Ep 15: Guest spotlight Dr. Adam Little, Founder of GoFetch

Glance behind the curtain with Dr. Adam Little as he chats with Ira about his startup journey including the highs of innovation and the lows of layoffs. Adam shares the hard knock lessons he learned with brutal honesty showing that integrity and compassion always win.  You won't want to miss this episode with one of the most brilliant innovators in veterinary medicine.

Learn more about Adam on LinkedIn

Episode Transcript

Ira (00:04):
Welcome to the Accidental Entrepreneur's Podcast.
I'm your host.
Ira Gordon.
Stacee is out this week, so I'mextremely excited to be joined
by our guest, Dr.
Adam Little.
Adam's also a veterinarian andone of the true thought leaders
in the world of innovation inanimal health.
He's also very much anentrepreneur in his own right,
so today we're going to hearabout his topsy-turvy journey at

(00:25):
his own startup.
With that, it is a pleasure towelcome you to the Accidental
Entrepreneur's Podcast.
Thanks for being on the show,Adam.

Adam (00:37):
Yeah, thanks for having me , Ira.

Ira (00:39):
Yeah, I'm excited.
So tell me a little bit aboutkind of how you went from being
someone that wanted to go to vetschool and become a
veterinarian to developing aninterest in being an
entrepreneur.

Adam (00:51):
Yeah for sure.
So I think this will probablybe a pretty consistent theme
when we kind of unpack some ofthe moments in my career.
But a lot of it came throughlike exposure to interesting
kind of people, ideas and justmaybe a different lens on where

(01:12):
veterinary medicine was headingand the role that we could play
in helping to provide solutionsaround that.
So I went to the OntarioVeterinary College, graduated
2013.
I wanted to be a clinician.
When I got into the program Ispent some time in the oncology
service and the neurologyservice and that was kind of the

(01:34):
path that I was particularlyinterested in and maybe kind of
the first moment which ended upmaybe being the first domino in
falling towards this new path.
When I was in my first year ofveterinary school, there was two
summer job opportunities that Iapplied for, and one was to
volunteer or spend some timewith the neurology service and

(01:55):
the other was that I applied forveterinarians without borders
and I desperately wanted to doboth.
And I remember trying toconvince the, the dean, uh, the
associate dean of research atthe time, um, that I could, from
tanzania, actually perform theresearch project for neurology
um remotely, and I I rememberlike actually sending him the

(02:18):
cell maps showing that I wouldget service enough in southern
tanzania to be able to uh thisproject, and he basically was
like look, dude, absolutely not,you're going to have to choose
one or the other.
And I ended up choosingTanzania.
And so I think for me that waskind of three months working
with poultry farmers and beingable to, I think, see a

(02:40):
completely different way inwhich veterinary medicine could
be used to help society, acompletely different way in
which veterinary medicine couldbe used to help society.
It was really fun, it wasinteresting, it was challenging
and the other thing that it didis it gave me a lot of free time
in the evening to start to readand just kind of explore some
other interests.
So it was also at that timewhere, when the Bayer Animal

(03:00):
Usage report came out, which wasone of the first research
reports that I'm aware of, thatkind of looked at the impact
that the internet was having onpet owners and their attitudes
towards veterinary care and someof these maybe relatively early
pieces of evidence that, hey,this was going to really change
the way that people discoveredveterinary services, how they

(03:22):
interacted with providers, and,I think, create a huge
opportunity for practices tostart to implement these tools.
So, coming out of that, I saidI'm going to start to build an
app for pet owners to help themconnect with their vets and I
called it Pet Connect and Istarted making these wireframes
and I would take them to mentorsof mine and contacts through

(03:45):
the college and I would probablyreach out to 50 people or so in
the final couple of years ofveterinary school basically
saying, hey, like I'm a vetstudent, I want to build this
app.
Here's a bunch of wireframesand they kind of sit down with
me and they gave me a lot ofgood advice, but a lot of it
focused on like, hey, this ideais kind of cool and interesting,
but like, who are you and whydo you care about these things

(04:07):
and why are you passionate aboutthis?
And I think what many peoplemaybe saw at that time that I
didn't see was that you know,this particular idea might come
and go and and maybe it was thatthing, but they were really
interested and really trying tosupport me in this kind of
journey to to my background ineducation in some unique ways,
and that was ultimately what ledto my first job with LifeLearn.

(04:30):
So it was a really interestingkind of arc through veterinary
school because by the time Iactually left school I then
spent, I went right to work withthis company, lifelearn, after
spending a little bit of time inSilicon Valley at an
institution called SingularityUniversity, kind of being
further exposed to some of thesenew technologies.

(04:51):
So it was a combination of likehey, you know, maybe one or two
decisions in first year kind ofled to a bunch of other
decisions and opportunities downthe road.
But I do think back sometimesabout like what would have
happened if I just took the jobin neuro that summer.
But in many ways it kind ofcompounded in ways that I

(05:11):
couldn't necessarily anticipateat the time.

Ira (05:15):
Well, you know, potentially because you're smarter than the
two of us, but you know, so youskip this step that Stacee and
I had along the way of being apracticing veterinarian, for the
most part right, and so likehow do you feel about that?
Or how did I mean, how did thatsort of happen?

Adam (05:30):
Yeah, it's a good question .
I think that wasn't necessarilya deliberate choice.
I think for me, what I wasreally driven by was and I
remember thinking about this infourth year because obviously at
that point you have people thatbasically get categorized into
buckets are you large or smallanimal?
I remember we'd go for likelike a dinner, like a sponsored

(05:54):
dinner, and they'd ask peoplelike, raise your hands if you're
going to go to small animal,raise your hands if you're going
to go to large animal.
And I'd be sitting there andI'd be like I don't necessarily
feel like I'm in the right place.
But I think for me what I wasreally driven by was actually,
ironically enough, like helpingpets.
And from my perspective I wasthinking, hey, if my goal is to

(06:15):
help as many animals as I can,the best way to do that would be
to be able to build systems orcreate systems or upgrade the
systems of care to help all mycolleagues practice at the best
level possible.
And I was really driven by andto this day still am this idea
that by working on thoseproblems you can have a really

(06:36):
significant impact on patientcare.
Now, at times do I wish I wouldhave gone into practice, I
think at times I think it wouldhave been an advantage, but I do
think that it didn'tnecessarily become a deterrent
or to the detriment of my careerand it allowed me to kind of

(06:56):
pursue opportunities that mightotherwise been difficult to have
pursued.

Ira (07:01):
That's really interesting.
Certainly, I think it'ssomething that is in common with
my story and Stacee's and maybemost entrepreneurs, but this
realization that you have atsome point that if I build
something that everybody can use, that can have a much bigger

(07:22):
impact than me providingservices that only a limited
number of people actually canhave access to yeah, I, I think
so and I think that there's likea degree of empathy maybe for
the veterinary experience that,while I haven't practiced, I
think is shared between peoplewho have spent significant time
in this industry.

Adam (07:41):
um, that I think when you take a step back now and you see
kind of the flood of capital,new players, is sometimes maybe
lacking, um, about what it'sreally like to be in some of
those environments.
So you know, my wife sometimesjokes, um, she's like, oh yeah,
you can go in there and, likeyou know, spay a dog or kind of
get there.
I'm like, look, it's kind oflike riding your bike, like I

(08:02):
never.
It's not like I'm going backand like picking up a bike.
It's like I never built themuscle memory of actually
providing care in that way, andso it's not so much like, hey, I
took a couple of years off.
It's that during that reallyimpactful time for people, when
they first are kind of put intoclinics and spend a lot of time

(08:25):
with patients and with theirteams, they just grow so much
and they build a level ofconfidence and a level of
competency that I think if I wasto go back, I'd need a lot of
shadowing.
But on the other side, I doconsider myself very fortunate
that I get to work withveterinarians every single day,
consider myself very fortunatethat I get to work with
veterinarians every single day,and I think it's one of the

(08:49):
greatest professions andindustries out there, with some
really special people and somethings that make it particularly
fun to work in.
So, yeah, it's just maybe adifferent part of it, I think,
by maybe going this route.

Ira (09:00):
Yeah, no, I certainly agree that we have the best people in
this field by and large.
So tell me a little bit abouthow you went from working at
LifeLearn and sort of beinginvolved in innovation there to
actually taking the leap andgetting involved with your own
startup own startup, yeah, so.

Adam (09:28):
So I think maybe the kind of the connective tissue between
or the thread between those twothings was that when I was at
Lifeline I was doing a lot ofbusiness development work and we
brought in this, this projectwith IBM Watson.
We were building a decisionsupport tool and LifeLearn at
the time had done a lot morelike kind of services work and
they had some products, but Ithink they weren't kind of the
traditional kind of productbuilding technology force.
They had a vibrant kind ofindustry services business.

(09:50):
So it was a bit of a differentprocess to be able to kind of go
zero to one with thistechnology.
And I remember kind of goingthrough that process and
thinking like you just needeverybody kind of focused on
this one thing, and and it wasmaybe difficult in that
environment to really birth thiscompletely new product, which
is something that happens a lotin in in you know, larger

(10:13):
companies with more establishedlines of business.
So after that I decided youknow, do some consulting kind of
play around, look at some otherideas.
I was starting, let's say, geton the periphery of some of
these startups.
I was doing some advising,talking to some folks, but I was
always kind of looking at thatpoint, saying I want to find
something to start myself.
And ironically enough, I endedup meeting my co-founder through

(10:36):
that program at SingularityUniversity, where he was a VC on
the climate side, who from hisjourney he was getting
increasingly active as a boardmember, as an investor and
really kind of getting to thepoint in his own career where he
was ready to start something.
He wanted to actually be abuilder and I was kind of doing

(10:58):
the same.
And so we kind of met at a timein both our lives where we were
really interested in startingsomething together or starting
something and then kind of foundeach other.
And I would go to a lot of thosemeetings and a lot of those
kind of community events saying,hey, we should be looking at
the animal health space, weshould be looking at veterinary
medicine.
This is an amazing industry.
It's got all these kind ofproblems, but there's an

(11:19):
opportunity to build businessesto solve those problems and I
think if we can find the rightteam and the right people, we
can do something special.
And so that's how Mike and Imet and we kind of embarked on
this journey and one of thethings I'm particularly proud of
which I'm sure we'll revisittowards the end when we talk
about you know how that businessended up going is that many of
the early backers of ourbusiness were people that I had

(11:43):
built relationships withthroughout my entire career and
in school.
We had my first dean, my firstboss, the chair of the board of
my first company I worked for,and so it was a reflection for
me personally that there was alot of people that were willing

(12:07):
to bet on me, not just kind ofmetaphorically, but actually,
like you know, with their owndollars, um, and we're really
big believers, I think, in me asa co-founder of this business,
and that was something I tookvery seriously, um, throughout
the entire time in that company.

Ira (12:23):
Uh, that's.
That's great and awesome tohave such supportive backers at
the beginning, for sure.
So why don't you tell me aboutkind of what the initial vision
was when you started?
Future Pet.

Adam (12:36):
Yeah.
So it's really interestingbecause it did.
The product changed, but I thinkthe vision was always pretty
consistent, which was, if we canfind a way to create a great
experience for clients around avisit, within a visit, we can
make the lives of veterinariansa lot easier, we can lead to

(12:57):
those appointments being betterfrom an efficiency standpoint,
from a compliance standpointstandpoint, from a compliance
standpoint, and the idea is toreally take away, or kind of,
you know, take on theresponsibility of adding value
to those appointments in a waythat didn't require the vets to
have to manage all those tasks.
So what we started with wasintake.

(13:18):
We thought, hey, you know, ifwe can gather as complete a
history as possible while alsohelping to set expectations with
owners ahead of that visit, youcould ideally, in theory,
create these veterinary visitsthat were much quicker, that
were more personal, and bysetting expectations up front we

(13:38):
thought that you could drive anincrease in compliance.
So we set out to build thisintake software that would
integrate with practicemanagement software systems and,
practically speaking, what thatwould do is, hey, we'd read all
these appointments, we'd textthe owners and we would then try
to build that complete medicalhistory to the best of our
ability behind those exams.
So that was kind of like thevision, this idea that can we

(14:00):
kind of wrap technology around apractice, upgrade the
experience through technology?
And where we focus initiallywas intake.

Ira (14:10):
Got it, and what did you?
Learn trying to build thatsolution.

Adam (14:34):
It was a really interesting story and one that,
yeah, almost the naivety of whatwe were kind of working on, I
think now today is kind of funnyto look back on.
So I think the first thing thatwe really ran into was which is
something that I think a lot ofbusinesses, whether or not they
recognize it, face face todayis that for us to create that
value, we needed an integrationwith the practice management
software system.
And those integrations arecumbersome, they're expensive

(14:55):
and they can be unreliable.
And one of the things that Inever really appreciated until
we kind of got in there is thatyou can have, like a great
product and you can be doingeverything on your side, right,
but if, like, that integrationleads to an experience that is
not just not ideal but canactually be harmful, it kind of
doesn't matter how good yourpart of the puzzle is.

(15:17):
Um, people are going to be upset.
Um, I kind of and a comparisonto this is like, imagine you
rent an Airbnb and the pipesburst.
If you're the guest of thatAirbnb, you don't really care
about the plumber or who theyare, you just blame the host.
You're like look, you have tosolve this problem, even if the
host is saying, well, I'm notthe plumber, right, it's the

(15:38):
idea that you're buying intothis experience.
So in our case, what thatmanifested as was that we
couldn't reliably at the timewhat that manifested as was that
we couldn't reliably at thetime really gain an
understanding of who theseappointments were for, what

(15:59):
types of appointments there were, and one issue kind of really
manifested itself thatultimately caused us to pivot
that business.
So we had a large and kind oflike anchor pilot agreement with
this new practice group andthey were in the process of also
acquiring clinics.
So you got to appreciate, likethey're going through their own
process, they're trying to sellthese practices on.

(16:20):
Hey, you know, this is going tobe the group we're going to and
we are now the solution, one ofthe solutions that they are
kind of bringing first to thetable, to try to get these
practices to adopt.

Ira (16:29):
No pressure.

Adam (16:30):
Yeah, exactly.
So we found out through some ofthe integrations that, through
kind of our onboarding, thatthere was a particularly sticky
integration issue where, forthis particular practice, we
were reading or integrationswere kind of reading these
phantom appointments.
And for those people who mightnot be as familiar with them,

(16:54):
these are appointments thatdon't kind of exist on the user
interface but in the database doexist and so, for example, they
can be with like a recurringappointment that's sent into the
future because you have like avaccine appointment scheduled
for every single year.
And so we we, practicallyspeaking, what it meant was we
got to the point that we weresending appointment reminders
for an appointment that didn'texist, for doctors who didn't

(17:16):
work there anymore, for pets whowere no longer alive.
It was awful and and we are likein firefighting mode at this
point, right, and our technicalteam is saying like we don't, we
can't distinguish this, wedon't know what's going on,
there's only so much that we cando.
And it got to the point wherewe just said, look, we can't, if

(17:39):
we can't fix this problem, wecan't provide this solution.
And you can imagine thewillingness to kind of wait
through this, for for thoseclinics, like it doesn't exist
right and clients exactly rightand so we just pulled the plug,
we gave them back all theirmoney and we pivoted the company

(18:00):
.
Um, to be honest, in partbecause that kind of real-time
reading of the practice datafrom the integration partner we
were working with at the timewas so unreliable that it
basically cratered our businessor at least created that
particular product, and so thatwas really tough because it felt
like, as a founder, there wasthis very specific technical

(18:24):
problem that maybe I didn'tfully understand at the time or
didn't really know how to solveour team's getting frustrated.
Obviously our customers areincredibly frustrated, but it
really taught me a veryimportant but kind of tough
lesson about the sensitivity ofthose client relationships and
the care that practice has kindof put into cultivating that

(18:44):
relationship.
You know, in these cases theseare people at times that have
been with the practice for fiveor 10 years, right, and the last
thing they want is even onephone call from somebody
complaining about something, letalone an issue like this.
So it was a tough period forthat business or for our
business, but you know, wenavigated it the best that we

(19:08):
could, I think, by, you know,taking responsibility, refunding
it and basically shutting thatpart down.

Ira (19:14):
Well, let me give you a quote which might or might not
make you feel any better.
It's not mine, it's taken froma friend of mine named Trip
Stewart, and he said, and hesaid I have seen so many great
companies die on the mountain ofpractice management system

(19:36):
integration.

Adam (19:36):
It's, it's a, it's a good one like, and this has been for
for for for me, um, I think alesson I had to learn a couple
different times but thatreliance again of those
integrations as an essentialbuilding block for your product.
Hey, we're going to be great ifA, b and C comes together.
And then you quickly realize,hey, wait a second, we can't

(19:58):
control A, b and C, or itdoesn't work like that or it's
too expensive.
So, yeah, I can certainlyrelate to that quote.

Ira (20:08):
So you had to shut down this major part of your business
and look to make a shift.

Adam (20:17):
What did you do?
So there's two times in ourcompany's history that we had to
lay off 50% of the team, andthat was one of the times we
ended up pivoting towards thisconsumer-facing rewards program,
this loyalty program, and weended up building this loyalty
and rewards membership modelthat we partnered with Vet

(20:37):
Clinics to provide butultimately was sold to pet
owners.
And so we ended up reallytrying to focus on a bit of a
different part of the journey.
We again kind of getting backto that vision, we thought, hey,
could we create incentives thatwould allow people to, that

(20:57):
would allow us to drive theright behaviors for pet owners?
And we started rolling out thisloyalty program, which would
basically consist of a couple ofcomponents, out this loyalty
program, which would basicallyconsist of a couple of
components, one was like 5% backon your pet's spending, which
would then have to be spent backat the clinic, and so this idea
that you could kind of build upa bit of a pet savings account

(21:19):
coupled with a 24/7 support, andwe provided that we'd sell that
to pet owners and we'd promotethat through clinics and we'd
have kind of a network ofclinics that would uh, honor and
support that, uh, that, thatreward plan, um, so that.
So that took us for the nextcouple years and at that time we
were starting to bring onindustry partners.
Uh, covid happened, um, and sothere was some minor

(21:43):
modifications there, but thatreally became the initial
building block towards what wethen began to roll out, towards
kind of the second half ofGoFetch, I would say, which was
these wellness plans, so kind oftaking that core technology and
actually building out thesesubscription services, which
brought us back into thatintegration game a little bit,

(22:03):
maybe a little bit more informedbut certainly not bulletproof.
But that became the directionof the business.
And it was at that time thenthat we also began to bring on
some new investors and partners,some strategic partners that
ended up playing a verysignificant, at times really
positive, at times challengingrole to the business, times

(22:29):
challenging role to the business.
But that was basically kind ofthe journey where you know
loyalty rewards, wellness plansand kind of continuing to build
in that direction.

Ira (22:35):
Did you guys have a moment where it just kind of really
felt like you know, what we'redoing is working and sort of
people are kind of getting thisand things are starting to feel
good?

Adam (22:46):
Yeah, I think that's maybe one of the problems is that we
felt that moment a lot and Ithink in some ways that's
positive because you need thosemoments to kind of convince
yourself to kind of keep going.
But at times those momentsweren't necessarily driven by
like customer success.

(23:07):
So it would be like the releaseof a feature, not necessarily
like the widespread adoption ofit.
At times those moments weren'tnecessarily driven by customer
success.
So it would be like the releaseof a feature, not necessarily
the widespread adoption of it,getting an investment but not
necessarily securing a customercontract.
There was a couple of moments,looking back now, when we
launched our wellness plans,where we started to really see
that going, when we crossed somekind of financial milestones
plans where we started to reallysee that going when we crossed

(23:28):
some kind of financialmilestones.
But I think, looking back, Ithink the reality is like we
just never got product marketfit throughout the entire
seven-year history of thecompany and I think there was
many times that we felt like wewere close to having it and and
I think that proved to be a bitchallenging like, in some ways,
one of one of our, one of ourformer employees.

(23:50):
He's a our CTO.
He's a great guy and he saysyou guys always know how to turn
lemons into lemonade.
And I think that was that, wasthat was true, in that we were
able to find a way to just kindof keep going through like three
or four different versions ofthe business and there's
something about that kind ofgrit and resilience that I think
is like an essential ingredient, but it has to be paired with

(24:13):
kind of a more singular pursuitin that, like what you're
building is making a difference.
You can't just like stay in thering To just stay in the ring,
you have to be working towardssomething, and it took us a long
, long time for us to realizethat we needed to like really
significantly simplify ourbusiness and really almost drive

(24:34):
an engine that was just gearedtowards product market fit.
And so the way that I look atlike our company is a little bit
in these two components, whereat least two these two parts,
where that intake to loyalty, towellness plans, that was this
kind of like continuous streamwhere we just kind of kept
adding stuff and kind of tryingto find our way and convincing

(24:55):
ourselves that by adding more wewere somehow making the
business better.
But in reality, when I took astep back, I'm like I think we
just made the business way morecomplicated and we ended up
having to deal with thatcomplexity when, ultimately,
about a year before we went outof business, we ended up having
to deal with that complexitywhen, ultimately, about a year
before we went out of business,we ended up making another
really significant pivot andhaving to shut that part of the
business down to pursue anotherdirection, which we can talk

(25:16):
about in a second.
But I think it was this ideathat we were able to kind of
find a way to keep going.
We thought that adding morestuff was going to help us get
the product market fit or reallyjust kind of blurred the lines
where people were like I get allthese things, but I'm not
really sure that I need any ofthem, and ultimately we were
able to kind of celebrate thesemilestones that we were hitting.

(25:37):
That for us felt reallyimpressive.
But I think, objectively, wejust weren't on the right
trajectory and that that becamepretty clear as well.
So there was certainly a bit ofa painful period when you start
realizing like, hey, you know,we're just not on a path to
being able to get to that nexthorizon a little bit.

Ira (25:58):
Yeah, let me ask you about this, which is this.
It's kind of like thisentrepreneurial conundrum On the
one hand, you need to have thispersonality and drive to you
know, not let bad news stop youor slow you down and to be able
to be able to overcome a varietyof types of hardships and

(26:21):
somehow, at the same time, youhave to have a personality and
sort of analytical piece that'sable to look and say you know
what, like this isn't workingand we can't keep doing it.
We have to shift our, ourthinking or our strategy a
little bit.
And, like, I don't know, how doyou think about that?
That sort of conflict?

Adam (26:39):
Yeah, it's, it's a really good question.
So I think, from for me now,what I didn't do at the time
which I wish I would have donewas be really focused, almost
like just personally.
Like what metrics do I need tosee in the business so that I'm
confident that we're on theright track, to, at the same

(27:07):
time, hold this like reallycompelling vision that can like
evangelize your team, canevangelize your investors, can
give you the direction worthgoing, but kind of knowing that
on a day-to-day basis, we arefocused on the right things.
And I think for us, where wereally struggled was that we
ended up hiring way too earlyfor roles that we didn't need,

(27:27):
in part because we thought thatthat would kind of solve maybe
some of those those problems andand and and, at the same time,
be able to, okay, we don'tunderstand this thing.
So let's go hire somebody tolike help us figure it out.
But the problem is, like whenyou're really early and you
haven't figured it out yourself,like if you hire a salesperson
and, as a founder, you haven'tfigured it out yourself.
Like if you hire a salespersonand, as a founder, you haven't

(27:48):
figured out how to sell this,like how are you supposed to
train that person right, if youare?
And so we ended up hiringpeople that ultimately, I think
we didn't necessarily set themup for success, in part because
we hadn't gotten the clarity inour business in terms of what we
actually need, what were thedrivers of our growth, what
skill sets we wanted.

(28:12):
And that was when, I think, thetimes were the worst where we
had kind of this combination of.
We have this vision that peopleseem excited about, but we have
a lot of people now.
They are either doing thingsthat I don't necessarily know if
they're all aligned, or they'relooking for direction what they
should do, and we're not seeingthe growth of the business from
like just a dollars and centsperspective.
And and I think that I dowonder, like if it's like for me

(28:36):
, we almost have to learn theselessons the hard way in order to
like get, get the learningright.
And so, like I've read almostlike every startup book you can
have and I remember thinking howdo people make these mistakes?
It seems so much morestraightforward, but it's almost
made worse by the fact thatI've read those books and then
still made those same mistakes.

(29:07):
Your point you have to have thislike unbridled enthusiasm and
belief and confidence that attime, can maybe distract from
some some of that sober reality.
Um, and I think back to some ofthe best advisors that we've had
in the business, and some ofthem were like very experienced
entrepreneurs and they werenever afraid to say like hey,
like this doesn't seem like it'sworking, like you guys can make
all the excuses you want, youcan blame a bunch of people or a
bunch of reasons, you can blamethese integrations, but,

(29:29):
putting that all aside, likeyou're just not making the
progress.
And I think at times that, yeah,sense of almost like fatigue
senses as well, because at thispoint you're like several years
into it, you feel like you'vegiven 110 and you're like, look,
I, I don't know why it's, we'rejust not seeing that growth, um

(29:51):
, and so that was that wasparticularly challenging, for
sure.
And so that ability to have tosimultaneously hold this
incredible clarity on what youneed to achieve in a short
period of time, such that yougive people direction and they
know what success looks like,while also painting this like
super compelling vision aboutthe way that the world could be
that evangelizes everybody Ithink it's very difficult to be

(30:14):
a leader that can do both ofthose things.

Ira (30:16):
You almost need two different personalities, right.

Adam (30:19):
Yeah, exactly, it's really , really, really hard, um, and
we ended up getting that lesson,and maybe this is kind of the
final chapter of the story.
So I mentioned that there wastwo moments in the company that
we laid off 50 of the people,and the last time we did that
was um December 2022.
We had, at that point, we hadum two products.

(30:41):
We had this kind of wellness,let's say, frankensteinian
product that we had been, wethrew so much into and just to
kind of paint a picture of allthe things that we developed, we
had a pet owner app.
We had a clinic-facingdashboard.
We could build these customplans for any of the clinic
services.
We sold them direct to petowners.
We were the first business tosell wellness plans direct to

(31:03):
Pat owners.
We were the first business tosell wellness plans directly to
Pat owners in association withthat clinic.
We had baked in financing andtelehealth.
We had this new checkoutprocess.
We built so much stuff that wethought was necessary to get
going which spoiler alert, itwasn't.
But we have this really complexproduct with customers that
we've been working for a longtime.
And on the other side, we hadthis really simple payment app

(31:25):
that was using some of thetechnology that we built for the
wellness plan, but this wasfocused on point of sale
financing and payments forveterans that had insurance, and
that product was called GoFetchPay.
So we had GoFetch Plus on thewellness side and then we had
GoFetch Pay, and we looked atour business and we said we
can't, we have two products inone business and we're not like,

(31:50):
we have to get one right Right.
And GoFetch Plus was somethingthat was burning a lot of cash.
It was really difficult tosupport, there was a lot of
technical challenges, and sobasically, we wound that down,
and so that day we laid off halfthe company.
We called you know, I calledevery single one of our
customers in Canada to let themknow that.

(32:11):
Hey, you know, I know thatwe've been following these
wellness plans for a while, butwe're going to have to shut
those down.
That was a particularly toughday, I would say.
And then we doubled down onthis go fetch pay direction and
we said we're just going to dothis and honestly, I think the
heartbreaking part of it is likeI feel like that was still the
right decision at the time.

(32:32):
It was a product that was farsimpler.
It was a much clearer valueproposition.
We had an anchor customer forit.
We can talk about what happenedthere, but it was the first time
in our company's history that Ifelt like we were actually
shedding some of the complexitythat we had created and we
finally began to understand,like, what we needed to do to

(32:54):
get to that next level.
But, like, as you know, like Idon't have a business background
, like I went to vet school, andso the idea of like having
employees and like lettingpeople go is not something that
is is enjoyable at all.
And having done that now twice,virtually on zoom, you know you
, you bear a lot of, you carry alot of weight for that, and you

(33:17):
start to realize that, at theend of the day, there's a lot of
people involved in thesebusinesses.
And, and so that was kind ofanother kind of unfortunate
milestone in the business whenwe made that tough decision to
basically wind down one productand, as a consequence of that,
really simplify our operations.

Ira (33:36):
I want to ask you more about that, but maybe I'll save
that for our next episode Adam,if that's all right.
But yeah, I would like to hearabout you know sort of the next
year after sort of that and sortof how things sort of transpire
.

Adam (33:55):
Yeah.
So you got to imagine, at thispoint we're like six years in or
close to that We've now doubleddown in one direction.
One of our strategic partnersand insurance companies is kind
of the anchor customer for thisproduct.
The way that this productworked just so kind of the
audience is aware is that, um,the insurance space is a
reimbursement model, and one ofthe things that people don't

(34:16):
realize about that is the reasonit's that way, or part of the
reason is because one insurancecompany, trupanian, has ip that
prevents other insurancecompanies from integrating with
the practice management softwaresystems for the purposes of
kind of adjudicating claims, andso it's a reimbursement model.
And the way that that manifestsin a problematic way is that

(34:38):
you know you can be a pet ownerwho's done everything right.
Right, you got your insurance,you're there, you go in and
you're faced with like a $2,000,$3,000, $4,000 bill and you're
saying, look, I have coverage, Ijust don't have four grand at
this exact moment.
And what are those pet ownerssupposed to do?
And so we thought that we couldbuild this new kind of payment
experience around that use case,and so what we did was we

(34:59):
unlocked the ability for any petinsurance company to be able to
provide upfront, to eliminateupfront out-of-pocket expenses,
and what that would actually dois, if you're a pet owner that
had this app and you had one ofour connected insurance policies
, you'd be able to generate inreal time a virtual visa card
that would work at any clinic.
We didn't need any integration,so we started shedding some of

(35:20):
that complexity and you couldpay for that care and then the
insurance claim would bereimbursed to your balance on
the card and anything thatinsurance didn't cover would be
rolled over into a low interestpayment plan.
That's what we had been workingon.
That's what we began to rollout.
That's the direction that wedoubled down on.

(35:40):
We signed a contract for aparticular brand that we were
growing quickly with, and Imentioned that we had kind of
two strategic partners asinvestors.
Obviously, this one was acustomer.
That strategic partner had beenacquired themselves the
previous summer and, and so wehad been working on this project
with them for kind of a coupleof years.
They get a new owner.

(36:01):
That owner's got a lot of otherrelationships, a lot of other
priorities, and it just becamevery clear that they had a
different vision of what theywanted to do and where their new
insurance company kind of fitamongst their portfolio.
And so it was really a hardpillow to swallow, because it
wasn't so much like pet ownerssaying I don't like this product

(36:21):
, or us dealing with technicalintegrations, it was our main
customer basically saying look,we are not in a position anymore
to continue this relationshipand us feeling like we never
necessarily got a chance tobasically bring that out and
really scale it.
And so that was reallychallenging.
And ultimately, when that becameclear for us it was a bit of a

(36:44):
death blow, because at thatpoint, to take a step back six
months earlier, we've shut downone product and doubled down in
this direction.
We've laid off half the company,evangelized people around this
new direction and now kind offeel like our feet have been
taken out from underneath us.
And at that point we kind oflooked at the options for the
business and my co-founder youknow rightfully so was like look

(37:07):
, like we've been through a lotat this point.
Right, we found a way to kindof keep going, but we now have a
situation where one of our corepartners and investors has
basically said like look, I'mnot going to be able to support
this company logistically and,practically speaking, there's no
way, like, what are we supposedto do with this kind of gap?
How do we at all, you know,navigate through that?

(37:28):
And also, I think our sharedbelief and confidence in the
business was low and we feltthat if we couldn't present a
direction that we believed intothe team, they were probably
going to walk anyway.
But we couldn't confidently beable to do that, and so we made
the decision, with the remainingcash, to basically wind down

(37:50):
the business, repay our lastround of investment, our bridge
round, and provide our team withthe softest landing possible
given the circumstances.
And that's what, ultimately, wedecided to do.

Ira (38:01):
Yeah, it reminds me a little bit of a lesson that I
only learned more recentlyrelated to kind of building a
product and then selling it to apotentially larger population
of individual end users, versushaving a key component of your
business be dependent on anotherlarge business or a really
large customer.
because while it seems like ashortcut to getting a lot of

(38:25):
traction to make a relationshipwith a big partner.
You just have so much risk tiedup in that partner and if you
just don't work out for randomreasons like in this case the
acquisition of that business bysomebody else all of a sudden
everything you've been buildingtowards can be kind of cut out
from under you, which is just abig risk.

Adam (38:46):
Yeah, 100%.
There's like kind of a coupleof phrases that I remember
people telling me or laying outwhen we were building.
One was like customerconcentration risk, and I
remember when we were talking tosomebody about this, I think
they could see much more clearlythan us at the time that like,
hey, guys, like you think thatthis is an advantage, but it's

(39:07):
not.
It's like a huge flag.
Um, so that was one thing.
And then the other thing toowas an investor at the time that
we were trying to to get onboard.
He says something reallyinteresting and this was the
picture on the wellness plans hegoes.
He asked did this business usedto be something else?
And I said, well, actually, 100.
Yeah, like from my perspectiveit felt like we were just kind

(39:29):
of adding or whatever.
But the reality is like we havedifferent chapters of the story
and and for him it was kind oflike I think he could tell like
this business had become apurpose and these capabilities
had been kind of re-bundled totry to find, you know, something
that would work.
And and for him, you know thatwas obviously not a good sign.

(39:51):
But I think I don't look backat it at the time it just kind
of felt like almost like acontinuous stream, right.
We just kind of went on to thenext thing, but and I think, had
we maybe done a better job oflike doing a like more of a
reset at times that would havebeen a little bit more clear, or
maybe articulating to like ourteam, like what we've learned

(40:13):
that would allow us to kind ofgo in this direction.
What success would need to looklike?
Moving forward, we were justreally good at finding a way to
kind of keep going.
Um, and and I think in partthat's why it really stung when
it ended the way it did, it wasbecause it kind of felt like we
had learned so many hard lessons.
We'd taken a lot of our youknow, a healthy dose of medicine

(40:35):
to get to the point where wecould be successful, and it just
wasn't the right time.
Now, that being said, you know,you take a step back now and
you're like we were about tobring into the market a
financing solution, not like a0% interest environment, right,
and the reality is maybe thebusiness would have struggled.
It probably would havestruggled in some different ways
.
And so I think there was aquote or something I was reading

(41:01):
.
It was kind of like you know,good founders are able to like
in, like, like basically no onesituations like make great
decisions and the failure.
I don't regret it.
I don't really feel bad aboutit in the way that I might have

(41:27):
maybe earlier in my career and Ican be proud of the way that we
handled things, and part of thereason I feel comfortable
saying that is because I wentback to all those investors who
wrote us small checks that hadknown me and I was like look,
I'm sorry, this is what happened, and none of them.
They all reacted with like suchgrace and support that it

(41:49):
actually made me like emotionaland maybe even higher with them
and and and.
So that helped me feel okayabout the way things that
ultimately ended up.

Ira (42:00):
Yeah, as somebody that's sort of become a bit of a angel
investor in early stagebusinesses, it's not surprising
to hear I'm glad to hear it thatthat was your experience.
But, as I think about theinvestments that I wanna make,
it's usually mostly investmentsin people and teams and
believing in them and wanting tosee them, support them and see

(42:23):
them do well and and soultimately, you know, I want to
be able to feel good that, evenif this didn't turn out to be
the right idea at the right time, that you know you work with
good people, you tried hard, youall learned, and that you're
sort of in this together andit's not like me versus them,
like I've given you this and nowit's your job to sort of give
me something back in return.
It is your job to do that.

(42:43):
But yeah, I think I try to lookat it a little bit differently
and I'm glad that was yourexperience as well.
I did want to ask you about justsort of the yeah, kind of like
the aftermath of winding downyour company that you'd worked
on for all these years.
And, you know, maybe now youhave the perspective to say, hey

(43:03):
, you know, this was, this wasgreat and we, you know, tried
hard and tried to do some goodthings.
And some of these problems youknow progress has been made on
them, but yeah, I guess, like,how did?
How did you do, like how didyou sort of feel in the more you
know the weeks and monthsimmediately following that, and
how about?

Adam (43:26):
Yeah, the weeks and months immediately following that and
how about it, it was strange.
To be honest, I kind of didn'treally appreciate how much of my
life was just plugged into thisbusiness right All your
routines like, all your kind oflike, just like how you, you
know how you set up your desktop, all the accounts that you're
logged in, like there's you'reso ingrained on on so many
levels and one day the kind ofthe train kind of stops, right.

(43:48):
Um, you know, we had a periodlike a wind down period where a
couple of us stayed on just tokind of close off some accounts,
and that was a bit of a weirdlimbo period.
Um, I think for me being ableyou know, I wrote a little bit
about it, I wrote some stuff tomyself as well just to kind of,
I think, preserve some of thelearnings and also just how I
felt and give myself a littlebit of an outlet, I think for me

(44:14):
, one of the things that's kindof kept me motivated is that I
think the problems that we weretrying to solve were like
meaningful ones, and I still ampassionate about trying to solve
them, and I think that therehas been a lot of progress that
other folks have made andthere's kind of new.
You know, a little bit like awhack-a-mole and we got whacked,
but there's a whole bunch ofnew folks that you know are

(44:34):
saying, hey, these are good.
So I can kind of maybecontribute or explore some of
those opportunities from aslightly more informed and
experienced position than before.
Um, I think it gave me anopportunity to also be more
deliberate about um buildingrelationships with like friends

(44:54):
and family.
You know we have a young sonthat you know he kind of came
into this world in the in thethick of a lot of this, and so
it's been really nice to be ableto be more present in his life
and and kind of realize andmaybe recalibrate what the next
phase of my career looks likearound those commitments and the
desire to be really presentwith with both my wife and him.

(45:15):
It kind of felt like almost Ineeded to talk to other founders
as well, like you know peoplewho had kind of been through it
and I I think that for me therelationship to to like work and
career is something that'sreally different.

(45:36):
When you've been like a founder, like you can't you can't just
go back to a job.
You'll never go back to a jobAt least I won't Right In the
traditional way, like I'm alwaysgoing to try to find projects
and people that I can do morewith.
I don't work well inenvironments where people are
just kind of like not trying totake big swings or don't really
care about the work that they'redoing.
And I think for me, the thingthat I really miss most is the

(45:59):
team, right, the team of peoplethat we built, the team that
worked their butts off, the teamthat really brought the best
out of me at times, and it iskind of strange to go and say
like, look, those people existand we've been very supportive,
and one of my, again, one of thethings I'm proud about is that
almost all of them have kind offound roles that I think are

(46:21):
well suited for them and they'vekind of been roles that I think
are well-suited for them andthey've kind of been able to
move on to the next thing.
But you know, it's kind of likeyou know, the band going away
and I think for some of them,having spoken directly, there's
a sense too that like, hey, youknow that was a fun time and we
did a lot of good work and itwas really meaningful, even if
it didn't work out.
So that's a bit of arecalibration where you know

(46:43):
it's not like we have this bigoffice where we kind of shut the
doors.
It's like you close your laptopand and those relationships not
necessarily done, but lookconsiderably different.
Um, my co-founder and I stillkind of catch up every once in a
while.
He's talking the climate spaceand doing some meaningful work
there.
Um, and and yeah, I'm reallygrateful for the opportunity I

(47:05):
recognize the position that wewere in to even have an
opportunity where people werewilling to take a shot on this
and take a shot on us.
And so, yeah, it's been, it'sbeen an interesting period and
it's it's almost coming up on ayear which kind of feels like
it's been a bit of a wild time.
Time feels very different.

Ira (47:25):
I'm sure, I'm sure.
Thank you very much, adam, forsharing your story and your
journey with us.
I think, a little bit likescience, I think
entrepreneurship and business,like you tend to see and hear
the stories of the things thatwent well, and there's probably
at least as many interesting, ifnot more interesting, things to

(47:45):
learn and think about relatedto the experiments that did not
go as well, and they're stillyeah, I mean, they're still
really important work andthey're valuable.
So thank you for sharing thatall with me.
I'm going to have you on foranother episode soon, and we
have a tradition here that wespin this wheel and it will give

(48:06):
us a question that we are goingto tackle at that next episode.
So just give me a minute here,all right.
What is some key advice youwould give a new startup?
So think about that a littlebit and we will answer it at our

(48:27):
next episode.
Thanks everyone for joining us.

Adam (48:30):
Awesome.
Thank you everyone.