Raising $15M+ to Build a Pet Nutrition Brand with Dan Schaefer
In this December 2022 podcast episode, host Justin Gordon interviews Dan Schaefer, co‑founder of Native Pet, about the creation and scaling of a clean‑label pet supplement brand. Dan recounts his personal journey from finance and consulting to pet‑parenthood, the early brainstorming of multiple business ideas, and the decision to launch Native Pet in 2017. He explains the product innovation process, focusing on the development of an air‑dried chew that reduces inactive ingredients and mimics real food, and describes the extensive R&D work involving test kitchens, vet nutritionists, and palatability testing. The conversation moves to the challenges of finding a co‑manufacturer, the criteria used to evaluate partners, and the 18‑month effort required to secure a suitable production line. Distribution strategy began with Amazon, leveraging its fulfillment and organic traffic, then expanded to Chewy, D2C, and retail (Target, Thrive Market) while building an omnichannel brand. Dan details the fundraising timeline—seed round (2020‑21) led by Selva Ventures and Kiva Dickinson, followed by a $6 M Series A from Kavu Ventures—explaining why capital was needed for R&D, hiring, and brand‑building. He highlights the brand’s media push (TikTok, YouTube, a modern rebrand) and the macro trends driving the pet supplement market, such as the “food as medicine” movement, customization of pet nutrition, and 20 % YoY category growth. The interview closes with a look ahead to new product launches, a cat line, and Dan’s openness to founder connections.
Chapters
Welcome to the show, Dan.
Thanks, great to be here.
I am excited to talk all about your company, all about Native Pet. There's so much that we could go through, but for people who aren't familiar with Native Pet, what are you doing with this company?
Native Pet is a clean label, highly effective brand of pet supplements to help keep your dogs and cats healthy and happy.
This industry seems to be exploding just from like my friends and personal anecdotes from people and how they treat their pets. We'll get into that eventually. But I'm curious on how this got started in the first place, Dan.
Yeah, so I— we founded this business in 2017. It was myself and then my co-founder, Pat Baron. We grew up together in St. Louis. We've been long, longtime friends. And so for years, we had been trying to find, you know, what the right entrepreneurial journey would be for us. We had both spent a number of years in investment banking or banking and strategy consulting. And so we had both done a variety of different things in finance and strategy. Pat is more interesting than me. He had also had like a brief, you know, 6-month timeframe where he was a farmer. And so, but I think we've always had the entrepreneurial itch. And so we had, you know, talked about a lot of different businesses. We had tried a few things, but the journey with Native Pets specifically really started When I was in school in Ann Arbor, business school, 2014, I adopted my dog Louie and he came to us just in terrible shape, malnourished. He had worms, he had fleas, just everything. He was a 10-week-old puppy. And so, that was my first kind of pet parenting moment. And, I won't say we rushed out and bought him a bunch of supplements, but we just kind of went headfirst into this world of, you know, kind of specialty nutrition and wellness and everything that goes into pet parenting. And that's what started the journey. And it was years later from there, but I think just being a pet parent, kind of experiencing the pain points, understanding, you know, everything that goes into nutrition and taking care of your dog, we just saw a lot of opportunity. So 2017, you know, Pat and I finally aligned on what our entrepreneurial vision was, and that's what NativePet became.
Okay, because the show is for other founders and entrepreneurs, we will get into NativePet in one second. But you mentioned you, you try a bunch of other ventures or thought about a bunch of other ventures. Just take me through really quick, like, what you were thinking about before and then how you landed on this company, because that's so much— so many times that that's the struggle, like, which business to pursue. A lot of good ideas out there. Just tell me through your journey with that?
Yeah, I mean, we had talked about— Pat and I have been talking for years. So you can only imagine just the, like, ideas that have been thrown around over the years. And, you know, so our graveyard of business ideas is actually pretty vast. From an idea perspective, things that we've actually tried. We, you know, we wanted to make a product in the outdoor space. We both love spending time outdoors. We had tried to make kind of the Yeti of storage containers at one point. We got into the industrial design process there. We're also big Tim— we were big Tim Ferriss fans back in the day, 4-Hour Workweek.
Awesome.
So we've sold some white label products on Amazon. We've done a bit of it all. And I think fortunately none of those ideas worked. So you got to fail before you can fly. And so we have a few kind of failed business ideas in our past. But learned a lot. And ultimately, like everything was just kind of a stepping stone to where we are today.
It's funny you mentioned that because I talked to my friends Laura and Aria, they're both entrepreneurs, both have started multiple companies. And every time we hang out, it's just like, so what ideas do you have? What other business ideas do you have? What are we building? Like, you all have companies already, like you're good. I'm at a venture firm, like we're good. But like, you can't help it. You're just like always thinking of some other ideas, just, just in case there's something else out there you could potentially build.
And are you really an entrepreneur if like you've tried something that hasn't worked? Like that's Kind of just part of the process. Like very few people, it's like first business, first idea became my, you know, $100 million brand. That's like, you know, I'm sure that that happens. But most of the time, there's a graveyard behind things that didn't work out quite the way you wanted them to.
Well, to that point, then for Native Pets, so you know, you had this, the pet issue 2014, this started in 2017. There's a gap of time there. You didn't start right away. What was it about this idea? I mean, was it like, Oh, you saw market potential tied to a personal need. Like, just take me through more of like evaluating the idea to actually be like, dude, like, we're doing this one. This is the one we're doing.
Well, I mean, yeah, it was— I was in my first year of business school when we adopted Louie. Pat was in grad school. So, you know, and I didn't go to business school thinking I wanted to be a CPG founder. That was like way off my radar. Yeah, I was coming from the capital markets. So I was in like a sales and trading It was 2014, Bitcoin was brand new. I really wanted to work in fintech. That was the exciting thing at the time. And CPG was not on my radar at all. And so I truly thought, was just going through being a pet parent and gaining experience raising a dog and taking care of a dog and feeding a dog and everything that goes into it, vet visits and shots. And so it didn't start out as a business idea. And then meanwhile, we're brainstorming all these other crazy ideas and I haven't connected the dots yet. And so then I went to go work for the Boston Consulting Group after school and then kind of through the grapevine ended up in our consumer products consumer practice, not necessarily CPG, but I did a lot of auto work or heavy equipment, but with a consumer end to it.
Yeah.
And then ended up doing consumer work. And so it wasn't until 2017 did I say like, wow, a lot of the pain points that I'm feeling in pet, I think would be A, ubiquitous in the category, and B, the pet category is a huge category and they're There is a lot of opportunity here. And then see, you know, how fun would it be to get to work in the pet space? I'm a huge dog lover. I like was a, you know, the literally the stereotypical millennial pet parent where we, my wife and I had adopted our dog before we had kids. I was like all of the clichés, right? And so how fun would it be for this to be the way we spend our time? How rewarding, how valuable? And then it was just, you know, what is our angle? Like, how do we make something that's meaningful that we get value and then we provide value to the market? And, you know, that process took a bit of time, but where we landed and what we're doing every day is, you know, easily the most rewarding thing I've ever done professionally for a variety of reasons. And I know Pat feels the same way.
There's a few different components, obviously, talking about CPG, there's this massive important component of the product and having amazing product. And then there is this distribution, which ties kind of into brand, which may be a third thing, but those are the kind of main components. I want to start with the product first. How did you think about and go about developing the product when you launched? And this is again, years ago. And then how has it evolved? I guess I want to start with the launch of like the product itself and that side of things for other CPG founders who are like, how do I even begin this process? Take me through the product side.
Yeah, I mean, Pet is so unique. Because you're not the ultimate end user of the product. So I think the attractive thing about food or bev or alc or whatever it is, is that it's all things that you eat, drink, experience. So your personal preferences will play a big role into what you believe is a good product or a good opportunity. It's not necessarily the same in pet. With that said, it's still a lot of the same excitement of delivering something that is gonna add value, delivering something that's different, delivering something that solves problems. And that's what gets Pat and I up at night is the product side. And it's our favorite part of running the business. And I don't wanna take too much credit. Like, Pat is absolutely the brains behind all of our product and he's just crushed it. And so we have created a differentiated offering for the category and we take a lot of pride in that. And so when we were looking at the space and, you know, we knew we wanted to do functional foods, something that was like around the bowl, which is a tagline that we've trademarked, which is all the stuff you feed your dog outside of the main meal of what goes into the bowl, any toppers, supplements. And when we looked at the space, the category was just starting to blow up. And we kept noticing that all of the brands in our space were all selling this product called the soft chew. And we were kind of like, well, what's the soft chew? And it turns out it's just a cold extruded product, which is just a bunch of starches that have been pressurized and gelatinized. And then it becomes very uniform and very easy to eat. And we were like, why is every product in our category or almost every product in this category in the soft chew? And we did some research. It wasn't because the customer loved it. It wasn't because Dogs loved it. It was literally because it was convention. That's where there was manufacturing capacity. And the same subset of a few co-manufacturers were making products for everybody in our space with very little product differentiation. Yet there was no affinities from humans or dogs. And so we immediately said, like, from a product standpoint, this is our opportunity. How can we make a better soft chew that humans are gonna love, that dogs are gonna love, and what's gonna be a fundamentally better product. And so, you know, this was 2019, so we'd been in market for a little bit with a few products. This is the point where Pat and I quit our jobs, raised a little bit of capital, and like really dove in full-time on turning this into what we believe can be a $100 million business. And so we looked at the space and said, okay, We're not going to make a cold extruded product. Like, that is one of our brand promises. We're going to find a better way. And so, we have some products in oils, some products in powders, which are just kind of like fundamentally clean label, easy to use. And then, our big product innovation was what we called the air-dried chew. And, we've essentially been able to cut the inactive ingredients out of our product, out of the soft chew, and use chicken as the base.
Okay.
And so, we have an average soft chew has 12 inactive ingredients. Our product has 5, and the number 1 inactive is chicken. And so, when customers feel our product, it looks more like food because it's chicken, but it has all of the benefits that a soft chew might have. And so, it just feels more food-grade, it feels more natural, and it's just as effective. And, it's been kind of the North Star for our product innovation.
I've talked to a number of other CPG founders, some even in a similar category of pet. I love to dive into details. Like, okay, you want to build this company, NativePet, you know you want to do a better version, you see what's out there in the market, did some market research. What do you do? Do you just start Googling stuff? Did you have people to talk to? Like, take me through that process of figuring out how you could actually make this product.
Well, I mean, it all started, you know, it's just so much research. We spent so much time going to pet stores and just asking questions. Like, you know, the beauty of— there's all these independent pet stores with these incredibly well-educated, you know, kind of— they're not salespeople, but just the people that work in stores at independent pet are extremely educated in which brands and why. And in certain instances, they know more about nutrition than vets, which is crazy, but they spend all day reading about pet food. pet supplements, right? And so we just went and talked to people, what products were moving, what products were selling, why does it move, why does it sell in all categories. And we just started test kitchening, like in our kitchens.
Nice.
Just, we've made the first prototype of all of our products and specifically the air-dried chew. We spent 2 or 3 months just perfecting it in our kitchen with the little dehydrators and dryers and ovens and all this stuff in our kitchen. And that was the first step. And then the, you know, the next step is then finding a manufacturer who can replicate or upgrade your process. And that's where it gets really hard.
Okay, I want to get to that part in one second. But with the test kitchen, everything, so did you get a vet early on to like commit to helping you guys as an advisor, as like a co-founder, as an employee?
Like, Yeah. Yes and no. I mean, we spent, you know, nutrition is a, is a little bit of a, of a, a little bit of a gap in expertise. It's very similar with humans. You know, doctors don't have to take any nutrition classes to become a medical doctor. It's the same in the vet category. It's very pharmacology focused, right? You know, you go, you know, internal medicine, pharmacology, there's a clear path for vets that doesn't necessarily require them to study nutrition and the impacts of food and natural ingredients and et cetera.
Yeah.
Many vets are well-versed in that. I'm not saying that they aren't, many are, but it's information that they've pursued on their own time. And so we spent a lot of time reading white papers. You know, one thing that the pet industry has is there is good research. on the active ingredients. So, we were reading white papers, studying ingredients, trying to do as much as we could on our own. We were absolutely on a budget. So, we did end up working with a board-certified vet nutritionist once we got through the prototype stage. And, what they help us with is in our kind of anti-inflammatory products, how much green-lipped mussel do you need?
Yeah.
What's the appropriate dose? Then there's the manufacturing side, which how do we get these active ingredients that drive the supplement? How do we get them mixed with inactive ingredients and processed so that your dog will eat it without killing off any of the efficacy of the actives, right? And so there's a, it's a, it's a very complex R&D process. And then once you get through all that, there's the palatability test at the end, which is I'm going to put this in front of a 12-year-old dog who maybe is starting to lose their teeth or doesn't like to eat their kibble. And how do you get them to eat this product? And that, that, you know, those were all problems we had to solve along the journey.
Wait, so in that test kitchen, you're playing around with it to see like how it all comes together and all like different ingredients, researching that.
Different temperatures.
That's what I'm saying. Yeah. So many things to go with that. And then do you just like, hey, we split test, we have 2 dogs. What did they both like? Just take me through more. Like, I'm so curious.
Well, here's the problem. Like, Pat was— we were in different cities. And so like, oh, really? My bat— yeah, like I would, I would have a batch and Pat would have a batch. And then my dog Louie is a, is a lab and he's a terrible taste tester because he'll literally eat anything. And so like, you only knew if it was like really bad because Louie wouldn't eat it. But that— I don't know that that ever happens. Like, he'll still eat the trash, you know? And so, you know, we'd have to find random dogs and then you're just like the weird guy, like with homemade dog treats at the dog, you know what I mean? It was a weird time, but we got through it and we felt really good about where R&D landed. And then we moved on to this phase of like, okay, how do we manufacture this?
Well, let's get into that then, the manufacturing side of it. You got something you liked, you have like, okay, we think we have the product somewhat figured out, but manufacturing and especially getting some level of scale, what did that look like for you? How'd you approach that?
It was really hard. That, I mean, that's where, you know, honestly, for us, like, that's where we spent most of the time in R&D was finding the right partner. And there's so much that goes into co-manufacturer selection and finding the right partner at that size. It's equipment, right? Do they have the right equipment? Are they big enough to scale if the business takes off? And then there's some intangible things. Are they excited about entrepreneurship? Do they wanna help support small brands? Do they see your vision? Do they believe you're going to be a big brand down the road?
Yeah.
Are they gonna be patient enough to work on a more custom product? Do they wanna invest alongside you? There's so many things that you have to consider. And honestly, we didn't, know any of that. Neither of us had done anything in manufacturing before. It was absolutely the steepest learning curve. Just kind of partner selection is like, it's all the worst parts about fundraising, right? You gotta like sell this co-manufacturer on your vision. Then there's a lot of technical requirements that you have to hit. There's quality programs, there's packaging, there's so much that goes into it. It turned into a massive exercise for us. And it took every bit of 18 months to get to a good place on the manufacturing side.
Was there anything, because you went through that, you went from zero to obviously doing it, anything that was helpful in terms of questions you needed to ask them, like research or diligence you needed to do on them? 'Cause I'm always just thinking of other founders who are going through something like this process. Anything that was helpful for you, Dan?
I think, Spending a lot of time upfront and treating it as you would any investor or sales pitch. Ultimately, the co-manufacturer, everybody will, if they believe in the business, really believe in what you're trying to do and believe you're gonna be a $20 million client for them in 5 years, the way they behave will be totally different. And I think, and honestly, I think, you know, we've landed on some good manufacturers. I think that's the part we didn't do enough of upfront was, hey, we need to sell them. Like, they need to believe. If they believe we're just going to be some small ankle-biting nuisance, Yeah. you know, they will treat us differently. And I think treating your coat manufacturers like you would any other partner And sell them on the vision and where this is going and why they should believe. And I think doing that will really help forge a long-term relationship.
So you said the better part of 18 months to get to a good point with all of this. But having product and not having in the hands of anyone is kind of pointless. So how did you go through the distribution side of things? Marketing, was it like getting on the shelves? Like, tell me that side of things with Native Path.
Yeah. So just to be clear, these are the air-dried chews that took this long.
Yep.
We had other products that were in powder formats or oil that we were able to get to market faster. And so I think the challenging thing for us is all of our products are great. And so we built the brand on efficacy, having a cleaner label and making the products taste great. When we talked about the brand originally, those were like What our products needed to fit into.
Yeah.
And for like the powders and oils, while, you know, less innovative in terms of originality, they're still different for the pet category and they fit our brand extremely well. They were effective by nature. You know, our probiotic powder has 4 ingredients. They're clean label and dogs still love the taste. We still found ways to work in whole food ingredients. And in almost every case, all of our products are at a higher ingredient and manufacturing standard than almost any other product in the pet category, right? You know, human-grade bone broth or whatever it is that sets our products apart. Like, they're— so we, we were able to get some easier R&D products into the category early. And so we were able to start selling and building our brand because we were confident that they fit in with that kind of product innovation story we wanted to tell. The air-dried shoes were just, you know, a much bigger exercise and are more differentiated and unique and harder to replicate.
Yeah.
And so, you know, we got those in market in early 2021, but we were still able to lay the foundation of the brand, start selling, building relationships with customers, and kind of building the foundation of the business.
Was that always the plan for it? Like, you know, you're gonna start with the powders and other stuff first, and then you're gonna branch into something more innovative that took a little more time? Or was this kind of evolution of, okay, what else can we do next?
It was— I think we thought the air-dried chews were going to take considerably less time. So I think, but, you know, certain products are just like fundamentally better in powder. For example, our probiotic powder We're able to use a more effective blend of probiotics by leaving it in a powder rather than putting it into a chew, just because probiotics are really, really sensitive. So that product was actually more effective in staying with the powder. Same with our, our pumpkin puree, which is, you know, the best-selling pumpkin fiber, or one of the best-selling pumpkin or fiber supplements on Amazon. It just makes sense that it's in a powder. It's cheaper to ship. It lasts longer. It's, it's a better experience to have that in a powder. And so there are certain products that just made more sense. But, you know, we thought air-dried chews were going to take 6 months from when the prototype was ready, and it took much, much longer. So I would say, I think we were gonna— we thought everything was going to come into the market more all at once. It didn't end up being the case.
So then you launched your first product in 2017, 2018? Yeah.
2017.
And then with that, was it— I was in e-commerce at that time, so I know how crazy Instagram, Facebook ads, et cetera, have gotten in terms of price at this point. But were you launching with paid ads like that? Were you doing Amazon sales? Like, take me through the distribution side of things.
We started on Amazon.
Nice.
I think we've kind of made a habit of zigging when other people are zagging, sometimes on purpose, sometimes on accident, to be Very, very clear. But in this instance, it's just started as an Amazon brand and everybody was rushing into Instagram and Facebook ads and we didn't really have any expertise there. And honestly, we didn't have the bandwidth to do that. That's really capital and personnel dependent. Whereas Amazon was something we were still moonlighting. This was a nights and weekends business at that point, right? Yeah. That was something that we could learn. They do all the fulfillment. There's a self-service platform, and we were able to teach ourselves how to do Amazon in a really capital-efficient way. And it ended up being absolutely the right step for our business. Amazon is the dominant— Amazon and Chewy are the 2 dominant retailers in our space. And so we were lucky to build some expertise in Amazon in 2017 when it was less competitive than it is today, and it served as the foundation for the How did that evolve then in terms of going from Amazon to—
because obviously if you're on Amazon, you don't own the customer relationship the same because like the emails and all that sort of thing, as opposed to having your own store as much.
Amazon's, you know, has its frustrating points and you definitely wish you had more data, but the flip side is it has all these customers, right? Of course. And by succeeding on the platform, you know, you obviously sell products through advertising. But then there's kind of like they have an aisle, which is where you're ranked organically on search pages. That's an aisle, that's people browsing. And so what you're paying for, what you're giving up in data, you're gaining in aisle shoppers and you don't get aisle shoppers on your D2C site. Right. And so that's one of the advantages of Amazon is all the organic traffic they bring you if you can get your products to rank for the right search terms and et cetera. So we We've learned that game very well. We're not the best. There's been some big brands in our category who've done amazingly well on Amazon. And so we've done very well on Amazon. I think what we've done differently is it's hard to build a brand if you're only focused on Amazon.
Yeah.
And so we went the venture capital route because we saw the opportunity in the category is not to be the 5th or 7th or 10th Amazon pet supplements brand. We saw the opportunity as the first omnichannel pet supplements brand, and we felt like we were uniquely positioned to do that because we had the product differentiation story. And if we could build the brand story and have an audience and have a group of customers and have content and, you know, kind of build that brand, that we'd be uniquely positioned to succeed in the category. And I think We're just at the precipice of starting to see that vision come to life on the brand side. And we've worked on a ton of really exciting new brand initiatives and building a social media following, building a YouTube channel. TikTok's our biggest media presence. So we've just worked on a ton of cool stuff. A lot of our peers have not chosen to go that route. And so again, it's just something that we've done differently. to help us stand out and break through the noise in the category.
I want to go back to that theme that seems to be coming up here of zigging when people are zagging, going a different way, doing something. Is that always just been how you guys have thought about things? Does that go back to, I don't know, investment banking times, consulting times, or whatever? Like, what, why, why that? I'm curious.
Definitely not. I mean, I think, you know, I'll take that back. So I think consulting does teach you to think differently and challenge norms. And maybe not as much banking, but I think both of our time as consultants, I think, has taught us to question things, challenge things, think outside the box. But I think Pat and I just both naturally lean in that we don't necessarily see the world the same as other people, and we tend to be contrarian at times or have A unique point of view or rose-colored glasses or whatever it is. And so I think there are times when following the leader is right, but I think more often than not, forging your own path and using first principle thinking to say, what is the right step for us here? What is the right step for NativePet? And not just rely on a playbook or something that other brands have already done. And sometimes the playbook for NativePet looks similar to what other people have done. More often than not, it's actually been totally different. And being able to take a step back and make that decision and have our team become first principle thinkers about what's right for us has led us to do things differently. And we're really proud of that. And we think it's a big reason why we've been successful.
One thing, as you mentioned too, going back to kind of switching from Amazon as a starting point, which you can get a lot of traction on Amazon for sure, use those sales to do other things on the content hiring, et cetera. So there's definitely a lot of value in that, but going from that to being like, all right, we're going to raise venture capital. You raised a $6 million Series A. I don't know if you've raised before that, but you want to raise venture capital. That's a much different route you're going. You're signing up for something different. Take me through that, like what that meant for you. And at what point in the business you were at where you're like, yeah, now is the time versus like 6 months ago, a year before that? Like why at that timing?
You know, we have raised 8 total. So we had raised in 2 tranches before the Series A. And I— this is another example, like people just, you know, they want to paint you as either a bootstrapper or venture-backed and like treat it as like this binary choice. And, you know, like I kind of call like on both ends of the spectrum, you got like, you know, I call it the bootstrap porn where you hear about like, you know, the one founder that was able to scale their business to $100 million. You don't hear the 99 that, you know, ran outta money or didn't grow, right? Like that's the one angle. But then there's also the people who'd like think raising capital is a home run and you know, the fact that you closed a round of capital means your business is definitely gonna succeed. And like, there's— but really, there's tons of stuff in between, right? And so for us, you know, Pat and I are both married with kids. Pat didn't have kids when we started the business. You know, I was a dad, I was leaving a very stable career.
Yeah.
And, you know, so like part— and we wanted to do R&D. You know, it's hard to bootstrap when you have an 18-month R&D cycle. And you and I needed to make money, right? You know, I, you know, I, we couldn't, my family, we couldn't afford to not make money for 2 years while we bootstrapped. And some people can do that. And I've heard some crazy stories about what founders have done. And I have nothing but respect for, for people who bootstrap. But for us, it wasn't the right call just because we, we wanted to be able to scale this business without like taking massive sacrifices on the family side. And, you know, we needed to make a little money. So we said, you know, and also we believed that this had venture private equity scale returns. We said capital is the one thing standing in our way to turning this into a $100 million business. And so economically, we also felt like it made sense. We had the right scale, the market was big enough. It was a— there was investor appetite. So like all of the fundamentals of why you take venture money were there. And then our personal reason of knowing this was going to take a while to get off the ground and just needing to like to make money, it was a good trade for us to be able to have some security, have a salary, raise some equity capital, and, you know, sell a bit of the business, but also have capital in the business scale growth. And so it's worked out really well for us. We've also had incredible partners to work with on the, on the capital side. And that's made all the difference.
On that side of things. So with raising venture capital, you mentioned the things around like YouTube and TikTok and these different things. So when you raise capital, was that going mostly toward like, what was that going towards in terms of use of funds? Was it hiring to help you do some of those growth initiatives? Like, was it just having capital to buy more product? Just tell me what that even went Towards?
For our seed round, which was led by Selva Ventures and a great consumer investor named Kiva Dickinson, that round was more about giving us more runway to get our products in market, start hiring a team. You know, we had, you know, I think before we started talking to Kiva, we were at 4 employees. And so, you know, we needed more, More people. But really it was just about, you know, hey, the, you know, the products aren't quite in market yet. We need more time before the Series A to get products in market, be able to invest in marketing. So that round really came down to product and marketing. Yeah. When was that?
What year was that roughly?
That was in kind of end of 2020.
Okay.
Early 2021. is when we closed that round. And so I think original plan was Series A, but the R&D took so long. We had great traction, but it just was like we weren't ready for the big Series A. And Kiva is a great seed Series A investor, so he was really comfortable with our stage, and he really spent a lot of time with us understanding the vision and where we were going. And I know, you know, he was super pumped to invest in that round. So we did a convertible note, And that was enough to kind of power us through, get everything in market, let our vision kind of come to life a bit more before we raised the Series A, which we ended up closing later on in 2021.
Gotcha. Yeah, that's good for context and thinking about that. And I'm always curious on what people do to use that. And being at a venture firm now, same thing now. Go ahead.
But then the money for the Series A was a little bit different because, you know, we We only ended up hiring one full-time person over the course of 2021. So we were at a team of 5. And when, so we started working with Kavu Ventures, who's another like great consumer fund. We work with Jared Jacobs really closely. He's been an awesome partner. Brett Thomas is on our board. They've been an incredible partner to us. But when we were in diligence, Brett was like, Where's the team?
He's like, where's the rest?
You gotta hire some. Yeah, you're doing all this with 5 people, you know.
Impressive.
And, and so when, when we, you know, closed the deal with them, one of our strategic priorities for the year was we got to hire a team. And so, and Kavu is very passionate about brand and marketing investment. And so, you know, we, you know, most of, you know, our Series A has been allocated towards building a brand with a capital B and hiring the team, right?
Yeah.
And so that's their expertise. They've been a huge help in doing that. You know, I got these late night phone calls with my guy Jared on the West Coast, just strategy sessions, and we're constantly talking about brand and hiring. And so we've more than tripled the team in the last year, which we're super excited about. I'm in like our fulfillment center. We now have like a 3PL to do our fulfillment. So we're moving up. We've used that money to just, Scale, you know, we call it building the factory, but how do we, how do we, you know, turn this into an automated business, create roles, processes, systems? And that's been a big focus for us this year.
Yeah, all the scaling things. I just talked to a founder yesterday on the podcast as well, who was— they just raised a Series B recently and like they did a whole big rebrand, hired a big fancy agency. And like, it looks amazing. But like, I can tell it's like, oh yeah, you got that Series B money now. I see what you're doing. It's a whole different ballgame.
I should say, you know, so Kavu helped us with the rebrand. So that was one great thing about working with Kavu is they come with, you know, they have their in-house team. Stevie Clement is their chief brand strategist and has worked with Rohan and Brett for a long time. She's an incredibly gifted, you know, brand person. And so she's spearheaded the, you know, I won't call it a full rebrand. It'll still look and feel like Native Pet, but Modernizing the brand, modernizing the packaging, get us— getting us ready for retail. Stevie worked with our marketing lead Ashley very closely, and they've crushed it. That's gonna launch in January, kind of the new look and feel of Native Pet. We're super stoked with how it turned out.
So with launching Native Pet in 2017, so we're recording this at the end of 2022. So it's been like 5+ years or so. Just take me through how the industry has evolved Since you started, what you've seen? I mean, I love the saying, rising tide lifts all boats. I think pet has gotten a lot bigger from the outside. It seems like just anything that changes, evolutions, anything you've seen in the industry.
Yeah, I heard this like really, I love it. It's pretty cheesy, but, and I wish I could remember so I could attribute it to the right person, but it was, they called it like the surfer and the wave. Where it's like entrepreneurship is like surfing a wave. And I'm not a surfer. I live in St. Louis, to be very clear. I wish I was that cool, but there's definitely no surfing happening here. But the surfboard is your business idea, right? And so you need a good surfboard to ride the wave. As an entrepreneur, you're the surfer. It takes some skill and some grit and some muscle to be able to get up on a surfboard and ride the wave, and you got to be ready to go. But ultimately, If there's no wave, you're not going surfing. No matter if you have the best surfer in the world and the best surfboard in the world, you need a wave. And the market and the category is your wave. And we've been very fortunate that I think we have one of the most powerful waves that we're riding in consumer products, which is the pet category. And then we're in the fastest growing subcategory within pet. It's still really small in the grand scheme of things, but supplements and this kind of beyond the bowl, Nutrition has just absolutely exploded in the last few years. And if you really think about it, it makes a ton of sense, right? Because what, what's happened in human is there's this movement towards food as medicine and using food more as utility to improve the health and wellness. And there's so much more awareness and consciousness about what we're eating and why and how it affects me personally, not myself as a human, but me as Dan. What does this food do to me? And it's going to be totally different than what it's going to do to Justin.
Yeah.
And that awareness has really changed the human side of the fence. But supplements are still huge and very important in humans, but kind of less important because, Justin, if you want more fiber, you can just change your diet. You can say, I'm just going to have broccoli for dinner tonight, or I'm going to have rice and beans. I'm not going to have red meat and pasta, right? You have so much choice in what you eat during your meals, and you can use that to modify your diet. You don't need to rely on only supplements to do that. Contrast that to the pet category where pets are fed kibble, which is basically— they call it complete nutrition, but it's the lowest common denominator of the nutrient profile that every dog needs, not what one specific dog might need.
Yeah.
But, you don't get to modify their diet. Some people do, it's a very small minority, You're feeding them the same thing every day, and it's just a base nutrition. Supplements are actually your only real opportunity to customize their diet. And so if you believe that this food is medicine and customization and personalization is a macro trend in human, which I think, you know, most people do, then you should be extra bullish about its potential to be a macro trend in the pet category. And we've— and the growth is 20% year over year. And so what we're seeing is people are coming to realize that Kibble is great, but your unique dog will need unique things to help them survive and thrive. And so the trend is more customization. It's really, really hard to customize kibble. There are plenty of business ideas in the graveyard of kibble, customized kibble manufacturers. Nom Nom and a lot of these cold chain deliveries have done a nice job and those are great businesses, but That's still a relatively small piece of the category. Our point of view is that, you know, the mainstream consumer is gonna stick with kibble and they're gonna look to customize and personalize in other ways. And we think supplements are perfectly positioned to be there. And so if you couple that with the macro trend, with adoptions during COVID and what's happening in our society with dogs and the role pets play in our lives, you get this swirl. And that's where I think we're riding a really, really big wave. And I think the wave hasn't even really started. It definitely hasn't crested yet, right? So we're, I think we're in the early days of what's going to be a big macro wave in the category. And we're excited to be, you know, a few of the early surfers in the space.
I love that. And on that similar note, what's next for Native Pet? What can customers be excited about as well?
Well, we got the rebrand coming. I think it's gonna look amazing. We've spent a lot of time on there. It's modern, it's colorful, it's cool. You still got the same classic illustrations, same blue, you got the dog. So, it's going to look badass. And so, we're excited to get that. We're always innovating on new products. And so, we got a new super supplement launching on Amazon and Chewy in January, then on our D2C site and Target in March called The Daily.
Okay.
It's going to be all the best ingredients you could ever want in the supplement. Um, all in one easy scoop for your dog and that you can just scoop over kibble and it'll get their day started off right. It's like an Athletic Greens for dogs, but on steroids. So we're calling it our daily super supplement and we're pumped about that. A couple other, you know, exciting new products, um, come in and then, you know, we're always taking a look at what's like the next big thing. So we're looking at the cat space. We're excited about cat. Um, You know, I, you know, I, you know, we don't discriminate dogs, cats, we love them. So, you know, we're looking there and, you know, there'll be some, some, some big new product announcements coming from Native Pet in, in 2023 for sure.
Perfect. Dan, where's the best place for people to learn more about Native Pet and connect with you if they would like to as well?
We don't, we don't discriminate channel either. So nativepet.com is a great platform. Check us out there. If you want to buy us on Amazon, Chewy or Target, please do. Those are our core 4. You can also find us on Thrive Market. And so we are, you know, come to our website, learn, and then just shop wherever's convenient for you. Any channel is great. And we just would appreciate your support. We hope you love the product.
If any founders want to reach out, how should they connect with you?
Yeah, so I chat with founders all the time. I would love to be an angel investor, but I have no money. So I don't I can't angel invest yet. Hopefully someday.
Good context.
Yeah. So if I can be a thought partner on anything product innovation related, Amazon related, company building, team building, always happy to chat. Just dan@nativepet.com. Feel free to reach out direct.
Awesome. Thanks for your time, Dan. Appreciate it, man.
Awesome, Justin. Appreciate it. This was fun.
