The company raised $25 million from investors, including Maveron, Zulily founders Darrell Cavens and Mark Vadon, Joe Montana, and Ashton Kutcher.

[3] Lowry was the co-founder of the restaurant recommendation service Urbanspoon, and had previously been the owner with Heitzeberg of Hack Things, a company that teaches software engineers about the production of computer hardware.

[4] The two co-founders discussed startup concepts together and thought back to a shared friend who repeatedly praised the entire cow he had purchased from a Western Washington farm.

[10] They conducted a Kickstarter campaign for testing purposes in which they hoped to sell portions of a 550-pound (250 kg) cow they had purchased from a tiny farm near Seattle.

[6][8] Their website received 600 visits,[11] and they took one day to sell their initial cow in the middle of June 2015 through orders from friends and people living in Washington, Chicago, New York, and Florida.

[12] On January 24, 2017, Crowd Cow received a $2 million seed investment headed up by Fuel Capital, which was joined by Maveron, Zulily founders Darrell Cavens and Mark Vadon, and the National Football League quarterback Joe Montana.

[22] On May 24, 2018, Crowd Cow secured $8 million in a Series A funding round headed by Madrona, which was joined by Joe Montana, Ashton Kutcher, and Guy Oseary's Sound Ventures.

[23] At the time of the funding round, Crowd Cow was making $1 million in monthly revenue, which was a tenfold increase from the previous year.

[27] In June 2019, Kutcher's Sound Ventures invested $1 million to purchase a convertible security to be used later during a Series B round for Crowd Cow.

[29] The company's revenue increased fourfold at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic as people were unable to visit restaurants and were largely stuck with making meals at home.

[37] Seafood it sells includes Maine lobster, Icelandic Arctic char, lingcod, halibut, blue shrimp, and Dungeness crab.

[34][43] Other parts of the cattle for purchase include the animal's heart, tongue, liver, kidneys, tail, hooves, and bones for making broth.

[44][45][46] On July 12, 2017, Crowd Cow began importing to its American customers the Japanese A5 Wagyu beef from Mirai Farm, which is based in Kagoshima Prefecture in Japan.

[47] The company's co-founder Joe Heitzeberg, who has a Japanese minor from the University of Washington, visited farmers and butchers in Japan to learn about wagyu.

[18][51] Critics thought the company was betraying American ranchers who faced difficulties in raising grass-fed cattle while inexpensive non-American beef was being imported.

The James Beard Foundation Award-winning author Adam Danforth entered the haiku: "The Best Beef / Is Found On American Farmland / Vote With Your Money".

After meat is sold, Crowd Cow takes a 22% cut before requiring the rancher to pay more money for handling the payments, dry ice, and packing.

[9] Marilyn Noble of The Counter said that "while Crowd Cow began as a next-generation wholesaler, a bulk buyer of meat and a customer ranchers badly needed, producers say it now functions more like gig-economy platforms Grubhub and Airbnb—as in, it takes a big cut of revenue in exchange for providing access to an ostensibly large marketplace of shoppers.

[13] The company included a link on its website to a Portlandia parody depicting a duo filled with worry about whether the chicken they were ordering was raised with dignity.

[15] The company offered a recurring meat purchase subscription to farmers that lasted six months or a year to give them a steadier expectation of the number of animals they should raise.

Analyzing the situation, journalist Marilyn Noble of The Counter wrote, "twelve weeks' notice can feel like a blink in the grass-fed cattle business, which operates on the scale of years, not months.

[15] Since Crowd Cow procures its meat from numerous farms, it is able to offer a larger variety of goods and serve more areas compared to independent farmers.

[13] In a 2018 The Arizona Republic review, journalist Weldon B. Johnson wrote about Crowd Cow beef he had purchased, "It had a nice, beefy flavor and was tender and juicy, provided you cook it correctly."

[34] Reviewed's Amanda Tarlton said that although it is more expensive than what is sold at supermarkets, "Crowd Cow is 10/10 worth it" for those who "like high-quality meat, avoiding the grocery store, and supporting independent farmers".

[38] Jody Allard wrote in The Guardian that Crowd Cow "offers consumers a sense of accountability that's not easy to find in beef sold at megafood retailers".

She concluded, "Crowd Cow gives you reliable, convenient access to the type of meat you want to be eating — raised with ethical and environmentally friendly standards by farmers and ranchers who care.

"[17] The Arizona Republic food critic Dominic Armato purchased a "Kagawa A5 olive Wagyu strip steak" through Crowd Cow.

The experience was closer to devouring a slab of foie gras — a lightly crisped and salty surface that gave way to a wash of decadent beef fat.

[15] Brian Kateman, a professor at Columbia University's The Earth Institute, said, "If consumers find that grass-fed beef is available significantly less expensive from traditional retail sources, what will keep them buying from Crowd Cow?

She wrote that according to ranchers she interviewed, Crowd Cow "mined the meat community for connections and industry knowledge without making long-term investments, an approach that came to feel extractive when those relationships went sour".