Vetted Pet Health
Not much can describe the bond many people feel with their pets, and many pet lovers wouldn’t hesitate to call their pet a part of the family. Maya Shaposhnik Cadena, CEO and co-founder of Vetted, knew this feeling herself. She had grown up with a lot of pets, but one pet in particular stole a special place in her heart: her sister’s K-9 military dog, Fedor, the Belgian Shepherd Malinois. Natalie, Maya’s sister, was saved by Fedor when he guarded her as she lay in a ditch in the middle of the night, wounded and surrounded by darkness and fear. Fedor ran to the closest base to get help and they immediately took her to the hospital to get treatment. He loved Natalie with everything he had. This unique bond is what made the loss of Fedor all the more devastating several years later, and what ultimately set Maya out to answer a single question: what could they have done proactively to maximize Fedor’s time here?
This is how Maya and her co-founder, Ashley Brooks, landed on the idea of giving pets the highest standard of care from home. They modeled their service off of how veterinarians give their own pets care and decided they wanted to give pet parents nationwide access to the same quality care. This led to the birth of Vetted, an annual membership that empowers pet parents to take care of their pet’s preventative health from home.
A Vetted membership provides four key offerings to make preventative pet care simple, accessible, and cost-effective:
Vetted Membership Offerings
Vetted expects to save the average pet parent ~$400/year based on what Vetted will empower pet parents to do from home. In addition, pet parents can be less reliant on the vet for basic services as ~80% of the services that are crucial for a pet’s health can be managed by better education or access to products available in the market today. Vetted will even vet all of the products for members and send them directly to their home. Through the app, Vetted will teach pet parents how to administer these services so that members can help keep their pet healthy. With Vetted, your pet’s health will always be top notch.
Not only does Vetted offer a compelling new way for pet parents to care for their little loved ones, but it has the right team to bring this vision to life. Co-founders Maya Shaposhnik Cadena and Ashley Brooks met through the Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital (EVC) Club at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, where they are both currently MBA candidates for the class of 2023. Maya is a repeat founder, having previously co-founded one of the largest event production companies in Israel. Ashley is a coding wizard and long-time tech lover, previously working in enterprise SaaS with experience in managing software developers and in digital marketing. Maya and Ashley are backed by a strong team of six other full-time staff as well: Brandi Jackson, Rich Tayloy, Rebecca Wulfsohn, and Geva Bidner providing their business and technical expertise, and Kealy Fitzsimmons and Ivana Vorsin contributing their vet expertise. This female-founded startup launched the beta product on August 1, 2021 and already has over 40 pet parents paying for the full services.
In 2020, approximately $104 billion USD was spent on pets in the United States, of which $31 billion USD was spent specifically on vet care and product sales, according to the American Pet Products Association. To date, there are no true competitors in this space that are tackling holistic pet preventative care the way Vetted is. There are some companies who are offering a part of what Vetted offers: for example, Dutch and Airvet are working to provide more convenient ways to connect with vet services virtually. Additionally, vet clinics are now starting to offer packages directly, but this still can require pet parents to get established with the vet clinic and still depends more heavily on the vet’s bandwidth to provide services.
Vetted has already raised $1.5M in funding to date and is planning a full launch in February (because who do they love more than their pets!). Chicago-based pet parents will have access to join Vetted and claim one of the 1,000 Vetted parent membership spots available. Vetted will also offer a freemium version, for a limited time, of their app so that you can have access to your pet’s health log and lifecycle calendar. Be on the lookout as spots are limited both for membership and Freemium opportunities!
Moving forward, Vetted is focused on building out their cat parent membership, improving the predictive abilities of the app to help get ahead of any foreseen health issues, and refining additional membership offerings. Vetted is also excited to expand partnerships with content providers (to continually provide their customers with the best education) and other pet companies (to recommend these excellent services to their Vetted members).
To learn more about Vetted or to join the Vetted pet parent waitlist, please visit https://getvetted.io/. To connect with the founding team to learn more about investing or partnership opportunities, please feel free to reach out directly through the contact page at https://getvetted.io/contact-us/.