Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in pet care but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Erick Eidus, CEO & Founder of PupPod, located in Hood River, OR, USA.

What's your business, and who are your customers?

PupPod is a multispecies gaming platform for pets and people at the intersection of smart homes, esports, and pet products. Millennials and GenZ make up almost 60% of the 69M US households with at least one dog, and they seek technology to be better pet parents. Pet parents think of their dogs and cats as family members, and they want their pets to be happy. They feel tremendous guilt when their pets are left home alone and feel stress when their pets are acting out (barking, separation anxiety, causing destruction). They are comfortable leveraging technology to check in and play with their fur kids from anywhere.

The core of PupPod is to provide the pets we care for with more interesting activities than chewing on a piece of plastic or plush toy. We are betting that software is going to disrupt the pet product space, and PupPod will be the platform for these connected products.

Tell us about yourself

I started my career at Motorola and Microsoft, building the early wireless handheld computers and smartphones back when most people only had a pager. I lived through building a huge new product category and saw a similar opportunity to invent a new product category of canine computing. You can listen to these podcasts for more on my background if you are looking for more anecdotes to use:

I've had a lot of discussion in these podcasts about my background and origin story.

What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?

Dreaming up a wild idea that was way ahead of the market, building it, selling it, supporting it, and seeing all the lives (human and pet) that we've had a positive impact on. We've had dogs play over 232K games and dispense over 9.6M rewards in about 2 years. I'd say that's a big accomplishment that very few people have the privilege of experiencing.

What's one of the hardest things that comes with being a business owner?

Fundraising. It's the hard part by a long shot.

What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?

Don't do it unless you are comfortable with failing. The odds are stacked against you in so many ways you can't even imagine at the beginning.

Where can people find you and your business?

Website: https://puppod.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PupPod
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/puppod/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/PupPod
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/puppod-inc-/

If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.

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