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This is a good example of falling into the trap of picking something too broad, "pet lovers", which leads you down the rabbit hole of generating features you th

by rdrd 5y ago

This is a good example of falling into the trap of picking something too broad, "pet lovers", which leads you down the rabbit hole of generating features you think the average pet lover is interested in and would find useful. I think the B2C space is neigh on impossible to penetrate in the pet space, most pet lovers form sub-communities on existing social networks (see pets on Instagram or puppy101 on reddit), you would need something very special to be able to get the average person to maintain an app on their phone just to engage with other pet lovers. I'd flip it on its head and look for B2B niche within the pet lovers industry if you're exploring pivots. A good example of friction I've found recently is pet sitting, dog walking and doggy day care, currently we have a pup which goes day care and we use 4/5 apps to manage this process - to find one we used Google, but then cross-referenced with something like Instagram to get a feel for how they are on their dog walks, to sign up we had to fill out a questionnaire via another web app, after accepting our pup they sent us a waiver/legals to sign from another app, after which they directed us to another app on the App Store to book/cancel day care each week, must be done by Sunday lunch, but it never reminds us... they send invoices each month via email, which we have to then hop over to our banking app to pay manually, they send us pups "report card" and photos via WhatsApp. I'm sure a small pet walking business or individual dog walkers would happily pay X amount each month to provide an integrated services to manage a lot of this, but more importantly it would be very easy to validate whether this is something the market wants, by just talking to some of these independent pet sitters to understand what pain points they have.

akbarb 5y ago
My co-founder and fiancée is a veterinarian and we met on a dating app. I never had pets before meeting her. I knew nothing about the importance of pets in their owner's lives. I turned out to be a crazy cat lover as she is lol but I always wondered why there is no filter on dating apps for pets. So, that's how the idea for this app came to me. Seeing other niche apps for specially dog lovers made me realize this app needs to be broader for any type of animal lover. The pet adoption section was added to attract shelters to use the app so that they can then help us by spreading the word to their network of individuals. We also have donation programs to shelters. I think a lost/found pet alert section is a must though. An app to only have that feature is probably too small. Anyways, that's how this app has become what it is today. It started as a simple dating app idea. Your pivoting idea and B2B niche is something I have been thinking about as well. Very good example you mentioned. I will be thinking more about it. Thanks for your honest opinion
- paulcole 5y ago
  > I always wondered why there is no filter on dating apps for pets What were the steps between having this thought and diving into the project? I’m guessing there’s a valuable lesson there.
  - akbarb 5y ago
    Well, I made a lot of mistakes and am more than glad to share them here. As I mentioned in one of my comments, after having the original idea/thought I got too excited too soon. At the time I did not know mobile or web development and so jumped on Google, did a quick search and filled some forms on some mobile app developer companies website and literally hired the first company that called me back. Then spent about $6k for just logo design, wireframe and a landing page. That stage took about 4 months and then they gave me a $50k quote for iOS and Android app. I did not have that money. That's when I came across Upwork and posted a job there. The quotes were much lower as you may know since most of the freelancers/agencies are based outside the US. I finally hired a company from Pakistan since their CEO personally called me and kind of lured me into not only giving them the job, but also told me he is interested in the project and he could be my advisor/mentor. Again, I got excited and thought that was a great deal. That ended up being the worst experience of my whole professional life. Their company just broke apart in the middle of the project. Cofounders parted ways and the one who contacted me (the CEO), he said that all their team members left with the other guy and took the source code for our app with them. So I had to contact the other cofounder and have them share the code with a new team that the CEO hired. It was a mess and the project was delivered poorly and way after deadline. However, in the middle of all that, I decided to learn web and mobile development. So, I took a lot of Udemy courses and watched many Youtube videos. That was I guess the only silver lining and maybe I needed to go through the whole excruciating process to get there. Anyways, long story short, after taking loans and spending about $35k for design and development of the iOS and Android apps, I had to redo everything else myself while having my full-time engineering job (I still needed to pay bills and had just got engaged. So no way I could quit that other job). It was a lot of non-stop 15 to 18-hour workdays. This might not have been what you asked for, but I thought I'd share part of my story :)

by rdrd 5y ago

akbarb 5y ago

My co-founder and fiancée is a veterinarian and we met on a dating app. I never had pets before meeting her. I knew nothing about the importance of pets in their owner's lives. I turned out to be a crazy cat lover as she is lol but I always wondered why there is no filter on dating apps for pets. So, that's how the idea for this app came to me. Seeing other niche apps for specially dog lovers made me realize this app needs to be broader for any type of animal lover. The pet adoption section was added to attract shelters to use the app so that they can then help us by spreading the word to their network of individuals. We also have donation programs to shelters. I think a lost/found pet alert section is a must though. An app to only have that feature is probably too small. Anyways, that's how this app has become what it is today. It started as a simple dating app idea. Your pivoting idea and B2B niche is something I have been thinking about as well. Very good example you mentioned. I will be thinking more about it. Thanks for your honest opinion

paulcole 5y ago
> I always wondered why there is no filter on dating apps for pets What were the steps between having this thought and diving into the project? I’m guessing there’s a valuable lesson there.
- akbarb 5y ago
  Well, I made a lot of mistakes and am more than glad to share them here. As I mentioned in one of my comments, after having the original idea/thought I got too excited too soon. At the time I did not know mobile or web development and so jumped on Google, did a quick search and filled some forms on some mobile app developer companies website and literally hired the first company that called me back. Then spent about $6k for just logo design, wireframe and a landing page. That stage took about 4 months and then they gave me a $50k quote for iOS and Android app. I did not have that money. That's when I came across Upwork and posted a job there. The quotes were much lower as you may know since most of the freelancers/agencies are based outside the US. I finally hired a company from Pakistan since their CEO personally called me and kind of lured me into not only giving them the job, but also told me he is interested in the project and he could be my advisor/mentor. Again, I got excited and thought that was a great deal. That ended up being the worst experience of my whole professional life. Their company just broke apart in the middle of the project. Cofounders parted ways and the one who contacted me (the CEO), he said that all their team members left with the other guy and took the source code for our app with them. So I had to contact the other cofounder and have them share the code with a new team that the CEO hired. It was a mess and the project was delivered poorly and way after deadline. However, in the middle of all that, I decided to learn web and mobile development. So, I took a lot of Udemy courses and watched many Youtube videos. That was I guess the only silver lining and maybe I needed to go through the whole excruciating process to get there. Anyways, long story short, after taking loans and spending about $35k for design and development of the iOS and Android apps, I had to redo everything else myself while having my full-time engineering job (I still needed to pay bills and had just got engaged. So no way I could quit that other job). It was a lot of non-stop 15 to 18-hour workdays. This might not have been what you asked for, but I thought I'd share part of my story :)