Dan Nagler | Co-Founder, Your Dog Is Bored

Your Dog Is Bored started with a pretty simple problem. Dan Nagler and his wife, Celeste, kept finding themselves asking the same question: our dog has energy... now what? That idea turned into a deck of activities that's quickly gaining traction with pet parents, retailers, and creators. We caught up with Dan to talk about where the idea came from, the early momentum, and what he's learned (and is still learning) since launching.

You've spent years helping other pet brands grow through Sniffworthy Labs. At what point did you decide, "I want to build something of my own," and what gave you the confidence to make that leap?

It built up slowly, then all at once. I spent years in BD and partnerships at consumer brands like Shutterfly and Adobe, along the way attempted our first startup, a mobile app for endurance athletes, then finally went out on my own doing fractional BD work for pet brands after the unexpected passing of our dog Wally. Through that work, and through the recent launch of Sniffworthy Labs, I kept sitting across from founders or marketers with the same problem: a good product, but to get it in front of the right consumer at the right time, they faced high CAC's.

Somewhere in that stretch, I noticed the same gap in our own house. My wife Celeste and I have had three very different dogs, and with our last two, Wally and Mochi, most days we'd run into the 7 pm zoomies. We would be standing there knowing our dogs needed something, with no fast answer for what. At some point it felt like a problem worth solving.

Given my background and our prior experiences, it gave us confidence to build a product like Your Dog Is Bored - it was a new challenge, a chance to help so many other pet parents, and aligned with our love of dogs.