• Aaron Easterly wanted to become an academic economist before he landed the CEO job at Rover.
  • Investor Greg Gottesman came to Easterly with the idea for Rover at VC firm Madrona.  
  • The company was targeting June for its public debut, but that plan is now delayed due to the SEC.

Rover CEO Aaron Easterly isn't the typical startup founder.  He actually wanted to become an academic economist after graduating from Harvard. But then found himself in love with tech after working at a few startups in Seattle and landing at Microsoft. 

Now, Easterly is on the cusp of leading a multi-billion dollar company that's about to go public. Rover, an online platform that matches pet owners with dog walkers and other services, announced in February that it was merging with a special-purpose acquisition company backed by private equity firm True Wind Capital.

The company was targeting June for its public market debut, but that plan has now slipped to July or as late as September, due to a few weeks of back-and-forth with the SEC over its prospectus, according to sources familiar with the matter. The SEC holdup is also impacting other listings, including Robinhood.

After Easterly left Microsoft, he was invited to become an entrepreneur-in-residence at Seattle-based firm Madrona Venture Group. That's where investor Greg Gottesman approached him about a pet "matchmaking service" that connects owners with care providers, after he won a Seattle startup competition for his idea. Gottesman had come up with the idea for Rover after his family dog was injured at a kennel, Easterly said. 

"When Greg approached me about Rover, I got excited, not because of the size of the opportunity, but because startups are an exercise in humility and emotional highs and lows," said Easterly, who describes himself as a "dog nut." 

After years of building up the company, Easterly experienced several dark months in Rover's history during the pandemic last year, and had to make difficult decisions, including a significant round of layoffs.

"What we told our employees was, 'hey, this is going to be hard, but the companies that don't survive these types of events are ones that either don't have the capital to withstand it, or something fundamentally shifts about their business,'" he said. 

After that, Easterly also decided it might be time to take the company public and it helped to have options, he said. The company considered a traditional IPO, and also a SPAC merger and "strategic" private investment after getting several unsolicited offers.

"It's a weird thing to contemplate in the middle of a pandemic," he said. But after some serious thought, Easterly thought going public via a SPAC merger would be a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity" to expand the company into new geographic regions and roll out services like grooming nationwide.

And while the SPAC process was a little bit "challenging," Easterly said it was better than doing another complicated fundraising round. Another investment would only delay the inevitable: going public. And a SPAC merger offered that option much more quickly. Prior to the SPAC deal, Rover had raised a total of $281 million and was last valued at $970 million.

"What we realized is we just really wanted to have the capital to invest in what's going to be a unique time in the pet industry where there's a new wave of pet owners," he said, referring to the surge in pandemic puppies that helped to rebound the business earlier this year. 

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