Dakota Sheets | Founder, DogSauce

Dakota Sheets is a serial entrepreneur who has spent the last decade building, scaling, and selling businesses. With DogSauce, he set his sights on the pet category—launching a meal enhancer designed to bring variety and joy to dogs eating the same kibble every day.

In this conversation, Sheets walks through DogSauce’s journey from formulation to first production run, what it was like pitching at Walmart’s Open Call, and why retail—not paid ads—was always the end goal.

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Tell us about yourself—what were you doing before you launched DogSauce?

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My name is Dakota Sheets. I’m 30 years old and have lived in Colorado my whole life. I went to CSU for construction management, but I’ve been a founder for 10 years and this is my second startup after selling my first in 2020. I also run a boutique digital marketing business and have brought half a dozen companies to seven figures through performance ad spend.

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What is DogSauce and why did you decide to start it?

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One thing I wanted to target with my second business was connecting with a larger population, and I knew I could accomplish that through the pet space. DogSauce is a meal enhancer made up of bone broth and sweet potato puree. It was made to enhance dogs’ meals—but more importantly, to bring joy to dogs that have had the same kibble for most of their life with no changes.

I knew going into the pet space was a north star for me. This is a community I could wake up excited every day to be a part of and could contribute to.

After three years of working on formulation, we had our first production run in March of 2024. We knew with these scarce units we needed to focus on putting them in people of influence’s hands and collect honest feedback. The initial response has been great, and seeing thousands of dogs enjoying the product has been one of the best parts of my entrepreneurial career.

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What is Walmart’s Open Call event? How did you prepare to present there, and how did it go?

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Walmart’s Open Call is for businesses that manufacture and produce products in the United States. It’s an incredible opportunity for U.S. businesses to be seen by the largest retailer in the world.

I spent weeks crafting the pitch deck that we used to pitch our merchandisers. I’m sure my girlfriend could recite it by the time we got our opportunity in front of Walmart.

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What does it mean to win the Golden Ticket?

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Receiving a Golden Ticket from Walmart means that you have an opportunity to sell in Walmart stores across the country, depending on capacity and your company’s capabilities.

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Was it intimidating pitching in front of Daymond John from Shark Tank?

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Pitching in front of 700 people and Daymond John was one of the most terrifying and exciting moments of my life. Knowing the president of Walmart was watching me—and every merchandiser responsible for buying products inside Walmart—made my head feel like it was going to fall off my shoulders.

Once I got a couple of laughs, though, it felt like pitching my product to anyone passing by at a trade show.

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What are your main focuses right now?

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With a small team, my main focus right now is logistics, finance, and making sure all the moving parts are ready for our first large-scale production run. Switching my brain from e-commerce to retail requires a different attention to detail because it’s less of an attention game and more of a strategy for getting folks to grab our products off the shelves.

We’re very excited to roll out our sidekicks in the best stores of the 1,000 locations we’re launching in.

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What is the Walmart onboarding process like?

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The onboarding process was a lot more technical than I expected. Utilizing Walmart’s Retail Link was a bit like taking a college class for the first time. This is where the dynamic product data lives that allows for seamless purchasing from their locations and connects our warehouse to stay on top of POs.

From a human standpoint, it has been fantastic. Realizing Walmart buyers and merchants are just like buyers from any retailer has been a huge unlock for me—knowing the goals and margin negotiations are still the same.

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Why did you decide to approach Walmart instead of going all-in on DTC and paid ads?

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The goal for DogSauce was always to get into a large retailer like Walmart. This is a bit of a finance hack that allows a startup with no backing to start driving meaningful revenue, which is important when trying to lower production costs with volume.

We did spend money on Facebook and TikTok to grow last year, but I’ve always valued e-commerce more as an awareness tool that helps drive retail sales by allowing consumers to understand your product before seeing it on the shelf.

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It’s not often we get to speak with founders while they’re building. What advice would you give someone in a similar position to where you were a year ago?

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My biggest piece of advice is to just start and not overthink your initial launch. Building a brand has a lot of twists and turns and takes many years—until then, you’re only a product looking to get better.

When you’re a bootstrapped founder, people buy into you. It’s up to you to show up and become known for the category you want to make an impact in. This will be dismissed many times in the early days, months, or even years—but if you show up with consistency while innovating, you’ll earn the respect of the community you want to be a part of.

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