Launch Pad

Just imagine: dog food made out of “real, actual ingredients just like you’d find in a grocery store,” delivered conveniently to your door. That’s what The Farmer’s Dog does.

Lots of so-called premium pet foods claim to be healthy, natural, or fresh. But as founder Jonathan Regev says, “When you actually open the product or experience the product it's not really differentiated at all. And so all we've done is produce the product in a way that it actually is real and fresh and natural and people can see that. It has tangible benefits to their dog as well.”

Sure, there are other companies in various cities producing phenomenally expensive dog foods of a similar quality—what The Farmer’s Dog does that’s so compelling is provide a subscription service tailored to your dog’s consumption, and delivery it directly to you, at a lower price point than those other guys. In doing so, they created a scalable business—a very different player in the marketplace than these boutique solutions.

Listen to Karl Ulrich and Jonathan discuss the challenges in making this venture scalable, from finding a human grade food manufacturer who was willing to make food for dogs, to working out the kinks in the subscription service so that dogs never miss a meal (and you never waste food), to figuring out how long to bootstrap, and when to raise funds.