Joe Spector (Dutch) - How he’s changing the pet industry and how his approach to fundraising has evolved

Our guest today is Joe Spector, Founder & CEO of Dutch. Dutch is the online vet care when you need it. Previously Joe was one of the founders of hims & hers. We discuss the opportunity he saw within pet insurance and care, how his approach to fundraising is different than hims & hers, why he wants to change the incentive structure within the vet industry. Why did you decide to leave hims & hers? What was the aha moment that led to Dutch? What was the opportunity that you saw? Why did you decide to focus on telehealth for pets? What is the major pain point for pet owners? Can you lay out for us the value chain for healthcare for pets? How are the regulatory requirements different from healthcare for humans? How did you approach raising capital? In the early days, they have to be good at multiple things What was the first problem you wanted to solve? How did you approach distribution and sales? Paying vets $80 an hour Hims & Hers raised money every 90 days and raised lots of money. How do you approach fundraising and the capital structure of Dutch?What was it like fundraising during COVID? Don’t use a recruiter There was a substantial increase in pet ownership during COVID and telemedicine was more widely adopted as a whole during this period. How was Dutch affected? Did you grow faster than you expect? Since only 2% of pet owners have insurance, how do you approach consumer education? How do you think about the incentives for vets - they make money off selling the drugs, so they would want to recommend more drugs for your pet - and what is Dutch doing to create better alignment with the vet and the pet owner/pet?