Dog breeders will soon be able to leave behind their outdated business tools and hard-to-navigate social-media groups for a new community platform.
Boston-based TellTail has raised its first funding, bringing in a $3.4 million seed round led by General Catalyst with participation from The Companion Fund and Scribble Ventures. The startup is launching a platform for pet breeders to connect with one another and manage their businesses.
Co-founders Brittany Brody and Mariana Gomez met while MBA students at MIT. The pair bonded over dogs immediately — Brody because of her frustrating search for her mini golden doodle dog, Oscar, and Gomez because her grandmother bred Pomeranians in Colombia.
Like many other pet parents, Brody tried to adopt during the pandemic. When shelters were cleared out, she emailed countless breeders, but had trouble navigating scammers and so-called "puppy mills."
“We put our heads together and said, let’s stop looking at what’s above the surface and what is, candidly, the most obvious problem, which is what the pet parents are going through. Let’s dig below the surface,” Brody said. “That’s why we started to interview hundreds of breeders and try to deeply understand their pain points.”
The pair found that breeders are still largely operating with pen-and-paper systems, leaving room for scammers to blend in with other un-secure payment methods. Additionally, breeders have difficulty sharing their knowledge and experience in Facebook groups because the social-media site bans pet sales. Venmo and PayPal also ban pet sales.
“There’s no breeder-certification process. There’s no breeder university. The way breeders learn how to breed is from each other,” Gomez said. “Because there’s so many restrictions about what they can and cannot say, then that education piece and that knowledge sharing is not being efficient.”
Gomez and Brody founded TellTail in August 2021. The beta version of its platform will launch this month, Brody said, which includes discussion forums, networking and educational materials. She added that breeders will need to apply to join TellTail, but the features are free to use.
Phase two of TellTail’s platform is expected to include tools for breeders to manage their business. Brody said they will explore a subscription model for some of these additional features.
“Our belief, strongly, is that by supporting breeders, that leads to healthier breeding programs, which then leads to healthier puppies,” Brody said.
General Catalyst contributed $2 million to the round, Zak Kukoff, a principal at the venture capital firm, told BostInno.
“We meet hundreds and hundreds of founders a year, which I’ll personally work with, call it, six to eight teams every year,” Kukoff said. “Ultimately you’re looking for somebody in a team, particularly when it’s early investing like we did here, that really jumps off the page.”
Kukoff compared the company’s vision to serving pet breeders to the same way Shopify helps small businesses. He also cited Brody and Gomez’s empathy and understanding for this community as a reason General Catalyst invested early in this startup.
With this seed round, TellTail said it will be hiring employees in tech, customer service and marketing. This team will help build out the back-office tools for the next version of the platform. Brody said TellTail is also planning a move to LA in the near future but plans to hire the best talent they can find, wherever they are located.
While the platform will initially serve dog breeders, Brody said they’ll explore expanding services to other pet breeders as needed.
“We have centered our company around what the breeders need,” Gomez added. “We’re always looking for their feedback. We’re always looking for what their pain points are and trying to design solutions.”
