Dutch online vet grows after AI-assisted marketing shift
Joe Spector says Dutch cut ad costs and sped up testing after replacing an outside agency with an AI-assisted in-house team.
By Daniel Okafor · Business Editor
3 min read
Hims & Hers cofounder Joe Spector says his Dutch online vet service is growing after he replaced an outside marketing agency with an in-house team using AI tools. The shift matters because Dutch is trying to make virtual veterinary care familiar to pet owners before they are searching in a crisis.
Spector told Fortune that the idea for Dutch came after his corgi, Eddie, ate four M&Ms in 2021 and he struggled to find emergency care. One clinic sent him to a poison hotline, another was an hour away with a four-hour wait, and the final cost was $2,000, according to Fortune.
Dutch launched on July 1, 2021, after Spector helped build Hims & Hers, the direct-to-consumer telehealth company known first for hair-loss and sexual-wellness treatments. Dutch has since expanded to 35 states from eight at launch as more states have eased rules on veterinary telemedicine, according to the company.
What is Dutch online vet care?
Dutch offers members video appointments with veterinarians for a flat annual fee of $100 covering up to five pets, according to the company. Spector told Fortune that price is about what a single in-person veterinary visit can cost at a traditional office.
The company says it has recorded millions of interactions and has more than 100,000 active members. Dutch raised $20 million in early 2022 in a funding round led by Forerunner Ventures, according to a TechCrunch report cited by Fortune.
Dutch declined to give Fortune its current revenue or valuation. The company said revenue rose 5.5 times from 2022 to 2023, 2.2 times from 2023 to 2024, and 1.8 times from 2024 to 2025.
Why did Dutch replace its marketing agency?
Spector told Fortune that Dutch had been paying an outside agency about $50,000 a month late last year for five pieces of creative work, or roughly $10,000 each. He said that setup was costly and too slow for a company that needed to test messages for a product many consumers do not yet understand.
After ending that agency relationship, Dutch built an in-house marketing group that uses AI tools to help make static ads, animated spots and live-action commercials, Spector told Fortune. The company now produces about 50 pieces of content a month internally, a tenfold increase, he said.
Spector estimated that buying that amount of creative output from an agency would cost about $500,000 a month. He also told Fortune the bigger advantage is speed: Dutch can test which messages help pet owners trust a virtual veterinary service and understand when to use it.
The company said its Meta spending has grown from about 5% of its ad budget to roughly 25%. Dutch also said its customer acquisition cost fell 20% between January 2026, before the new team was operating, and April, while its audience grew 20% month over month from February to March.
Spector credited the marketing staff, rather than AI alone, for the change. He told Fortune the company is also using AI for measurement work, including A/B testing, brand-lift studies and search strategy.
Dutch’s early growth came from Google searches by pet owners dealing with urgent problems, Spector told Fortune. He said the company now wants owners to know the brand before emergencies happen, and Dutch has brought on former Olympic figure skater Tara Lipinski as a brand ambassador after she used the service for her dog following the Los Angeles fires.
This story draws on original reporting from Fortune.