Current workarounds are dangerous. Leaving your dog in a car can expose them to unsafe temperatures. Tying them up outside can expose them to theft or altercations because they're not protected. But now that we offer a safe place to leave them, our customers gain time with their dogs before, after, and in between all their errands.

The house itself is a safe, clean, comfortable environment. First of all, it's a locking dog house. The dog house portion is important because dogs are den animals. They feel safer in closed spaces than exposed ones -- that den-like environment provides them a level of comfort similar to when a dog is scared from fireworks or thunder and they run underneath your bed or hide under the table. It makes the dogs feel secure. It locks, which means your dog can't get stolen and no other dog or person is able to touch your dog. The temperature is also extremely important. We have air conditioning in the summertime, heating in the wintertime, and always keep it at a safe temperature range, never colder than 32 degrees or hotter than 80 degrees. If the temperature is more extreme than that, the house takes itself online to become unavailable.

We also have UVC sanitation lights in the roof of the house, which can kill almost all viruses, molds, and bacteria. Those sanitize the houses between each and every use to combat kennel cough, dog flu, or any kind of communicable disease. They’re the same kind of lights a lot of veterinarians use in their offices to keep surfaces sterile. We also have a fleet team that performs daily maintenance and cleaning.

Dogs do not poop in the house, which is probably the most common question we get. They don't go to the bathroom because they're enclosed in the environment, and dogs don't soil environments like that. We’ve had nearly 2,500 sessions and we've never had a single accident inside. If it were to happen, though, we could take the house offline and send maintenance out to clean it up.

Dog Parker exteriors are a powder-coated aluminum shell. They are double walled and insulated. Inside, Dog Parkers have veterinary-grade, non-porous plastic surfaces to keep germs at bay.

Technology:

• Forced air ventilation for fresh air.
• Air conditioning for hot summer days.
• Interior Puppy Cam to keep an eye on your pup.
• UVC sanitation light on a motion sensor to clean the house between sessions.
• A Member Card reader.
• Connected via a wireless network.

Safety features:

• Automatically made unavailable if interior temperatures are unsafe.
• Ability to remotely unlock the house in case a member’s phone dies and they’ve lost their card.
• An 8-hour backup battery in case of a power outage.
• Two manual override keys so that, no matter what, a dog is never stuck inside (one is stored in a lockbox on the house, another is at headquarters).

The idea came to me about three years ago because it was a problem I was experiencing almost every day. I have a dog named Winston and we live together in Brooklyn. I've had dogs my whole life. In North Carolina, where I'm originally from, we had a big backyard and when we walked my dog, we would walk them in a suburban neighborhood that didn't have bodegas or grocery stores along the street. When I started living with a dog in a city for the first time, I started to realize how much logistical planning is involved.

The city is Winston’s backyard. Every time I walked him, something would come up where I needed to meet someone, grab a bottle of water, use the restroom, and I’d realize Winston couldn’t go with me. You’re sort of left with this, "Well, what do I do? Do I tie him up? Do I trust a stranger to hold him? Do I go home? Do I put him in a bag and try to sneak him in?" More often than not, I’d take him home for the day, which meant he couldn’t get an extra walk or spend time outside.

There was one particular day when I had a friend visiting and wanted to go to a diner she loved about two miles from my house. It was a beautiful fall day, and I walked to meet her. Other than that 30-minute meal, we spent the rest of the day outside, but Winston had to stay home the entire day because we weren't going to be near my house. I thought, "There has got to be a better way. What can we do for short term pet care in 10-minute, 15-minute, or 30-minute blocks of time?"

When I started the business, I started by asking pretty obvious questions, such as, "Am I the only dog owner experiencing this?" The lucky thing about our business is that customers are really easy to find because they’re out walking their dogs. We started walking up and down sidewalks, going to dog parks and interviewing and surveying, and we started to see some patterns that led us to believe the market opportunity was real. 

Next, we started talking to stores. Is this a pain point for them? Have they had to kick customers out because they have dogs, or have dogs tied up outside caused trouble? We found there was a pain point for stores too, primarily of lost business and the desire to accommodate dog owners. Many had treats in their stores or water bowls outside. At that point, we felt confident that there was going to be demand for our solution.

Then we needed to figure out if we could actually build the houses. We started in my one-bedroom apartment, and I rented a woodworking space in a garage across the street. We used off-the-shelf parts to build our first two Dog Parkers. Me and my co-founder, Todd Shecter, found an electrical engineer to build the brain of the house, which had temperature sensors, ventilation, an RFID reader, a Solenoid lock, and a webcam. Then we bought an off-the-shelf dog house and started building different sizes to see what worked best.

Finally, we worked with some veterinarians. I was, of course, talking to my local vet about environmental needs for dogs, and we started talking to pet experts about behavioral conditions, the best type of environment for dogs, and we incorporated their recommendations in the prototypes.

Our first step was to build five of our handmade Dog Parkers. We had dog owners signing up and using them, and that was enough for us to raise our first round of financing, about $400,000. Then we got the attention of the New York Economic Development Corporation, who has a program called the Next Top Makers. They awarded us grant money to continue prototyping the solution and we won a couple of business plan competitions which allowed us to get off the ground. We started pitching at these startup pitch events and winning money, so we were able to supplement our savings and credit card debt with that.

Through the New York Economic Development Corporation, we got the attention of a Queens-based manufacturer called Boyce Technologies in early 2016. They're one of the very few advanced manufacturing plants here, and they had only been around for a couple years, but they had some major contracts with Amtrak and our subway system. We cold-emailed the company because we were impressed with some units they’d built in the subway system that had similar design requirements to our houses, and we were curious to know if they might be interested in working with us. Turned out the founder, Charles Boyce, was interested in finding up and coming hardware companies in NY to help grow. A short time later we we're touring their impressive facilities ad started to build a great relationship.

We were still starting to raise money at that point, and some people are reluctant to invest in hardware startups early on because most of them fail before they're actually able to make their products. With hardware, if something doesn't work, you could be set back months because you just can't fix it as quickly as you can fix software or apps. We knew we needed to get a manufacturer on board to scale the business.  Fortunately, Boyce offered us terms that would have been hard for us to find elsewhere enabling us to secure the kind of manufacturing support prospective investors were looking for.

Suddenly we had a really skilled, amazing, accomplished, and quickly growing team of engineers and manufacturers building our dream dog house. Version two, which was completed in September 2016, was light years ahead of what we’d built in the garage, and that allowed us to raise more money, and to build a higher quality product that played a key role in enabling us to convince more dog owners to trust our service. Our first Boyce manufactured Dog Parker went out in December 2016. 

We had some early traction, and we also got into a really prestigious accelerator here in New York City called the Entrepreneur's Roundtable Accelerator. Ever since then, we've been building more houses and putting more out and convincing more dog owners to trust us.

On the business-to-business side, which are our locations specific to storefronts, we just pounded the pavement. We walked into each store, asked to talk to the owners, and we’d pitch them on the idea even before we had a prototype. We still do that -- just walk into really high impact locations, like grocery stores, and ask for the owners and try to get the locations that way.

Since we've gotten bigger and the awareness level of what we're doing is much higher, we've been able to attract the attention of larger retail chains. Mom-and-pop shops and one-off locations are where we're able to get quick decisions and quick wins early. Now we need to scale increasingly in relationships with retail chains like Whole Foods and Starbucks because we can grow to dozens or even hundreds of locations with those corporate partnerships.

We also work with co-ops. There's a bunch of grocery store co-op owners who own businesses in cities, and if we work with the people who own those businesses, we're able to get in one fell swoop a lot more locations.

Those conversations have just started in the last couple of months for us as we've hit our stride and gotten more confident in our technology and grown our network. No deal has been closed yet with a company that large, but that's what we're in the thick of right now.

We make money three ways: Dog owners pay 30 cents per minute when they use the service. Storefronts pay a monthly licensing fee to become a dog friendly destination. Advertisers pay for unique visibility in high-traffic areas. Once dog owners sign up, they can run Dog Parker entirely through the app, and we send a Member Card as soon as we have their address. We are also able to work directly with cities and local sponsors to deploy houses in needed areas and offer the service for free or at a discount. 

If each Dog Parker were utilized 60 minutes per day, that would generate a little less than $11,000 a year at 67% margins. 

Our units in the early days averaged two minutes of use per day, then increased to five minutes per day on average. We’ve been growing at about 25% month over month. Grocery stores are by far our best locations and they’re about half of the way to our goal of 60 minutes. It’s been pretty fast growth for us, and again we continually see it go up every week and every month.

We’re a self-service kiosk, which requires very little maintenance or logistical support compared to what bike-sharing and car-sharing services need. We don’t have to restock or rebalance anything. We’re just selling time. 

Our biggest overhead piece is daily maintenance, which is about a five-minute trip per house. It’s quick, but they all get visited every day. We also have a business-to-business service, where businesses pay us a monthly fee but get a revenue share from the house. That’s another operations cost. Everything else is pretty minimal -- depreciation on the houses, delivery and installation, 4G/LTE service, credit card processing, insurance, and customer service.

We premiered the service in Brooklyn at 20 cents a minute, and we’re planning to increase it to 30 cents per minute as we launch into new markets. We've been giving the houses to store owners for free, but now we've signed up new locations to pay a $50 per month subscription fee. To get started we gave away a lot of free trials and we haven't charged all our business partners. We've earned about $5,000 in revenue. It's relatively small, but at 20 cents a minute with launch discounts, it can take a while to add up to big dollar amounts.

We are talking with one partner right now to franchise Dog Parker, and there is a revenue component associated with that model.

In the last few months, we’ve gotten much more active in the community. We go to street fairs, we go to dog parks, we just show up and engage people in conversation and we often bring the Dog Parkers with us. We'll pop up a tent, we'll have a couple Dog Parkers, we'll have friendly people there in t-shirts, and we'll encourage people to interact with us, interact with the technology, put their dog inside and see that their dog is comfortable and safe and it’s easy to unlock using the app or tapping the card to the house. That's been really impactful.

About three months ago, we launched a brand-new app and gave new users a one-week free trial. We saw a 131% increase in sign-ups and utilization basically overnight. In the past, we had a $25 sign-up fee, because we wanted the barrier to entry to be a little high as we finalized our back-end operations. As soon as we took down that barrier, we saw a huge increase. The good news is that giving time for free doesn't cost us anything in goods, so we're really willing to do free trials, giving users access to the houses.

The way that we ensure proper use of the house, the dog’s comfort, and the dog’s safety is we know who's using every house, when, where and for how long. We monitor every single house, and the dog owner can see the one they’re using through the app. Remote monitoring is a really important feature to make sure that all houses are being used per our terms of service and also to allow the dog owner to keep an eye on their dog.

As with anything new to consumers, people have a lot of questions and it takes time to get familiar with it and educate them. We will hear skepticism, like, "You're putting dogs in kennels. How cruel." People's immediate reaction to this is never neutral. It's usually like, "Oh my god, this is the best thing. I can't believe it hasn't existed. I want to use this with my dog every day so they can be with me more." Another side of it is like, "Oh my god, how could you ever think that putting a dog in a crate on the sidewalk is a good idea? Think of all the things that could go wrong." The good news is, we have thought about everything that can go wrong, and we've designed our technology to stand up to it, with several redundancies and also that people are talking about us -- it's the ideas that push people's boundaries that have the potential to really take off and change the way people live their everyday lives. 

We are the only ones doing this successfully right now. There are a couple of companies that have put up websites that seem like they want to try to do this, but none of them have a product to market yet. Also, we have a utility patent pending on our technology, so anyone entering our space wouldn't be able to do it exactly the way we're doing it. We always say that our biggest competitor is the workaround. People are used to tying their dogs up or leaving them in the cars, so we really need to change behavior by getting people to trust us.

Our first entry outside of Brooklyn was a three-day pop-up at Brookfield Place, a mall in Battery Park City. We put a house there for three days and it exceeded our utilization goals tremendously. We had a 105-minute average utilization per day at that location, exceeding our 60-minute goal.

That was an early proof point for us. It showed us that markets outside of Brooklyn will be a good fit for us and that a network isn't needed to have successful locations -- high value locations, like a mall, can stand on their own without a 'network-effect' being present. This is exciting because it means we can expand anywhere in the world without needing to set up an entire city-based network to do so.

We have a few key partnership areas. One is storefronts. Malls, food halls, grocery stores, and retail chains are going to be really important for us, especially as we start scaling up and scaling into new markets -- we want to work with brands that have multiple stores across multiple cities. Second is advertising. We have a physical network of houses that allows for advertisers to join us in the way that Citibank paid to have their branding on all the CitiBikes, which is the bike share here in New York. We've started having conversations with some big pet brands to write, "Brought to you by [brand name]” on the side of our houses.

Beyond that, we also partner with animal experts and veterinarians. We've got a core team of experts that help us make sure that we're framing this the right way and disseminating accurate information, and those partnerships with animal groups and animal experts are really important for us.

We're making this investment opportunity available on Wefunder because we want people who love what we're doing to have the chance to participate regardless of where they live or what kind of investment opportunities might normally cross their desk. Since we started Dog Parker, we’ve seen that it has this mass appeal. People love their dogs. A smart dog house is something that's fun, it's playful, it's something people have never seen before. As a former non-profit founder, the appeal of this business and the interest it sparks in people is a real different experience for me! As soon as I started talking about it with friends, there was like this different level of curiosity and interest in what we were doing across the board.

Early on, people suggested Kickstarter, but you can’t really Kickstart a hyper-local service. We raised money the old-fashioned way. We did an angel round. We have now raised money from some strategic investors and from some VCs. But in the last year, since we launched the house and got an enormous amount of press and attention, we've had more than 250 people email us asking if they bring Dog Parker to their city or if they can franchise it or if they can somehow partner with us to help us expand. That's all been organic. It showed us, "All right, there's something here where people get it and they want to be a part of it."

We closed a third of our Seed2 round with professional investors (including many of our current investors) and we thought, "Well, let's reserve a part of it and do equity crowdfunding." First, it helps us widen our network, which could lead to more attention from larger B2B retail opportunities. Also, we’re finally in a place where we have hard numbers. We have 700 active users now, growing every week, and we can tell their stories and we can point to the data and we can point to the success of this now, which we couldn't do before.

We've identified 63 walkable urban centers throughout the United States. The smallest market would be Boulder, the largest in New York, and in between are places like Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, and D.C. These are all walkable cities that we’ve identified as good fits based on retail and population density and dog friendliness scores.

Beyond that, we’ve gotten requests from people all over the world and all over the country that want this in places that aren't on our list. What that leads me to believe is that this has an appeal beyond our densest cities, but we won't really know until we try.

Our goal with our seed two round, which we’re in now, is to try different markets. We want to try Jersey City soon, which is a smaller, walkable place that feels more like Portland or Seattle but is still close to our home base here in NYC. If we’re able to prove the model there, it’ll show that we’re ready to expand into other cities.

My background is in business operations and project management, which I’ve done for large non-profits and large corporations as well. My first job out of college was with IBM as a financial management consultant, and then I went and did operations for Ashoka, which is a large non-profit in DC.

I met my co-founder, Todd Schechter, at the Huffington Post. I was recruited with my experience as director of operations at Ashoka Changemakers, which is a really prestigious social entrepreneurship network, to start Arianna Huffington's non-profit. I came on to turn her really vague idea of service and non-profit work into an actual company. Todd and I became co-directors and co-founders of Ignite Good, which was Arianna’s non-profit.

Todd is a strategist. He also has experience in both non-profit and for-profit startups. When I first had the idea for Dog Parker, I was going at it alone for a while and needed some additional help. In addition to being a great thought partner for me, Todd understands how to explore product/market fit and is extremely handy, he was the one who built the houses in the garage for the first time. He was first advising and helping out occasionally but eventually I brought him on as my COO.

Randy Ramusack started as an advisor, then invested in us, and recently joined us full-time as our CRO. We met him at South by Southwest, where he was on a Smart Cities panel representing LQD Wifi, his Smart Cities kiosk company. He recently sold that company to Verizon which freed him up to be able to join us full time! He previously managed large organizational partnerships for Microsoft in Europe as one of their international CTOs and has experience selling smart cities technology and sidewalk-kiosks to cities much in the same way that Dog Parker does.

Alex Tosti is our fourth core founding team member. She's our design director. We met her in the Economic Development Corporation's Next Top Makers program. She had her own startup at the time focused on creative technology and design products for girls. She gets it, knows the slog, knows what we're up against, and is here for the fight. We're thrilled to have her.

Alex is our creative designer leading experience and marketing, Todd is leading manufacturing, our fleet team and our development team, Randy brings in key city and advertiser partnerships and I do fundraising, team building, and day-to-day management.