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A Social Network Where Pet Parents Support Each Other’s Journey to Pet Parenthood | Purrch App

Purrch as A Social Network Where Pet Parents Support Each Other’s Journey to Pet Parenthood

Animal Innovations Show - Episode 80 - Purrch

A Social Network Where Pet Parents Support Each Other’s Journey to Pet Parenthood | Purrch App

Looking for a pet app that’s the Facebook, LinkedIn, or Instagram version for pet parents?

Let Purrch surprise you with all its features!

According to Vail Weymann, the co-founder and CEO of Purrch,

“It’s really a place for pet parents to come together, swap advice, share recommendations, and support each other’s pet parent journey. We like to describe the Purrch experience as peer-to-peer-led with expert goodness sprinkled on top.”

Purrch as a Social Network Exclusively for Pet Parents

Purrch as a social network exclusively for pet parents

One of the benefits of Purrch is that it helps pet guardians like you to connect with other pet people. It also allows pet parents to discover new products that their animals may love and learn from pet professionals.

According to Vail,

“…We believe the value of an experience—at least on the Purrch experience—is about connecting real people, real pet parents, to other real people, to other pet parents, as opposed to an experience that is expert-led or sponsored. We really want this to be an opportunity for our pet parents to connect with other pet parents just like them and really share what they’ve learned and experienced for the benefit of everybody.”

This way, even if pet parenthood can be complicated, it is possible to have a better everyday life for pets and the humans who love and care for them.

How Purrch Came to Be

Vail began to conceptualize an online community after she and her husband adopted a red-nosed pitbull they named Rosie. Rosie was very good around people but not with other dogs.

“Living in New York City trying to manage a dog that didn’t like other dogs in the apartment building of the small elevator, you can imagine it was challenging at times,”

Vail said.

a dog mom calming down her pup

With all the challenges Rosie had, Vail just wanted to find a community that could support their family’s journey to pet parenthood.

However, what made things more difficult was that pet parenting can be expensive and time-consuming. And at the time, she was juggling the role of being a mother to a one-year-old son.

“That’s really when the wheel started turning for how can we create a community where connections are made for me based on [my] pet’s attributes versus me having to go out and really search for that community of people.”

With that thought, she and her co-founder, Ken Herbert, who is also a self-proclaimed pet nerd-slash-developer, teamed up to create a pet-focused social network that put community and collaboration as a priority.

The Purrch App for Pet Parents

purrch app for pet parents

Unlike other social networks that offer entertainment value, the Purrch team’s purpose and mission are much more profound.

More than entertaining pet parents, Vail and her team want to make pet life more fun and easier to navigate. To this end, their goal is to become the primary go-platform that supports the pet parent journey, including making the right pet parenting decisions.

“One of the things that we found is that our users want an even more tailored experience as opposed to just a [community of] other dog owners like them. They want to go even deeper to very specific needs, or concern, or interest around their pets.”

purrch app website

In response, they launched a pilot program where they teamed up with other business partners to support three communities. These include communities about dogs with cancer, dogs who suffer from anxiety, and dogs who suffer from tummy troubles.

“We thought it would be pretty awesome to be able to dig deeper into each pet—their personality, their health and wellness concerns—and then create connections within the Purrch experience between people that have similar cats or similar dogs. And going a level deeper than having just a dog or a cat…but going into their personality, health, and wellness traits and really create a community around those similarities,”

Vail added.

So, if you’d like to be part of an online community that connects you with other parents with the same challenges, Purrch may just be what you need.

 

 

Learn more about the Purrch app!

Check out their website at https://www.purrchpets.com!

Have suggestions for who we should interview next?

Send us a message at [email protected]!

Vail: I’m Vail Weymann, and you’re tuned in to The Animal Innovations Show.

Chris: So, Vail, tell us who you are and how you’re innovating and helping animals.

Vail: I am the CEO and co-founder of Purrch and Purrch is a social network for pet parents. It’s really a place where pet parents can come together, swap advice, share recommendations and support each other’s pet parent journey.

We like to describe the Purrch experience as: peer-to-peer lead with expert goodness sprinkled on top.

Chris: All right. So, you have to break that down to me. Peer-to-peer lead means, what? 

Like, what does that mean to a layman like me?

Vail: Absolutely. So, peer-to-peer lead is simply a fancy way of saying that we believe the value— in an experience—at least on the Purrch experience, is about connecting real people, real pet parents to other real people, to other real pet parents.

Chris: Yeah. I love that. And the fact that it’s about pet parents, right.

Because we’ve got 5 cats, and sometimes you just want to talk to someone else that has cats and you’re not looking for veterinary expert advice. You just want to socialize with other people that know the crazy stuff in the zoomies that cats like to run in the afternoon when they’re trying to burn off energy.

Vail: Our pets are all very different. When we meet we have five dogs or five cats, and each is going to have a very different personality.

And so— really, when we thought about how could we make Purrch really valuable for pet parents, we thought that it would be pretty awesome to be able to sort of dig deeper into each pet, their personality, their health, and wellness concerns, and then create connections within the Purrch experience between people that have similar cats, similar dogs and going a level deeper than just a dog, or a cat, or a breed, but going into their personality and their health and wellness traits and really creating community around those similarities.

Chris: Yeah, I love that. So, tell me how it works. 

So, I download the app, right. And— I’m getting it set up. But what are you doing? What information are you getting from me? How are you matching me to those other people, that I really want to connect with?

Vail: You download the Purrch app, and it’s going to take you through a pretty robust onboarding process. It’s a lot of fun we’ve been told.

And really what we’re looking for is you to create a pet profile. Tell us about your pet. We ask you a whole bunch of questions,  really a simple tagging process. We ask you about their personality, and you can tag from a pre-selected list of personalities.

We ask you about their health and wellness traits, and then we ask you about their dietary needs. This, of course, is in addition to the type of pet, the breed, the age, etc.

Chris: Interesting. So you’re using all that awesome data, right? Machine learning and all those other fancy terms to kind of say, where would Chris and his pets, right. Where would they best fit?

What’s the group that he’s going to get the most value out of?

Vail: We allow you to create a profile for each of your pets. So, like I said, if one cat is very different than the other, you might be needing to connect with a different group of pet parents based on the personality of your pet.

So like I said, I have three children. All of them are very different. I parent them all very differently based on their own personality. So as a pet parent, you’re going to want to pet parent your pets very differently too.

The way that you respond, and you parent them, so to speak, is going to be different. And so the tips that you want to get in terms of how to do that should come from parents of pets, just like each of them.

And that’s why these communities are very different. So, we’re putting you into a community based on the attributes of your pet. 

Chris: So, then is it more like— is it like a group conversation type of a thing, where I’m introducing myself and just kind of meeting other people and sharing my stories?

Vail: Yeah, so—what’s really fun about it is we take all this crowdsource information that other pet parents are sharing.

Whether that’s a product recommendation, a vet recommendation, a pet parent tip, a question. And then what we do is we pull that information together and we make sure that every single pet parent on the Purrch app is receiving the content that is most applicable to their specific pet.

Chris: Nice. I like that. So, you’re making it more of an experience for me, right. And it’s tailored and customized if you will, for me.

Vail: Exactly.

We tailor the experience to not only every user, but every pet profile. 

Chris: Yeah, that’s really cool.

So, now is it just dogs and cats, or what other types of animals do you do this with?

Vail: We welcome all animals, all pets, dogs, cats, small furry mammals. We have chinchillas in our house, for example. We have chickens, birds. Any type of pet is welcome on the Purrch app.

And obviously, the more that we spread the word about Purrch, the more users find us and engaged, obviously, the more valuable it is for all the members of our community.

Chris: Well, how long has this been out? When did you launch this?

Vail: We actually launched the app to the app store in the first quarter of this year, and our journey has been one that’s been very aligned with our users.

And so obviously we’ve built this app for pet parents,  and so we want to make sure they’re getting the most value out of this experience. We’re excited about what’s to come.

Chris: Yeah, that’s really cool. I’m excited to see where that’s going to go.

So, what’s your vision? I mean, you’re the CEO, right? You’re the strategist. What is this going to look like in 5 years?

Vail: Our goal is to be the primary go-to platform for pet parents who are looking for support along their pet parent journey.

We want to be on the phone of every pet parent and also make the ability to receive and discover that information, super-efficient.

Chris: Yeah, you know, I really like that,  the authenticity of it really comes through. So, I’m excited to use it and get all my pets added on there and see where this goes.

So, where do people go? Vail, why don’t you tell them how to find the website? Actually where to go download the app and how to get started.

Vail: You can go to the website WWW.PURRCHPETS.COM and we’re also available on the App store under Purrch as well.

And if you are interested in joining our pilot program, check it out and request early access, and hopefully you’ll be able to be part of that.

Chris: I love that. That’s a great way to end the show.

So, Vail thank you for coming on. This is really super cool. I’m excited to try it myself. I’m excited to see where you guys are going to go with it.

And as we wrap things up, I’ll just remind our viewers and listeners that if you’ve got an amazing idea, like Vail did for an app, or a website, or a service, or anything like that, we’d love to talk about it.

So, go to INNOVATIONS.SHOW and come on the show and we’ll talk about it and let everybody know about it.

So, Vail thank you again. I’m really excited to see where you’re going, and I’m really glad that you came on the show today.

Vail: Thanks for having me, Chris. I really appreciate it.

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