Jane Lauder‘s latest business venture has made its first acquisition.
TAW Ventures, the pet-focused firm she founded and launched in late 2025, has acquired Polkadog. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
It marks the first acquisition for TAW, which bears the initials of Lauder’s own dog, Thaddeus Alistair Warsh. The deal also reveals some of Lauder’s ambitions both for the fund and the category writ large.
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“Having grown up in beauty at Estée Lauder, the things that make a great brand are the quality and the performance of the products, and the great founders and people who created it,” Lauder said. “A portfolio of brands that are all in the premium space doesn’t exist today. There’s a bunch of big strategics, but they have just mass and premium. Nobody focuses just on premium. And there’s a big opportunity to ensure that these premium products are all of the highest quality, clinically tested, safety tested and perform at a higher level.”
Polkadog was founded in 2002 by Rob Van Sickle and Deb Suchman for their dog, Pearl, who had one eye. The company has grown to encompass the treats, which are packaged at their Boston facility, nationwide wholesale partnerships and its own retail channel, where other brands are also sold.
“We’ve been in discussions with them for quite some time,” Lauder said. “Now was the right moment. That’s also why I wanted to partner with Leap [the pet care incubator], because it’s a great way to see small brands and nurture them, learn the industry and see what’s out there.”
Lauder said that TAW has two other unspecified minority investments, of which her fund is the largest, and she hasn’t ruled out other opportunities to expand her portfolio. “I didn’t want to create a venture fund, I wanted to create a strategic partnership with brands,” Lauder said. “What I can bring is the marketing and the digital and all the things that help really grow the brand for the long term and not just be a passive investor. Finding those people, great founders, great products that we can really partner together to grow.”
“For us, Polkadog has always been about creating something we genuinely believed in — products we felt proud to give our own dogs, and a brand that reflected the way so many people feel about their pets,” said Van Sickle and Suchman in a statement. “As we thought about the company’s next chapter, finding a partner who truly understood and respected what makes Polkadog special mattered deeply. From the beginning, Jane and the TAW Ventures team shared that mindset, and we’re excited for what comes next.”