Bark

“We went out to raise a hundred million through that pipe process. We had an interest of nearly five hundred million, so we ended up raising 200 from that in addition to the SPAC funds.”

“And what I say to people now is, I intend to die in the saddle. It, truly, it goes back to Hugo. And that responsibility at that And the legacy. But I say that knowing that I'm a month away from having a baby boy. A human child, yes. Maybe that becomes my obse…”

“We have line of sight to, how do we get to that 600 dollar ticket? We have very clear line of sight to doing that, I'd say, in the next year.”

“We never looked at the market data or the market sizing and said, let's go here. If we had, we would have never chosen toys.”

“Those tickets are six to 8000 dollars one way, and we're sold out in September. We were sold out in August.”

“When we started, there were thirty-eight million households in the U.S. With a dog, and today that's sixty-five million.”

“We started a service in 2013 called Bark Care, which was an in-home vet service in New York, and people loved it. Dogs loved it. Everyone was loving it, but it would have taken us a tremendous amount of capital to do it and scale it the way that it needed to b…”

“We did an equal chunk of equity. So a third of the company.”

“Our fiscal year, 22, when I stepped in, we lost fifty-seven million dollars. The next year, it was 31. Last year, it was 11.”

“Henrik and I together put in 10,000 dollars, and it kind of that same story of too much money or money at all. Isn't the type of company we want to build. We want to build something for us and something that's profitable, and this isn't going to be a venture-b…”

“We, I definitely freaked out my board and our investors but walked away from the fundraising round and said, forget it.”

“In May of 2012, Mike Hirschland, who had started Dogpatch Labs, and Mike and I obviously worked closely while, while I was there, and he reached out and said, I'm starting this new fund. Can I invest in this thing? Can I lead a round for you? But that came wit…”

“So that year ending March 31st, we burned a hundred and ninety-four million dollars, and if we had done that for the next 12 months, that would have been it. We're done. We're gone.”

“I was just disappointed with the offerings, and tried the local pet codes and pet smarts as well, and it was all the same.”

“And it does get, it gets poo-pooed by a lot of people because, well, that's only three and a half billion dollar industry. And you already own 10% of it.”

“Then we also had ambitions of someday being a public company, and I had an idea that I didn't want to be a public company CEO.”

“Again, we were going month to month on our cash. I remember in March of 2020, having conversations with investors and our banks and saying, well, we'll see what retention looks like on April first. And then all of a sudden, customer acquisition is just off to …”

“So I started to carry a square in my pocket, and I'd show people, and they'd give me the reaction. I'd plug the square in, and I'd say, it's live. Swipe your card. And I'd hand, hand the phone to them, and their faces would change. They'd be like, well, so the…”

“No, not at all.”

“They're usually copying the whole playbook, so taking to Google search or Facebook advertising, and it's easy enough to just lean on them and outspend them. If you're bigger, we'll, we'll bleed you over time, and that happened time after time after time.”

“And a very good guy that I think we put into difficult spot. You're saying to someone, take on a CEO role. Take it on in the middle of a pandemic. You'll live in Seattle, but you'll commute to New York. That's fun. You won't get the opportunity to meet most of…”

“If you're not growing, it catches up to you and works in reverse and eats away at your cash.”

“This year, we should make four or five million dollars. And up from there.”