Forerunner's Pet health is going the way of human health; our investment in Dutch covers the reasons the VC firm has invested in the pet telehealth startup Dutch.
The main reason is fairly obvious. The pandemic accelerated the already growing trend towards pet ownership.
According to the ASPCA, 23 million American households acquired a dog or cat during the pandemic.
And as the article points out, the increases in pet ownership came with increases in the demand for veterinarians and vet services.
Unfortunately, there weren't enough vets to meet the new demand, which led to challenges getting vet appointments and increases in appointment wait times.
Dutch is hoping to take advantage of the new demand by offering telehealth vet services. Key quote from the article:
Dutch just launched its platform for virtual, vet-prescribed treatment plans for pets’ underserved conditions, delivered to their doggie doors. Dutch will initially address chronic veterinary issues like pet anxiety and dermatology/allergies, adding treatment for more ailments over time.
Telehealth for humans boomed during the pandemic. Thanks to looser regulations and spurred on by fear of visiting doctors offices during the pandemic, telehealth doctors' visits have become quite common.
The longer term trend towards pet humanization has led to many companies offering anthropomorphic products and services like canine couture, feline wine and dog hotels.
So it makes sense that vet telehealth services would follow their successful human counterparts.
We're often asked why we cover pet trends. There are 3 main reasons:
- the pet sector is large, growing more rapidly than most other consumer sectors and lots of small businesses and independent workers participate in it.
- pet humanization is a powerful social and demographic trend. It's linked to declining birth rates, economic insecurity and other social trends we follow.
- we like pets and it's a fun topic.
