NEW YORK, May 2, 2019 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Small Door Inc. – a company reimagining the veterinary experience by integrating the latest in medical advances, technology, and hospitality best practices – announced the close of a $3.5M round of seed funding today.
Lerer Hippeau co-led the round with Primary Venture Partners, with co-investment from Brand Foundry Ventures. Small Door also announced participation from a number of individuals including Nat Turner and Zach Weinberg, co-founders of Flatiron Health; Neil Blumenthal and Dave Gilboa, co-founders of Warby Parker; Jonathan Neman, Nathaniel Ru, and Nicolas Jammet, co-founders of Sweetgreen. Along with the funding, Small Door announced a team of founding advisers, including Dr. Tom X Lee, co-founder of One Medical Group; Dr. Richard Park, co-founder of CityMD; Martin Tiveus, former CEO of Evidensia; and Dr. Douglas Palma from Animal Medical Center. The funding round comes a year after Small Door was founded by Josh Guttman and Florent Peyre.
"We started Small Door because we love our pets and believe they deserve a higher quality of care than most current practices deliver," said Josh Guttman, co-founder and CEO of Small Door. "The market for pet healthcare makes up more than a third of the $75 billion Americans will spend on their pets in 2019. Yet, the typical general practice veterinary experience is stuck in an earlier era. For pet owners, this makes going to the vet a chore. For industry workers, it leads to low morale or worse, as evidenced by the mental health epidemic among the veterinary profession. Small Door is going to change all of this with a reimagined experience," Guttman explained.
Small Door was founded as a Public Benefit Corporation, identifying the animals they treat and the veterinarians they employ as key stakeholders. "We felt the patients and veterinarians needed to be at the center of this endeavor. We included the animals to ensure we always do what's in their best interest as a first principle. We included our veterinarians because we believe their skills have been undervalued in the market, particularly amid the recent wave of corporatization," explained Guttman. Small Door is also a registered B Corporation, adhering to a high standard of ethical and corporate social responsibility.
Small Door's veterinarians are trained at the top veterinary programs in the US and Europe. Many have completed internships at well-recognized specialty hospitals and/or have extensive experience in the field. These doctors will further their training upon joining Small Door, with a uniquely designed continuing education program.
"Small Door is seizing the opportunity to build a better veterinary experience from the ground up using modern technology and customer-centric principles. Between the brand and product, we believe Small Door is creating a 10x experience that pet owners will love and widely recommend," said Graham Brown, partner at Lerer Hippeau." Ben Sun, partner at Primary Venture Partners added, "Small Door provides a superior customer experience across the board: skilled doctors focus on getting pets well and keeping them well, advanced diagnostic testing and effective monitoring, no wait time, on-demand messaging, and all your pet's health data in a single accessible place."
Small Door built an innovative technology stack that provides its members with unprecedented access. As part of the Small Door membership, each member receives 24/7 access to their medical team via a mobile app and a personalized approach to managing their pet's health that guides them through lifestyle and nutrition choices in conjunction with diagnostics, imaging, prescription medications, and priority access to specialists. Those specialists include everything a patient may need, from a leading orthopedic surgeon to a board-certified oncologist.
"Having recently adopted a puppy in our family, we saw firsthand how opaque the industry operates and were surprised by how difficult it was to get the relevant information we wanted as new pet parents. With Small Door, we are modernizing the veterinary experience and bringing it on par with the latest innovations in human healthcare management," explained Florent Peyre, Small Door's co-founder and President.
Small Door plans to use the funding to support new hires, build out their virtual and digital offerings, and construct veterinary practices that will set a new standard for the industry.
About Small Door
Small Door is a new kind of veterinary experience that integrates modern technology and hospitality best practices into a new standard of general practice care. The company was founded in 2017 by Florent Peyre and Josh Guttman, two seasoned entrepreneurs involved in building five different startup businesses between them. Small Door will open its first flagship practice in Greenwich Village in the fall of 2019. Learn more at http://www.smalldoorvet.com/.
Press Contact: press(at)smalldoorvet(dot)com
SOURCE Small Door
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