Rich Kelleman just wanted his dog to live a healthy, long life. Working on a Burger King ad campaign had soured him on meat. While he was discovering the numerous health benefits of a vegan diet, he wondered what might be possible for his canine. Kelleman set out to create a better dog food – free of the downsides of traditional meat – and the inspiration for Bond Pet Foods was born.

In quick succession, Kelleman quit meat, exited the advertising industry, and then launched Bond in 2015. He seized on the opportunity to bring superior nutrition to pets without all the problems of farm animal welfare, environmental issues, and safety concerns. Deeply inspired by Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma and the positive messaging from the Washington, DC-based Good Food Institute, a non-profit committed to advancing alternative proteins, Kelleman was drawn to a new network. Step one: dive deep into the world of biotech innovation and startups, including plant-based, cell-based, microbial, and precision fermentation. Step two: validate the technology. By 2017, Kelleman had found his co-founder, Dr. Pernilla Turner Audibert, whose PhD in biotech engineering brought the “scientific chops” to bring Bond forward. Step three: level up, drawing on the deep biotech and business experience of Hawkwood Biotech.

Science meets strategy 

Hawkwood founders and managing partners Tony Day and Richard Kenny, with their combined decades of experience in industrial biotech and industry, believed in Bond’s vision and supported its early efforts. They signed on as partners to help develop the go-to-market strategy, stepped in as active business development advisors to build a pipeline of customers and partners, and worked out the engineering scale-up plan. Along the way, they took an active role in sourcing, hiring, and onboarding new employees for Bond. Most importantly, Hawkwood was instrumental in raising Bond’s $2.5 million seed round, and in 2019, the $17.5 million Series A funding. Kelleman credits Day, his fractional CTO at that time, as “basically attached at the hip with our work and a big part of helping us get lift-off.”

Enter the chicken. The Hawkwood team joined Dr. Audibert and Kelleman on a seminal trip to Lindsborg, Kansas to extract a blood sample from Inga, a heritage hen. They isolated the chicken cell protein that would form the basis of their formula. Through creating a proprietary production process that couples the protein with fermented yeast, they went on to develop a humane, nutritional, and tasty food. And they really do eat the dog food. “We eat the product all the time,” Kelleman says. “It’s actually quite delicious. Nutty, umami, with a buttery flavor.” Unlike alt meat companies that focus on “sizzle and mouthfeel” for human palates, Bond’s meat proteins do not need to be a structured meat product, making their technology readily scalable for pet food. Finally, the chicken-based microbial formula meets the popular assumption among pet owners that their dogs and cats need plenty of meat.

What’s now, what’s next

Hawkwood was also embedded with Bond back in 2020 when they went through the food tech cohort of Silicon Valley-based incubator Plug & Play, a program for helping startups attract investors and hone their commercialization strategy. Bond’s pitch deck at demo day caught the attention of Hill’s Pet Nutrition, a leading brand in the massive $90 billion North American pet food market, who soon signed on as a partner. The Hill’s partnership, developed with Hawkwood’s guidance, has allowed Bond to prototype the product with a larger pet audience, perform pilot tests, and collect key data needed to validate at scale.

Kelleman is now busy raising a $25 million Series B round, the final capital needed to get to market. “We’re working through the final gates of the FDA’s regulatory process and fine-tuning production so we can turn on higher volume,” says Kelleman. As a new founder managing a core team of biotech experts, he can’t wait to leverage his years of brand and marketing knowhow: “We’ll also start to establish the brand and communicate to the public about the nutritional value of Bond’s recipe for high-quality pet proteins.” 

His beloved dog, a Rottweiler-Sharpei mix by the name of Rumplestiltskin, has already licked his chops at the new dish. Bond Pet Foods products are projected to hit the market by the end of 2025.