Hey everyone, I’m David
Did you know there’s a 15% chance your cat goes missing in a five-year period? And it’s not just cats. Around 10 million dogs go missing every year in the US alone.
2 years ago when I saw another blurry ‘missing cat poster’ on a rainy dark night I figured this could be done way better nowadays with digital technology. So I started a small side project with a friend. We used sponsored posts on social media to basically advertise your missing cat to thousands of neighbors in a 0.6 mile / 1 km radius around your address.
It worked much better than expected. Suddenly we were finding lost cats and reuniting them with their families. I remember when the first sighting of a lost cat came in. I couldn’t believe it. Reuniting them was a beautiful moment, and I was even invited for dinner as a thank you.
It really started to pick up, and not much later I actually quit my full time job and focused only on what was then called CatRadar.
We’ve found our 8,000th missing cat last week and since we get many people with lost dogs also asking for our help, we’ve now rebranded to PetRadar. We’ve already found our first dog, actually!
Just wanted to share this journey with you. Hope it gives some inspiration/positivity to your day :)
Our business model is that we take a part of the advertising cost. Some people indeed ask us ‘why do you need to make money off of this’, but seeing as we’re 7 people working day and night, our bills also need to be paid. Kind of like going to the vet, they also make a small margin.