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Join the SF founder community to connect with other founders and hear war stories from a founder who went through the wringer and came out the other side.
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Meowtel: The Cat-chy Business
It all started with revenge poop.
Sonya had just returned from a 4-day work trip to find her house covered in cat poop. The poop was everywhere.
Her cat, Miss Lily, was sending her a message. Miss Lily was not happy to be left behind.
While she was cleaning up the mess, Sonya had a thought: I need a cat sitter.
Sonya looked online for a solution, but noticed that there weren’t any cat sitters out there. So she decided to do it. Sonya quit her corporate job to embark on her solopreneurship journey to solve this problem.
Getting almost wiped out…
Meowtel started in 2015 with just Sonya and a few part-timers. For 2 years, they bootstrapped the business. They raised a little bit of money in 2017 and tried again in 2019. But they ran into a problem. They struggled to raise a seed round but finally did so right before March 2020.
But it got worse when Covid hit. People stopped traveling and nobody needed a cat sitter.
The business seemed on the brink of disaster.
to figuring it out…
The Meowtel team could have called it quits, but instead got creative with finding new customers. They brought their iconic mascot to CatCon in Los Angeles - complete with a hula skirt - and started sponsoring an independent film called Cat Daddies. They started spending just a tad on digital ads and then realized the internet was a gold mine for finding cat parents. All of these efforts were instrumental in growing their user base.
to crushing it.
Along this journey, Sonya realised she needed a technical cofounder. She found him right under her nose in the Meowtel sitter community.
Now, with 27 cat lovers on the Meowtel HQ team, 2,300 active sitters and 25,000 customers across the US, Meowtel is on track to hit 8 figures revenue by the end of the year.
There’s so much more to Sonya’s journey and how she built and rebuilt this unusual and cat-chy business. We will hear meow-re about it on Founder Friends in Jun 13. And hopefully there will be a lot less revenge poop for cat owners now.
The Schedule
***This event has limited capacity. Only the first 150 signups will be in!***
6-6:30pm: Get here, eat pizza, make friends
6:30-7pm: Fireside chat with Sonya Petcavich of Meowtel
7-7:30pm: Q&A
7:30-8:30pm: Finish the pizza, make more friends
8:30pm: End
Who's behind this?
Hustle Fund is an early stage venture firm that believes great founders can look like anyone and come from anywhere. We invest in startups all over the world and we'd love to see what you're building. Learn more about us.
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