"Everyone has opinions, but you have to figure out who comes from a place of experience and knowledge – those are the ones to listen to."
Alex Willen graduated from Stanford then spent a decade working in Silicon Valley as a product manager at enterprise software startups like Box and Talkdesk before deciding to leave the industry and follow his passion of working with dogs. He moved to San Diego to open a dog-boarding business, but as he was about to start on the build-out of his facility, Covid hit. After shuttering that business, he pivoted to e-commerce and started Cooper’s Treats, a premium dog treats startup offering a dog treat mix that makes it easy for dog owners to make healthy, delicious dog treats in their kitchens.
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Table of Contents
Thank you for joining us today. Please introduce yourself to our readers. They want to know you, some of the background story to bring some context to your interview.
Alex Willen: I’m Alex Willen, and these days I’m running Cooper’s Treats, a premium dog treat startup. It was something of a rocky road to get here, though. I graduated from Stanford and ended up in the tech industry, working as a product manager at early-stage enterprise startups for about a decade. While I had the opportunity to work with some amazing people on some really interesting products, I just wasn’t that passionate about cloud content management or call center software, though, so I decided to make a change. I asked my girlfriend (now wife) to move with me to San Diego, so I could open a dog boarding business, and thankfully she said yes and we headed south.
I leased a building, obtained plans and permits, found a contractor, and was days away from closing my SBA loan… in March of 2020. Covid struck, and suddenly being in the dog boarding business, which is driven by people traveling, didn’t seem like such a good plan. I shuttered that business, but I still wanted to start a company. I had been taking my dog Cooper some homemade frozen treats during the hot San Diego summer, and I decided to turn those into a company. Thus, Cooper’s Treats was born!
You are a successful entrepreneur, so we’d like your viewpoint, do you believe entrepreneurs are born or made? Explain.
Alex Willen: Neither. I don’t think entrepreneurship is a personality characteristic – I think it’s a decision. You’re not born an entrepreneur, and you’re not made one – you decide that you’re going to be one, and then you follow through on that choice. Beyond that, I also think that some people take far too narrow of a definition of entrepreneurship. It’s not all about raising money and starting a big company. A plumber who works for himself is an entrepreneur. So’s a kid with a lemonade stand. You can be an entrepreneur on the side while you work a full-time job or stay home raising kids. It’s about what you do, not who you are.
If you were asked to describe yourself as an entrepreneur in a few words, what would you say?
Alex Willen: I think I’m a jack of all trades, master of none. My best skill as an entrepreneur is that I’m able to learn new things quickly. Coming from a background of enterprise software, everything about starting a dog treat business was new to me. When you’re dealing with software there’s no manufacturing, shipping, supply chains, inventory, or anything else. I’ve had to figure all of those things out, and I’ve been able to do so by constantly educating myself, talking to people, and just trying things to see if they work.
Tell us about what your company does and how did it change over the years?
Alex Willen: We make premium, all-natural dog treat mixes. Our most popular product is Pupsicle Mix – it’s a powder that you mix with water, pour into an ice cube mold, and freeze for healthy, delicious frozen treats. We use just a handful of high-quality ingredients, all of which are sourced in the US – our Beef and Cheddar Pupsicle Mix, for example, contains just freeze-dried beef, whole wheat flour, whole egg protein, and cheddar cheese powder. We also manufacture all of our treat mixes in the US.
We’ve only been around for about a year and a half, so the main change has just been growing. Initially, I was making, packing, and shipping all our products myself. Now I’m working with a great contract manufacturer and have two fulfillment centers shipping my products out. We’ve done six figures in revenue in 2021, our first full year of business, so it’s an exciting time and we’re growing quickly!
Thank you for all that. Now for the main focus of this interview. With close to 11.000 new businesses registered daily in the US, what must an entrepreneur assume when starting a business?
Alex Willen: An entrepreneur shouldn’t assume much of anything, especially these days. Just because something worked yesterday doesn’t mean it will work today. Facebook ads were an easy way to bring in customers for a long time, but then Apple changed its privacy policies and things have suddenly become much more difficult. Shipping products used to be straightforward, but now there are dozens of container ships waiting in the port of LA.
My advice is to test instead of assuming, and figure out how to do it as cheaply as possible. Don’t assume that people are going to love your new product and order 10,000 from a manufacturer. Instead, make a few yourself and go try to sell them at local events. If people love your product and make lots of purchases, then start manufacturing at scale. If they don’t, figure out why not (and be thankful you didn’t pay for 10,000 units). The advantages you have as an entrepreneurs are a speed and flexibility. Use them to your advantage and test, test, test instead of assuming.
Did you make any wrong assumptions before starting a business that you ended up paying dearly for?
Alex Willen: I selected a 3PL that had hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from some of the biggest VCs out there because I assumed that with that kind of backing, they would be at least a solid, reliable choice. That assumption was the worst one I’ve ever made – they were terrible. Constant overbilling, shipping things in boxes way too large and from the wrong fulfillment centers, storing my products inefficiently, and then charging me for the needless extra space they used – you name it, they’ve screwed it up. I ended up spending more time chasing them down about issues than I would have if I had just continued shipping everything myself.
If you could go back in time to when you first started your business, what advice would you give yourself and why? Explain.
Alex Willen: Just to stay confident and not get discouraged when things go awry. Entrepreneurship is always a bumpy journey, and it can be stressful when you’re facing a problem without an obvious solution. All you can do is persevere – if the fundamentals of your products and business are good, all the other problems you might face are solvable.
What is the worst advice you received regarding running a business and what lesson would you like others to learn from your experience?
Alex Willen: The worst advice I received was not to start a business in the first place. I know some folks that are more financially conservative, and the thought of investing time and money in an unknown new business when you could be earning a steady paycheck is really difficult for them to grasp. These kinds of folks don’t necessarily mean to be discouraging, but when you talk about your business they react with negativity and doubt because that’s how they’d feel in your shoes. The key is to understand whose advice to listen to. Everyone has opinions, but you have to figure out who comes from a place of experience and knowledge – those are the ones to listen to.
In your opinion, how has COVID-19 changed what entrepreneurs should assume before starting a business? What hasn’t changed?
Alex Willen: Don’t assume old business models will work. The world has changed fundamentally, and the people who adapt are going to be the ones who succeed. That’s why it’s more important than ever to be aware of what’s going on around you. Read the news and understand what’s happening with global shipping, people’s shopping habits, or any other large trend that might affect you. Knowing the big picture will allow you to steer your business in the right direction. As for what hasn’t changed? You need to have a good product and treat your customers well. At the end of the day, if you sell garbage or treat people badly, you’re going to fail.
What is a common myth about entrepreneurship that aspiring entrepreneurs and would-be business owners believe in? What advice would you give them?
Alex Willen: I always thought that there was some almost mystical, unspoken difference between entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs. I thought many times about starting a company, but it just didn’t seem like something I could do. I still can’t articulate exactly why that was or what I thought the obstacles in my way were. One thing that changed that perspective was meeting and hearing from a lot of other owners of dog boarding businesses while I was starting mine up. I had joined a franchise, so I saw lots of other franchisees, and I joined dog daycare owner Facebook groups as well. This is going to sound harsh, but honestly, a lot of them were just not great businesspeople. They couldn’t figure out simple things, treated their staffs badly, and clearly started up their businesses with very little planning… and yet many of them were successfully running businesses. That’s when it dawned on me that the difference between someone who is an entrepreneur and someone who isn’t is just that the entrepreneur decided to start a business and then did it. It’s not about intelligence or financial acumen or anything else (though those things do help) – it’s just about being good enough at the basics and getting help from people in areas where you need it.
What traits, qualities, and assumptions do you believe are most important to have before starting a business?
Alex Willen: I think there are a few. First, general organization and time management skills are critical. No matter what kind of business you start, a lot of it is just going to be keeping track of stuff, like money coming in and out, filing dates for corporate documents, and deadlines for all sorts of things. None of it is glamorous, but it’s all important – you’re ultimately responsible for everything in your business, so you need to be organized enough not to let things slip through the cracks.
Second is adaptability – especially in this day and age, you need to be able to change as life throws problems your way. If you’re the sort of person who thinks there’s only one way to do things, you’re going to face a lot of challenges. Last is perseverance. Starting a company will be incredibly frustrating. There’s just no way around that. You need to go into it knowing that you’re going to face problems, some of which seem insurmountable. If you’re not ready to face that reality and push through, you’ll never get your business off the ground.
How can aspiring leaders prepare themselves for the future challenges of entrepreneurship? Are there any books, websites, or even movies to learn from?
Alex Willen: I’m a big fan of books and podcasts that tell the stories of businesses. The podcast How I Built This by Guy Raz is one of the best – he has some amazing guests that tell their stories, and he does a great job of highlighting the difficulties they faced and how they overcame them.
Similar, books like Shoe Dog and The Snowball tell stories of some of our greatest entrepreneurs, and there’s a lot to learn from them. The key is to focus less on the details of the business and more on the approaches they took. You’re not going to start the next Nike, so don’t try to do what Phil Knight did. Instead, try to understand how he thought about problems and what he did to find solutions. It’s that kind of big-picture frameworks that will help to guide you.
You have shared quite a bit of your wisdom and our readers thank you for your generosity but would also love to know: If you could choose any job other than being an entrepreneur, what would it be?
Alex Willen: You’ve probably figured this out, but I love animals – especially dogs, but all of them. I think it would be amazing to be a zookeeper (though just to be clear that would have to be at a high-quality, conservation-focused zoo like the one we have here in San Diego).
Thank you so much for your time, I believe I speak for all of our readers when I say that this has been incredibly insightful. We do have one more question: If you could add anyone to Mount Rushmore, but not a politician, who would it be; why?
Alex Willen: I wouldn’t – I’m not a fan of blasting big chunks out of mountains to put people’s faces up. People’s legacies should be in what they do, not how big of a statue there is of them.
Jed Morley, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Alex Willen for taking the time to do this interview and share his knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Alex Willen or his company, you can do it through his – Facebook
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