Dylan Munro | Co-Founder & COO, Spot & Tango
Spot & Tango grew from 12 boxes a week to 200 million meals served and an estimated $130M in revenue — 95% subscription, zero retail. Co-founder and COO Dylan Munro on why the company spent tens of millions building its own factory, how vertical integration cut UnKibble's cost nearly in half, and why frugality still governs a business investing at scale.
Before co-founding Spot & Tango, Dylan Munro was studying high-growth consumer brands at McKinsey, analyzing what separated great businesses from merely good ones. That experience gave him a front-row seat to what makes a company durable, and helped shape the blueprint for what Spot & Tango would become.
Eight years later, Spot & Tango is a profitable business generating an estimated $120–130 million in annual revenue, growing 60–70% year-over-year, with roughly 95% of sales coming through subscriptions. The company has invested tens of millions of dollars into building its own manufacturing, recently committing another $20 million to expand its Allentown facility and double production capacity, all while continuing to avoid traditional retail.
In this conversation, Munro explains why most pet food brands are really marketing companies, what it took to build manufacturing from scratch, how Spot & Tango turned a customer complaint into its flagship product, why frugality remains a core operating principle even after investing tens of millions, and how AI is beginning to reshape supply chain operations.
You were at McKinsey studying DTC brands before you co-founded one. Did that work basically show you the blueprint for what you wanted to build?
While at McKinsey, I was lucky to work both directly with DTC brands and also with investment firms who were deciding whether to invest in or acquire DTC brands. This gave me multiple perspectives into what makes a great ecommerce company across culture, execution, operations, marketing, and financial performance.
So, when I left McKinsey to co-found Spot & Tango, I knew what “good” looked like, and I’ve strived to build Spot & Tango into that kind of business. The key is to first build a product that is truly differentiated and that people love, and then build on that product-market fit to quickly prove that the unit economics — customer acquisition cost compared to the lifetime value of a customer — can work at scale.
Ultimately, by following these principles, we have been able to build a scaled, profitable business growing 60-70% year-over-year, and have made hundreds of thousands of dogs happier and healthier along the way.
Other Interviews
More conversations with founders, operators, and investors building the future of pet care.
Alexandru Bacita | Co-Founder & COO, The Cat Health Company
Cats are living longer, but the drugs for age-related disease have not kept pace. The Cat Health Company, a clinical-stage biotech, has three drugs in trials and 11 more preclinical candidates, and has out-licensed its first therapeutic. Co-founder and COO Alexandru Bacita explains why cats compress the drug-development loop, how the company targets muscle loss and kidney disease first, and why the route to longevity runs through veterinarians and pharma partners.
Elias Weiss Friedman | Founder, The Dogist Company
Elias Weiss Friedman spent a decade turning street photography into The Dogist, one of the largest dog-focused audiences online. Now he's testing whether that trust extends to physical products, starting with Vitality, a vet-formulated antioxidant chew built with Dr. Angela Rollins. He talks about the discipline of brand extension, the operational learning curve of a first physical product, and what a decade of stopping strangers on the street taught him about people, not just dogs.
Sarah McLean | Co-Founder & CEO, Big Damn Dog Co.
A joint supplement label that stopped at 60 pounds sent Sarah McLean looking for a product that did not exist. Big Damn Dog Co. is the bootstrapped answer: giant-breed formulations, dosing built for 120-pound dogs, and a customer list the founders still call by phone. Six months after launch, its Gravy Blend already accounts for roughly 40% of joint supplement sales.