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After I built and exited two healthcare technology companies, including the largest cloud-based Electronic Health Record platform in the U.S. that reached a $700 million valuation before its acquisition, I had the obvious path of starting another venture in healthtech — a crowded, well-funded category where investors already understand the playbook and I have a proven track record.
And that’s exactly what most founders do: Chase the same categories. Those markets have a clear story. The budgets and findings exist. The pitch deck writes itself. The downside is simple, too. Competition shows up fast. Customer acquisition costs rise, and products start to look the same. Founders spend energy fighting (and paying) for attention instead of solving hard problems.
As opposed to this, I decided to buck trends and do the opposite of what would have been easier (and what was expected) — I started a company completely from scratch in an industry that I came to realize from personal experience was in desperate need of innovation: pet adoption. The question I got from those around me: Why?
The merits of neglected vs. Well-funded markets
Neglected industries look different. You find real pain, low software adoption and a lack of modern infrastructure. The two biggest competitors in this category are over 20 years old and most of the rescues and shelters we serve have (literally) no budget for technology. These outdated systems combined with a worsening pet surrender crisis saw 6.5 million cats and dogs entering shelters and rescues nationwide last year, and 920,000 cats and dogs were euthanized.
The beauty here is that you connect with people who also care deeply about the work and will adopt tools that actually help. Animal welfare fits this pattern. Shelters and rescues manage living beings with unique medical histories, behavioral needs and safety risks. They handle foster networks, volunteer coordination and constant intake pressure. Yet many still rely on manual processes and a patchwork of software that does not connect.
That gap creates opportunity, but it also creates responsibility.
How healthcare helped shape this path
When I helped scale healthcare platforms, I learned lessons that transferred directly into this new venture — as is the case for many founders who choose to pivot. Standardization enables scale. Healthcare platforms improved when they made data structured and portable. Pet adoption, I came to realize, needed the same thing.
In 2023, I adopted two dogs back-to-back. During this process, I filled out 16 applications totaling over 1,000 questions. This one inefficiency causes tens of thousands of prospective adopters to abandon the adoption process each year, as they are simply too busy to fill out application after application.
This redundancy was synonymous with filling out physician intake forms over and over again — a problem we solved at my first company — and this is where we started.
Land and expand
When beginning a new venture, you don’t want to start by trying to fix a problem as a broad concept — rather, you can begin by chipping away at the highest identified pain points that are solvable.
For example, I did not set out to “fix pet adoption.” But I saw that in adoption, the most preventable failures come from mismatches. Half a million dogs are adopted and then returned every year. A high-energy dog goes to a low-activity home, or a first-time adopter takes on a complex behavioral case without support. A family ends up adopting a pet that does not fit their housing rules. Those mismatches can lead to returns, stress and euthanasia. Once I realized this one fix could have a domino effect when it came to problem-solving for rescues and adopters, we had a guiding light for what would ultimately become the backbone of our platform, a lifestyle matching algorithm that helps adopters to find pets that best match their lives and expectations across the largest rescue pet listing in the U.S.
Why make it free?
One thing founders who pivot into service or mission-oriented industries, especially ones that traditionally don’t see a lot of innovation or attention, have to consider is the cost to use their product. When we evaluated this, we knew we had to make it free.
Shelters and rescues do not have room for expensive software. Many operate on donations and small grants. Charging them a lot would slow adoption of the very infrastructure that could improve outcomes.
That’s why we made our shelter offering free forever, again a lesson taken from my first company, Practice Fusion. As we did with doctors’ offices, shelters can use it without contracts or limits. That removes friction and aligns the product with the mission.
This does not mean the company lacks a durable business. It means the value comes from building the network. When more shelters use the same infrastructure, data becomes cleaner, distribution improves and matching becomes better. That creates compounding value over time.
What can other founders learn from this path?
If you are an experienced founder thinking about pursuing a mission-driven venture, there are a few lessons and tips I would encourage you to consider before you jump in:
- Bring your proven playbook. Do not pretend you are starting from zero. Use what you know about scaling, product adoption, marketing and customer support. Apply that discipline to a space that has not had it.
- Design for the real user. For example, we know that shelters run on urgency. Volunteers turn over. Staff wear many hats. Our product (and its value proposition) must feel obvious. If training takes weeks, you’ve already lost.
- Measure outcomes that matter. We track adoption completion rates, time to placement, return rates and follow-up success, and use those metrics to guide our product decisions.
- Align incentives with impact. If your revenue model conflicts with the user’s mission, you will fight your own market. Therefore, make the “win-win” clear.
Why “unsexy” markets matter
Some of the most meaningful opportunities do not sit in crowded venture categories. They sit in industries where modern infrastructure has not been applied at scale.
I chose animal welfare because I could see the gap, and I knew how to close it. I also chose it because impact and durable value can coexist when you build real infrastructure for real operators; what we’ve now built at GetBuddy is a case study for this idea. But this is not a singular use case; there are ample other industry opportunities for innovation in untried markets.
If you want to build something that matters and lasts, look for the places where the system still runs on paper, spreadsheets and hope. These are the industries where experienced founders can make the biggest impact and where their expertise and vision are needed the most.
After I built and exited two healthcare technology companies, including the largest cloud-based Electronic Health Record platform in the U.S. that reached a $700 million valuation before its acquisition, I had the obvious path of starting another venture in healthtech — a crowded, well-funded category where investors already understand the playbook and I have a proven track record.
And that’s exactly what most founders do: Chase the same categories. Those markets have a clear story. The budgets and findings exist. The pitch deck writes itself. The downside is simple, too. Competition shows up fast. Customer acquisition costs rise, and products start to look the same. Founders spend energy fighting (and paying) for attention instead of solving hard problems.
As opposed to this, I decided to buck trends and do the opposite of what would have been easier (and what was expected) — I started a company completely from scratch in an industry that I came to realize from personal experience was in desperate need of innovation: pet adoption. The question I got from those around me: Why?
