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Treat — Conversational commerce pet care app
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Replies
Hunter
My cat kept sitting on top of my stereo equipment. Treat solved that for me.
Would you consider expanding to other kinds of veterinary care in the future? I have, in the past, had both birds and some exotic animals as pets. Thanks - love what you are doing right now!
@elissabeth Thanks! Right now we're just cats and dogs. But many of our customers have multi-pet households, so we're always listening to hear what they need.
@s5 Ok, cool! I am hoping to start keeping birds again later this year. It is always difficult to find good veterinary support for smaller pets (like parakeets) and for more exotic animals. It's also very high stress for these more delicate pets to travel to a vet. So I do hope to see Treat expand into other kinds of pet support, as you grow as a company!
@elissabeth very interesting! We'll definitely a closer look at exotic animals.
Starting at 8:00AM PST tomorrow, you'll be able to rent a kitton through Treatbot! All kittons are delivered by a Treat veterinarian and all proceeds go to Toni's Kitty Rescue. AND all rentable kittens will be available for adoption in July!
@martacrowe Sounds like a great marketing gimmick, but are you sure it is safe to expose kittens to a bunch of random people (i.e. germs)?
@joewaltman hi joe, Toni's Kitty Rescue (our partner organization) has been holding kitten events for 17 years. It is an important outlet for getting the kittens adopted, and is safe for the kittens once they are of this age.
@martacrowe and in addition, every outing/event is supervised by a Treat staff veterinarian.
@martacrowe I am sure there are many (much more experienced) veterinarians who wouldn't totally agree that it is safe to have these kittens transported all over town (from an immunity and behavior perspective). Perhaps more importantly, this kind of service (i.e. 'renting' cute/furry things) propagates an irresponsible attitude towards animals. I realize you are doing this with good intentions (i.e. promoting adoptions), but you should ask yourself if the ends justify the means. As an analogy, if one was going to encourage human adoptions, would it be OK to have a 'babybot' where people could rent babies by the minute/hour? As the owner of a pet care company, can you help me understand why these kittens are treated differently?
@joewaltman @martacrowe Hey Joe, same question applies to pet adoption events in general, cat cafes, etc. Rescues and shelters believe they're a great vehicle for promoting adoption. We are simply adding a bit of fun to something that rescues and shelters already do (with equivalent exposure to germs etc - but we've taken it a step further by always having a vet present). Again - these kittens have been under our vets' supervised care for weeks, and we've put their health and safety above everything. Not appearing on camera today were the three kittens who our vets haven't yet cleared.
Hey everyone! Super excited to be here. We're going to be on TechCrunch Live in 10 min talking about Treat and pet care. WITH KITTENS!
Excited to try this! @s5 curious- how do you source and vet (no pun intended) your vendors/professionals? Are users given a choice at all or does Treat choose which vendor is booked for a given service?
@topilarity Right now we select the provider for you. Since our vets are full time employees of Treat (not contractors or vendors), you can always request your vet later, or chat with them between appointments. As we grow and include more providers (trainers, groomers, etc) we'll default to selecting for you, with a browsable directory of providers. But - baby steps :)
@topilarity And vetting vets (that one never gets old!) is a standard interview and hire process. In our field, all 50 states have professional licensing which is a minimum qualification for us. And you have to be a good text communicator :)
We've seen two providers through Treat and they were both spectacular. Leopold is 19, and Treat's super friendly vets helped us figure out what was going on with him as the non-obvious effects of aging started to take their toll. The built-in messaging made it possible to talk to the vets after the visit, letting us tailor treatment to him based on how things were actually going. Changing his diet was a major component, and being able to order the right food at a competitive price right in the app is super convenient. Knowing we can touch base with his care providers any time has set our minds at ease. Treat's focus on service design is super evident, and the launch feature set is just right — there were several "wait, it does that too?" moments for us.
At Dogster and Catster we always got questions posted about should I see a vet about issue x, y, z. And the dog and cat community would almost always have to say yes, since it was rarely conclusive to know it wasn't. The Treat founders are super dedicated pet people and they saw a way to actually answer that question by coordinating with vets and vet techs around the clock so an expert could give real, qualified guidance. So I'm a big fan of Treat. When we got our dog I had so many questions. And on Dogster and Catster there were always questions about everything. So got answered, some didn't. I really hope Treat can be that solution for people that want it.
Where can I find an iPhone 7?