A Bankable Pet Project - How Moonshots Capital helped eTailPet scale up and attract a buyer in just three years.

Berenice Giannini's startup, eTailPet, wasn't a natural fit for Moonshots Capital. The Austin-based venture firm, launched in 2014 by Kelly Perdew and Craig Cummings, both of whom had previously served in the U.S. Army, frequently backs companies founded by military veterans.

- By Ali Donaldson

Berenice Giannini's startup, eTailPet, wasn't a natural fit for Moonshots Capital. The Austin-based venture firm, launched in 2014 by Kelly Perdew and Craig Cummings, both of whom had previously served in the U.S. Army, frequently backs companies founded by military veterans.

Giannini didn't have a military background. She and her husband ran a chain of pet stores in Southern California called Protein for Pets. But her spinoff company offered a promising solution to a problem she and more than 13,000 other independent pet store owners across the country had been struggling with for years: how to compete against retail giants such as Petco and online sellers like Amazon.