R/GA Innovation Exchange Spotlight: Meet Dana Romano of PetParent
As part of our Inclusive Innovation series, we interviewed the female founders who participated in our 2019 R/GA Innovation Academy with Kinship at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. We spoke with Dana Romano of PetParent about adopting two dogs, how taxing the traditional pet adoption process can be, and how her tech-enabled platform can help adoptable pets find loving homes.
What does product management, e-commerce, data science, and pets all have in common? Dana Romano, the Founder, and CEO of PetParent.
While Dana has had an impressive career executing as a product manager, data engineer, e-commerce strategist, entrepreneur and tech leader in companies like Rockets of Awesome, Gilt, and Mars Petcare, she has always had a passion for pets. That passion lead her to eventually found PetParent in 2018, a SaaS platform dedicated to facilitating and transacting end-to-end pet adoption, making it easier for both adopters and rescue organizations.
“I’ve always had a passion for animals to the point where I pursued it in my education. My undergrad degree is in animal equine science and now, I finally found the opportunity to bring my work and passion together. I really loved the idea of creating something from nothing, providing value to customers and creating amazing experiences,” Dana explains. “What came to fruition in my adult life is exactly what I wrote in my college admission essay on how I wanted to be at the intersection of technology and business. It’s rather serendipitous that I studied my passion and embarked on a career tangential to that and now bringing them both together. ”
It should come to no surprise that Dana’s founding story of PetParent begins with her adopting not one but two dogs.
“Eight years ago, I walked into the mall to go shopping and I unexpectedly walked out with a puppy. At that time, I was not looking for one but had I been looking, I would not have gone the route of rescue or adoption. I had a lot of misconceptions around what it meant to be a shelter dog and why dogs were abandoned. I thought they were problematic or had behavioral issues. If my intent was to get one, that was not the route I would have taken. Within two days of bringing home my puppy, he almost died of pneumonia. So, I started looking into puppy mills and dogs that end up in pet stores and I started learning the horrors of the industry., “ Dana says.
“At that moment, I decided if I ever got a second dog, it would absolutely be through rescue. Two years later, I decided to add to the pack and knew without a doubt that rescue was the route I wanted to take and so started out on the process. I filled out 10-page applications over and over again with different rescues, often times not hearing any response back and sometimes getting a no and feeling confused about why it was so difficult. It took me almost 4 months to bring a new dog home.”
According to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals® (ASPCA®), 6.5 million animals enter U.S. animal shelters nationwide every year and 3 and a half million of them are then adopted. Yet puppy mills breed about 4 million dogs a year.
“Today, people are more aware of rescue and adoption. It’s almost becoming taboo to buy. There is education happening about pet adoption and why puppy mills are so bad and were seeing sweeping movements of legislation outlawing them. We know that there is a huge shift going on. I think that from the adopters perspective, the problem with adoption is not the perception that shelter pets are unattractive to them but rather that the process is so difficult. People start the process but then drop out of the funnel. They end up buying because it takes too long or it’s just too difficult. PetParent makes that process easier for them by streamlining it, digitizing it and providing transparency. We are able to let users know whether their application has been reviewed, so they can quickly find out if they have been rejected for a specific pet or rescue and why that’s happening.”
PetParent’s platform is free to both to the adopters and rescue organization to the point of transaction. The platform charges a fee when a successful adoption is completed. After an adopter takes home their new best friend, they can shop directly on the platform for all the things they might need for the life of their pet.
PetParent donates a significant portion of that e-commerce revenue back to the rescue organization where the adopter adopted their pet. Through these donations, PetParent’s goal is to continue to support and further the ecosystem of animal welfare and rescue organizations.
“From a technology standpoint, what we’re doing is not particularly complex, what’s really unique is utilizing features that have been made popular through the vertical integration of retail and providing a very similar experience around pet adoption. We’re focused on is providing an amazing experience, helping people who want to do the right thing actually be able to complete the end to end process seamlessly.”
For the rescue organizations PetParent works with, the platform serves as an end to end solution in managing the adoption process including the transaction. Their system knows when an organization has reviewed an application and provides a notification to the potential adopter. When an adoption is completed and the transaction occurs, PetParent notifies all other individuals who have open application against that pet. From there, the platform lets them know that animal is no longer available while also inviting them to apply for other pets that they are well suited for.
In discussing the long term goals for PetParent, Dana expressed that on a national and global scale she ultimately wants to, “to help adoptable pets find loving homes.”
“The adopt don’t shop mentality is really a global movement, not just in the United States. We see the opportunity for us to be worldwide.”
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This year, R/GA Ventures partnered with Kinship, the newly launched ventures, technology, and business innovation arm of Mars Petcare, rebranding the program the R/GA Innovation Exchange with Kinship. The R/GA Innovation Exchange program extended its marketing and advertising focus to tech startups in the growing sphere of purpose-driven companies that can create positive change on a global or local scale.
To learn more and stay in the know, visit ventures.rga.com/studios or follow @rgaventures on Twitter.
