Pet People
Click through to view the pitch deck.
Team
Our focus as PetPeople is to bring together people who are passionate about their pets' well-being and care. Our team is made up of three college seniors trying to do right by our animals and have a “thrive, not just survive” mentality when it comes to pet keeping. We have Kameron Kocinski, who will be graduating with a Marketing degree, and has a blue heeler dog he cares deeply about. Desiree Hurley will be graduating with an Accounting degree and cares for 2 guinea pigs plus a Pitbull. Kamryn Ward will be graduating with a degree in Fashion Merchandising and owns two bearded dragons and a ball python.
Problem/Solution
Taking home a new pet can be exciting, but also overwhelming. There is a wealth of information available, but it can be next to impossible to find it all in one place- and online resources are often riddled with misinformation and conflicting data. That’s where PetPeople come in! We are an interactive platform that allows pet owners of all kinds to be able to show off their animals, find a community of like-minded owners, and a wealth of researched care guides and training content. Pet owners can find answers on our platform that are specifically tailored to their pets and their needs. The makers of the PetPeople have pet health in mind and also offer owners a place to keep up with milestones and goals for their animal friends!
Market Size
The pet industry in the U.S. (2020) is valued at $103.6 billion. With vet care/product sales equating to $31.4 billion and other pet services which includes pet training being valued at $8.1 billion. Within the U.S. 70% or 90.5 million homes own at least one pet. This can be broken down further for pet segments we are currently targeting- dogs (69 million homes), cats (45.3 million homes), reptiles (5.7 million homes), and other small animals (6.2 million homes).*
Business Model
Our software will provide anxiety-free help for your pet needs where we can act as a medium for people to express their concerns and receive feedback from others who have experienced the same problems. At the same time, we can provide other businesses with user information, such as the pets they own and problems they have, so that they can better reach our consumers through targeted ads. We will be creating specialized training content to obtain additional revenue and will work with pet brands to promote proven product recommendations.
Competition
PetPeople’s largest direct competition comes from pet-specific Facebook groups that can provide posts and advice from thousands of owners at a time, though the mix of information is confusing, often unverified, and clutters the user’s feed. Vet telehealth platforms can be costly and response times can vary. An indirect competitor of PetPeople is the Google search which offers a variety of information but can lack specificity and is a nightmare to sort through. Another indirect competitor of ours is chain pet store care guides that are free to access but are proven too often to be riddled with misinformation. Unlike the PetPeople software, these platforms do not provide the easy-to-find and research-backed pet training, care, and content that is so important to owners.
Marketing/Sales
Because we are in the early stages of development, we have not accumulated any sales or revenue through our platform. Through our surveys and interviews, we have discovered that 40% of potential users would pay for access to additional content such as training videos and extra educational articles, 40% might pay for these features, and only 20% said no, they would not. We will be advertising our software through Facebook and Google Ads, which is where the majority of our consumers look for pet content.
Progress To Date
We have created a functional and interactive software that is in its early stages of development. The software has been tested by over 40 people in our target market via surveys, user observations, and interviews, and was developed with consideration to the needs and wants of our target market.
Future Milestones
We plan to further develop the software to be even more user-friendly after conducting more user observations and interviews. More species will be added to the software to reach the largest possible number of potential consumers. We will continue to tailor the feed and profiles to the user’s specific pet(s) to avoid overwhelming the user with content. We will be consulting with veterinarians and animal specialists to obtain research and data to begin uploading care content to the software and will begin to build the community and media aspects of the platform, as well. Once content is available and the software is further developed, we will add a paywall to specialized training content and vet help.
*https://www.americanpetproducts.org/press_industrytrends.asp