VetPronto

VetPronto was a veterinary service company founded in 2014 by Joe Waltman, Soren Berg, and Dr. Katherine van Ekert. The company was a member of the Y Combinator Winter 2015 class and focused on providing on-demand veterinary house calls for pets, operating in cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York. The founding team's expertise blended technology and veterinary medicine; Waltman and Berg had previously co-founded and sold an email marketing company to Twitter, while van Ekert was an experienced veterinarian. The idea originated from Waltman's personal experience with his sick puppy, which highlighted the inconvenience of traditional clinic visits.

The company operated on a marketplace business model, connecting pet owners with veterinarians for in-home appointments. This model aimed to reduce stress for pets and save time for owners. VetPronto developed its own technology for scheduling, medical records, and client communication to improve operational efficiency. Despite raising $120K in a seed round from investors including Y Combinator and Hemisphere Ventures, and an additional $362,718 through a crowdfunding campaign, the company faced significant challenges. A primary struggle was the high cost of acquiring new customers, as veterinary services are needed infrequently, which limited organic growth and word-of-mouth marketing effectiveness.

In November 2017, VetPronto was acquired by Vetted PetCare, another in-home veterinary care company. However, the acquisition did not lead to a successful outcome for VetPronto's founders or shareholders, and the company effectively shut down. Co-founder Joe Waltman described the event as the company "going out of business," citing the inability to build a cost-effective customer acquisition model as the main reason for the failure.

Keywords: veterinary house calls, on-demand vet, pet telemedicine, mobile veterinary, pet healthcare, Y Combinator, VetPronto, Vetted PetCare, Joe Waltman, Soren Berg, Katherine van Ekert, animal health, in-home vet care, pet tech, vet services, marketplace, startup failure, acquisition, San Francisco, veterinary technology