Drizzle on top: a new high-end dog food brand is coming for the 1%

The pet food aisle has never been more crowded, which is exactly why Hilary Coles says she was skeptical when Atomic Labs came calling.

“I had the same reaction you did,” Coles told me on a call Monday afternoon, a day before her new company, Golden Child, opened for business. “Surely that can’t be what people need.”

Coles co-founded Hims & Hers with Andrew Dudum, Jack Abraham, and Joe Spector back in 2016 and spent seven years there overseeing brand, physical products, and consumer strategy before taking a year and a half off to have her children. She describes herself as “a consumer person first” who happened to land in healthcare. Dog food wasn’t “on the bingo card,” as she put it.

The pitch that won her over was rooted less in dog food specifically than in a methodology. Atomic, the startup studio founded by Abraham, runs what it calls “painted door tests” — lightweight experiments designed to reveal what consumers will actually do, not just what they say they want. When Atomic ran those tests in the pet food space, interest was clear. The team then studied 11,000 reviews of existing fresh dog food products and found recurring complaints: inconvenience, dogs getting sick, food that felt like a chore to prepare and serve. “We started to peel the onion,” Coles said.

What they found, she and her co-founder Quentin Lacornerie argue, is an industry that hasn’t innovated in about 12 years — a claim that strains credulity, given how crowded the premium and human-grade segment has become — but one they say ties to 11,000 customer reviews showing persistent complaints about existing fresh food options, even as the humans feeding their dogs have dramatically changed their expectations.

Lacornerie, who was part of the founding team at Hims & Hers and spent years spearheading its personalized growth strategy, says there are lots of parallels to the early days of that company. “Wellness has eclipsed Big Pharma by 4x in market cap,” he noted. Pet parents who take collagen for joint health, who read ingredient labels, and who track their own nutrition and increasingly want the same rigor applied to what goes in their dog’s bowl.

Golden Child is launching with two “five-star” products sold direct-to-consumer for now: a fresh frozen meal system and, more intriguingly, a “drizzle” — a shelf-stable liquid topper that can be added to whatever a dog is already eating, whether that’s Golden Child’s own food, kibble, or something else. The drizzle retails for $19.95 a bottle. The meal system starts at $3 a day and is sold primarily on subscription, though a starter box is available for people who want to ease into the relationship.

The drizzle is the more novel idea and, presumably, the higher-margin one. I asked Coles whether the company had considered just focusing on that product. “Like all entrepreneurs, we have a lot of opportunities to build out worlds,” she answered. “This is just the first inning.”

The food itself is made in the U.S. across multiple manufacturing facilities, using human-grade supply chains — a harder thing to establish than it sounds, said Lacornerie. The recipes were developed by a PhD in animal nutrition; Megan Sprinkle, who is one of only roughly 80 board-certified veterinary nutritionists in the country; and (naturally) a classically trained chef, one who has work ties to Ina Garten and Guy Fieri, says Lacornerie.

The company also developed what it’s calling a “protein block,” a way of delivering chicken and beef with an enhanced amino acid profile that standard meat cuts alone don’t provide, says Coles.

Golden Child is announcing $37 million in total funding today as it comes out of stealth — a seed round and a Series A led by Redpoint Ventures, with Atomic and A* also participating. That’s a meaningful amount for a company selling dog food, but Lacornerie says that doing it right requires actual experts who don’t just dial it in. Indeed, among the company’s 12 employees, the nutritionists and chef are all on staff, not advisors.

The brand name is broad by design. When I asked whether Golden Child might eventually expand into shampoos, travel gear, even some form of veterinary access — getting medication for a dog is its own particular bureaucratic headache — Coles didn’t deny it. “There’s a lot of interest and excitement from pet parents to involve their dogs in all aspects of their life,” she said. The goal, eventually, is to earn a place as a household brand, not just a food company.

Atomic has had notable successes along with some stumbles. Hims & Hers, now 10 years old, is a publicly traded company with a nearly $7 billion market cap. OpenStore, the e-commerce roll-up co-founded in 2021 by Abraham and venture investor Keith Rabois, tells a different story: After years of splashy coverage and more than $150 million in venture funding, it last year slashed its valuation by 95% and pivoted to focus on one of its brands, Jack Archer.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that OpenStore had shut down entirely.