Francesca Albo & Lea Burbidge Izquierdo | Co-Founders, Puppy Sphere
Puppy yoga read as a novelty. It is now 13 corporate-owned studios, 450,000 customers, and more than $14M in revenue, built without outside capital for four and a half years. Francesca Albo and Lea Burbidge Izquierdo explain why they financed growth from cash flow, passed on VC term sheets, and kept every studio company-owned instead of franchising. The story is not the puppies. It is the operating discipline underneath them.
When Puppy Sphere first launched, it could have easily been dismissed as a novelty, a fleeting wellness trend built more for social media than serious scale. But over the past few years, it has grown into something far more substantial.
What began as an unconventional experiment has grown into a $14M+ business with 13 studios and more than 450,000 customers. Behind that growth are founders Francesca Albo and Lea Burbidge Izquierdo, who built the company without following the typical startup playbook.
In this conversation, they reflect on what it took to get here: bootstrapping from the ground up, navigating the realities of scaling a physical business, and going 4.5 years without outside capital. They also open up about the less visible side of the journey, the financial discipline, sacrifices, and moments of doubt that came with turning a “crazy idea” into a multi-location company.
Take us back to the very first Puppy Sphere event. What was the idea behind it, and when did you realize this could become a real business?
This problem is deeply personal to us. Both my co-founder Lea and I have struggled with mental health, and our dogs gave us the mood boost we needed to get through some really dark periods. We experienced firsthand how transformative spending time with dogs can be. It can increase feel-good hormones like oxytocin and dopamine, lower stress, and create this immediate sense of connection and presence.
And positive socialization can be incredibly valuable for puppies too. Our dogs genuinely helped save us at our lowest points. We wanted to create that same kind of experience for more people. Not everyone has access to a dog when they need that support most, so Puppy Sphere became our way to make those mood-boosting interactions more accessible.
Four and a half years later, we’ve done $14M+ in bootstrapped revenue, served 450,000+ people, and built 13 studios, and we’re just getting started!
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.