Copyright Entrepreneur
Key Takeaways Joe Spector, 45, is the CEO of Dutch, an online veterinary care service. In a new interview, Spector shares how he went from living on food stamps to becoming CEO of his own startup. Spector also co-founded $9.3 billion telehealth startup Hims & Hers. Joe Spector and his family immigrated to the United States from the former Soviet Union, now Uzbekistan, in 1990, when Spector was 10 years old. When they arrived in Fremont, California, the family lived in low-income housing and relied heavily on welfare and food stamps as they adjusted to their new life. “Coming to America was like going to Mars,” Spector tells Entrepreneur. “It’s really a different planet.” Basic things like culture and clothing were different, but Spector also noticed a difference in the classroom. In the Soviet Union, kids were told not to ask questions, but in the U.S., teachers encouraged students to ask questions and be curious. “That alone highlights the freedoms that we have in this country,” Spector says. Related: This 29-Year-Old Founder Took a $150,000 Pay Cut to Become CEO of His Own Startup. Here’s Why He Says It Was Worth It. Spector’s limited finances played a role in major life decisions, like deciding to finish college — which he was paying for himself — in three years instead of four. After graduating from the University of California, Berkeley, with a degree in business in 2001, Spector moved to New York to work for JPMorgan as an investment banker. He ended up making over $200,000 in salary at just 25 years old. “I made money to justify the sacrifice my parents made to come to America,” he says. After five years at JPMorgan, Spector left to obtain his MBA at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. It was in business school that he found a community of entrepreneurs, some of whom were also immigrants. “I think seeing that is the first time I truly realized that I could be an entrepreneur as well,” he says. Related: She Moved to the U.S. at 17 and Worked at a Gas Station — Then Became CEO of a $1 Billion Brand Spector graduated from Wharton in 2007 and spent the next decade in the San Francisco Bay Area building businesses, including a failed dating website, and working at various startups in sales and business development roles. He honed his network and his skills. In 2017, Spector co-founded telemedicine company Hims & Hers, an over-the-counter prescription drug startup, now a publicly traded $9.3 billion company. Spector says his starting salary at the company was $150,000 in 2017, and he made $210,000 when it went public in January 2021. His salary might seem below average for a fast-growing Silicon Valley startup, but Spector believed in the mission of Hims & Hers: to make healthcare more affordable. “I think generally anything around healthcare affordability is meaningful to me, having grown up on welfare and food stamps when my family first came to the United States,” Spector says. There was only one issue, and it wasn’t the salary or mission — Spector was senior vice president of strategic initiatives at Hims & Hers, not CEO. The chief executive title belonged to his co-founder, Andrew Dudum. “Look, at Hims, I wasn’t the CEO,” Spector says. “Ultimately, I wanted to build a business with a point of view and intentionality on culture that I couldn’t have when I was at Hims.” Spector decided to leave Hims & Hers in February 2021, one month after it became a publicly traded company. He had spent his whole career at early-stage companies, and says feeling like he was a “cog in a wheel” at a big public firm was unappealing. Related: She Took Her Business From a $5,000 Investment to Over $1 Million in Revenue — Here Are Her 3 Profit Hacks for Small Business Owners Spector went on to found Dutch, a telehealth platform connecting pet owners to veterinarians for a single annual subscription fee. Spector’s decision to pursue Dutch came from personal experience. His family adopted a corgi named Eddie during the Covid-19 pandemic. Very quickly, the vet bills racked up — Eddie got into some trail mix, leading to a $2,000 urgent care vet visit. From his experience building Hims & Hers, Spector predicted that pet healthcare could be more affordable, leading to his idea for Dutch, a platform that charges a flat fee for unlimited telehealth vet care. Dutch offers a year of care, with unlimited virtual calls with a veterinarian for up to five pets, for $132. Spector launched Dutch in July 2021 after raising $5 million in seed funding from Forerunner Ventures. As CEO of Dutch, he now makes $280,000 a year, a step up from his salary at Hims & Hers. More importantly, he views his work at Dutch as a “more important calling” than what he was doing at previous companies. “At Dutch, 50% of our clients report that they haven’t been to a vet in over three years,” Spector says. “It’s crazy. In terms of giving back, it’s a more incredible opportunity than anything else I’ve done.” Related: His College Side Hustle Made $12,000 on Amazon in 2 Weeks — Then It Surpassed $250 Million The startup has seen its revenue double year-over-year for the past three years and is now “almost profitable,” according to Spector. “We’re getting there,” he says. Spector describes the most fulfilling aspect of building Dutch as the excitement and satisfaction of solving new challenges. “I love being part of something new,” he says. “That’s the hardest part, but it’s also just the most professionally satisfying when you figure things out for the first time.” Related:
