing. Because even if they come back and fund that round, or if they don't, they'll probably look at a future round or know someone who will be interested in the future. And then if you get to the stage that our last round is that, it's a combination of 1. highlighting the right key metrics. If you know your business well enough to be able to highlight the things that are your true superpowers, you bring those to the front, right, the front and center. Why is this a superpower? Fetch has 17, 18 million monthly active users, and 6 million of them are daily active. That is the single highest ratio of monthly active to daily active out of any shopping app in my category, by a longshot, too. That's starting to look more like a social media company. So what does that mean? We unlocked fun. That is what our app creates is a reason for someone to open it every single day. No one else has done that! That's our superpower. When you get to engage with 6 million people every single day and be the bridge for your brands to now be a part of that every single day, that's our superpower. So how do you show that through the data and show that that's something that's strengthening? That's something that no one else can do. And then still give them the picture of where you're going and why there's so much opportunity still on the table. That's what we've done. Now, we've always been a high-growth company, because we're in a huge market that has huge opportunities, and we still see 10x's in front of us. So, that was the right story and formula for us as we fundraised. But for other companies, if you're – again, that's not the only way of doing it. There's so many other successful amazing companies out there that don't go down that path. So it just depends on what you're looking for, what you're going to highlight in those meetings. But in general, that's how we've done it.

Adam: What's interesting, Wes, is as you're describing your best tips on the topic of raising capital, I'm thinking about these principles as they apply to leadership. Understanding yourself intimately, self-awareness is essential to effective leadership. The importance of communication, one of the most critical elements of effective leadership. What do you believe are the key characteristics of a great leader? And what can anyone do to become a better leader?

Wes: We talked about how you can also engage with clients. I think it's important for good leaders to be transparent with information down to their teams, the good and, more importantly, the bad because then you're just calling attention. If you're trying to shoulder that all on your own, teams will pick up on that. And then if you start to slow down or something like that, it will impact the entire business, but no one will know why. And where people start to lose focus or get disengaged is when they lose track of why things are going the way that they are. So I think it's really important for good leaders to trust their teams, to have transparency with them. I think it's important for them to also listen and have a good pulse on their team and what's going well, what's not, be open to feedback, and seek out feedback from the team of what can be done better. I think it's also being comfortable just making it clear that you have a belief one way or another and then be comfortable admitting if it was wrong, or you're changing that belief. I think that transparency is also really important. It's the transparency to your thought process. Because then – I love when our teams have really big conviction on something, they'll make a big stand on it, and then they'll say ‘I have changed my mind given the new information that I've seen and I'm actually going this way.’ It's amazing. Good leaders need to also take the blame much more than ever take the success. The blame is the part that can eat away success. No problem, I will just grow bigger and bigger. Those are some of the things that come up top of mind for me.

Adam: We spoke a little bit about the importance of having a great support system around you. What role did mentorship play in your success? And what are your best tips on the topic of mentorship? How to find great mentors, and how to optimize mentor-mentee relationships.

Wes: I think you need to always have a natural curiosity to learn. And I find that the fastest way of learning is to go to people who have been there and done that. So for me, that's what mentorship is. Mentorship is like an accelerant of learning. And it's amazing, because you can take someone's 10 years, 20, 30 years of experience, and within a two-hour conversation, get some key nuggets out of it that may have taken them 20 years to learn. It's why podcasts are so good. You're distilling down huge, huge amounts of information that someone had to spend a ton of time to get down to the true takeaways. Now the problem is that you hear so many of them, sometimes you don't internalize them fully. So with mentorship, I think it's important to have a variety of a lot of different voices that you're listening to, just being open to hearing what you think they're uniquely positioned to talk about, that others may not have seen. And then you have to have a filter. Which are the ones you're going to focus on and not, because there's endless amounts of ideas, or people giving you feedback, you have to choose which ones you're actually going to embody and focus on. So, have lots of different variety of voices that you're seeking out, but you can't just spend all of your time out there talking about it. At some point, you’ve got to just be like, ‘That's a great piece of advice, I'm going to focus on doing that for the next three weeks until it becomes a part of my everyday routine and then I'll move on.’ Some of the trouble is that you can drown in all these ideas, and you get started and don't actually get long enough into whatever it is the feedback was or the idea was for it to take on a life of its own. And then you move to the next one. So I think with mentorship, it's important that while I'm saying surround yourself with different ideas, listen to different people, it's really important to also know that some of my mentors, in general, I talk with once or twice at the beginning of the year, and then I might not talk to them for another year. And that's not because I'm not interested in them. I just can't absorb more because I’m still in the process of implementing the things that I talked with them about the last time. So I think there's that constant balance of getting excited from hearing the conversations but then the real – in entrepreneurship, it's always the metal hits the road on operationalizing things and execution, same with mentorship.

Adam: I think that's really good advice. A couple of things that you shared that stood out to me: variety. Variety is the spice of life, as Tony Horton, a guest on Thirty Minute Mentors, likes to say. A term I've coined: mini mentors, having people in your life who maybe you only talk to once, maybe you talk to them once a year, once every five years, once every 10 years. But that one conversation can be a game changer. And to your point, Wes, sometimes you can only absorb one conversation. Because at the end of the day, as important as it is to surround yourself with great people, as important as it is to absorb as much information as you can, it's ultimately on you to execute. The most successful businesses and I've interviewed many of America's most successful entrepreneurs including you, you talk to the most successful entrepreneurs, they'll tell you: having a great idea is nice, but it's ultimately all about the execution.

Wes: The reason why I think it takes everyone repeating it and everyone's still ‘that's your main takeaway’ is because when you reflect back on it: this is your template for me working on Fetch. The idea took all of a couple of weeks to formulate early on. And then I've spent 10 years actually building it. So I think that's why we all talk about it that way. Because when you just look at where you spend the time, it's actually that: I see a lot of people who think that they're entrepreneurs because they’re idea people, they like generating ideas. Entrepreneurs are actually the people that get more energy out of the operationalizing of the ideas. Idea guys are great, but they're actually somewhat better in other roles and they typically need teams that support that and can actually go run and execute on those. Yeah, I think for me, an entrepreneur recognizes the fact that 99% of your time spent on a business to get it to where it's what you see today is not the ideal.

Adam: Wes, what can anyone do to become more successful personally and professionally?

Wes: This year for me, I've been really focused on the concept of ‘less is more.’ Especially with technology, you're just bombarded with so many ideas, so many tips for how to get better. The crazy part is, there's a lot of merit to most of them, I'm sure. I'm sure if you really dig in and get down to the nugget of it, almost the majority of it is probably somewhere based on a good idea. And something that would be valuable to you. But you got to focus in on just starting somewhere on a couple of the ideas and getting them over the line, versus doing tons of little stops and starts. Because those stops and starts aren't going to actually move you along in your journey. Whether it's starting a business, whether it's trying to excel at something, you’ve got to – if I think about back to the sports analogy – you've got to choose, ‘I'm gonna really work on dribbling.’ And just really focus on dribbling and doing lots and lots of things around dribbling well before you get to figuring out ‘can I do a better Euro step or something like that?’ Yeah, Euro step is great. It's good in certain cases, but you’ve really got to get good at some of these other things. And by getting really good at those ones and making those changes, then you're building your base out. And the bigger a base you build, the higher you're going to be able to build up on top of that. And I think so many people just, from the outside when you look into someone who you hold up as being really successful, you just see how big of a tower they've made. Well, you don't realize how much foundation there is beneath the surface of things that they went and invested in ahead of time that makes it look like it's standing sturdy and can stand up to anything. That'd be my encouragement to someone who's looking to do it for the first time. Have the patience, but focus on things. Don't try to do it all at once. Just do some things really well and then keep building on to that.

Adam: Wes, thank you for all the great advice and thank you for being a part of Thirty Minute Mentors.

Wes: Thanks for having me, Adam.


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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