Nov 4, 2024 · 1h 6m · how-i-built-this
BARK: Matt Meeker
0:00 / 0:00
gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of How I Built This, host Guy Raz traces entrepreneur Matt Meeker's journey from co-founding Meetup to building Bark into a publicly traded pet empire, detailing the operational pivots and relentless perseverance required to pull the company back from near-fatal cash burn into profitability.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Guy holds 33.2% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 3.6 Guest teaching 1.1 Guest disagreement 0.4 Guy pushing back 0.4
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 40:47 Dismissing feline customers
Matt bluntly rejects expanding into feline products, stating dog owners view pets as children while cat owners do not, jokingly telling cat owners to just give the empty shipping box to their cat.
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 1:04:40 Guy challenges anti-cat stanceGuy refuses to let Matt dismiss cats, pressing him on whether he dislikes them and arguing forcefully about the unmatched entertainment value of kittens chasing laser pointers.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 8:15 Thirty million burn correctionWhen Guy suggests the failed pager startup burned over ten million dollars, Matt immediately corrects the scale of the failure by noting the real figure was approximately thirty million.
Guy holds their own ▶ 10:27 Guy names Bowling AloneGuy demonstrates deep background knowledge by instantly citing Robert Putnam's seminal sociological study 'Bowling Alone' before Matt finishes introducing the concept of community disintegration.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Guy as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Guy pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Preview: The Struggle for Financial Survival | 5 | 0 | 0 | 1 | Guy sets up the episode by framing Bark's massive revenue against its severe historical cash burn and introduces pet industry macroeconomic statistics. Matt confirms the existential stakes of burning nearly $200 million in a single fiscal year. | |
| Discovering the Internet and Early Dot-Com Success | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Matt recounts his early exposure to the internet in college and his first role at iTraffic. Guy demonstrates familiarity with iTraffic's timeline and subsequent acquisition by Agency.com. | |
| Lessons from a Failed Paging Device Startup | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Matt details the failure of a credit-card-sized paging startup overfunded with corporate executives. When Guy guesses the business burned around ten million dollars, Matt corrects him that the figure was closer to thirty million. | |
| The Post-9/11 Inspiration Behind Meetup | 6 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Matt describes the post-9/11 atmosphere in New York that inspired Meetup. As Matt mentions sociological literature, Guy immediately identifies Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone and extends the discussion on civic disintegration. | |
| Recruiting a CTO and Launching Meetup | 3 | 3 | 1 | 0 | Matt shares how they recruited their CTO and closed angel investments by trading loaded iPods for signed checks. When Guy assumes the launch was localized to New York City, Matt corrects him that they launched globally immediately. | |
| Meetup's Growth, Political Inflection, and Monetization | 4 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Matt explains Meetup's unexpected adoption by fringe subcultures and its inflection point via Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign. He also candidly recounts their failed early foot-traffic monetization attempt with Barnes & Noble. | |
| Exiting Meetup and Searching for Purpose | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Matt explains his decision to leave Meetup in 2008 when the headcount reached 45 employees, feeling overwhelmed by managing people. He describes adopting his Great Dane Hugo and struggling to find suitable dog products in local retail shops. | |
| Summit Series Partnership and the Genesis of BarkBox | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Matt narrates meeting co-founder Henrik Werdelin on a Summit Series cruise and prototyping BarkBox inspired by Birchbox. He explains validating demand on the street using a mockup and a Square reader. | |
| Onboarding Carly Strife and Packing the First Boxes | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Matt explains recruiting Carly Strife from early Uber with equal equity and packing the very first shipment of 78 boxes by hand in December 2011. | |
| Cash Flow Tactics, Customer Retention, and Groupon | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Matt outlines his cash-flow strategy of using upfront multi-month subscription payments to fund current inventory purchases. He explains relying on Groupon to scale early subscriber counts despite negative unit margins on those initial acquisitions. | |
| Venture Financing, Massive Scale, and Personal Toll | 5 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Guy cites Matt's 2013 public statements aiming to build a five-billion-dollar modern pet brand. Matt reflects honestly on accepting institutional venture capital and how absolute immersion took a heavy toll on his personal life and marriage. | |
| Coping with Copycats, Staying Dog-Only, and Bark Care | 3 | 2 | 2 | 1 | Matt details defending against clones by outspending them on digital marketing and firmly rejecting cat products. He also reflects on shutting down Bark Care, an in-home vet service that proved too capital-intensive to scale. | |
| Retail Expansion, Investor Resistance, and Cash Strain | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Guy asks about acquisition interest and retail expansion into Target. Matt explains walking away from an investor-pleasing food fundraise in 2018, which led to a precarious two-year period running hand-to-mouth on cash. | |
| Pandemic Acceleration and Transitioning CEO Leadership | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Matt discusses the massive pandemic tailwind in dog ownership that reversed Bark's cash crisis. He also explains his decision to step down as CEO in 2020 and hand leadership to Manish Joneja ahead of the planned public listing. | |
| Going Public via SPAC and Hugo's Passing | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Matt explains how SPAC sponsor John Ledecky convinced Bark to go public before market saturation set in. He shares the emotional turning point when his Great Dane Hugo passed away, driving his decision to return as CEO. | |
| Navigating Financial Distress and Restoring Core Strengths | 4 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Guy notes Bark's ongoing lack of profitability upon Matt's return. Matt explains the immediate survival measures enacted to stem the $194 million annual burn rate, refocusing on core toy dominance and Amazon distribution. | |
| Innovating Luxury Pet Travel with Bark Air | 4 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Guy mentions regional competitors like JetSuiteX while discussing dog air travel restrictions. Matt describes launching luxury chartered Bark Air flights and his ambition to lower ticket prices from $6,000 to $600. | |
| Reaching Profitability, Life's Work, and the Role of Luck | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Matt shares Bark's trajectory toward full-year profitability and framing Bark as his life's work. He reflects on the combination of relentless operational grinding and external market luck. | |
| Playful Cat Debate and Episode Conclusion | 3 | 0 | 3 | 4 | Guy initiates a playful debate pushing back on Matt's anti-cat stance, passionately defending cats' entertainment value with laser pointers while Matt jokingly tells him to start his own cat company. |
Statements from this episode (36)
Meeker: Corporate Executives Often Struggle to Adapt to Early-Stage Startups
“So you have very talented people who are bringing You know, imagine you're running marketing for AT&T one day, and the next day you're trying to start something. You're bringing that approach. And it meant we spent a lot of days in conference rooms talking abo…”
Meetup Found Its Co-Founder CTO Through a Craigslist Ad
“We put an ad on Craigslist. It was very obnoxious saying interviews are next week. We were looking for a co-founder CTO. If you're not here in New York City next week, then you're, you can't be interviewed, and that's it. Within 24 hours, we had 450 applicants…”
Meeker Traded Loaded iPods for Meetup Angel Investor Checks
“It was the exact moment where the iPod came out, and we sent notes to all of them, and we said, hey, Matt's gonna come up and pick up your paperwork and your check and if you hand it to him today, he's gonna hand you back an iPod pre-populated with a thousand …”
Meetup Launched Globally Across Hundreds of Topics on Day One
“No, it was everywhere. Which probably went as well as that sounds like it would go. You've got a computer in New York City making decisions of how things should go in Moscow. We started with a couple hundred topics, and then we would tell people, it's seven p.…”
Early Meetup Saw a 50% In-Person Show Rate from RSVPs
“Worldwide, what we would see is about half of the people who RSVP'd would actually show up.”
Howard Dean Promised to Plug Meetup at Every Campaign Speech
“That turned into a meeting with Governor Dean and Joe Trippi, his campaign manager, at which they said I intend to run for president, and I don't have a lot of money, but I can promise you this, from now until the day I get out of the race, I will end every sp…”
Meetup Took Four Years to Adopt a Subscription Business Model
“It took us probably four years to get to the subscription service.”
Meetup Reached Profitability and 10 Million Active Users by 2008
“Growing quickly, profitable, supportive investors and board, everything looking very good, and ten million plus active members worldwide every month.”
Meeker Found Mainstream Pet Retailers Failed to Accommodate Large Dogs
“I was just disappointed with the offerings, and tried the local pet codes and pet smarts as well, and it was all the same.”
Bark Sold Early Subscriptions Using a Phone Mockup and Square Reader
“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…”
Bark Launched With $10,000 and No Initial Venture Capital Ambitions
“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…”
Bark Founders Gave Carly Strife a One-Third Equal Equity Stake
“We did an equal chunk of equity. So a third of the company.”
BarkBox Sold $15 Groupon Subscriptions Despite Having $20 Box Costs
“If I remember right, we were selling three-month subscriptions for 45 dollars so 15 dollars a month, but you'd probably have a 20 dollar cost of goods in every box.”
BarkBox Reached 15,000 Subscribers by the End of Its First Year
“That first year we thought we were huge, where we ended the year with about 15,000 subscribers.”
BarkBox Experienced Zero Customer Churn During Its First Four Months
“So I remember the first four months that we were alive, we had no churn, not one subscriber left. Now, not a whole lot of subscribers there, but out of over a hundred, no one left.”
Bark's Seed Investor Conditioned Funding on Meeker Becoming Full-Time CEO
“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…”
Accepting Venture Capital Forces Founders to Build a Different Business
“I think it meant you're, you come to that fork in the road of, if you're taking venture capital on, you're now deciding to build a different kind of business in a different way.”
U.S. Dog-Owning Households Grew From 38 Million to 65 Million
“When we started, there were thirty-eight million households in the U.S. With a dog, and today that's sixty-five million.”
Bark Crushed Copycat Competitors by Deliberately Outspending Them on Ad Channels
“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.”
Bark Shut Down In-Home Vet Service Due to Immense Capital Requirements
“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…”
Bark Founders Ignored Market Sizing and Avoided Data When Choosing Toys
“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.”
Bark Walked Away From an Active 2018 Fundraise to Sustain Itself
“We, I definitely freaked out my board and our investors but walked away from the fundraising round and said, forget it.”
Stalling Growth Reverses Subscription Working Capital Cycles to Drain Cash
“If you're not growing, it catches up to you and works in reverse and eats away at your cash.”
Bark Accelerated Rapidly in 2020 After Nearly Running Out of Cash
“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 …”
Meeker Stepped Down Because He Did Not Want to Run Publicly
“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.”
Bark Required Its Incoming Pandemic-Era CEO to Commute From Seattle
“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…”
Bark Raised $200 Million in SPAC PIPE Following $500 Million Demand
“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.”
Bark Burned $194 Million During Its 2022 Fiscal Year
“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.”
Bark Holds a Ten Percent Share of the Dog Toy Market
“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.”
Bark Air Sold Out Summer Flights at $8,000 Per One-Way Ticket
“Those tickets are six to 8000 dollars one way, and we're sold out in September. We were sold out in August.”
Bark Air Aims to Reduce Ticket Prices to $600 Within One Year
“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.”
Bark Reduced Its Annual Net Losses From $57 Million to $11 Million
“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.”
Meeker Projects Bark Will Achieve Net Profitability This Fiscal Year
“This year, we should make four or five million dollars. And up from there.”
Meeker Intends to Remain CEO of Bark For the Long Term
“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…”