Dogs are the most popular pet in the U.S.: 65.1 million households have one, according to the American Pet Products Association. But while cats aren’t far behind, with 46.5 million households with one, many innovations in the pet category are focused exclusively on dogs. And even if the service caters to both species, the focus is more prominently on dogs.
Sonia Petkavic, the founder of the cat-watching app Meowtel, believes that cats and cat people deserve more.
When Petkavich’s cat Lily died in 2015, she realized she might not have been the best cat mom. Petkavich traveled a lot for her Philip Morris sales job and wasn’t home as much as she thought her elderly cat might need. She knew pet sitting services existed, but she didn’t think they were doing enough for feline friends.
“There should be a service specifically for people with cats; they have very different needs,” Petkavic told TechCrunch. “Rover had been around for a few years and Wag was going strong, but they were so focused on the dogs. I said, “Shit, I’m going to be the crazy cat that does that.”
She took $100,000 of her own money, found a team of developers, and launched Meowtel in 2015. The startup is a marketplace for cat owners to find cat sitters and only hires people who have direct experience with things like administering medication of cats (cats are particularly prone to chronic diseases as they age) and care for cats with special needs. Prospective caregivers go through a rigorous six-step process until they are allowed to join the app. This includes a 30-minute chat with the Meowtel team to confirm they are a real person, something other sit-down sites don’t do. Petkavich joked that it was easier to get into Harvard than to become a Meowtel caretaker.
The company has operated largely underground since its inception. Petcavich said the company has only just come out of stealth because over the past nine years, the team has put in the work, built its brand and got its user experience where it wanted to be.
Meowtel is profitable and its gross booking revenue is up 50% year over year. The company has more than 2,200 caretakers on the platform, some of whom have been with Meowtel all nine years. The company has fulfilled more than 95,000 seat requests and has largely focused on larger cities, including New York and Los Angeles. It is looking to expand its paw print in smaller cities as well.
Meowtel got to this point by raising just under $1 million in venture capital. Of that amount, $500,000 came from angels, including Jason Calakanis’ Launch and Elizabeth Yin, general partner at Hustle Fund. Additional capital came from accelerator programs including Tech Wildcatters and Sputnik ATX. The company’s last funding was in 2020.
Petkavich said raising venture capital is difficult because the venture capital community is more dog-oriented and many people don’t understand why cats need their own service. Petkavich said she even still wanted to seek venture funding for Meowtel because of its marketplace business model, which she says makes it suitable for venture capital. Also, because of the capital-intensive nature of the market business, she thought venture capital money made the most sense.
She is right that there seem to be significantly more venture-backed companies focused on dogs than on cats. There are several startups focused on areas such as better dog food, accessories, and even health-focused ones. Butternut Box, a UK-based dog food company, has raised more than $466 million in venture capital funding. ImpriMed, a canine oncology startup, raised $23 million in November, and Fi, a smart collar for dogs, raised more than $40 million in venture capital.
As for cats, they are significantly less. Fresh pet food company Smalls is one of the few venture capital-backed companies in the category. It raised $19 million last year, and its founder Matthew Michaelson told TechCrunch’s Christine Hall that he also thinks innovation in the pet category is largely focused on dogs.
But does the market really need or have the ability to support cat-only sitting services? Petkavich says yes, and her company’s success so far and growth trajectory seem to back it up.
“In the era of 2020, there’s a brand that caters to every specific type of audience that exists,” Petkavic said. “These species are different, but no one makes that distinction. I think the psychology of the cat owner, the medical needs of the cat itself really opened up that blue ocean.”
