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?
