A Chat With Paal Gisholt, President/CEO, SmartPak Equine

CS: As a venture capitalist, had you had any experience with a direct-to-consumer business before?
PG: No, I had absolutely no prior catalog experience, nor did Becky. We both had substantial healthcare business experience, and this is kind of a hybrid between healthcare and direct marketing. So we had that as a source of experience, and that gave us a lot of credibility when we started dealing with manufacturers. It was a big leap of faith for them to allow us to repackage their products. The fact that we had very strong healthcare business operating credentials really gave them a lot of confidence in us. But we didn’t have any catalog experience at all.