Co-Workers’ Dog Side Hustle Made $456K in Year 1: Houndsy

Key Takeaways

- Bapu and Wilson raised $160,000 on Kickstarter to help bring their side hustle Houndsy to life.

- Both co-founders quit their 9-5 jobs by 2023 to focus on the business full time.

- Houndsy has seen $15 million in lifetime revenue — and is on track for another $15 million this year.

This Side Hustle Spotlight Q&A features Pavan Bapu, 40, of Chicago, Illinois. Bapu and his co-founder Luke Wilson started their side hustle Houndsy, which sells dog feeders that don’t require people to bend down, in 2021. Houndsy generated more than $450,000 in revenue during its first year and is on track to surpass $15 million in 2026. Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

Image Credit: Houndsy. Pavan Bapu and Luke Wilson.

What was your day job or primary occupation when you started your side hustle?

I worked as director of growth marketing for a hardware and software company that makes computer-controlled carving machines for small businesses.

A viral TikTok video inspired co-workers to start a side hustle

When did you start your side hustle, and where did you find the inspiration for it?

I started a side hustle with my co-side-hustler Luke Wilson in May 2021. He worked at the same company as a senior product manager. One day, he casually shared a TikTok video of an original dog feeder he built that garnered over 15 million views.

It stored a large bag of kibble and effortlessly dispensed perfect portions of dog food via gravity with the simple crank of a lever. No wires or batteries. No loss of the feeding ritual and bond between dog parent and dog. It turned the two-minute process of walking to the bag, hunting for a scoop, guessing the right amount and bending down to dump it into a bowl on the floor into a two-second one. Just crank a lever and dispense perfect portions of kibble into a stainless steel bowl.

I watched the video over and over again on a continuous loop for 30 minutes. I realized that Luke had single-handedly created the most convenient, consistent and beautiful way to feed your dogs. Luke would build these kibble dispensers; I would sell them. A side hustle was born.

Image Credit: Houndsy

Luke left his 9-5 role in 2022 to focus on Houndsy full-time, and I did the same in 2023.

Bootstrapping the side hustle with $20k, then Kickstarter

What were some of the first steps you took to get your side hustle off the ground? How much money did it take to launch?

We were extremely frugal operators and spent less than $20,000 to get this bootstrapped business off the ground.

Knowing that organic TikTok could serve as a free acquisition channel to generate awareness for our product, we created a simple landing page using a codeless builder to collect email addresses from potential customers. Over time, we posted videos on TikTok demonstrating how our kibble dispensers are the most convenient and beautiful way to feed your dogs. Those videos attracted enough views and visits to our landing page to generate about 70,000 email addresses.

With potential customers on hand, we needed to prove product-market fit. Will customers actually take out their credit cards and buy our kibble dispensers? We decided to launch a Kickstarter campaign to find out. Luke built a set of polished, production-grade dispensers. I produced the content to launch our crowdfunding campaign. Without spending a single cent on paid advertising or agency fees, we emailed our 70,000 prospects and generated $160,000 to bring Houndsy to life.

Using resources like Kickstarter, Shopify and Upwork

Are there any free or paid resources that have been especially helpful for you in starting and running this business?

- Kickstarter: Crowdfunding platform that took a small fee in exchange for helping us prove product-market fit for our kibble dispensers and generate enough cash to launch our company.

- Shopify: A freemium ecommerce platform with intuitive, codeless tools that helped us sell and ship kibble dispensers after our Kickstarter campaign.

- Upwork: A global network of contractors ranging from design to development that cost-effectively filled in resource gaps to launch our business.

If you could go back in your business journey and change one process or approach, what would it be, and how do you wish you’d done it differently?

I should have quit my day job sooner. I was stretched too thin between my day job and our side hustle, and my wife and toddler felt it the most. Had I made my side hustle my full-time job earlier, I could have grown the company faster and spared myself from panic attacks, sleepless nights and being in the dog house with the wife (pun intended).

Rigorously ‘torture’ testing for side hustle success

When it comes to this specific business, what is something you’ve found particularly challenging and/or surprising that people who get into this type of work should be prepared for, but likely aren’t?

There’s no “UNDO” or “Command-Z” when you