Pitch Please

00:02.12
mike_flywheel
What's up everybody. This is Mike we're back here with the pitch please podcast today. We've got veno from cabo real simple names for you excited to learn about what you do veno was cruise in your Linkedin Profile we're gonna have a hell of a time learning about your background maybe kick us off with. You know a little bit about you. We'll dive into that. But also um, a little bit about your role at at cabo.

00:22.90
Vino
Yeah, excited to be here as I mentioned longtime listener first stock participator. Yeah, but as you mentioned my name is vino I've you know, really come from a background of working in the digital marketing space was very lucky early on to drop out of westward and. You know, give up the binge drinking and partying to join Facebook early on and you know got got to experience the part of them going public and you know really for those like next Four To Five Years watch this like emergence of advertising really being evolved online where we could identify people and you know I really got to work in the e-commerce team and. Watch brands like dollarshaveclub to casper grow and it was phenomenal to see how you can reach people so easily you know, found myself in warehouses and then obviously caught the bug to become an entrepreneur myself and you know started a drop shipping business to get my feet wet and and following that you know. Alongside my identical twin brother and co-founder vja who also worked at Facebook um, you know we decided you know we don't want to spend that much of our lives apart. So let's start a business together and um, you know, really, we were able to build Cabo and you know I operate as the Ceo and my brother operates as our Ceo um. But really when we started cabo we were on this mission just to help dogs live healthier lives and make mealtime easy again and it really spawned from an experience we had raising our dog.

01:46.18
mike_flywheel
That's that's amazing. Maybe let's start with the name. How did you you get to the name cabo.

01:50.86
Vino
Yeah I would like to say I have like some genius maniacal creative mind. But really when we started the business cabo the idea was like let's try and offer freshly cooked dog food that'll be better in terms of helping a dog live a longer life. And enjoy the day-to-day with their current owneror and that kind of came about because we adopted our first dog the moment we got to move out of our parents' house because being ah immigrants from Sri Lanka Let's say people aren't as fond of having pets in the house. So years of us trying to get a dog didn't pan out until we moved out ourselves. Got her first dog. Her name was cabo she was actually being surrendered out of shelter and this fluffy chow chow came into her life and what ended up happening was you know she unfortunately passed away due to stomach cancer and I remember the vet telling us like oh you didn't know your dog was going to get stomach cancer and I was like. That's weird like you don't tell a human hey you know you should know you're getting get arthritis at this age like um and that's what got us into this deep dive to understand that like dogs because they're essentially inbred and the gene pool is a little bit more finite. You can almost like predict every degenerative disease of a breed so like. Smaller dogs obviously have a harder time with the organs growing and the lifespan tends to be a little bit shortened due to issues around that area golden retrievers for instance at the age of 7 for instance are going to get like arthritis because they have like bigger hips. So these are things that are kind of like known to us. But when you get a dog like you're not really thinking about like.

03:17.72
Vino
So how do I plan for arthritis 8 years from now you have a puppy. You're just trying to ah make sure that your puppy doesn't need to eat a sock and cause troubles. Ah today or tomorrow ah exactly and and really like when we started the premise was like let's try and cook some food find some people on Instagram to sell this food to.

03:26.11
mike_flywheel
They're going to do all those things though.

03:36.30
Vino
And we needed a brand name and we said okay like why don't we name this after Cabo like this this whole journey started from us trying to figure out like what we could have done better and we realized like just like humans is 2 things at Ultralife. It's your diet and activity and when we looked at that diet Piece. We said let's name it after her cabo. And you know later on down the line. We'll we'll we'll change it but the name really stuck because I think pet owners really like to see the the story and the authenticity behind what we're doing.

03:59.72
mike_flywheel
Yeah, that's amazing and I know where we're jumping really far ahead. So we're going to come back to all this but I I was super curious. It's always interesting, especially when it's such a I was like you got 4 letters in your name. The business got four letters I thought maybe there's something there but clearly there's just a big affinity for like short easy simple names.

04:17.29
Vino
Exactly.

04:19.34
mike_flywheel
You've got going on and I like it. So let's go back to to Facebook um, which by the way your your personal profile and brand. Your resume is amazing. Your personal online brand is fire I've got massive envy but you were at Facebook so you said you dropped out of western and started at Facebook in the early days you were there through their ipo. And that's sort of like when you made a pivot. What led you to Facebook and then what sort of led you out of Facebook interesting kind of like move there.

04:47.70
Vino
Yeah I think what led me into Facebook was you know, being a 20 year old who you know in the past summers I was actually studying biomedical science and um, you know in in the previous summer I took an unpaid internship to go work at my friend's startup that was doing international clothing importing it from Korea and shipping it. And it was phenomenal. You know I was like a 19 year old at that time having the ownership that really like bought me more into the startup culture and and entrepreneurship. Um, and it really only took like 1 trip when I went to San Francisco during my reading week spring week spring break time where you know. I could easily email the founder of Reddit and meet up with him and this is like you know 2009 to 10 and it's like it was crazy and just being around that energy. It got me really infectious and I found myself at school doing less and less school work and working for more and more startups and decided to say okay like let me take 1 year off of school. Um, and and and try and find an opportunity and I actually worked at a td for external recruitment doing a placement there because I really wanted to explore corporate life before like writing it off ah but quickly I realized when the opportunity came up for them to hire a Facebook contractor to literally just like download reports for advertising. You know I looked at and said listen I'm 20 I can jump into this role I know it's only six months but if I do a job well enough like maybe they'll get me a full time I can work on some more of like these interesting advertising products and you know I decided to make that take that shot and you know for the next four or five years like really got to spend my time with the advertising team and.

06:19.64
Vino
You know, watch Newsfeed ads be built like how the algorithm was weighing good and positive positive and negative user sentiment like seeing all these things behind the doors because we were very moved fast and break things. So I'd say a lot of stuff was let's say questionable at times. But I think towards the end of it. Um, you know. Like any millennial 5 years of work is equivalent to 20 years of work at a normal company. So I think just seeing a lot of these brands being built both successfully and unsuccessfully like I think I got to see the rise and fall of d two c and I think that's where we looked at it and said like you know I think we have enough confidence here being sideline you know watchers and bystanders. Um, but I think it's like really time for us to you know, ah pack it up and and do our own thing because we have this expertise from Facebook and that that that role really did expose me to a lot built my connections helped me really understand how advertising works. But.

07:11.90
Vino
You know as and as a young individual in their early 20 s like you just want to be able to continue to grow and learn over anything else. So it was time to jump and and do our own thing.

07:20.84
mike_flywheel
That's cool. So then you went from there and you started a drop shipping business next and that was that with your brother as well or with some other people.

07:30.86
Vino
Yeah, yeah, so it was alongside um my brother as well and we called it s m 5 3 group because all we did was source a bunch of random stuff and sell it. We'd run hundreds and hundreds of ads a day with hundreds of different products from coffee shop items to ah bowls to pet products and. You know it came from our time working with dropshipping I was in China for eight months with Facebook and and really building out that industry so it got me infatuated with that that opportunity and at the same time we just knew drop shipping was a business that didn't require a lot of financing. And it could be cash flow positive and most importantly, it could give us the experience of like running the ecommerce business ourselves and doing operations because you know we could be all fine and dandy and make claims that like okay, a Dollar Shave Club Grew and I was working on the account like it doesn't really matter they they would have done well with or without me but to really build confidence to do our own brand we wanted to. To dip our toes and and we scaled out that dropshipping business to about 5000000 in revenue and we were able to actually exit it with our third -party partner in china who was actually interested in doing dropshipping so it worked out really well and you know following that we actually spent a year working at other direct-to-consumer companies that were funded. Um, so we could really understand as well like how does the venture capital space look like you know what are the pitfalls and you know the things outside of the techcrunch article.

08:50.60
mike_flywheel
That's cool, such a rich number of experiences I'm also seeing here like forbes 30 under 30 so obviously you were having some big impact early I will never make that list mostly because not not my impact you know I'm just well over thirty. But probably my impact too. How does I'm curious have to ask? Ah I haven't had someone that I've talked to recently that's a forbes 30 under 30 how does that even happen is it just all the waves you were making across all these different things across like working in tech working for yourself. How does that happen. What's it like.

09:09.41
Vino
Um, if.

09:25.73
Vino
Yeah, it was definitely a great experience. Um I'm still part of the community I think it's actually a pretty phenomenal and rich like community of individuals that kind of come together and we all kind of have like similar trauma bonding from building businesses. So it's it's a nice group of people. But. Yeah I think ah we originally got a nomination from one of our investors. Um, and it was while we were building the cabo business. This is you know we we were actually on dragons instead and following that like we were scaling. You know from a $1000000 business to I think about like or actually sorry for 150000 to about 2000000? Ah so it was quite the jump. Um, and we were you know nominated. We went through the process I think we answered a couple interview questions and then never heard from them and we're like they're not going to choose a canadian dog food startup but it's really about the overall individual and their background and the work they've been doing and I think.

10:16.39
Vino
My brother and I were nominated together and I guess with twins it's like a 2 for 1 So maybe they like the deal. Ah yeah, so on on the show we had them ah offer us investment. It was just that like what ended up happening was we were actually shooting dragons den during the covid time. So there's like a lot of on and off.

10:21.90
mike_flywheel
Ah, nice and so did the Dragons invest.

10:35.96
Vino
Um, that went along and honestly it was just like a communication thing so because we got the offer from Michelle and Arlene when they reached when we try to reach out. It's kind of hard to get in touch because they are busy and things are going on. Um at that same time we were oversubscribed like that month by like $6000000 so it it.

10:52.43
mike_flywheel
Well congrats.

10:55.46
Vino
Yeah, it was is a good problem to have but the the issue was like the valuation was like totally different from what they originally looked at so that ended up being the area that they didn't want to like kind of get into because you know it is a show and at the end of the day. They're also looking for like a bit of a premium the equity but you know when we have the capital and.

11:00.35
mike_flywheel
Here.

11:15.40
Vino
And and it's hard to kind of convince our existing investors then it just wouldn't be able to happen but we still keep in touch with them most of them are actually still customers of Cabo too.

11:22.89
mike_flywheel
Cool. That's super cool. Well I think it's man the experience is I want to talk about cabo a bit but before we before we do like I kind of want to wrap a bow around all of that which is like what are some of your top. Insights or learnings from that journey whether it being like on Dragons Den Top 30 under 30 facebook to going to do drop shipping to exiting a business like wow that is like more than most people accomplish in their lifetime. So what's like 1 or 2 nuggets that you'd share that you think are like advice to.

11:56.98
Vino
Yeah I think one is like don't just follow the norm because even I think even when we raise money like we turn down all the institutional offers and specifically work with like Angels and groups of Angels because you know for us like we looked as investors as an opportunity for someone to work for us for free that will give us money. Essentially.

11:57.28
mike_flywheel
Could take forward.

12:16.84
Vino
So they're either going to help you with recruiting or you want them to be some kind of impact. It doesn't have to be every day but I think that was something that we did that was outside the norm when everyone was taking more institutional money and ultimately gave us more control. So I always think like you know don't. Don't fall for every like Techcrunch article you see as like a validation point in terms of direction you're going um and the second thing you know that we're actually like kind of doing right now is um, really thinking about this as like an alliance or like the avengers you know you don't have to fight this battle alone and I think when it comes to things like growth. A lot of people think like okay I have to be able to figure this out on my own or even like when they're thinking about distribution expansion. They're like okay how do I go from selling just in Toronto to Vancouver? um, and you know a lot of those experiences is kind of what helped spawn another business that we've launched outside of cabo. Ah, which gets us into like the frozen and fresh 3 pl world where we actually help brands deliver directly to consumer um using our platform and all these fulfillment centers that we build. So I think going through that experience I'm starting to see that yes like we can all maybe order boxes together to get a lower cost right. But at the same time you can also collaborate to do really cool brand projects where you know if you're selling a supplement drink and there's another brand that you know might be a good collaborator like reach out to them do email blasts together do like a co-branded limit edition products like.

13:44.79
Vino
This is the best way where you're going to really start to grow like really rich audiences and learn from them and things like the paid acquisition all that stuff like there's still collaboration there too where you know you could talk to other people in terms of how they're targeting how much of their spending just getting a gut Check. So a lot of that like collaboration is like underestimated. And definitely like go against the norm like you know sometimes your gut is right on the.

14:07.50
mike_flywheel
That's really, that's really smart and brilliant just like the concept of like the working together and finding synergies. Even if it's not like this partnership of go-to-market every time or crossing over but where can you just learn from. Um you know, similar businesses or combined forces with similar businesses to gain economies of scale which. I think that's a piece that a lot of people miss is that economies of of scale maybe because now you know a lot of businesses are are digital in nature. So they think economies of scale is purely cloud but sometimes it's the partnerships you have sometimes it's the other things you have to do and and you talked to even about some of that buying power. Um, so let's jump into Cabo. Ah.

14:25.40
Vino
Um, image.

14:44.20
mike_flywheel
This is called pitch please so before we do anything I'm and I'm going to have to start with your pitch get that drink of water if you know, um, let it hear it. What is your pitch please.

14:52.11
Vino
Yeah, so like kabo we're on a mission to help dogs live happier and healthier lives and we simply do that by making meal time easy and enjoyable again. You know the experience of currently you know feeding your dog is a bit broken because we feed them essentially the equivalent of processed food. Um, the ingredients and controls aren't really there with production from the government. So when we wanted to change that experience cabo just allows a customer to come online enter in information about their dog everything from age weight breed and from that we're able to actually recommend that that dog owner diets that are suitable. And the right amount of calories in portion. So we really fight the biggest issue which is overfeeding because anytime a dog looks at that bull. You just think I should just fill it up but really our dogs actually need a specific amount of calories based on this information about them and we simplify that process and we make it easy for customers to choose between. Products like frozen freshly cooked dog food all the way to dry deliver it right to their doorstep and make it a simple subscription and continue to provide our group of subscribers. Fun enjoyable products like we have a protein bar for dogs. We do an ice cream for dogs every summer so we like to keep a fun and interesting just as much as ensuring that meal time is taken care of.

16:08.21
mike_flywheel
All right? but keep it down my dog's listening in the other room as soon as they heard protein bars. She's like licking her lips ice cream not too Loud. So You said that you know the business was inspired. Um, by your own dog that passed away of stomach cancer and you were talking to the vet that inspired the name Cabo Obviously super compelling story of like this is a real problem for you. What made that problem turn into a business and I guess generally I know we've sort of mentioned it by like. Let's talk about the problem that you're solving here and and open that and unpacked that a little bit because I don't even know that people understand that they just might understand allergies I learned something and your opening around like the concept of the crossbreeding creates some of these issues and so we have to be more aware of it. Can you talk about that problem and and a little bit about.

16:49.21
Vino
Um, it like.

17:03.40
mike_flywheel
You know your own journey and learning there that pivoted you into starting cabo.

17:05.15
Vino
Yeah, yeah, definitely yeah I think the hard part is is like you know as a pep parent. We don't really think about like what's going to. You know, affect my dog's life 8 years from now. Really what we look at is like we got this puppy I want to take care of it today and tomorrow. Interesting thing that we went through with Cabo is like knowing that she's a chow chow. We didn't know that she's predisposed to like stomach cancer because we're essentially inbreeding these pets to get a certain specific breed that kind of that has like a level of consistency on the fur or the look or what have you Ah, but knowing that information like. That's kind of key. The hard part is is like as a pet parent. You're not getting a puppy and planning that 108 years out so we looked at that as like 1 of the biggest issues is that like if we know what's going to be the cause of um, you know an illness or fatality for them like is there something that we can do to help guide them better. And the more we spoke to vets and actual nutrition experts with graduate studies background what we realized was that you know there's 2 things that affect the life the activity so they actually need like 30 minutes to an hour of like strenuous activity. Not like just a stroll they actually depending on the breed it varies. But that's what got. That's what has me running outside these days but the other thing is is diet and what's so interesting here is that like you know over 60% of pets are having health issues because they are obese and if we look at humans like a lot of this stuff mirrors over right? like if we eat better and exercise better. We could live a longer life.

18:32.26
Vino
1 of the biggest issues we face is obesity. One of the biggest issues that pets face is obesity and when they have obesity they have a higher propensity for most of these diseases so when we looked at it. We said how can we just use food to solve that obesity problem because it's not that owner not knowing how much to feed the dog. It's just that like you know when you're probably looking at that dog food bag. You're not looking at that little like chart on the back. That's like a periodic table of elements trying to decipher how much to feed your dog exactly. It's like what are they gonna stop giving me puppy dog eyes. That's what I'll stop. But you know.

18:55.24
mike_flywheel
It's just like will they keep eating if I give it and the answer is they will always keep eating.

19:03.76
Vino
What we said simply is like can we just like produce a better form of less processed food because we know the processed food also contributes to the obesity. It's like if I were to eat Mcdonald's every day. It's probably not a great idea then the other side of it was saying can we portion control it and those are the the 2 things that we knew if we can control in this experience. Like producing more fresh dog food that we can deliver to them that has the right portions then we're taking away the ability of overfeeding and we're really introducing diets that have a higher digestibility which is healthier for them.

19:32.92
mike_flywheel
That's Amazing. So Can we talk a little bit about um the types of dog food and I guess I'll want to understand because I'm sure people with pets are wondering you know like obviously there is existing raw food options for dogs. There's is existing multiple dog foods that are all over the spectrum. Um I don't know if all of them Deliver. We can talk about your benefits after but help us understand the industry like what are the the spectrum of where and how people get Food. What's available and then that way we can kind of mirror what you're doing and where that fits in.

20:03.60
Vino
Definitely yeah in Canada I think there's still about like 60% of people going into pet stores. So you know what? you'll typically see in terms of the incumbents of offerings is you have the big players like the purina the royal canines that are owned by Procter and gamble or Mars they're you know, typically distributed everywhere from a pet store to Walmart. Ah, you want to consider this as like the higher processed version of dog food. So this is typically dry. You'll notice. They're like chefs shelf stable for like 3 years like you know any of our food that stays that long I hope it's just like a spice almost ah but really like you know they've become experts at. Um, using extrusion to like have this product last as long as possible which is like blasting a lot of heat. Um, you know which breaks down the ingredients and then recombining it and then maybe spraying on some you know ingredients to ensure it meets like the the animal feeding control guidelines. And these incumbents have been here the longest then you have a lot of like these new players where as you've mentioned like raw is a great example. We're seeing a lot more of that in the pet store and raw diets is kind of like this concept around like you know predator-style eating ah the difficulty you know I think that that raw tends to have is like it's hard to create a balanced diet. Based on the feeding guidelines so that's been kind of like a content contentious thing that's been going on at the same time you know vets tend to want to stray away from it. You know that's a whole other story I'm not going to get in the middle of that one. But.

21:26.60
Vino
I think the interesting thing about raw diets that makes it a little bit difficult is like a safety piece for the human because there is a chance that like a raw you know product can cross-contaminate ah bring salmonella to us and it's you know, specifically a huge risk if you're like pregnant for instance to have like raw food or even just like touching that food bowl from the dog. Um, so there are still some challenges in terms of the use case of raw but raw's like 1 of the faster growing trends that are very popular and then the the final category is like you have freshly cooked diets so freshly cooked diets is something you know we see that we do that a lot of other smaller bone pop. We've seen kind of pop up here and there in different provinces. Um, and really with freshly cooked diets. It's like the same thing as ours. It's like you know, taking some chicken rice et cetera cooking it at like at a low temperature so that the nutrients is still there and it almost looks exactly like a shepherd's pie or a chicken rice dish. It just has 0 flavor because there's not like salt or pepper spices and. Ah, you know, specifically with our diets we're including like a nutrient mix. Yeah oh the dogs will love it. They get hooked. It's hard to take them off of it. That's what I'll say um, but you know on top of that we're obviously including like a nutrient mix. So everything is balanced. It's suitable for dogs at our puppy stage adult senior.

22:24.20
mike_flywheel
No no flavored eyes. They're gonna love it though.

22:40.52
Vino
Etc and you're able to customize it and because it's cooked. It gets frozen and it's vacuum seaalled and frozen. So it can last in the freezer for a very long time and at the same time. It's also safe for us to touch and and and and interact with.

22:53.60
mike_flywheel
Got it. So it's like precooked and frozen. Do you just feed it as is frozen but it's just cooked so like there's obviously frozen raw and the difference here is like instead of frozen raw. It's already cooked so you don't have to recook it or worry about the bacteria and stuff.

23:03.49
Vino
Um, right.

23:10.42
Vino
Exactly.

23:12.46
mike_flywheel
You just give it to them still frozen. They can eat that their teeth are real strong. You just give it to them frozen right away out of the out of the freezer or.

23:17.55
Vino
Yeah I'm sure if you give it to them frozen. They might take a long time. It might be more of popsicle actually might slow down my dog from eating too fast but a lot of a lot of people just thought out. Yeah, exactly a lot of people thawed out or heated out like ah like a microwave meal. Um.

23:22.69
mike_flywheel
Okay, so you could eat it up. Okay, yep.

23:31.98
Vino
So they can either heat it up or they can just thaw out most the time people just like thawed out and then kind of it becomes like a regular butt food exactly exactly exactly? yeah.

23:34.93
mike_flywheel
Okay, so like do like your you know your chicken breast just throw them in the for a fridge from the freezer and day or 2 before they're okay and then when they're kind of squishy. You're good to feed okay and then you also said so I have a german shepherd.

23:47.94
Vino
Yeah, but I should I should try the frozen thing because my dog scars things that way too fast. Oh yeah.

23:54.66
mike_flywheel
So you can give her frozen. It doesn't slow her down much like yeah, it goes real fast and and we actually we actually feed our dog those like pre-mixed raw patties but to your point like it's always been a discussion and we've talked to some of our friends who.

24:05.88
Vino
Um, yeah.

24:11.26
mike_flywheel
Use those 2 and you know they just recently had a child and when the wife was pregnant or now that they've got a child. They're worried even like the dog's tongue around the the baby so that it's a real thing. Um, so it's yeah and so you've got that but you've also got like is it like a kibble or is it like like.

24:19.36
Vino
Um, yes, yeah, it's a tricky piece.

24:29.37
Vino
Yeah, so we have another like dry dog food. It's also like used like the extrusion process similar to like what people normally see with dry dog food but we actually created that because you know when you think about freshly cooked and it's frozen like imagine you have like as you said like ah a large german shepherd or a great Dane like.

24:29.49
mike_flywheel
Freeze dried. What's the other category. You've got.

24:48.19
Vino
Freezer is going to be completely gone right? And then you're going to be eating chefloerity for for weeks on end and your dogs eating better than you so we found for larger dogs is like they want to have like maybe 25% of that diet be freshly cooked and then the other one being a dry dog food supplement. So what we did was you know we wanted to create something that was compatible with our so this is dry dog food. He uses all the ingredients are similar structure like we're trying to keep a natural source within Canada you know, ensure that it's not like some 4 year lifespan onto it. Keep as little preservers and and contents out of it and then just keep it as healthy and balanced so that.

25:15.21
mike_flywheel
Yeah.

25:22.14
Vino
Now We're giving options for medium and larger dog owners to get like 25%. Let's say they're ordering a freshly cooked and then the remainder is coming on the dry side and as we kind of continue to expand you know our goal is as we start to figure out some pieces like raw dog food in terms of like how we safely deliver it. The cross contamination Piece. We Want to introduce that as well because. Our premise isn't to say like okay you know if you go to Purena they're like okay if you're not feeding Dry. You're killing your dog and you go to the raw guys and they're like if you're not feeling raw making everybody feel bad but the truth is I think these product forms.

25:51.97
mike_flywheel
You're neutral. You do both.

25:53.52
Vino
Yeah, exactly we we want to do everything because one of the studies that like you know we've been looking at and and try to work on with some of the universities as well is like looking at diet variability in dogs. So just like us in terms of like eating different foods throughout the week we want to try and be able to show a premise of like what happens if they're eating raw and dry. Um, do their guts get better. Are they less sensitive to allergies. So there's some interesting things there I think that veterinary science schools are like helping with on the research side that we really want to see because you know eventually raw freeze to ride all these things like we want to be able to be the one source that produces it for you. You know it'll be safe. Either way, you're choosing in terms of options and you can get everything you need and in 1 place.

26:30.85
mike_flywheel
Can we talk about that for a bit so like obviously your background your brother's Background. You know how to do this like scale Shipping. You know how to do advertising you know how to build a brand I didn't see Chef on your resume or nutritionist. But it sounds like you're you know, weaving those concepts in is that like something you went to go learn. Are there people that you work with how are you formulating this dog food. That's different than others like it sounds like there's a lot of other moving parts in the background here Maybe tell us a little bit about that.

26:57.64
Vino
Yeah, definitely I would say like our r and d scientists Andrea she's like an absolute pro like we've had her since day 1 or actually I guess like day 10 or so but you know I read her. she did a graduate studies in companion animal nutrition you know she did a bit of. She wrote a piece about like freshly cooked food and like the digestibility for it and literally the only one in Canada to do it so you know we we got in touch I believe she's the one who actually reached out and then ever since then she's been on our team coming up with some of or like putting up with my crazy ideas. But. Helping us find the balance between okay like here's a crazy idea like pizza for dogs and you know how do we make this possible. What are the things that we need to think about like on a nutrition basis. Is there a functional component. We can add to it and then you know just given the hard job of making it come become a reality. And then when we really started off in the beginning to understand how production works and operating a kitchen and you know we have like a human grade facility. That's hasip and cfi approve. So literally you can cook human food in our facility and like that's really important for us when it comes to the food we produce because we produce at a higher standard. We actually learn from. A really good friend of mine Greg who's like the chef and owner of burger drops which is a a local toronto burger join here in Liberty Village and he's just an amazing production. He used to work at Allloette and allo and like was a line chef I believe.

28:25.88
Vino
Um, so having him in the kitchen really helped us like organize and understand like how do we build a production team. You know how do we? you know stand top of things like inventory but a lot of it came down to like you know leveraging people around us or having people join the the team.

28:36.98
mike_flywheel
Yeah, so you kept true to that theme. You talked about earlier which is like collaboration even with people that aren't even in the business sometimes finding the experts bringing them into the business but just getting these insights to to go build this out so it sounds like a massive operation. So like you've got your like you've got your own.

28:47.53
Vino
Exactly.

28:55.50
mike_flywheel
Manufacturing facility that you've had to get into to do this? Um I guess you're storing all of this somewhere. It's not like your basement cold freezer like it sounds like you're you're at a pretty big scale here. How do you do all that like what? what's the what did you have to go stand up is that sort of what that raised was about um and what's sort of like that journey.

28:59.67
Vino
Um, that it.

29:14.72
mike_flywheel
Journey to where you're at now like what were some of the early days like was it your freezer in your basement. Um the Chowo Chow just kind of looking over.

29:19.64
Vino
Um, yeah yeah I'd say ah yeah I feel like for every frozen or food brand. We all kind of go through the same journey of like cooking in your kitchen and I'd have like a million vacuum seers from Costco here just running and. Ah, sucking up the beef recipe to to to pack and freeze in my freezer and my parents and everyone else's and obviously at a certain point we kind of move over to a commissary kitchen which is like a shared almost like a shared coworking space. But for kitchens. Ah, and even when we started out growing bad like that's really when when we were looking at financing the business. Yes, a certain amount of capital goes to growth but a lot of it was around like here are our cogs levers like what do we want to own. We know we want to own the production and we know we want to own the distribution and distribution was big for us because we knew if we could reach more canadians that was going to be a big piece. And in order to distribute a frozen product like you can imagine how difficult that would be you know considering how bad Canada post or some of these other players can be with our regular deliveries and that was really an important piece for us because we knew if we couldn't deliver you know frozen food in a cost-effective way. Then the business wasn't going to make sense right? It's kind of like pets.com in 9099 or whatever when they were shipping. You know these twenty Kilogram bags of dog food and it would cost them more than the cost of the product to ship it around. Ah but what was interesting is what we did raise that financing the you know first few things we did was actually set up.

30:45.70
Vino
These like fulfillment centers. So we have one in Vancouver we have one in Calgary and we have one in Mississauga and what they have is like these giant like 15000 Square foot freezers that get to like minus thirty five they also have like a fridge unit in front of it and what that allows us to do is like. You know produce the product because we know there's a certain amount of inventory. You know we're going through like £50000 a month on average now and with that that's a lot of dog food to store and distribute so in order to get it to the customer where one you know the product is still frozen and good quality and and 2 like cheap and effective.

31:06.69
mike_flywheel
Wow.

31:20.39
Vino
Ah, we had to set up these fulfillment centers so that we could store the product and then we leveraged last mile distribution partners which is something that's like been very new over the last five or so years it's been around for a while but really exploded over the last five years where you can almost think of it as these like software tech companies that are using uber drivers. To come and pick up and deliver packages. So someone who has a van can take you know 100 boxes and deliver it and probably will do a better job because he's getting compensated on a performance basis right? versus someone who works at a federal courier company so that was another game changer because being able to ship £15 of frozen dog food to someone's door.

31:56.41
mike_flywheel
Yeah.

31:58.42
Vino
Probably be expensive but we can do that like well under 10 dollars and you know a big piece for us. You know what I felt like could have been a bit faster was like if we had these fulfillment centers in place and we could just like ship our product and start selling right? Away. It would have been amazing. But every time we were kind of stuck. Similar to what a lot of other direct-to-cons consumerer brands do which is go out raise money build a fulfillment center or find a way to distribute it and what we found was like in Canada there just isn't a lot of frozen or fresh 3 pl which are considered like third partyy logistics companies. So that's why we went on the journey of building it ourself.

32:28.50
mike_flywheel
Yeah.

32:33.98
Vino
And really from that like what kind of grew from that experience of like you know watching us, do it was that you know over the last year and a half I've had every other food brand in Canada kind of come to me and be like hey listen like I'm running out of space in my commissary kitchen or my basement. Do you know where this freezer space and. What was interesting is like when we built this infrastructure. We have the tech and the and the manpower and the physical component. Um, we started saying like why can't we fix this experience for other brands right? Like why does everyone have to go through the same shitty experience from the basement to then raising a shit ton of money just so that they could use a freezer just like ours. And they have orders online just like ours so we started working with some of these brands and said hey listen like let us be your operation arm as your third -party logistics company and we'll help you go from toronto Toronto nd you know our first client on this third -party logistics end of things. Ah, was able to launch into bc in one week and ah you know we're able to offer prices that are way more competitive because you know we really built this around the experience of what it's like to be a direct to consumer business because margins are everything and we know that you know if we can help save the money and we could subsidize some of that cost from the cabo side. And if they grow we can mutually benefit and really you know this this this journey has been like phenomenal to take it from that kitchen to now like helping others go through ah that journey of like being able to move out of the kitchen move out of your house move out of the province. Even.

34:01.19
mike_flywheel
So so many thoughts because like at first I'm like okay Cabo is the good food for pets and then you start telling me about this secondary component of your business where I'm like you're. Amazon and you've built warehouse space for other things and now you're like hey I want to share this and then you're kind of like okay actually I'm like a cloud provider too because I'm going to like help scale that up and I'm going to benefit from it and share that benefit with others. Um. That's so cool. So like you know Cabo is the main thing but by necessity you've had to go build out capabilities and back to what you talked about earlier, you're sharing it with the community and so you're winning because you're going to be able to scale up even more and create a bigger footprint for cheaper and you're helping them get access to things that they can't get at that rate.

34:43.21
Vino
Okay.

34:54.14
Vino
Um, exactly are.

34:57.99
mike_flywheel
And you're helping them win and creating those collisions is that called Cavo is it called something else.

35:01.27
Vino
Yeah, so we actually just launched the brand. It's called pack Fresh So packfresh dot Ca is where we're starting to create some content around fulfillment education everything from how to deliver chocolate to anything else that we get in terms of questions. So yeah, we really enjoyed that experience of.

35:04.80
mike_flywheel
Okay.

35:20.74
Vino
Now grown it to about 10 or 12 different brands that we're working with distributing from Bc to Ontario and as you said like you know we're very upfront with them and I think what really sticks with a lot of the brands that we work with is you know some of them not even fresh or frozen. They're just like regular. They might be just selling regular ambient or dry products. But I think the thing that sticks with them outside of the pricing or our reach is really the the experience right? Like we are brand owners ourselves like you're not going to find another 3 pl a warehouse in all of Canada that has someone who launched a direct-to-consumer brand as well. So we understand the pain points. We know why they need margins here. We know. How difficult it is with all these random fees that normally warehouses charge them and we really prioritize communication. So you know they're able to like pick up a number and and call it and someone will answer and it's not an account manager. It's literally someone in the fulfillment center. Um, and like this like. Connection piece is It's so simple but I can't believe that's the biggest differentiator that's like really converting people over.

36:17.91
mike_flywheel
That's crazy it. It matters. It's the it's so funny How often that piece is missed over and you called a communication but I think it's actually people and it's like people at the core and when you go build those relationships sometimes people forget.

36:30.22
Vino
Um, a.

36:34.88
mike_flywheel
In business right? that it's people at the other side and actually just treating them and getting down their level and collaborating and being super authentic about it is a world of difference and it sounds like you know you're being super humble about it and saying you know that you know it's you know the responsiveness the connection but man I think they want to learn from you. You're doing amazing things. You've got this thing that you've probably broken down a lot of barriers and I would want to be in proximity if I was in this space just to learn from you to to catch you know, catch a draft. Using you know f 1 or tour de France terminologies and and they're kind of catching a draft on on what you are doing with Cabo so that's quite amazing. What's I want to talk more about it in a couple different spectrums. But um I guess it'd be a good.

37:09.16
Vino
Um, today.

37:23.30
mike_flywheel
Point to ask like are you just in Canada today. Are you in North America where what sort of like stage are you are you at as a company and in your journey.

37:31.93
Vino
Yeah, so we're primarily. Ah, only folks in Canada at the moment we have done like limited time drops in sales internationally with our protein bar. Ah. But our main focus is primarily servicing the canadian audience like we feel like we have a good moat here and we haven't really reached the majority of the people we want to like in the coming year. We're launching our Montreal Micro-fulfillment Center so a smaller version of what we have built out so that we can reach more people out there in Atlantic canada as well. So those are 2 big areas and then really getting into the weeds of some of the areas that might not be as like Let's say top hitting for like you know a bigger brand like if we were to think about like Regina or Winnipeg these are regions that we want to get distribution into so that's still a huge focus of ours because we feel like we can learn a lot from this audience we can test a lot of products. And then definitely in the works is working on some like export business. So we're currently looking at the opportunity the us I think what's really difficult is like there's a lot of competitors. A lot of players. We we stay in touch with all of them and it just sounds like a huge pissing match of like ad dollars being thrown left and right.

38:34.64
mike_flywheel
All but also in like the delivered dog food Fresh frozen. Okay, so the you're you're like I am the Canadian Market leader right now for now.

38:39.80
Vino
Yes, exactly so it. Yes, yes, we're definitely the largest in in fresh dog food delivery in Canada in the states I wouldn't say it's the same. it's you know it's it's funny hearing there so because a lot of them are vc -funded and it's a little bit of this like. Stuff that we saw that didn't really work at facebook right? like I get it like the lifetime value of of these dog profiles can be anywhere from like 1502000 but the reality is is if you're paying you know $300 cpa right now to acquire them. It's going to take a couple boxes to get that paid back and especially to market like this. It's very difficult. But I think areas that really excite us are you know markets that are growing in middle- income households so you know in in india and like hydra bad for instance, like they just finally had like people actually adopting dogs. You know, whereas most of the times dogs are like you know, kept outside of the house. So when you start to see these like populations and countries kind of move in that direction. You know we see that as like a more of an interesting opportunity to say like okay, how do we? you know make this play are we working as an export and producing here. Do we think about locally producing there. Um, you know there's all these different avenues on geographic expansion. But we want to be a bit strategic and not just think of it as like canada and the us.

39:55.43
mike_flywheel
That's cool. So it's you are thinking about expansion but you're thinking outside of the us as well. You're thinking like where can you go get smart about about where you expand. Um, so tell me how it works How how does how does Cabo work I Assume step one go to your website.

40:00.22
Vino
Is here.

40:08.79
Vino
Yeah, yeah, definitely so step. 1 you go to the website Kabo Ceo right now we're completely online direct to-consumer this year at actually entering to next year we're starting to enter into retail so we're doing 2 stores in Calgary that was just starting to pilot out and learn how we can kind of. Create a good retail offering but right now customers go to kabo co they started for entering information about their dog from their the dog's name all the way down to the weight age breed what that allows us to do is calculate the number of calories that that dog needs on a daily basis so you'll even tell us like how active they are. And then based on that we'll then present a recipe screen where you can choose everything from dry to fresh. You can do mixed and then you can choose your portions of mix. So maybe you want to do 25% freshly cooked 75% dry. Maybe you want a delivery frequency that's different. So once you've kind of selected those options. You're right off to start your trial so within the trial period you know if you don't like the food you can easily cancel subscription. You know we make it easy as possible for people to pause or cancel. Yeah, yes, yes, you can test it too. But I don't know how good I don't know how good I'll pass on that taste test.

41:12.87
mike_flywheel
I Mean if your dog doesn't like the food Hopefully you're I mean you could eat it. It's like ah.

41:23.14
Vino
But yeah, like essentially if you find that your dog's able to take to it. There's no issues if they have any issues they can actually reach out to us. We have ah our customer experience team is actually a team of veterinarians. So like people who come from a veterinary background or animal Health Science background.

41:32.98
mike_flywheel
Oh wow.

41:38.56
Vino
Um, so they really talk you through it if you ever dog have allergy even before you purchase they can start chatting with us and then once you become a subscriber you have access to our marketplace where I mentioned we do have like seasonal treats um different products that are being dropped offers that might help out the pet parent throughout their journey. And really you know as we kind of go on that journey with them. They're able to easily pause change a subscription. Do all the things that are kind of necessary in the subscription era but we want to make that experience seamless for them. So anytime they want to adjust the portions or they want to talk to someone about it. They're able to get in touch with us and it really becomes a. You know, a very high retention based experience because you know feeding your dog food is something that you do ritually and you know ideally your dog's not asking for something new every week So It's a little bit different than humans and things like good food or hell fresh. But yeah, yeah.

42:26.52
mike_flywheel
Yeah, you don't have to pick your like what do you want this week recipe their recipes are pretty consistent I guess that's a advantage over time. That's cool and how often does it? What's like the the delivery frequency or do you pick and what are the options.

42:33.73
Vino
Exactly.

42:39.89
Vino
Yeah, so you could pick and based on your region. It might vary so obviously more in city core areas. We can do more flexible last mile distribution. So maybe you're receiving it every 2 weeks if you're further out or maybe if you're ordering less food. It's monthly. But. People can choose every eight weeks every twelve weeks we have people who use the food as just like toppers to add into their dog's diet and they're ordering like chess freezer worth of food every 6 months like power to you if you have the electricity for that. Um.

43:04.27
mike_flywheel
Oh.

43:10.16
Vino
But for the most part like we really focus early on on that flexibility. But when it comes to delivery. We actually deliver on a once a week cycle. So if you order in Monday you're kind of batched in and if you you know, kind of miss that cycle you're on the next delivery cycle but that's really important when it comes to. Ah, keeping your costs low making sure the experience is good for everyone as well being able to like ensure you have flexibility if there are any changes that happen.

43:37.10
mike_flywheel
God it makes sense. Um, and I think just so that people you know we'll put in the link and in the show notes as well. But if you're looking, don't try to go on vacation. We've been talking about freezers the whole time. It's not cabo with a c it's cabo k a B O Dot Co.

43:50.74
Vino
Yeah, yeah.

43:52.65
mike_flywheel
Just want to make sure they go to the right place and don't end up in Mexico or something and instead. Um what is it? okay for me to ask like where does this fall relative to like the price of other options. It's obviously got pros and cons around a directed consumer model. But it's.

44:04.31
Vino
Yeah, yeah.

44:11.23
mike_flywheel
Sounds like it's a little bit more premium. Obviously you're paying for the health of your dog. It's the same as like yeah, can we get to Mcdonald's Cheeseburger real fast real cheap. But if I want to like get a nice healthy salad with proper proteins and vegetables and it's going to cost me a little bit more where does it fall on that spectrum relative to to other options. People probably use.

44:26.92
Vino
Yeah, so on average we say with our dogs like what you're looking at a price point is around 3 to $5 a day so we almost think of it as like a coffee when you compare to a lot of other dog food. We're actually like so if you think about the everyday kiable you might be grabbing at Walmart or Costco. We're definitely like 2 x over that price. We're like a premium food. It's freshly cooked like all the ingredients are from here. Um, so we tend to be 2 x higher than that and then when you look at more of like the premium up'll put in quotes dry dog food. That's out there. They're actually about like closer like we're maybe at most like 20 to 50% higher than. And what they're doing so we're actually able to kind of keep it down when you compare it to like things like freeze dryed ah freeze-driied raw or freezedry products. They're more expensive than a freshly cooked but let's say our dry option. It's only about like 15 to 20% higher than ah, what the comparable would be in a pet store. Um, so for the most part we we do like we do know that like it is a premium pricing and hopefully over time without inflation in the area like we're able to kind of bring these things down but a lot of it came down to like us being able to own our own costs being able to bring production in-house these kind of things have been important and allow us to kind of like pass back that saving. And hopefully over time as well. Once we're able to produce more and more volume. We've always been able to like bring the price down I think the hard part was like prior to everyone else feeling inflation. We've been having it since covid with like chicken prices flectuatingating. It's like watching the stock market but you're you're hoping for thighs to come down.

45:53.90
mike_flywheel
Yeah, that's crazy I Can only imagine like the the swings in that because they are protein rich diets. So so at some point that you're really feeling the pain of that meat despite all the other things you're adding in into there actually question on that because I know like.

46:04.17
Vino
Mean.

46:13.62
mike_flywheel
And Raw like there's the bone in all those elements. How does that How does that work in the the cooked product is. There's like bone and stuff mixed in is that good for the I don't know like you've got the people on the team. So is that like a thing.

46:25.85
Vino
Yeah, so typically bone and things like that are kind of the source of like calcium and phosphate and these are like the minerals and vitamins as kind that's needed what we do is We don't actually take that source from the the raw meat itself because the digestibility of that is actually ah apparently like extremely low.

46:40.89
mike_flywheel
No.

46:42.60
Vino
So even if you're taking like one hundred grams of like let's say this? ah bone powder is going to be in ah the digestibility might be a lot lower on like the 10 to 15% so the the difficulty there is like okay, how do you make sure it's adequate enough for the dog without giving them like you know £4 of bow powder. Ah, so what we do is like we formulate a vitamin mineral mix that's like separate from it so it has the same properties natural everything that we try and keep and like not not synthetic and then we actually introduce that into the cooking process. So as part of the cooking process while they're cooking the meat. It's actually like something that's done separately so that we can extract it and then make sure it's added back in and then. It ensures that the when we send it to the labs for testing it'll have like the right levels of calcium phosphate and all the micro micro minerals and nutrients.

47:26.54
mike_flywheel
This is so cool I'm when we can coordinate it I want to tour I'm like fascinated by the like the scale and complexity of this operation to make our dogs happy and healthy I Love it. Um.

47:28.95
Vino
Yeah, yeah, you got to come by.

47:35.55
Vino
English.

47:43.44
mike_flywheel
I'm like do we start with like learning what like your hardest lessons were the most memorable. Let's start the fun. What like what is like on this journey. What is like the thing that's brought the smile to your face. The thing that you're most excited. Or energized about that. That's sort of like a core memory of of this journey and it sounds like it's been a couple years how how long three years four years okay yeah so what's like the most memorable exciting moment of that 4 years that kind of like sticks with you.

48:00.00
Vino
Yeah I think it's four years now yeah Yeah, yeah,

48:09.32
Vino
I think one that just comes to top of mind is like when I start to see like the team kind of directing the vision of the business because I think when when we start of course it's you know, just the cofounders and you know you have such great conviction at the direction but really in the later years or majority of it. It's like less of us and it's like more of our team right? Like. It's someone else who comes up with the idea of like a to go snack bar for dogs and I'm like that's great. It's like Cli bar for dogs and we said let's give it a try or you know it's like car in our head of operations who's like dude like why don't we just like spin out a 3 pl business and offer these brands like better support. We can you know all win together and. Always love that like I love that that piece is the thing that like really drives me that like really makes it feel like okay if I was hit by a bus. We're going to be okay.

48:55.74
mike_flywheel
I I think as you say that? um, recently I talked to the the founder of lexop they they do like their saas product that helps in in collections. Um, but 1 of the things that he was talking about. The impressiveness of the team. You're talking about the impressiveness of the team I think the synergy that I'm seeing across all these people is actually this aspect of you know you have really put your heart and soul in and hired amazing people. Truly believe and so you've brought that company culture in where they want to innovate this is their company just as much as is your company now. So it's really cool to see that how how big it sounds like your team's like 10000 people for all the things you're doing but how how big is this power powerhouse team at cabo.

49:28.67
Vino
A is a.

49:42.15
Vino
We're actually a fairly small team so on the operation side because we have our different fulfillment centers. We're actually closer to like maybe 15 or so maybe a little bit over that on on that side and that's for 3 fulfillment centers which is quite quite not quite a lot actually when you think about it. Um, so we kind of won run lead operations on that end and then on top of it like I'd say like our office team is only really four individuals so we have a really really tight and small team and we collaborate a lot so we work with a lot of contractors like different designers web developers here and there.

50:06.11
mike_flywheel
Wow.

50:15.96
Vino
But I think 1 thing we saw from Facebook was like you know you'd have. Ah ah you know an ecommerce business that's building pants but has like a 2000 person engineering team and you're like we're not in the game to like reinvent the checkout button I'm here to sell some dog food on the internet. So I think when we really look at that team. It's about like these core functions like having Andrea or scientist. My brother and I are able to play dual roles and then really think about you know how do you collaborate or pull in other groups of individuals that can really help benefit like a campaign or a project. We're working on and then really the bulk of our team is on the operations and the day-to-day picking and packing organizing a lot of that. You know lifeblood of the business.

50:54.99
mike_flywheel
Yeah I want to touch on that piece about your brother I Want to bring him back into this dialogue I don't know if I'm like this magnet for like family founders I've got like a whole series I just started like a whole separate series on family founders. Um, what's that. Been been like like what's the easiest part. What's the hardest part like what are the pros or cons because I've seen so many different perspectives and I think it's It's a good one because it's like the Natural. It's the person you trust. But I think there's like guardrails to understanding the pros and cons of that because I'm sure a lot of people think about that out of the gates. Um. But they need to know both sides of the equation any any thoughts on that now that you you know you've done that a few times. So Obviously you and your brother create some magic something special going on over there So tell us about it.

51:33.81
Vino
Yeah, yeah, definitely I think ah the it might be a caveat that you know being identical twins is a little different than siblings like I've seen even siblings twelve months apart not have ah the the best rapport with each other but ah. Yeah I think for us like we've always been aligned like other than university we've kind of spent most of our time together and working at Facebook you know sharing that experience is like a big piece and then of course like I think the number 1 thing you have with like a family oribling member is like something that you always need with a cofounder which is like trust you know you need like this ability to trust them. Like there are moments. You're probably going to get paranoid and I've seen it a lot with other founders and cofounder dynamics and that doesn't happen. You know I think like when you're able to have something like family involved. There is something deeper than just the business which is a great pro because you'll always be a line There's. You know when I'm gone somewhere. He's able to cover and vice versa. We have very complementary skill sets which also helps the difficulty can be like you know you're you're taking you're always going to be an alignment for granted and you know you're not really taking the work to say okay like we need just like every other cofounder relationship we need to improve our communication skills like. We need to like go through these processes and like really these exercises almost like you'd go through with couples therapy. You know every cofounder should be doing it but because you're so aligned all the time you're like okay we don't need to do this I don't need to check on him for this but it's important just like how we check out our employees about like how they're feeling with workload like.

53:05.70
Vino
You know I think we take our each other for granted that like okay if we knew we knew, but that's where I think it gets a little bit harder where you know you do really need some of those like practices that you'd normally have with people who aren't your siblings and making sure and checking in on each other to be like you know how are you feeling? Um, you know are we still on the same page. Ah, because sometimes I think we could just be so aligned that it's almost harder to look outside and be like what are we not aligned on anymore right? because you're still growing as an individual and changing as 2 different people.

53:31.69
mike_flywheel
Yeah, so I can embrace the trust but you know don't don't take for granted that you still need to nurture this relationship the same way you would with someone that's not you know, family to to make sure that you you're breaking through it every every turn possible.

53:44.94
Vino
Exactly.

53:46.72
mike_flywheel
What's been like the hardest I mean I don't know it sounds all really hard. What do you talk through. You make it sound so easy. But what's been like the hardest part of of getting this to where it is today.

53:56.74
Vino
Who that's a tricky one? Um yeah I'd say definitely the hardest part is um, not being able to like I think like really get a lot of the the support that we see in the states I think like you know, looking back at it. What what? I find is always very difficult and and like for canadian entrepreneurs is like we have a difficult challenge here because like our country population wise I think we're just about to be California in terms of size but you know we're like the second largest country in the world with a population just around the same size California. I think one of the hardest parts is always like having this conversation as like why we're choosing to build in Canada and being able to get a bit more support for it right? I think like that's always been the difficult part. It's like an uphill battle and my brother and I like we could have gone and build a business in the states. But I think as well. Another experience. We just saw was like all these people that. Great and talented in Canada going and leaving and working in the states and launching their startup in the states and doing all this in the states and when we were even thinking about cabo outside of the problem that our dog was going through. We were also thinking like what can we do in Canada right? and like you know Canada has great agriculture. You know we we actually have you know. Some of the top. Ah out of the top 5 pet food companies in the world in distribution like 3 of them are based out of here actually 1 of them just got sold to Mars so maybe not anymore. But the problem here is like I feel like that's always been the biggest challenge right? It's always been like how do we think about distribution here when there's no warehouses right.

55:24.95
Vino
How do I reach these people in this city that obviously have a demand for this Product. You know how do I get the financing to do it. How do I you know talk to an entrepreneur who's been through it right? and I think what's difficult is like we're missing a bit of that ecosystem and honestly, that's you know why we love stumbling onto podcasts like yours right is just. You can hear these things and you're like oh other people like this exist and it's no longer this like daunting feeling.

55:47.18
mike_flywheel
You know what I respect that so much that you're you know you're making a what is actually a very difficult decision to like wear that canadian pride and have that impact here in the canadian market. It's sort of the thing that I caught that was missing when I started this podcast is you hear about like the big money scenarios and the big. Tam and the addiction to quickly move into the us and what's your valuation? Are you going to break into the us market like whoever just talks about canadian companies at least impacting the canadian market and staying in Canada and then having that impact on the world. So respect I know it's it's a hard decision.

56:10.19
Vino
Make if a.

56:24.91
mike_flywheel
I'm sure a million times, especially when talking to investors or people you know trying to push back on you like well when you breaking into the United States is the Canadian Tam big enough. The reality is if you always guide by those decisions you have no innovation in Canada you'll have no great people creating great jobs in canada like we need to have a little bit more. A cycle of supporting that here. So so you know great great for doing that. Um, as we get to sort of the tail end I wanted to figure out if there's any final advice anything you want to mention that we didn't talk about today around what you're doing I'm still taking you off I wanted I want to do a tour. Ah um. But any final advice or or thoughts that you know you you wanted to share.

57:05.41
Vino
Yeah I think my but my final advice for anyone listening is just you know reach out like I think the number 1 thing is to always ask for help whether you're you know, reaching out to a podcast host and ah of someone that you're a fan of or someone who's done this business before. Think like a lot of the times we get in our heads and we feel a bit more siloed number 1 thing I think anyone can do is just reach out to anyone and and ask right like I think take your shot always ask for how people are willing to do it. You'll be very very surprised and that's literally like what got us to not only get into the world of dog food but now frozen supply chain. So. Who knows where I'll be a few months from now. Maybe a third one

57:42.44
mike_flywheel
I Love it. It's you're doing amazing work and you know what? the best part about your business is customer complaints are very quiet. The the end customer is always happy. So like you can only make them happier with better food So you're doing both at the same time.

57:48.96
Vino
Oh yeah, it's actually the best we get like the best photos.

57:59.43
Vino
Exactly like every Thursday and Friday Instagram gets flooded with delivery day photos of dogs ah and videos of dogs like going crazy for the cavel box and it's like the most like heartwormaning thing at the end of the week is like seeing all these customers and the dogs just like really enjoying it.

58:12.10
mike_flywheel
You must have some epic customer roundtables.

58:15.63
Vino
oh yeah, oh yeah definitely we have some like interesting even like we have like a former prime minister. That's a customer is so interesting like and like these like Netflix stars and we did the rubverdale cast I remember delivering to them back in the day. It's it's been a whirlwind of a journey.

58:31.77
mike_flywheel
So cool. Well you know if you know thank you for joining us today on the pitch please podcast. This is we've had a lot of like software. But we're we're breaking out. We'll talk to any canadian startup you're doing impressive stuff I I love that? um.

58:47.20
mike_flywheel
What you're doing is impressive but how you're creating this draft and bringing so many people along with you and creating like businesses that are supporting what you're doing. They're not like complete diversification but these other elements to it. It's like so unique and so special. Um, so much amazing advice. Keep up on the amazing work. We'll make sure all the great stuff's linked in the show notes. But thanks again for joining today Vino. Um, thank you everyone who listened in on the pitch please podcast and and hope you enjoyed this episode.

59:14.19
Vino
Awesome! Thanks Mike.