Kaley Cuoco, Katie Hunt on Oh Norman! and Rescuing Chihuahuas
Katie Hunt has had pivotal roles in several amazing companies, including Warby Parker, Hinge, and Showfields. Things were going great for her career-wise until she faced what she describes as "an epic fail." Her business shut down and she was forced to move back home with her parents.
She was down, but not out. After some much-needed rest and reflection time, she received a LinkedIn message that she first thought was a prank, but it led to her co-founding a new company, Oh Norman!, with fellow dog lover Kaley Cuoco. Their mission: "make joyful, cutting-edge products that improve the lives of the animals we love."
With health and wellness offerings like "Your Breath Effing Stinks!" and "Calm the Eff Down!," Oh Norman! has amassed a devoted following of pet parents who love the science-backed results of the products, the cheeky vibe of the company, and Oh Norman!'s charitable efforts to help animals in need.
I chatted with Katie on a recent episode of How Success Happens about her unpredictable career path, the growth of Oh Norman!, her advice to founders, and to get the definitive answer to the age-old question: who is better, dog people or cat people?
Listen to the entire episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. And check out highlights from our conversation below, which have been edited for length and clarity.
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Dan Bova: Please give us the elevator pitch of Oh Norman!
Katie Hunt: Oh Norman! makes healthy AF products that give back. Our products are sustainable, ethical, vet-approved, and all-natural. It is the things that Kaley and I wanted for our dogs but weren't finding on the market, so we decided we had to do it ourselves.
Did you know anything about making dog food before you went down this road?
Not at all, and I actually think that there's an incredible opportunity when you don't have a bias going in. When you don't know what you can't do, sometimes you try things in a different way. That naivete allows you to take greater risks, which was great for us with Oh Norman! It doesn't always pay off. I was one of the co-founders of Showfields. We had five locations at scale, and we were working with a thousand direct-to-consumer businesses before COVID hit. And what you don't know is how hard it is to actually operate a physical space. If I could go back in time, I would've done another direct-to-consumer business and not opened a physical space. It was an epic fail. But everyone needs one, though.
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How did you cope with that failure?
It was heartbreaking at the time. You're putting your time and effort into this idea of something being bigger than you. I was 36, single, and could no longer afford my rent in New York. I moved home with my mom and dad to Rhode Island. And I had this moment of "this is what epic failure really looks like." It was hard to lose the business, to lose the apartment, to lose the life that you had been building. And it was the best thing that ever happened to me.
How so?
For the first time in a very long time, I was actually happy with my life slowing down a little bit. It was forced upon me, but I had been running at a million miles an hour for so long that when I finally was forced to slow down, I thought it was gonna drive me crazy. I thought I was gonna be so bored. But in reality, I was like, "Oh, wow. I'm missing out on a lot of things that other people are doing. I've just been working. There are all these other aspects of life." So I had this time where I got to reflect prior to meeting Kaley and starting Oh Norman! I was able to think about what I would want my life to look like if I were to go back into startups again.
How did you and Kaley connect?
She wanted to start a business, and she put her team in charge of finding people who might be able to help her do that. And so I got a LinkedIn message that was something like, "Have you ever thought about co-founding a celebrity company?" It felt like a prank to get that message, but I responded and eventually found out that on the other side of this is Kaley Cuoco. Now she is one of the highest-paid actors of all time. She made, like, billions for The Big Bang Theory. She does not need to have a company in any way, shape, or form, but she has a rescue farm with over 200 rescue animals. This is her true passion in life. She wanted to create a company that gives back from day one. And so when I met her and she told me all the things that she wanted to do, it was just like a light bulb that went off for me. I thought, "This person is exactly who they say they are." I think what sealed the deal for us is that we are two of the only people who rescue elderly chihuahuas. We both have a love for these stinky, toothless dogs, and we think they're absolutely beautiful!
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Where did the name come from?
Norman was Kaylee's first rescue dog. This entire company is dedicated to Norman. "What would Norman do?" is sort of our ethos. If you could imagine building a company where a dog founded it, what would they want? You would make sure that everything you're producing is in sustainable packaging. You would make sure that every person, end-to-end, who touches the product is treated ethically and is paid fairly. And you would use all-natural ingredients. You would never use anything that could hurt an animal. This is baked into the DNA because it's what Norman would want.
For people thinking about starting their own thing, what's your top advice?
There are incredible communities out there that you can tap into — Reddit, your friends — where you can put ideas out there and get feedback. Don't create in a vacuum and don't try for perfection. Go out there with the messy ideas. You don't know what you don't know. I think too many entrepreneurs waste time and money trying to get something perfect before they get feedback on it. And then it's too late. They lost too much time and money to iterate.
How did getting feedback steer you?
Before we ever created a product, we created a community. And look, we have a very unfair competitive advantage with Kaley — we had 150,000 Instagram followers before we ever even dropped a product. But the reason we put so much time and effort into creating that community first was that we then went to them with endless questions. What's wrong with your dog? What would you change? What flavors does your dog not eat? You would assume you know the answer to those things, but we uncovered a lot of data that we weren't expecting, and it has led to our roadmap.
Important question for you: dog people versus cat people, who's better?
Oh gosh. I've had cats, and I've had dogs, but I am a dog person. I spent 15 years chasing my cat around and trying to get it to sit on my lap. And I spent the last 15 years trying to get my dogs off my lap because they're there constantly. I like being chased [laughs].
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