Ro parted with its COO and pharmacy GM and dropped the 'Amazon of healthcare' vision

Ro is a digital healthcare unicorn whose products include Ro Pharmacy, a direct-to-consumer drugstore.

That retreating from the 'Amazon of healthcare' vision and rebuilding the operations team around one Ro experience would stop the churn and fix monetization.

Ro's operations trouble surfaced publicly in October 2021, when former and current employees told TechCrunch about rising tensions, culture issues and an inability to monetize beyond its core brand. Eight of the 11-person customer service operations team quit over culture, most after only five months; high churn on the care team, overseen by COO George Koveos, continued into 2022.

After the October story, Koveos took internal blame for pushing the narrative that Ro should become the 'Amazon of healthcare'. In November 2021 Ro hired Amazon executive JR Blaszek as the new GM of Ro. A week before the shakeup, Ro landed capital from existing investors at a higher valuation. On February 24, 2022, TechCrunch reported, via an internal email from CEO Zachariah Reitano, that Koveos and GM of Ro Pharmacy Steve Buck were moving on.

The retreat from the 'Amazon of healthcare' framing is a visible strategy correction at a unicorn that had chased an expansion-first identity.

The org consequences were concrete: two top executives out, a reorganized operations team and an interim GM of Ro Pharmacy.

It shows the cost of a culture documented by press: TechCrunch's October 2021 reporting on churn directly preceded the executive changes.

A mission borrowed from another company organizes the org chart; dropping it becomes an executive decision, and it cost Ro two of its most senior operators.

As of 2022-02-24 the reorganization was underway: Saman Rahmanian was serving as interim GM of Ro Pharmacy for two months, Ro was hiring a new operations leader, and Buck remained an outside advisor to Ro Pharmacy. Whether the executives chose to leave or were laid off was unclear, and Ro's communications VP had not responded to requests for comment.