Why We Are Building PetPublish.com
Well let me first announce that my wife and I are exploring a new side venture aimed at helping animal shelters and rescues find more pets loving homes faster and we’ve named it PetPublish. This post is meant to kick off a series of posts journaling our experience along the way.
The idea
Over Thanksgiving holiday I authored a 3-part blog series about methodologies and frameworks for software startups and how to scale on the cloud. In the second part I invented a fictitious online dating app, eTumble, to illustrate how to apply the techniques described. Shortly after, my wife suggested that I build a real online dating app but for animal shelters to promote pets and help them get adopted quicker.
She described how she follows our local shelters and humane society and often when they’re desperate to find an animal a home, they create cute “dating profiles” for the pet like “fun-loving male seeking family to cuddle with” and the pets are snatched up quickly. It made sense and the idea began to simmer in the back of my mind, yet I was leaving town for a business trip.
My wife, a 20+-year competitive dressage rider, often reminds me that she likes animals more than people so who better to take on these challenges. :-) We also recently adopted our kids’ first puppy, a 7-month-old pembroke welsh corgi named Willow. We rehomed her from a family moving from their 1,200-acre ranch into a small condo and couldn’t care for all three of their corgis. Jamie’s passion and my background in software startups seemed like a winning combination — time will tell.
The initial research
On my flight the week after I began jotting down ideas and assumptions about my wife’s idea on the notes app on my phone. During that week while at a conference and various evening social events, I shared the idea with others and I would hear stories of their experiences with shelters and pet adoption — it seems nearly everyone I spoke with had or knew of an experience. Hmmmm!
6.5 million pets admitted to shelters annually with less than 50% adopted and nearly 1 million euthanized
On my return flight, which was delayed an hour, I began searching on my phone for statistics to see how big of a problem we’re looking at. Wow!
Seeking validation of the problem
Upon arriving home later that week, I told my wife I think she is onto something and that weekend we should do more research. The root problem appears to be due to overpopulation, and breeding, which our good friend Bob Barker (Price is Right host) has been advocating for decades to “have your pets spayed and neutered.”
We decided instead to focus on finding more pets homes faster and reduce the amount that are euthanized.
Our next step was to validate assumptions by talking to consumers and organizations to better understand the problem, so we can identify a solution. We had theories on how a software solution may help, but before diving into product design we wanted to have a better understanding of the current situation. That weekend we began drafting survey questions while my wife researched national reports, and a list of shelters nationwide.
Assumptions about animal shelters / organizations
- They want pets to get adopted faster
- They want to reduce euthanization rates
- They want better analytics and information
- Their current processes can be improved with software
- Promoting pets on social media speeds up awareness and adoption
- Their current manual and laborious processes can be automated
- Their staff use smart phones with Internet access
- They can purchase goods and services with a credit card
- Some breeds take longer to adopt, skewing national average statistics
Often techies like myself take these assumptions and just start building what they believe is the solution, without first talking to people and making sure they understand the problem. As in my 3-part blog series mentioned above, adopting Lean Startup principles applies here. Without much effort we can gain initial insights to make sure we’re on the right track, but eventually we’ll have to build an MVP to observe user behavior.
Building a national database of animal shelters
My wife found a website that weekend listing all the shelters / organizations nationwide. I was about to build a scraper application in Python using BeautifulSoup when I noticed they said the data was provided by Petfinder.com. I visited their developer center, registered for API access, and in a couple hours built a script and database to load up to at least 100 organizations per state to begin our research, and later our marketing.
Establishing our brand and website
Fueled with nearly 5,000 organizations in our database, we then needed to begin reaching out to better understand the problem, so we can flush out potential solutions. I wanted us to have an established presence to legitimize our requests for shelters answering our surveys, however.
Domain registration
Given my wife’s original idea was to publish or promote pets online with cute “dating profiles”, I began searching for available domain names and landed upon petpublish.com — it resonated with both of us and was easy to remember and refer others. We registered it on Google Domains for $12.
Email address and website hosting
In order to reach out to organizations, we needed at least one email account. I registered a single starter plan with Google Workspace, and set up a wildcard (*) so all email at the domain come into a single mailbox. Workspace, like gmail, includes spreadsheets, forms, and even sites, so in a couple hours I created the form, embedded in the site, and we were online.
Logo design
We visited some AI-powered logo generation websites to see if we could quickly create a logo, but none completely satisfied us. We identified two fonts we liked. My wife found some creative logos in a Google image search where they used the negative space in letters for silhouettes of animals and we knew that’s what we wanted. On advice from a colleague, I kicked off a Fiverr gig and for $17 and in 24 hours our new logo was created.
Technical feasibility of initial idea
After a productive first weekend, spending a few hours each day, we had a prospect database, website, email, logo, and online survey. Of course the techie in me already had neat ideas on ways to create an application and publish pet profiles. I tinkered that next day with OpenAI’s playground to see if it could generate useful content and was pleasantly surprised with the results.
Hi there! I’m Fluffy, a cocker spaniel looking for a family to call my own. I’m a friendly and outgoing dog who loves to play and run around. I’m also a couch potato at heart and love to relax with my people. I’m house-trained and know how to sit, stay, and come when called. I’m looking for a home where I can be loved and spoiled rotten!
Although we don’t want to rush into things, this was a fun experiment to prove that we could automate some of the content creation and streamline publishing pets for adoption online.
I’ve since used the OpenAI playground to produce content for our website, email campaign template, press release template, go-to-market plan, and more. Even if it’s not completely accurate, it beats starting from scratch and speeds up the normal process.
Kicking off our research
After our website launched, I began speaking with others and amazingly learned so much more about shelters and adoption. Many colleagues were actually volunteers at shelters in their communities, and others yet have been through the adoption process. As I learned more that following week in casual conversations, I tweaked questions in the online survey to make sure we flush out the right information — minimally to kick off a dialogue with shelters.
I registered for a free plan with MailChimp to prepare for the email campaign, seeking survey respondents. I also set up Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics on the website to make sure we are measuring and refining. Prior to kicking off our campaign, however, I’ll solicit personal contacts to refer anyone they know working at shelters to contribute to our research which is why I’m sharing this post.
Please encourage anyone you know working in shelters or organizations who help with pet adoptions to fill out our survey at https://petpublish.com
Thank you for taking time to learn about our journey to build PetPublish — Giving every pet a loving home. Stay tuned for more…
