Last month, we held our latest Fireside Chat with Andrew Robb, the former COO of Farfetch. Andrew joined Farfetch in 2010, and helped to scale the business from just a few employees into a $2bn GMV with over 4000 employees internationally. Farfetch IPO’d in 2018, raising $885 million for the company and leading to a valuation of $6 billion.
Prior to his 9 years at Farfetch, Andrew started in consulting then headed up the Motors and Category Development team at eBay in Australia, then went on to join Bauer Media, founding and becoming the Managing Director of Cocosa, a fashion e-commerce business.
In this post, we’ll cover Andrew’s answers to a variety of questions, including his biggest learnings from his time at Farfetch, how to scale team culture and some tips for achieving a good work-life balance.
What was the most important step you made in your career that got you through the door at Farfetch? What did they see in you then, and what attributes have you kept over time?
When Farfetch were in their post-Series A stage, they decided to hire a COO. The list of requirements matched up perfectly for me: they wanted someone who had worked in consulting, had done an MBA, had been in a large-scale marketplace, had run their own business and who had worked in online fashion. It was really fortuitous. This is part of why I got so excited about the role, because I knew that I could add so much value. I found it amazing that they’d gotten so far without anybody who had experience in eCommerce, yet I saw so many ways that I could use my skill set to help enhance this. I always loved working in growth environments, with technology and in the creative industry, so all of this definitely prepared me to be ready for an opportunity like that when it came along.
I think the most important thing for the role, though, was to have the right mindset. You don’t need to know about fashion to work at Farfetch, for example, but you do need to connect with the company and what it’s doing in some way. This was probably the most important aspect for me.
How were you able to grow with the role and the company? Did you ever suffer from imposter syndrome?
I definitely suffered from imposter syndrome throughout my career. I think this is generally true of all people in growth environments, because you’re constantly being asked to do things you’ve never done before. I think the most important thing is to maintain a growth mindset. You need to accept the fact that you don’t know everything you need to know, and be open to constantly trying to learn. It’s mostly your attitude that matters in overcoming this feeling.
How do you address career development in a high-growth environment?
The number one issue that came back on our employee surveys that we sent out at Farfetch was always career development. We didn’t ever fully crack it, but we invested a lot in trying to provide development opportunities for people. We tried various different programmes to develop people’s roles and ideally I’d have liked to have invested more capital into this. But I think it’s a given that if you have a team of really ambitious and bright people, they’re constantly trying to be growing faster and doing more, so it’s hard for this not to be one of the key issues that a high-growth business faces.
As Farfetch grew, how did recruiting evolve to find the right new hires and maintain a strong culture?
One of the most important things we did as a business was our work around company culture: defining it and using various tools to help it scale. The number one way to scale culture is through recruitment and ensuring you hire the right people. Our values were one of the key components to this, as they meant we knew what we were asking for. All the work that a company does around culture is essentially increasing the probability that you hire the right people. You’ll never get it 100% right, but trying to increase your % to as high a level as possible has a huge impact and I think we did a good job of it. Critically, the CEO really cared about putting in place the right processes and investment to make sure the culture grew with the company.
What was your biggest success and your biggest learning at Farfetch?
For me, I’d say they were the same thing: building the team. When I left, the team reporting into me were way better at their jobs than I could ever be, which is different to how it was in the early days. Evolving the team through that journey was great for the company, and my role changed significantly from being a doer to being a leader. I’m super proud of this - I think we built the team really well, and I learned loads along the way.
How do you balance your work objectives with other life wants and requirements?
It feels like you’re constantly sprinting when you work in a start-up, but you’re actually running a marathon. The average time from start to exit is about nine years, which means you need to work sustainably and in a way that is scalable. If you’ve got people working 18 hours a day in a company, you know that something is wrong.
In my role, it became a bit of a 24/7 thing because work was always on my mind. However, my style was really built from the culture of the consulting firm I worked for in my early years, where the rule was to never work on weekends. This helped me learn how to compartmentalise work. Farfetch felt like getting on a rollercoaster on a Monday morning, going round and round non-stop for five days, and then rolling back into the station on Friday evening so that I can live my life. I’m available 24/7 in case of emergency, but I won’t read emails religiously on the weekends and our CEO had the same philosophy.
It’s okay to take care of yourself and work on your own personal priorities in life too. Not working weekends was always the best way to ensure that I did this - almost everything can wait until Monday.
If you could talk to your 16 year old self today, what would you say?
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