Story
BarkBox wasn't a stroke of genius — it was 'the least shitty idea of the day'
Henrik Werdelin, co-founder of BarkBox/Bark, debunks the heroic-origin myth. The Disney-for-dogs subscription box started as a casual Friday brainstorm; they didn't think it would be a big business and only realized it was working once traction showed up.
“I think when you build a big business like we have now, you want to try to come up with these glorious stories about like how insightful you were. It wasn't really a big deal. Like, I think it was kind of like the least shitty idea of the day. We definitely didn't think it would be a big business. I think what we saw pretty quickly was that it was working.”
Framework
Anchor the business in a promise, not a product
Werdelin explains why he modeled Bark on Disney: Disney is hard to peg because it makes toys, parks and content, yet it's coherent because it's anchored in a customer promise. He built Bark around the promise of dog happiness rather than any single SKU.
“And so I think what was intriguing for a slightly kind of neurotic entrepreneur like myself was this idea that you could anchor your businesses not in a product that you were making, but in a promise or a problem you were solving for your customer. And we wanted to make our dogs happy.”
Steal thisAnchor your brand in the customer problem or promise you solve, not the product you ship — it lets you expand into new lines without losing coherence.
Tactic
Validate demand by taking a real credit card on the spot
Instead of asking whether people liked the idea, the founders pulled up Square and charged real money the moment someone said they'd sign up. They hit ~70 paying accounts before they'd built anything, proving demand was real rather than polite.
“And he was like, well, I have Square on my phone. I can just take a credit card right now. Yeah. Let's see if this is real or if this is Polite. Exactly right. And so I think we got to like 70 accounts and then we're like, holy moly, now we actually have to ship something.”
Steal thisTest demand by charging real money immediately — pull up a card reader and take the payment before you build the product, to separate real intent from politeness.
Take
Success is obvious fast; failure is the opaque one
Werdelin's heuristic from starting several companies: if customers genuinely care about a product, traction shows up quickly and success is fairly obvious early. It's the unsuccessful ideas that stay ambiguous and tempt you to keep going.
“And in many ways, I feel now that I've started a few things, success kind of like is somewhat obvious pretty quickly if you have a product that customers really care about. And it's a little bit more like the unsuccessful stuff that's a little bit more opaque.”
Steal thisDon't agonize over whether a new product is working — real traction is obvious fast; if it stays ambiguous, treat that as a signal to kill it.
Framework
Sell the lifestyle, not the product (the MTV playbook)
Drawing on his MTV background, Werdelin made Bark's content about the dog-owner lifestyle ('what do you do if your dog doesn't like your boyfriend') rather than utilitarian product copy. They even trolled political forums posting from a dog's point of view to build a culture of playfulness people wanted to share.
“I think our content would be more about like, what do you do if you're dog doesn't like your boyfriend, then it was about like 5 ways to clean the paw of your dog. And I think everything, things tend to be pretty utilitarian because most product owners or entrepreneurs were like, well, I need to sell my stuff.”
Steal thisMake your content about your customer's lifestyle and identity, not your product's features — it's more shareable and easier to associate with.
Billy
He bribed an engineer and hijacked MTV Australia at 2am
Early in his career Werdelin pitched a UGC-style web/TV show idea that MTV engineers dismissed as impossible on a Windows 95 machine. So he bribed the transmission engineer, discovered the offices were wired for broadcast, and went live at 2am without permission — turning the stunt into a job running product development for all MTV channels outside the US.
“So I got a little bit stubborn and figured out that all the offices was wired for broadcast. And so I bribed the transmission engineer and I went live at 2 in the morning from my studio without permission. And so back in the days, that didn't kind of land you in jail at MTV.”
Framework
Try many crazy things, then kill them ruthlessly on 'data day'
Bark's operating rhythm: build whatever idea they want, run it for a week, then on Sunday 'data day' Matt reviews the numbers and rolls back the entire week if metrics dropped. Werdelin calls it a 'bipolar' attitude — don't overthink experiments, but be disciplined about killing the losers fast.
“And so in the early days, we would build whatever we wanted to do, and then we would run it for a week. And then on Sundays, Matt would do data day. And if we had kind of dropped in numbers, we would just roll back a whole week.”
Steal thisRun new experiments for one week, then hold a weekly 'data day' to roll back anything that didn't move the numbers — fast to try, fast to kill.
Number
Bark had 150 'celebrity dogs' on payroll
Before influencer marketing was a category, Bark put famous Instagram dogs (like Tuna Meltz My Heart) on payroll — at one point around 150 of them — in a symbiotic cross-promotion that helped grow the brand's following.
$150
Celebrity/influencer dogs on payroll · dogs
“But at one point, I think we had 150 dogs on payroll. And so like, you know, Tuna Meltz My Heart.”
Tactic
Pay influencers on a fixed CAC — only for converted subscribers
Bark's discipline around influencer spend: stick to a target customer-acquisition cost (CAC) and, in the early days, pay celebrity dogs only when they converted a sale, roughly $20–$30 per subscriber. Werdelin notes the model has since shifted to more pay-to-play.
“But we've always been pretty disciplined by having a CAC that we stick to. So I would imagine it was like within those, I don't know what it was back then, like $20 or $30 or whatever it was, that we would offer these celebrity dogs if they converted into a sale.”
Steal thisPay influencers on conversion against a fixed CAC target, not flat fees — so acquisition spend stays tied to real subscribers.
Story
He reverse-engineered eHarmony data to find his wife
Single and wanting to settle down, Werdelin studied relationship-longevity research and eHarmony's published data, then defined 30–40 properties that would raise the odds of a lasting match. Concluding similarity beat compatibility statistically, he used 'serendipity' (friends-of-friends) as a proxy for chemistry he couldn't measure on paper.
“So I started to study all the books I could find about relationship therapy and longevity in relationships and start to try to understand, well, what is actually the background kind of for all these dating algorithms?”
Framework
The 8+1 framework: eight life boxes plus the box for thinking
Werdelin runs his life on an '8+1' grid borrowed from a Dan Shipper write-up: Transact, Invest, Assist, Learn, Health, Family, Relationship, and Ego/self-kindness. The crucial ninth box is reserved for actually spending time thinking about all the others.
“So I have this thing I call the A+1 framework. And the A+1 framework is really about the core elements that I'd like to kind of like be quote unquote successful people in.”
Steal thisMap your life onto fixed boxes (money, investing, helping, learning, health, family, relationships, self) and reserve a dedicated ninth box just to think about them weekly.
Tactic
Run growth-hacker experiments on your parenting
Werdelin applies experiment-logging to family time: bored building the same blocks with his son and reaching for his phone, he logged 'play experiments' in Airtable, bought a tabletop ping-pong table, and replaced the bad interaction with one they both loved.
“And so something as simple as, oh, you know, when I was about 5, I thought to play ping pong. So I bought a ping pong table, right? Like a little thing that you put on top of your dining table. And so next weekend, I then, again, because I'm slightly crazy, I put in my little Airtable of my experiments. And then I went down to try that and he loved it.”
Steal thisTreat personal life like a growth funnel — log small experiments (even for parenting) and keep the ones that produce a better outcome.
Framework
Overlap your life boxes to beat work-life balance
Werdelin's answer to balance: stack categories so one activity hits several. Working with friends gives you 'relationship' plus 'transact'; founding a company gives 'transact' plus 'invest' (salary plus equity); a walking business meeting in San Francisco adds 'health.' Sometimes the move is instead to separate boxes — e.g., keep a good-paying job and invest the surplus rather than taking equity risk.
“You get relationship and you get transact, right? You know, sometimes if you start your own thing, you get transact and invest, right? Because you often make both some salary and you have some stock options.”
Steal thisStack life priorities into single activities — work with friends, take walking meetings, found a company for salary plus equity — so you advance multiple boxes at once.