Before pet food was “DTC sexy,” Pure Pet Food was scaling with zero ad spend.

In this episode, Matt and Joe unpack how they built early traction through scrappy tactics like event pitching, awards, and PR - not Meta. With just a £300 council grant and no industry experience, they grew the brand to £1M+ in revenue without touching paid media.

They share how that foundation led to VC backing and how they leveraged Meta spend, a custom subscription stack, and retention-first thinking to push past 8 figures.

If you’re early-stage and trying to scale without burning cash, or already spending and want to scale smarter, this one’s for you.

🚨🚀 If you're a brand spending £100K/month, we'll run your ads. Apply for your free audit here: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0nkf8h0

00:00 Meet Pure Pet Food
04:35 Early failures + finding purpose
12:09 Early adoption into the pet food category
14:30 The rise of subscription pet food
16:50 How they were scouted for Dragons Den 
19:20 Pitch experience 
23:45 The impact post-air date
25:40 Inflection point for the business
28:03 Scrappy techniques
29:30 Hiring proactive team members
32:20 Raising investment
36:50 Understanding the game of venture
39:55 Overraising = pressure to 10x
42:10 How they unlocked Meta
49:15 In-house growth restructure 
50:40 Scaling and testing 
54:35 Retention & subscription flywheel
56:55 Post-purchase flows & feedback
1:02:20 Future vision for Pure Pet Food
1:04:50 Will they exit?

Follow Pure Pet Food
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mathew-cockroft-78bb2489/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/joemitchellcreative/
https://www.purepetfood.com

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