Jeese Draper: Hi! I'm like the valley girl. I live in Silicon Valley, the heart of innovative technology. I know where all these awesome companies are but how the heck do they get here? That’s what I'm here to find out, I’m like the valley girl, what do you do?
Hi! I’m like the valley girl. Don’t you just love puppies? In fact, I think I have had a lot more of them if I didn’t have to deal with the poopoo factor. Who wants a poopy puppy? Our next guest has figured out an amazing solution to the common puppy poopy problem. Please welcome Mr. Scott Sorochak and Mr. Ron Hornbaker of foopets.com. Thanks for coming out here. Have a seat.
Ron Hornbaker: Hi Jeese, I’m Ron.
Jesse Draper: Hi Ron! Nice to meet you, have a seat. So, how are you guys doing today?
Ron Hornbaker: Doing well, thanks. How about you?
Jeese Draper: Please help yourself to some tea, some pink tea that I like pink—
Scott Sorochak: Thank you very much. Thanks very much today.
Jeese Draper: Of course. Ron, tell me a little bit about your history?
Ron Hornbaker: So, I sort of got the entrepreneurial bug in veterinary school I guess. I started doing the class newsletter.
Jeese Draper: That’s an interesting place to get the entrepreneurial bug.
Ron Hornbaker: Yeah, yeah and often times—
Jeese Draper: I don’t think you get pleased or something. So, you’re both very experienced entrepreneurs. What is an entrepreneur? You want to go first?
Scott Sorochak: Sure. I mean we think of entrepreneurs as anybody that have creative ideas come up with a new innovative product or ways in which they can take a product or service the market in ways that other people have not done so far.
Jeese Draper: Ron, what do you think an entrepreneur is?
Ron Hornbaker: Tunnel vision on all idea, make it happen. It’s the creative process giving birth so something new.
Jeese Draper: What do you think is the most difficult part of starting a company?
Ron Hornbaker: Actually I think starting a company is the easiest thing to do. The hard part is getting others to believe in your idea to put money behind it.
Jeese Draper: Tell me about foopets.com.
Ron Hornbaker: Some veterinarian by education and been in the tech world for about a decade and I always get back to my love of animals some way.
Jeese Draper: I love animals.
Ron Hornbaker: Do you have pets?
Jeese Draper: I do, I do. This is a picture of my dog Archie and this is a picture of my bird Fluffy and then this is Fluffy.
Ron Hornbaker: Fluffy looks tired.
Scott Sorochak: He’s not doing well.
Ron Hornbaker: So anyway, people were spending more and more of there times online, a 25% of our waking hours are spent in front of the computer. So, one of the habits from the physical life is to have pets for companion. It’s very common to have a dog or a cat at home. But when we’re online, we don’t really have a little companion that hangs out with us so I decided to create the most realistic puppies and kittens that we could possibly create using artist from Pixar, DreamWorks etcetera. And they really come alive and you bond with them just like a real pet. It’s a great way to meet people.. So, like taking your puppy to the park, you meet people, very easy to talk about.
Jeese Draper: Okay. I’ve been taking my puppy to the park. I have to do that.
Ron Hornbaker: You need to do that. It’s a great interactive 3D game. We don’t really fall unto an age niche because what age doesn’t look like cute puppies or cute kittens.
Jeese Draper: So, tell me about the animals. Are they hypoallergenic?
Ron Hornbaker: They are, they are. We haven’t had one case of allergies yet, we should go for endorsements. Although a lot of users do want them to, can I use the P word poop?
Jeese Draper: Yes, you can use that.
Ron Hornbaker: They actually want them to poop so we’re trying to work the whole number one and number two thing into visuals.
Jeese Draper: Yeah I actually, I wanted to talk to you about something. I adopted a foopet. Her name is pink and she was a rescue Rottweiler and you know she’s doing great for like I do feel like she had some trouble because she eats a lot but it’s not coming out the other end.
Ron Hornbaker: You haven’t seen any indication that she’s gone?
Jeese Draper: No.
Scott Sorochak: To Ron’s point, we’re also bringing in a lot of realistic aspects of taking care of pets and this is talking to the children about what it means to take care a pet before you get a real one. You have to give your pet’s immunization shots and flu vaccines, things like that. That’s part of our business model. You can buy these different services for your pet.
Jeese Draper: And it’s kind of like a responsibility thing.
Scott Sorochak: Exactly.
Jeese Draper: That’s great, there’s all these other entire virtual worlds out there but you found like a good niche.
Ron Hornbaker: That’s right. There are a lot of clash toys and dragons and monsters but we really want to do reality.
Jeese Draper: Okay, there’s a lot of really awesome sounds on your site. I thought we should make some sounds. Let’s make our favorite animal sound.
Ron Hornbaker: Scott is going to do it in a ringtone.
Jeese Draper: Do it, do it in a ring.
Ron Hornbaker: It’s the first thing that came to my mind.
Scott Sorochak: What animal did you have in mind?
Jeese Draper: Let’s start with a dog.
Scott Sorochak: You’re going to start?
Jeese Draper: Sure. Well, that is so great. I think it’s time for a break. We’ll be back with more fun and foopets after this.