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ARTICLE
HOW I DID IT
The Founder of
Chewy.com on Finding
the Financing to
Achieve Scale
by Ryan Cohen

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 For the exclusive use of A. Ghobril, 2020.
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HOW I DID IT

THE FOUNDER OF CHEWY.COM

M O S T P E O P L E A S S U M E that the high
point of my professional career came
on April 18, 2017, when the owners of

ON FINDING THE FINANCING PetSmart paid $3.35 billion for Chewy.

com, the pet retailer I had cofounded

TO ACHIEVE SCALE
six years earlier. No doubt, that day was
incredible. It represented the culmi-
nation of a dream and a tremendous
amount of work. But believe it or not,
another handshake—another deal—
by Ryan Cohen mattered even more to me.

Photographs by MARY BETH KOETH

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January–February 2020 2
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That one happened on September 26,
2013. I had launched Chewy two years
earlier with Michael Day, using our own
cash and small loans, but my vision was
to build a large business, and I knew that
significant capital would be required
to finance the growth. We approached
dozens of VC firms—I even flew out to
Silicon Valley from our South Florida
headquarters and went door-to-door on
Sand Hill Road explaining how Chewy
would succeed by delighting customers
and running an ultra-efficient operation.
But everyone turned us down.
Larry Cheng at Volition Capital
was one of the people we pitched our
company to. We first met him in 2012;
he was en route to Disney World with
his family and agreed to make a quick
stop at our office. I remember that he
asked me, “Who’s going to take this
company to $100 million in sales?”
I was 26 and probably looked even
younger, but I confidently answered, “I
am.” He didn’t invest.
He followed up with us about six
months later, though. We’d beaten the
sales projections that we’d previously
given him, and he was impressed. A few
days later he signed off on a $15 million
investment in Chewy. The satisfaction
of that victory was even greater than
the pride I felt following the eventual
multibillion-dollar sale. After two years
of building Chewy—and more than
100 conversations with VCs that went
nowhere—I’d finally found someone
who believed in me and our business
model. Larry had validated our idea.
From that point on, the mission
was larger. I was even more committed
to making Chewy an industry leader,
because it was no longer just our own
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We intended to build a best-in-class, customer-obsessed pet
retailer—and to leave everyone who’d backed us a winner.
money on the line. Larry had gone out
on a limb for us. I felt that responsibility.
I approached every subsequent
round of financing, including PetSmart’s
acquisition, in a similar way—by under-
promising and overdelivering on sales.
Our mission was straightforward: to
build a best-in-class, customer-obsessed
pet retailer. We also wanted to leave
everyone who’d backed us a winner.
AN EARLY PIVOT
I’ve been working since I was 13, when
I started building websites for family
members and local businesses. From
there I moved into affiliate marketing.
I met Michael in an online chat room
discussing website design and computer
programming. We hit it off immediately
and started talking about collaborating
on a business.
I’d always wanted to build an
e‑commerce company, so we settled on
what we thought was a terrific idea in
an industry ripe for disruption: online
jewelry sales. We built the website, set
up the delivery systems, bought the
inventory, and even put a safe in the
office to store it.
But about a week before our sched-
uled launch, I had a revelation. I was
in a local pet store with my toy poodle,
Tylee, asking the owner about the most
healthful food I could buy for her. That’s
when it hit me: I was getting into the
wrong business. I didn’t care much
about jewelry, but like many dog and cat
parents I knew, I was passionate about
what I bought for Tylee. The pet industry
was big and growing, moving from mass
market to premium. It was clear that the
opportunity was huge.
So although we were only a week
away from launching the jewelry
business, we pivoted. We sold all the
rings, necklaces, and bracelets—and the
safe—and started learning everything we
could about the pet industry. We built a
new website. We found a local distrib-
utor and partnered with a third-party
logistics company nearby. In June of 2011
we launched. In just three months we
went from my epiphany at the pet store
to running a pet-supplies business.
People sometimes ask if I worried
about following in the footsteps of
Pets.com, in 2000 one of the highest-
profile failures of the dot-com bubble.
I didn’t. For one thing, I was 15 when
that company declared bankruptcy, so
I wasn’t very familiar with the story.
Second, Pets.com existed at a time
when most people had dial-up inter-
net and weren’t comfortable making
purchases online. By the time we started,
e‑commerce was second nature for most
consumers.
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I also got questions about Amazon,
and, of course, it was a real competitor.
It had an incredible infrastructure,
established relationships with customers
and suppliers, and endless capital. But
I knew that other companies, including
Zappos (later acquired by Amazon) and
Wayfair, had found success in specific
product categories. Their secret was
offering a differentiated customer expe-
rience. I thought we could do something
similar in the pet space.
With limited resources, we served as
our own C-suite. I was CEO, Michael was
CTO, and my longtime friend Alan Attal
was COO. We knew that superior cus-
tomer service had to be one of our core
competencies if we wanted to deliver the
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Ryan Cohen with his toy

poodle, Tylee, in Miami

same experience I’d had at the neighbor-

hood pet store, so our first priority was
building a team to work the phones, live
chat, and emails in our call center so that
we could stop doing all that ourselves.
From the outset we reinvested all our
cash from operations in the business, but
eventually we needed the larger pools
of money that VC firms offered. After
months of searching, we finally found
Larry and Volition.

SCALING UP
We closed the series A financing round
on October 24, 2013, and I’ll never forget
the moment the money hit our bank
account. Although we had signed the
term sheet, part of me was still skeptical
that it was all going to work out. But
when I saw the transfer confirmation,
it became real.
With that money we could invest in
developing the systems, technology, and
teams needed to scale up. We could also
bring stocking and shipping in-house.
We already recognized that if we wanted so much of the country’s population the scanner guns would stop working,
to create a multibillion-dollar business, lives there. The location we chose— or the Wi-Fi or warehouse management
fulfillment had to become another core Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania—would system would go out. We were tackling
competency. allow us to provide overnight delivery issue after issue 24/7 until we worked
Consultants had told us that it would to customers in the densely populated out all the kinks.
take a year and a half to build a ware- tristate area of Connecticut, New York, We also focused heavily on market-
house from scratch. But with 300% and New Jersey. By that summer we’d ing. From day one, we invested almost
growth year over year, we didn’t have opened a 400,000-square-foot facility exclusively in direct response ads, so
that much time. The logistics company full of bags and cans of dog and cat food, every dollar spent could be tracked—
handling fulfillment couldn’t keep up, carriers and cages, leashes, litter boxes, no Pets.com-style Super Bowl commer-
so the Chewy customer experience had toys, and treats. cials for us. We expanded by investing
begun to deteriorate. We needed more Although we managed to get up in the team and processes to effectively
control, and fast. We knew we had to and running in less than six months, it acquire the right customers at the right
make the transition within a few months. certainly wasn’t easy. Everything that cost. Our governor of growth was free
We started scouting potential sites could go wrong did. We couldn’t hire cash flow. Our sales more than doubled
in February of 2014, focusing on the people to work in the warehouse fast from $205 million in 2014 to $423 mil­
northeastern United States because enough. When we were finally staffed, lion in 2015.

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Our new hires played a big role in
scaling up the company. I realized
early on that I’d need to use my time
efficiently and focus on hiring. At first
recruiting was a challenge. Alan and I
spent countless hours reaching out to
candidates on LinkedIn, explaining
how quickly the company was growing
and describing what we intended to
build, but 98% of them didn’t bother
to respond.
Surprisingly, that turned out to
be a useful filter. The 2% who did write
back were true believers, team players,
and business builders who were
excited for the opportunity. They all
had tremendous heart, fire in their
bellies, and a will to win. We hired for
passion. Many people quit stable jobs
and relocated with their families from
across the country to join us. It was a
tremendous sacrifice that we never
took lightly.
Ultimately we raised six rounds of
financing totaling more than $350 million
from T. Rowe Price, BlackRock, Green-
spring, Lone Pine, Verlinvest, and the
investment bank Allen & Company.
THE NEXT LEVEL
Our revenue was $901 million in 2016
and growing 100% year over year. That
got us thinking about an IPO for our
next round of financing. We had about
7,000 employees and six warehouses,
with plans to add another two in the
next 12 months. From an operational
and strategic perspective, the company
was strong.
As we prepped for the IPO, Petco,
one of the biggest U.S. pet retailers,
approached us about a merger. It
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couldn’t meet our terms, so we shook
hands and parted ways.
In early 2017 PetSmart, Petco’s
primary brick-and-mortar rival, also
reached out. I received an email from
Raymond Svider, a partner and the chair-
man of BC Partners, the private equity
group that had completed its acquisition
of PetSmart in March of 2015. He said
he was interested in buying Chewy and
wanted to talk. We had met previously
but didn’t know each other well.
PetSmart was one of our top com-
petitors, so we proceeded carefully. I
explained that we were preparing for an
IPO, so we expected a certain price in an
all-cash, public-style deal. In view of the
competitive dynamics, we weren’t going
to give away our proprietary information
and start a lengthy due-diligence process.
I told Svider that if he wanted to make
the acquisition, he would need to do it
quickly. To his credit, he did. In April of
2017 we signed an agreement to sell the
company for $3.35 billion. It was the larg-
est e‑commerce acquisition in history.
Our investors were happy too. The
early-stage ones made huge gains, and
the later-stage ones earned significant
money. Investing in Chewy had made
a lot of careers, and I’m proud of that.
Those investors put their trust in me
and my vision, and I repaid them with
returns. The same would soon be true
for BC Partners and PetSmart.
Chewy’s revenues continued to rise
post-acquisition, hitting $3.5 billion
in 2018, while its losses narrowed to
$267 million. In June of 2019 PetSmart
spun Chewy off into a publicly traded
company at a valuation near $9 billion,
close to three times the sale price only
two years before.
FACTS & FINANCIALS
Chewy.com
Founded: 2011
Headquarters: Dania Beach, Florida
No. of employees: 9,833
Revenue (U Net income (loss)
$4 billion
$3.5B
3
2
1
0
–$267M
–1
Source: Chewy.com
I left the company in March of 2018.
It wasn’t an easy decision, but I felt I had
done all I had set out to do. The company
was sound, the foundation strong, and
the vision set. But I was no longer in full
control. And I didn’t want a boss. I’m
a business builder, not a manager. My
work was complete.
When I think back to why raising
the money to help grow the business
was one of the best moments of my life,
I realize it’s because the journey was
far more exciting than getting to the
finish line. I relished the challenges of
disrupting an entire industry and trying
to delight customers to a degree that
had never been achieved before. The
excitement I felt from putting together
a world-class team of employees and
investors, succeeding against all odds,
and building a multibillion-dollar retail
leader from nothing was unequivocally
the greatest of my career.
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