Immigrant founder goes from food stamps to startup CEO

Joe Spector and his family immigrated to the United States from the former Soviet Union, now Uzbekistan, in 1990, when Spector was 10 years old. When they arrived in Fremont, California, the family lived in low-income housing and relied heavily on welfare and food stamps as they adjusted to their new life.

“Coming to America was like going to Mars,” explains Spector. entrepreneur“It really is a different planet.”

Basic things like culture and clothing were different, but Spector also noticed differences in class. In the Soviet Union, children were forbidden from asking questions, but in America, teachers encouraged students to ask questions and be curious.

“That alone highlights the freedoms we have in this country,” Specter says.

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Spector’s limited finances played a role in major life decisions, such as the decision to finish college – which he was paying for himself – in three years instead of four.

After graduating from the University of California, Berkeley with a degree in business in 2001, Spector moved to New York to work for JPMorgan as an investment banker. At the age of just 25, his salary exceeded $200,000.

“I earned money to justify the sacrifices my parents made to come to America,” he says.

After five years at JPMorgan, Spector left to obtain an MBA at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. It was in business school that he found a community of entrepreneurs, some of whom were immigrants. “I think seeing this was the first time I truly realized that I too could be an entrepreneur,” he says.

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Spector graduated from Wharton in 2007 and spent the next decade building businesses in the San Francisco Bay Area, including a failed dating website, and working at various startups in sales and business development roles. He honed his network and skills.

In 2017, Spector co-founded telemedicine company Hims & Hers, an over-the-counter prescription drug startup that is now publicly traded. $9.3 billion Company. Spector says his starting salary at the company in 2017 was $150,000, and he made $210,000 when it went public in January 2021.

His salary may seem below average for a fast-growing Silicon Valley startup, but Spector believed in His & Hers’ mission: making health care more affordable.

“I think anything about health care affordability in general is meaningful to me,” says Spector, who grew up on welfare and food stamps when my family first came to the United States.

There was only one issue, and it wasn’t salary or mission – Spector was senior vice president of strategic initiatives at Hims & Hers, not CEO. The chief executive position belonged to his co-founder, Andrew Dudum.

“Look, at Himes, I was not the CEO,” says Spector. “Ultimately, I wanted to build a business with a vision and intention on culture that I couldn’t do when I was at Himes.”

Spector decided to leave His & Hers in February 2021, a month after its creation a publicly traded companyHe had spent his entire career in early-stage companies, and says he disliked feeling like he was “a cog in the wheel” at a large public company.

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Specter found dutchA telehealth platform that connects pet owners with veterinarians for a single annual subscription fee. Spector’s decision to pursue Dutch came from personal experience. His family adopted a Corgi named Eddie during the COVID-19 pandemic. Very quickly, the vet bills piled up – Eddie got into some trail mix, which led to a $2,000 trip to the vet for urgent care.

From his experience building Hims & Hers, Spector predicted that pet health care could become more affordable, leading to his idea for Dutch, a platform that charges a flat fee for unlimited telehealth vet care. Dutch offers one year of care with unlimited virtual calls with a veterinarian for up to five pets for $132.

Specter to launch Dutch in July 2021 after raising $5 million in seed funding Agradoot VenturesAs CEO of Dutch, he now makes $280,000 a year, a step up from his salary at Hims & Hers. More importantly, he sees his work in Dutch as a “more important business” than in previous companies.

“In the Dutch, 50% of our clients report that they have not been to the vet for more than three years,” says Spector. “It’s crazy. In terms of giving back, this is a more incredible opportunity than anything I’ve ever done.”

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According to Spector, the startup has seen its revenue double year-over-year over the past three years and is now “almost profitable.” “We’re getting there,” he says.

Spector describes the most gratifying aspect of Dutch manufacturing as the excitement and satisfaction of solving new challenges.

“I love being part of something new,” he says. “That’s the hardest part, but it’s also the most professionally gratifying when you figure things out for the first time.”

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Joe Spector and his family immigrated to the United States from the former Soviet Union, now Uzbekistan, in 1990, when Spector was 10 years old. When they arrived in Fremont, California, the family lived in low-income housing and relied heavily on welfare and food stamps as they adjusted to their new life.

“Coming to America was like going to Mars,” explains Spector. entrepreneur“It really is a different planet.”