CEO Michael Hamilton likes to say that his startup isn’t reinventing the wheel; it’s fixing a flat tire.
He founded Peeva, which is named after his dog, in 2016. The Buffalo-based company created a hardware/software pet-microchipping system that can read almost any microchip in the world and is a pet medical records database.
“There are so many technologies that have been developed, marketed and sold to pet owners over the last 30 years,” Hamilton said. “Peeva is basically taking what could work and actually making it work.”
That's not to say the journey has been easy. Hamilton would be one of the first to tell you that.
He’s been a 43North pitch contest semifinalist twice, has made his share of mistakes along the way and has largely bootstrapped his startup besides money he and his family and friends invested. The company just started really gaining traction over the last few years.
“I went years without getting a paycheck of any kind,” he said. “It’s not easy. … There were a couple different times when I was just going to stop.”
Before the pandemic, Peeva had been focused on animal hospitals becoming partners to refer people to the startup’s microchipping program. In 2019, the company entered into an agreement with Covetrus, a global animal health care technology and services company, which gave the startup access to about 9,000 hospitals that are Covetrus customers.
But when the pandemic happened, the business rapidly shifted to accepting online registrations.
What started as a minimum viable product has grown throughout iterations to the site Peeva has today.
Since 2020, the business has had about 207,000 new customers sign up through its website.
That largely happened since April 2022 as the site improved and the company joined a Google digital accelerator program and launched Google ad campaigns. That’s when the startup began operating in the black.
So far this year, Peeva has already surpassed annual revenue totals from 2023. Last year’s revenue saw 240% year-over-year growth from the year prior.
The company is based at 640 Ellicott St., Buffalo although its workforce is remote. The company employs 16 full-time workers, as well as contractors. The business has three workers, including Hamilton, based in the Buffalo area.
Peeva is partnering with Lemonade, an insurance company; A Pup Above, a human-grade dog food business; and PetMeds, an online pet pharmacy, to create an affiliate program.
At the start of this year, Peeva increased and restructured its pricing model so that it has annual recurring revenue rather than mainly one-time payments for its platform.
“That’s something I could never even consider doing a year and a half ago,” Hamilton said. “But now we’ve done it, and yeah, that’s basically a vertical line (of growth).”
