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Rob Bland

Senior PartnerBay Area

Leads Fuel, a McKinsey Company, throughout North America, serving start-ups and unicorns, counseling clients on growth and environmental sustainability; passionate about diversity, equity, and inclusion

Rob leads the North American team at Fuel, a McKinsey company that is dedicated to helping start-ups, their investors, and corporate innovators lead the next wave of disruptive innovation. At Fuel, Rob has helped start-ups raise capital and dramatically accelerate enterprise-value creation.

Rob is also a key leader in McKinsey‘s global Sustainability Practice, where he advises high-growth organizations on sustainability strategies that transform operations and capture opportunities, while also mitigating risk. He has deep roots in the energy industry.

Examples of Rob’s work include the following:

  • accelerating growth in field operations by 50 percent for a future-of-mobility company
  • developing a second business with an additional $20 billion in potential backlog for an electric vehicle company
  • creating $2 billion in enterprise value—with a path to the next $10 billion—for a new renewables company
  • identifying and performing due diligence on dozens of major investments that became high-value unicorns
  • building a disruptive software-as-a-service (SaaS) product for a future-of-infrastructure company
  • shifting $6 billion of capital from oil to renewables for a major international oil company
  • helping a leading philanthropy raise an additional $1 billion in resources

Rob began his career building high-growth companies at language-learning software company Rosetta Stone. Leading a variety of functions as part of the four person senior team, Rob helped Rosetta Stone grow from $10 to $100 million annual run rate revenue in four years before a successful exit.

Published work

Trends driving automation on the farm,” McKinsey & Company, May 2023

Scaling green businesses: Next moves for leaders,” McKinsey & Company, March 2023

A different space race: Raising capital and accelerating growth,” McKinsey & Company, November 2022

Accelerating toward net zero: The green business building opportunity,” McKinsey & Company, June 2022

E-commerce in 2021 ft. Delivery Hero's Cofounder & CEO, Niklas Ostberg,” Founders Forum, January 2021

Charging electric-vehicle fleets: How to seize the emerging opportunity,” McKinsey & Company, March 2020

Education

Stanford Graduate School of Business
MBA