VidiVet

Startup opportunity

As a practicing vet, Ben came to NOVA having identified that 80% of emergency vet practice visits didn’t actually need to visit a vet, as the pets symptoms were not life threatening. This not only caused problems for pet owners; the stress, time and expense of unnecessary visits, but also for the vets too. With many practices facing huge backlogs of appointments and overworked staff facing burnout.

Ben had the idea of a triage service for pet owners, where they could message, or take a video call, with a real vet directly for a quick response to their problems or to confirm they need to visit their vet. Aiming to both reduce the volume of unnecessary appointments in practices, reduce wait times for required appointments and better serve worried pet owners.

Since Co-founding with Nova

• Established commercial partnerships with Bella & Duke, DogFest, Buster box, Nibble and Nosh, Marylebones and Buddy & Lola.
• Currently serving 1700+ subscription customers (as of Jan 2021)
• Received over 250 5* product reviews
• Built, launched and continue to develop a bespoke multifunctional app
• Creation of brand, website & go to market strategy.
• Recruited one of the UK’s best-known vets as co-founder.
• Featured in various news articles such as K9 Nation, Liverpool Echo and BBC Radio Merseyside.
• Over 10,000 vet / pet owner interactions on the product
• Employed 7 vets to respond to questions from pet owners.
• Onboarded 2 vet practises.

Together we’ve developed VidiVet from the ground up into a digital subscription service allowing pet owners to get quick responses to their questions from a qualified vet. VidiVet lets users chat or video call an experienced UK vet from their phone.

Employing Nova’s lean startup methodologies we were able to quickly test and move through multiple product iterations; gathering feedback from pet owners and veterinary professionals. This shaped the product brief to create something for users that was a) as easy as ordering something from Amazon, b) as fast as googling anything about your pet and c) as reliable as speaking to a doctor about one of your own health issues.

Within the first 6 months we built, tested and validated their MVP and got major backing from industry partnerships with Bella & Duke and Buster Box. The product is now available to download via app stores and is successfully being used by over 1700+ customers in the UK. Looking forward, there are already plans for more exciting B2B partnerships as well as preparations underway to scale internationally.