Animal Friendly Poor Dawg teams up with Sabio to launch App
If you’re looking for an animal friendly app that not only helps you take care of your dog, but rewards you, look no further then Poor Dawg. A platform that teaches proper pet care, Poor Dawg was created to educate, help and motivate dog lovers around the world. Through tier levels of challenges, dog owners or dog lovers can spend time with pups, complete tasks such as walking or going to a local shelter, and receive prizes from sponsors. And who better to build the tech platform for this new app then Sabio.
Invigorated and full of information, we talked with Poor Dawg owner Rachel Ramierz about her experience.
S: How did Poor Dawg and Sabio meet?
R: That’s interesting because it started off as an ecommerce business where proceeds went to a local shelter to help reduce dog euthanasia. That went really well, everyone loved the cause and loved the site, but I knew that I wanted to make a bigger impact. I realized that I could get a larger demographic and I could reach out to more people if I focus on educating the dog owner in a fun way so they don’t really even know that they are learning as they go through experiences. So that lead me to think, you know, now this sounds like a tech platform. After doing some testing which went extremely well, I knew I needed an MVP. It was from there that my husband and co-founder of the business who is in tech at silicon beach ran into a fellow entrepreneur who did coding and was very interested in jumping on board. But, by the time we got to the point where we were going on board with him, he was offered a full time job, so he recommended that we speak to his mentor and CTO of the coding camp he went to…Sabio. So we spoke with Gregorio Rojas and the rest is history. Now we have an MVP.
S: Why did you choose Sabio to go on this journey with you?
R: Well to start I looked up Sabio and loved what I saw on the internet. Great reviews, no complaints. I loved that it was a well-rounded group of people or individuals, everyone was really professional, it just fell into place and grew to be a really really great relationship.
S: What was the exact assignment that Sabio had to do for Poor Dawg?
R: For Poor Dawg the cohorts assignment was to build a platform where dog lovers could create a profile for themselves and a digital pet, like an avatar. It’s almost like Pokemon Go meets Gigapet meets FitBit. Additionally, the goal was to create a profile and a dashboard for users to look at their pets health at a glance. A place where they could send notifications, let you know, okay from this time to to this time your dog needs to be walked. If you walk it during that time frame, you recieve points. It also rewards you based on your interactions with your dog. They also created a platform where you can see what offers are available to the users and are able to click & redeem those points. They created the notifications, UPS tracking, a dashboard where you can see the analytics, being able to connect to sponsors. They did all of that for us and they were upfront and very excited.
S: That leads to the next question, what was your experience like with the cohort?
R: It was great. I was really pushed to learn quickly, you know this was my first stab at anything technical in terms of a startup level. The process that Sabio put me through I feel helped me grow into a better entrepreneur, a better leader of my business, and it really helped me understand my product better. We’re in a much better place conceptually because I worked with Sabio.
S: What would you say were the specific advantages of working with Sabio?
R: I would say business knowledge. Being immersed in a tech environment group was really helpful, because as CEO and Cofounder I’m really thinking of the vision and this helps me get my feet dirty. I was in there trying to really make this come across in a way that was simple for the developers to understand so that they could create something that they could take pride in and wanted to share and talk about. I definitely feel like I came out of Sabio a better leader in business and a better co-founder for sure.
S: What are the next steps for Poor Dawg?
R: Right now we’ve got the MVP and we’re running tests on targeted groups and beta users, but we’re planning on launching by the end of the month. It’s all very exciting and happening very quickly, we’re passionate and we want to get this out there.
S: Is there anything you’d like to add about your experience with Sabio or Poor Dawg?
R: One thing in my experience as a minority, I never felt that way while working with Sabio. It was always we’re all on the same page and we’re working towards a common goal. I just felt this sense of community. Even when I went to the cohort, there were so many different people just in general, different races, you know it was beautiful to see everyone working together for this common goal, and I really feel like that helped motivate me because that’s the culture that I want to bring to my startup as well. I do my best to expose Sabio to other people that are looking for other opportunities to get their ideas from concept to something tangible. I think that when you find a group of people or individuals that are motivated, very professional, and that they know what they’re talking about, it really pushes and motivates you as an entrepreneur. People that can help move you along and help you learn at the same time are incredibly valuable, this is a learning situation and Sabio was there at a pivotal point where they can kind of mold you a bit, educate you a bit, all while keeping it professional. There’s some great accountability going on in the Sabio culture. It always starts from the top and trickles down, and it says something about the CEO, CTO and the culture that they’re instilling with their community, and that’s great.
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Written by Sassy Mohen
