FetchFind Founder and CEO Jamie Migdal didn’t start her career in the pet industry. But there was a simple, powerful reason she jumped ship from her professional career to become an entrepreneur in that space.
The tipping point? When she saw the powerful impact that animals had, especially when it came to helping people.
“I was a social worker before I got into the industry, before I was an entrepreneur, and had a couple of really interesting experience in seeing what animals did to people when they were in a crisis, and wanted to find a way to be a part of that," she said.
From there, she launched her first dog walking business. This led her down the path that has spanned 25 years and helped her launch three national pet businesses. Migdal’s credentials and accomplishments are too long to list, but most recently she joined the PetSmart Review Board as the director, received the Pet Age Women of Influence Award and was a participant in the VentureSCALE accelerator. She was also shortlisted for the Information Age Women in IT Rising Star Award.
She started FetchFind, which acquired Cincy-based PawedIn, because the pet industry struggles with keeping employees. According to Migdal, pet businesses have to basically re-staff their company at least once a year, and that was an issue she set out to solve.
Midgal said the problem is that oftentimes, folks come into the business because they think it’s going to be really great to work with animals, but it’s actually quite difficult/ Some people also take a pet industry job thinking they’ll be mostly working with animals, but a lot of times they find that they are mostly working with people.
FetchFind solves these issues in three ways.
“FetchFind was created to help solve the three biggest pain points for pet care businesses — finding, training and retaining staff,” according to FetchFind’s LinkedIn page. “We are committed to greater professionalization and safety in pet care services.”
FetchFind works as an online resource for pet business. Companies can buy subscriptions to FetchFind, which includes hundreds of online training programs and content. When a company hires new employees, they get put through the program. There are multiple different types of training, as well as new content on a regular basis. There is also the option for managers to monitor the performance of employees, to make sure they’re doing the training and how well they are doing.
One exciting thing for the company is that they are now heavily tracking data, so they can better understand the employees using the training program. That way, they can further develop their software to better train employees and increase retention.
