Chasing crazy valuation = making crazy decisions - Anonymous employee Ro Employee Review

1.0
11 Jan 2024
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

1. You'll work with great individuals, genuinely fun people who care. 2. The salary process is very equitable with regular reviews to keep titles all paid the same 3. The overall health problems that Ro works on are meaningful for patients - helping them is doing good!

Cons

1. Leadership will constantly push for features/product to scale faster than they should, even when really negative patient experiences are happening left and right. They need something to show off to the board to get one more quarter to finally prove that yes, they are worth +5x more than Hims... 2. There's a small clique of people who can make decisions. Most of the company are task takers because thats all they are permitted to do. Ideas that get raised outside of leadership get squashed - only not forever, just until leadership comes up with the idea themselves months later. 3. Employees struggle to give each other regular feedback 4. Very 'soft' culture, you have to cushion every statement in a question or a 'maybe', rather than speaking plainly. 5. Bought multiple, game changing companies (like Modern Fertility), to end up shutting down completely or putting on maintenance, robbing the world of great innovation (purely because they bit off more than they could chew with bad acquisition theses and irresponsible funding decisions, not because these companies weren't viable).

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Ro Response
2y
To start – I want to acknowledge that it’s great to hear that you enjoyed working with passionate teammates (I fully agree this is one of the most special parts of Ro), found the salary process to be equitable, and that our mission in helping patients achieve better health resonated with you. In terms of cons, I want to touch on a few things. Everything we do at Ro is with a patient-centric lens. As a leadership team and at all levels of the company we spend most of our time on this. We won’t always get it right (we may take a bet or make an assumption that doesn’t have the result we thought it would) and we won’t ever reach perfection (there will always be more to do), but it’s truly what we strive for every day. While we certainly do have to engage with our board, it’s always through the lens of how we’re driving value for patients. Decision making at Ro happens across various levels and functions versus with a single small group of people. We are always open to feedback and dialogue from anyone at Ro. In fact, we offer several opportunities - from anonymous AMAs to a weekly jam session with the Founders - for people to raise ideas, questions or concerns. We try as much as possible to give credit and recognition to Ro’ers across the organization when they suggest great ideas or contribute to strong outcomes, so I’m sorry to hear that this was not your experience - that’s not what we’d hope for. One of our company principles is “give feedback/seek feedback” and we have several formal mechanisms to encourage and enable this. While it’s always something we will strive to continuously improve, and some teams and individuals are “better” at it than others, it’s a relatively strong characteristic of Ro’s culture. In that spirit – if you’re willing to speak directly so that I can learn from your experience at Ro, I’d love to talk. Feel free to shoot me a note directly at saman@ro.co. Finally, it’s true that we have had several acquisitions over the last two years – and each of them, in different ways, are part of Ro today. Some are product offerings that have increased our ability to reach and serve patients with a wider variety of needs (the what) and others are part of our technology platform, enabling us to reach patients in new or different ways than we were able to previously (the how). An acquisition can take many forms and it’s very common that acquired companies do not remain stand-alone aspects of the company they join, but that does not mean that they aren’t continuing to drive innovation and value to patients. Saman Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer

Explore other reviews about Ro

5.0
3 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Benefits and work life balance

Cons

Abrupt changes in company direction

2.0
4 Jun 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Structure pre-GLP-1s - Benefits via employee recognition platform

Cons

- Quality of product launches sacrificed in exchange for speed, which is regularly touted as a feature of company culture

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