24A

Dogs love other dogs. For most dogs it is fundamental to their health and well-being to have interactions with other dogs on a regular basis. Unfortunately there are many people in Gainesville who only have one dog. I am one of these people and I am always thinking of ways to improve the quality of life of my dog. I wish there was a way for us to meet fellow dogs and dog owners in our neighborhood. That’s how I got the idea from my app. This app will allow you to locate and meet up with fellow dog owners in your neighborhood. I think this is a fairly new opportunity since as a society we are really just getting started in the way that we interact with apps and use them in our every day life. The market for this product is limited demographically to people who own dogs. Geographically, I would probably start off the app only in Gainesville because it is a community I am familiar with and it would be easier to increase awareness for my product in a small community that I have prior knowledge of. If the app ended up being a success in Gainesville then I could likely expand its range to other towns in Florida and maybe even across the country. I think that customers are currently satisfying this need by playing with their dogs and going to the dog park. However, this is not an ideal substitute because playing with your dog is not the same as letting him or her interact with another dog. And there are many dogs that don’t do well at the dog park and find it stressful. Also dog parks often transmit diseases, and in my experience, fleas.

My app would function almost like a platonic dog tinder. It would show you profiles of dogs and owners that live in your area and allow you to swipe left or right depending on if you think they would be a good match for you and your dog. It would be a free service available to anyone with a smart phone and would make revenue off of ads on the app. I believe that it would greatly benefit the dog owner community by bringing together the people and dogs of a neighborhood.

I think people would switch to this product because it is clearly better than just going to the dog park and hoping that someone is there. It is also better than having your dog just be sad lonely in your apartment by themselves. I think the biggest hurdle in getting people to switch to my app would be getting enough people to use it initially. I don’t think there are any direct competitors to this app because it would be a new service and because all of the revenue would be made off of ads. Customer support would be very important to this app. It would require constant monitoring to make sure that people aren’t misusing the app or using it for illegal purposes. I think that the biggest financial hurdle in making this app a reality would be the cost of designing the app as well as initial advertising costs to increase awareness of the product. After that, there would be few costs associated with running it. It also would not need many employees. Just enough to monitor the online environment. 

I think the most important resource to this app would be the online community fostered on it. If people are making friends in improving their lives on this app then they will be loyal to it. These type of connections are very valuable and are not easily imitated or substituted.

If I were to go forward with this app idea and try to make it into a reality I think the next step would be trying to find an app designer who could meet my needs for this app.

Assuming that I did launch this app, in five years I would really like to have expanded it to many cities. I’m not sure this is the venture I’d like to put the rest of my life into so I may have handed over control of many of its aspects so that I could focus on a different business.