LA Venture: Digitalis Ventures' Drew Taylor on How Investing in Pet Health Creates Opportunities for Humans

Minnie Ingersoll
Minnie Ingersoll is a partner at TenOneTen and host of the LA Venture podcast. Prior to TenOneTen, Minnie was the COO and co-founder of $100M+ Shift.com, an online marketplace for used cars. Minnie started her career as an early product manager at Google. Minnie studied Computer Science at Stanford and has an MBA from HBS. She recently moved back to L.A. after 20+ years in the Bay Area and is excited to be a part of the growing tech ecosystem of Southern California. In her space time, Minnie surfs baby waves and raises baby people.
Drew Taylor, partner at Digitalis Ventures

On this week's episode of the L.A. Venture Podcast, hear from Drew Taylor, a partner at Digitalis Ventures.

The firm first launched in 2016 with a $100 million fund invested in companies that focus on improving human health. Two years later, Taylor said Digitalis turned its attention from not only supporting companies in human health but also those in animal health.


Among its backers are Mars Inc., which is the largest owner and operator of veterinary clinics in the world, and one its largest owners of pet nutrition brands, Taylor adds.

Today, Digitalis Ventures manages a $100 million pet health fund as well as a $30 million fund for venture creation. It has offices in New York City, Boston, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

A native from California's farming city of Salinas, Taylor says his background is in food packaging. He was first exposed to the business world through his family's business, which cuts and packages fruits and vegetables for grocers.

"Pet ownership has definitely exploded during COVID," Taylor says. "The truth is, it was exploding before COVID. And COVID just accelerated that trend ... and there's some great research that supports just the benefit that pets can have from a companionship standpoint."

Taylor says that investing in pet health space presents a good opportunity to delve further into the human health space, and vice versa.

"[We] joke a little bit [that] our work in the human health gives us a little bit of a crystal ball and what's happening on the pet health side, because so many of the tools and treatments and care delivery methods that we create for ourselves in our own healthcare system, eventually, sort of get ported over to caring for animals as well," Taylor said.

"I think one of our dreams with this is that we'll be able to pioneer things on the animal side that can then sort of go back to the human side," Taylor said.

In the rest of this episode, Taylor also discusses ecommerce's big impact on pet nutrition, the synergy opportunities between human health care and pet care, and the explosion of ownership in cats in metropolitan cities in China.

dot.LA Audience Engagement Editor Luis Gomez contributed to this post.

Want to hear more of L.A. Venture? Listen on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Correction: An earlier version of this post misrepresented Digitalis Ventures' relationship with Mars, Inc.

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Decerry Donato

Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.

LA Tech ‘Moves’: Mapp Gains New CPO and CTO, Prodoscore Taps Boeing Exec
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“Moves,” our roundup of job changes in L.A. tech, is presented by Interchange.LA, dot.LA's recruiting and career platform connecting Southern California's most exciting companies with top tech talent. Create a free Interchange.LA profile here—and if you're looking for ways to supercharge your recruiting efforts, find out more about Interchange.LA's white-glove recruiting service by emailing Sharmineh O’Farrill Lewis (sharmineh@dot.la). Please send job changes and personnel moves to moves@dot.la.

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Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.

Raises
Image by Joshua Letona

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Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.

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\u200bPhoto: Gitai

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