According to the American Pet Products Association, dogs are the most popular pet in the U.S., with 65.1 million households owning a dog, but cats aren't far behind with 46.5 million households, and yet a lot of innovation in the pet space focuses solely on dogs, and even when services cater to both species, the focus is on dogs.
Sonia Petkavić, founder of cat care app Meowtel, believes cats and cat lovers deserve better.
When her beloved cat Lily died in 2015, Petkavich realized she might not have been the best cat mom. Her job in sales for Philip Morris required a lot of travel and she wasn't home as often as she thought her elderly cats needed to be. She knew about pet-sitting services, but didn't think they did enough for her feline friends.
“There's a need for a service that's just for cat lovers. Cat lovers have very different needs,” Petkavich told TechCrunch. “Rover had been around for a few years, and Wag was gaining momentum, but they were focused on dogs. I said, 'Enough already, I'm going to be the crazy cat person who does this.'”
She built a development team with $100,000 of her own money and launched Meowtel in 2015. The startup is a marketplace where cat owners can find cat sitters, and it only hires people with direct experience in administering medicine to cats (cats are prone to chronic diseases as they get older) and caring for cats with special needs. Potential sitters go through a rigorous six-step process before being allowed on the app, which includes a 30-minute phone call with the Meowtel team to verify their identity, something that other sitting sites don't do. Petkavić joked that it would be easier to get into Harvard than to become a Meowtel sitter.
The company has operated largely in stealth since its inception, and Petkavic said the reason it was able to emerge from stealth was because of the hard work the team has put in over the past nine years to build the brand and get the user experience just right.
Meowtel is profitable, with gross bookings up 50% year-over-year. The company has over 2,200 sitters on its platform, some of whom have been with Meowtel for nine years. The company has handled over 95,000 sitter requests and focuses primarily on larger cities like New York and Los Angeles, with hopes of expanding to smaller cities.
Meowtel got there with just under $1 million in venture capital, including $500,000 from angel investors like Jason Calacanis' Launch and Elizabeth Yin, general partner at Hustle Fund, plus funding from accelerator programs like Tech Wildcatters and Sputnik ATX. The company's most recent funding round was in 2020.
Petkavić said it was difficult to raise venture capital because the venture capital community is dog-centric and many people didn't understand why there was a need for a cat-only sitting service. Still, Petkavić said he wanted to pursue venture capital funding because he thought MiOtel's marketplace business model was well suited to venture capital. And because of the capital-heavy nature of marketplace businesses, he thought venture capital funding made the most sense.
She's right: There seem to be far more venture-backed dog companies than cat companies. There are also several startups focused on better dog food, accessories and even health-specific areas: UK-based dog food company Butternut Box has raised more than $466 million in venture capital. Canine oncology startup Imprimed raised $23 million in November, and smart dog collar Fi has raised more than $40 million in venture capital.
When it comes to cats, the numbers are noticeably down. Fresh pet food company Smalls is one of the few venture-backed companies in the space. The company raised $19 million last year, and founder Matthew Michaelson told TechCrunch's Christine Hall that he believes innovation in the pet space has been primarily focused on dogs.
But does the market really need a cat-only sitting service, or have the capacity to support it? Petkavic answers “no,” and the company's success and growth trajectory so far seems to back that up.
“In 2020, there are brands that cater to every specific type of customer that exists,” Petkavich said. “These species are different, but no one makes that distinction. I think what's really opened up this blue ocean is the psychology of the cat owner, the medical needs of the cats themselves.”