VC fundraising screeches to a halt in Q1 (Apr 6th, Pitchbook). The lowdown for European startups looking to raise money in 2023 (Mar 31st, Techcrunch).
Let's hear from a VC, investment bank and corporate who were present at the Unleashed Pet-Tech meetup in Linz on what their take-aways were and their advice to pet startups seeking funding in 2023.
Hedda Båverud Olsson (Lassie), Ludovic Lacay (Napo) & Alban de Préville (Dalma)
Pet insurance is being disrupted! Health, wellness and prevention are the priorities. Data first approach, automation and machine learning models are just some ways insurtechs are using digital technology to interpret big data on pets for better decisions on pricing to beat big traditional insurers and attract a new generation of consumers. At this panel, we will hear from the co-founders who have done it!
There is a paradigm shift from web1 (www) to web2 (social media) to web3, where you can find large virtual interactive community hubs for like-minded people, also known as the "metaverse." Dogami is a play-and-earn lifestyle game built on the Tezos blockchain. Raise, breed, and earn in the World's First Petaverse. Dogami is a unique "mobile-first" game that has set its path on providing the experience to own a 'digital pet'. We will talk to Kris Penseyres, Co-Founder of Dogami and previously from Sony Pictures about bridging your brand from the digital to the physical space.
Graeme Lawrence & Martin Bryant (InSites Consulting)
Graeme Lawrence, Managing Partner at InSites Consulting and Martin Bryant, Client Director, talk about what sustainability means to pet consumers today and how they have been impacted by Covid-19.The will explain the "say/do" gap and what are the 4 rules for communicating efficiently to consumers. The session will include inspiring examples.
We talk to Elizabeth Lockwood, Head of Europe for The Sound who has spent 25 years understanding consumers (including thousands of pet owners) to help companies launch, grow and scale. We'll hear how D2C brands in particular have a unique opportunity to accelerate growth ahead of the competition by leaning into the brand. The session will include ideas you can activate on immediately as well as thought starters for longer term planning.
We talk to Dominique Locher of CapMartins Ltd, Louis Magaldi-Charles of Five Seasons Ventures and Katie Marrache of JamJar Investments. They literally read hundreds of investment pitch decks monthly, and we will try to find out what excites them.
Marco Fabris (TripForDog), Michaelis Vitalis (Most Valuable Paws) & Julien de Waal (Doggies in Town).
We talk to Marco Fabris, Founder of TripForDog, Michalis Vitalis, Founder of Most Valuable Paws and Julien de Waal, Co-Founder of Doggies in Town to find out how pet travel start-ups satisfy our travel bug and how their businesses work.
David Prien (Firstvet), Nick Irvine (The Vet Connection) & Mark Boddy (Pawsquad)
The traditional vet care industry is undergoing tremendous change. Changing customer expectations and tech development have led to the rise of remote pet healthcare delivery via telecom technology, but Covid-19 has been the biggest contributor to pet telemedicine adoption. Governments have been forced to adjust their pet healthcare guidelines to meet the realities of social distancing and lockdown, and are still revising vet regulations in real time. At their core, pet telemedicine startups aim to streamline the pet owner’s journey, from seeking vet care to receiving it. Some companies in this space pursue B2B strategies and others pursue a D2C approach, taking advantage of an increasingly younger and technologically-savvy target customer.
In this interview, we chat with James Davidson, CEO and Co-Founder of tails.com on how they pioneered personalisation of pet nutrition and delighted their customers who keep coming back for more.
In this webinar, we discuss with guest speaker Michael Hurnaus, CEO of Tractive, on how they managed to raise a funding of $35M to expand their activities in the US: the biggest pet market in the world. Tractive was founded in Austria in 2012 with the aim to help pet owners never experience the sinking feeling of losing their pet. Tractive has designed a GPS tracking device that is attached to the collar of a cat or dog and provides real-time location information to the owners' phone. At the moment, Tractive serves customers in 175 countries all over the world.
When you get to know your customers, creating products they want to buy comes naturally. The deeper your knowledge of your consumers (whether they’re your customers or not), the more likely you are to make the right propositions. When you create products that delight the market, growth is inevitable.
From the biggest names to the newest startups, everyone in petcare has a part to play in the global challenge.In the last decade, everyone was talking about the move to digital. Now, they’re talking about sustainability. David Attenborough said in 2020 that the next ten years would define the next 100 years - and everyone has a part to play.
Bruno Farinha (Petable), Noora Keskievari (OneMind Dogs), Giuseppe Scionti (Novameat and Natu) & Alexander Wipf (Clear)
Purina’s Unleashed accelerator team is on a mission to discover the next generation of petcare startups. To launch the 2021 Cohort, the Unleashed team brought together an expert panel of 2020 alumni to discuss their experiences, and Purina’s Head of Accelerator Lab to share more on what makes the programme unique.
Maija Palmer (Sifted), Kathrin Burckhard (Cat in a Flat), Rebecca Hunt (Octopus Ventures) & Samuel Ryckewaert (Feelloo)
Why do cats tend to get less attention than dogs when it comes to startups and investment? Is it really true that cat owners are less willing to spend money on their pets than dogs? Or are cats a market that is ripe for development — and because it is relatively less crowded, all the better to be seized by the early entrants?
Pet trackers are small connected devices that can be put on a dog or cat’s collar, either to help find a lost pet, or to track its overall health and activity levels. Such devices featured heavily in Christmas gift lists this year, popular with many people who had adopted a pet during lockdown restrictions. But the category is still fairly nascent — there are no giant-sized market leaders and most companies are bootstrapped or funded only by small angel rounds.
Alex Thurstan (Different Dog), Maija Palmer (Sifted), Staffan Helgesson (Creandum), Garyth Stone (Houlihan Lokey) & Andre Jordão (Barkyn)
With 75m cats and 65m dogs in Europe, pet tech is a market ripe for hypergrowth. It stands at the crossroads of several trends that startups can capitalise on: millennials putting off having children and adopting “fur babies” instead, healthy, eco-conscious eating being extended to pets as much as people, the growth of direct-to-consumer deliveries, plus a pile of tech and telecoms advances that make new types of tracking and on-line communications possible for pets.
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