How Peeva Reached $1M Revenue and 251 Vet Hospital Customers with a Bootstrapped Team of 14 (Interview with CEO Michael Hamilton)

Introduction and Michael Hamilton's Background

Nathan Latka

00:00Hey, folks. My guest today is Michael Hamilton. He's the Founder and CEO of peeva. That's p e e v a. Before turning to entrepreneurship, he developed more than a decade of experience in New York managing litigation support and e discovery projects for some of the nation's largest law firms and corporations. Alright. Michael, you ready to take us to the top?

Michael Hamilton

00:16>> Sure. Yeah. Absolutely.

Nathan Latka

00:18What's an e discovery project?

Michael Hamilton

00:20>> Electronic data discovery. It's just glorified photocopying electronic format.

Nathan Latka

00:26There you go. Okay. So loop this now into what peeva is working on and how this has to do with pet pets and microchips.

What Peeva Does: Universal Pet Tracking and Microchip Data

Michael Hamilton

00:32>> It really has absolutely nothing to do with it other than ultimately dealing with large datasets. The pet problem is ultimately a data problem. The field of veterinary care in general is extremely fragmented. It lags behind other industries technologically. And to resolve the problem over missing pets, you have to resolve the data problem. That's what we're essentially doing with a critical mass of data. Peeva is a universal pet tracking system. So we can read any brand of

01:04>> microchip. Our microchips can be read by any brand of scanner. We're the first to read, record, analyze, catalog any brand of microchip regardless of the manufacturer, and we pair literally millions of pet microchip IDs with pet medical records in one centralized location. So that streamlines veterinarian shelter worker workflow to ensure that microchips are scanned and pet owners are instantly notified the exact second that their pet's microchips are scanned. So we're essentially two, you know, b to

01:37>> c and we're b to b. Right? So that might get a little confusing when you wanna start talking about percentages, you know, ARR and MRR and all that fun stuff.

Nathan Latka

01:47I would say I'd say you're b to b, but really then it's it's it's c to d, consumer to dog. Right? Yeah. Flush flushing that out. Yeah. Help me understand. People are gonna hear microchips. They're gonna go, wait a second. Wait a second. So let me just sort of break the tongue and try and down for me. If I how you know, have a great golden retriever. He sees the vet once every, you know, two months.

How Peeva Incentivizes Vets to Submit Data

Nathan Latka

02:09Sometimes if it it's a different vet, though, because I'm on vacation or I'm moving around. How do you incentivize vets to submit the data? Could be different vets to your central database that then shows on the microchip.

Michael Hamilton

02:20>> Yeah. That's an excellent question. With every hospital that we onboard, we take a hard look at the data. Right? So we have a breakdown of every pet, you know, that has a microchip, the brand of microchip, every pet that does not have a microchip, the breakdown of how many pets, you know, how often they're seen that year. So we know exactly what we're getting into. So we're essentially providing a service for them by, you know, pulling

02:46>> all this data together. Right? And then, you know, we're able to garner a critical mass because every pet that is already chipped with another brand is auto enrolled into peeva at no cost to the hospital or the pet owner. They just have to kinda confirm their accounts. Right? But that's really, really important because

Nathan Latka

03:07Michael, wait. Are you are you an do you also make your own chips, are you just aggregating other people's chip data?

Chip Manufacturing and Distribution Model

Michael Hamilton

03:13>> We distribute our own chips. We do not manufacture our own chips. We distribute them. I see. We will register any brand of microchip. And to offset that upfront cost, right, you know, vets are required to scan every pet or vet techs, every pet that comes in into their office and then vet techs had, you know, a line list of six or seven bullet points, the benefits of micro chipping, specifically, microchipping with peeva. They then register the

03:48>> pet on-site, and then we bill the vet.

Nathan Latka

03:52Oh, what's going on there, YouTube? Good to see you guys. Now imagine this. You love watching these interviews with SaaS founders, but imagine if we took all of the valuation data out from over 2,807 interviews I've done manually. Saves you a lot of time. Well, we've done this. We've built it into the beautiful interface inside of Founderpath. Check this out. I'll show you how you can access this in a second, but you log in, you connect

04:15your Stripe account, you see your valuation real time. You can see what it changed over the past eighty eight days and even set goals for valuation this year. Now the secret evaluation is there's many different ways to value a SaaS business. So the reason you're gonna see three or four different valuations inside of your Founderpath dashboard, this is all free by the way, is because depending on who's doing the buying of your SaaS company, you're gonna

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05:01not built off random data. Again, you guys hear these interviews on YouTube. All these datas are built from real time valuation data points founder share with us on the show. So traction 1,200,000 seed round 3.7 raise. They sold 22% of their business. Go in here and filter by the event. Maybe you only wanna see companies that have sold the whole business. Well, here are a bunch that have been acquired the valuation and the multiple. Maybe you're

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06:15Got it. So what brand I'm looking at your website right now. This is very interesting. It almost looks like a turkey syringe, ISO compliant transponder that holds like it looks like a pill almost. Who's manufacturing these for you?

Michael Hamilton

06:32>> A company called Wuxi in Shanghai.

Nathan Latka

06:36Okay. How'd you I'm less interested in who they are. I'm more interested in why you pick them.

Chip Costs and Initial Inventory Order

Michael Hamilton

06:41>> Our electrical engineers, we just vetted everybody out. It was very important that they have what is called an ISO certification. See, in The States, part of the problem is not all microchips can be read by all microchip scanners because there's multiple distributors, multiple frequencies. So, you know, in Canada and The UK and everywhere else, they have a specific frequency. So we chose that brand over the others to truly be a universal, microchip. But we can also

07:14>> read any other brand of microchip as well.

Nathan Latka

07:16Yeah. What so what does one of these things cost you?

Michael Hamilton

07:19>> Me? Well,

Nathan Latka

07:21not you, but the the company the company, peeva. What do you pay?

Michael Hamilton

07:25>> Like, it's a volume game. I mean, if you got them individually, they'd be really expensive, but literally, like, less than a dollar, like 60¢. I mean, when you're dealing with hundreds of thousands of these things, they can come down in cost considerably.

Nathan Latka

07:42Okay. Interesting. So when you first launched I'm gonna get your origin story here in a second. But when you first launched, what was the order size you you got as your sort of first, you know, slot of inventory? Are we talking like like a thousand or 10,000 or a million or what?

Michael Hamilton

07:53>> No. No. 4,000 chips.

Nathan Latka

07:55Okay. Okay. Interesting. And so that cost you what? Something like $4,000?

Michael Hamilton

08:00>> A little more than that at the time. Maybe closer to 6.

Nathan Latka

08:04Okay. So you don't have a real, like, capital allocation problem here. That's not a I mean, that's an upfront cost, but it's not a heavy upfront cost.

Michael Hamilton

08:11>> No. No. I mean, it it it's it's a volume game. It it really truly is.

Company Origins, Bootstrapping, and First Revenue

Nathan Latka

08:15Yeah.

Michael Hamilton

08:15>> You know, in regards to our actual launch date, I mean, basically, started peeva LLC, like, from a one bedroom apartment, like, years ago, but we didn't actually start taking in revenue till late twenty eighteen. We built I mean, this has been very, very lean. It's been bootstrapping. My brother and I like to call it drip financing, if you will. You know, so based on meeting milestones and having certain needs, then we throw more money in. And

08:47>> we, you know, it got pretty expensive. Mean, it was initially all my money in the beginning.

Nathan Latka

08:52How much did you put in yourself?

Michael Hamilton

08:54>> A couple hundred thousand.

Nathan Latka

08:55Great. Basically make you

08:58can't. Did that make you nervous at the time?

Michael Hamilton

09:02>> No. It really didn't because I just had so much support at that time from the University of Buffalo, I mean, academic chairs. I mean, was after, like, root cause analysis. I had you know, it was offset by different grants. I also had buy in from, you know, a highly regarded veterinarian here that sold off two practices to a major corporation. And then

09:30>> once I started putting my own money in, it's kind of like a no lose situation. Plus I was a single guy at the time, just loved my dog. When I was a little kid, my dog was stolen, never got him back. I identified the problem. And this truly is the only way to resolve the problem.

Nathan Latka

09:47Yep. Okay. This makes sense. So, grants, your own money at the beginning, 2015 got going, 2018 was first revenue. How many today, how many chips now have have been installed via peeva?

Chips Shipped vs. Chips Implanted

Michael Hamilton

09:59>> Our chips, well, a lot of them have been distributed. As far as how many have actually been implanted, we estimate, I I could I would say, you know, around 176,000.

Nathan Latka

10:14Wow. And how many have you shipped?

Michael Hamilton

10:18>> A little under 300,000.

Nathan Latka

10:20Interesting. So why would someone ask to be shipped one but then get nervous about actually installing it?

Michael Hamilton

10:26>> It's not that at all. The problem is there are free microchip registries. One in particular, you know, has a class action lawsuit against it right now. They actually got shut down. They were marketing themselves as a benefit to the public good by offering free registrations, but essentially they were just building up marketing lists. You think about it, whenever you're signing up for something free,

10:56>> That's spam, now they know you're a pet owner, a dog owner, the breed, its age, you can sell that data off for, you know, once once the volume of the data grows, so does, you know, now that most consumer purchases are made online, you know, online marketing firms and data brokers are willing to shell out, you know, a fair amount of money for those. Of course.

How Peeva Bills Veterinary Hospitals

Nathan Latka

11:21You're not making money though on these chips though, right?

11:23You're you're selling tell me how you're making money. You're selling to the vet, right?

Michael Hamilton

11:27>> We are providing inventory to vets. Yes. I would love to sell to vets, but it's basically like we give them an inventory of chips. We provide them with kiosks, scanners, marketing literature. They bill the the pet owner, and then we bill the vet. It's essentially a win win for everybody.

Nathan Latka

11:56I see. How do you know how much to bill a vet each month? Is it based off how many of their customers they've got to sign up?

Michael Hamilton

12:03>> Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, any organization, whether you're selling red sweaters or milk, you're gonna know exactly where your inventory was shipped. Right? So we can, you know, track it by lot number, by range of microchips, and then just we can bill them and just real time we know exactly.

Nathan Latka

12:22I see.

12:24What so so what what are you billing the average vet today per month? Are we talking like a $100 a month or like 10,000 a month?

Michael Hamilton

12:32>> So on average throughout all our hospitals, it works out to be about 488 implants a month.

Nathan Latka

12:40And is that a dollar per implant or something?

Michael Hamilton

12:44>> No, they actually right now, and this is kinda causing some contention because we have to raise our pricing.

12:56>> Some vets are charging about $80 for a one time fee. Some vets are charging as low as $40 for a one time fee. And then we are literally

13:08>> going halfway with with with with the vets on it.

Nathan Latka

13:13Oh, you don't have a fixed rate. You you go a percent off their revenue.

Michael Hamilton

13:18>> We bill them for every pet that is implanted. Not only do we, you know Yeah.

Nathan Latka

13:22But as a percent of what they're charging, you're not setting the pricing.

Michael Hamilton

13:27>> It depends on where they are in the country. Like cities like New York, Austin, Boston, you know, they're willing to obviously pay a little more, whereas cities and I I don't know. In in the Midwest, certain places, they are, not going to charge as much.

Nathan Latka

13:48Well, so what are you billing me? If I'm a hospital in the Midwest with 488 implants, what bill am I getting from peeva? Most likely each month for about how much money?

Michael Hamilton

13:55>> Multiply that times 20, it works out to be, you know, just on average. I mean, we have it broken down per hospital that we bill. So, you know, if it's a 488 times whatever that is times 20.

Nathan Latka

14:11So Yeah. So 10, 10 grand a month.

Michael Hamilton

14:14>> Yeah. 10 or 11,000 a month.

Nathan Latka

14:16Interesting.

14:19And how how can they pay that if they're only charging the dog owner $80 one time?

Michael Hamilton

14:27>> We literally know what their price points are, and we split right up the middle. So we know what they are charging.

Nathan Latka

14:35So it's not recurring then. If they charge $80 one time and then it's free after that, you're only making 50% of $80 one time.

Michael Hamilton

14:42>> Right. As of right now, you know, barriers to entry, you know, we are industry newcomer. We're competing against the status quo, which are owned by companies like Merck and Henry Schein and, you know, multibillion dollar organizations that have been around since the nineties. You know, we gotta come in and just basically say, take some scanners, take some kiosks, use us, let's make you guys money. Right? I mean, and it was a really, really comfortable Nathan, I'm

15:10>> not gonna blow smoke. It was a really, really comfortable situation

15:15>> at the beginning.

Nathan Latka

15:17What do you mean? Like what was revenue in 2020?

Michael Hamilton

15:20>> I essentially was in a we didn't have to worry about social media. Our veterinary partners were essentially doing sales for us. Okay? So we were just billing that. It just totally neglected social, Facebook, all that stuff just wasn't informed.

Nathan Latka

15:36No, Michael. I I get all this, but, like, help so, like, how many folks are on the team? You can quantify this by saying how small your team is today. Right? So how many are on the team full time today?

Team Size, Profitability, and Customer Count

Michael Hamilton

15:43>> Okay. As of today, there are 14 of us.

Nathan Latka

15:47Okay. Interesting. So they're all full time?

Michael Hamilton

15:50>> Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

15:51So And you're bootstrapped or you decide to raise?

Michael Hamilton

15:55>> We are we are bootstrapped on Love that. We've finally gotten to the point where we're making more more money than than we were

Nathan Latka

16:04You're you're pro you're profitable today then?

Michael Hamilton

16:08>> Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

16:09Okay. Okay. I'm I'm running I'm going through this quick because we're about out of time. I just wanna get more of the data here. So so you're profitable team of 14 bootstrapped, which we love. How many individual hospitals or vets are you in today that use you, individual customers?

Michael Hamilton

16:24>> It's 251 at the moment.

Nathan Latka

16:26Wow. Okay. So you think across the 251, you've got about a 176,000 installs?

Michael Hamilton

16:33>> Yeah. So if yeah. Installs. Yes. Now, obviously, there are more non paying customers, obviously. I mean I see. A shit ton more. But what is what's really made us the most money recently, especially

16:54>> this year over last year, and we're talking about like 1,200 percent over is on the online stuff.

Nathan Latka

17:02Michael, hold on. Before you tell the online story, so what what total revenue last year was about how much? Did you guys break a million?

Michael Hamilton

17:09>> Yes.

Nathan Latka

17:10Okay. 2,000,000 or no? Between 1 and 2?

Michael Hamilton

17:12>> So I don't really, you know

17:16>> I'm a single dad. You know, I don't really like to share a lot of that information

17:23>> unless I have to. I mean, in print, no problem. $79 is a barrier fee. I don't have to worry about certain people reading things, but anything that's that's that's

Nathan Latka

17:34Wait. Sorry, Michael. What sorry. Why does a single dad have to do with how much data you share?

Michael Hamilton

17:38>> Well, it's not it's not data. It's it's how much money I'm making.

Revenue Growth: 991.8% Year Over Year

Nathan Latka

17:42Got it. Well, yeah, mean, look, I'm trying to understand the the I wanna respect obviously any boundary you set up, but I'm trying to understand the business. Right? So if you did more than a million in 2020 and then you said you grew over 1200% year over year?

Michael Hamilton

17:55>> No. No. We we grew 1200% over we have, like, between October sorry, January one month to to date or or year to date from January 1 to today, October 26 over last year, we've grown over 1200%, over 21.

Nathan Latka

18:21So if you're growing from a base of a million, 1200%, I mean, that would put you That's like

Michael Hamilton

18:26>> So so, again, you're getting a little confused between the b to c stuff and the b to b stuff. Right? You know, it's total it's two separate it's it's two totally separate sales.

Nathan Latka

18:40Michael, I'm just talking about revenue. I'm like, I'm just talking I didn't talk b to b, b to c. I'm just revenue.

Michael Hamilton

18:45>> So all across the board, this year over last year at this time, we've made 991.8% over last year 20.

Nathan Latka

19:02Over full year last year or just January to October last year?

Michael Hamilton

19:06>> January to October twenty sixth of last year.

Nathan Latka

19:11Got it. You've made 900 times more revenue in that same period.

Michael Hamilton

19:17>> Nine, I'm sorry. Percent, not 900. We didn't Sorry.

Nathan Latka

19:21Percent. 900%. And I meant to say nine x.

19:24I did not.

19:25You're you're nine x increase would be 900%.

Michael Hamilton

19:31>> Correct.

Nathan Latka

19:32I see.

19:33When you say that there's a b to c model that I'm not understanding, you're right. I don't understand that. Where are you how are what are you selling to consumers? You're not selling direct to consumers. You're taking a percent of what the vet sells to their consumers.

Michael Hamilton

19:44>> Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Think of it as two different lines of business. Okay? So straight to consumer is register any brand of microchip with peeva online. So it's an added layer of protection.

Direct-to-Consumer Registration Model and Pricing

Michael Hamilton

20:00>> Pet owners that have chips, pets implanted with chips offered by our competitors will register with peeva for a handful of reasons. You know, we have different features and functions. As of right now, we don't have an annual subscription model. We're a little more expensive on the front end, but, you know, we can say pay once, protect your pet for life. We also make what is called our API available to other legitimate registries so they don't have

20:32>> to register with the primary register a sec registry a second time because that if if somebody out out of our network searches in another database, they'll say, this pet was registered with peeva on such and such date, and then our telephone number will display.

Nathan Latka

20:50Got it.

20:51You're not making money though on it. It's a free that's free. It's a free registration database for anyone with a dog?

Michael Hamilton

20:56>> No. No. It's $54.95.

Nathan Latka

20:59Per month or per year?

Michael Hamilton

21:01>> Per year.

Nathan Latka

21:02Per year. Okay. Got it. So you charge consumers directly. They put their dog in your system to make sure that if their dog is stolen, you can find them or something like that.

Michael Hamilton

21:09>> I misspoke. It's a one time fee as of right now for 54.95.

Nathan Latka

21:15I see. I see. The reason a dog owner would do that though is if their dog gets lost or stolen and then that the person who stole it, the robber, takes them to a vet. Boom. It's gonna get flagged and you're gonna help them recover the dog.

Michael Hamilton

21:25>> Absolutely. Okay. Got it. The model makes sense to me.

21:28>> Yeah. Until now,

21:31>> didn't really benefit vets to actually scan a dog for a microchip because then they had to start searching through all these different registries. So by making the transfer of vital health information quick and easy, it saves them time. Right? And that saves them money and then provides better quality of care.

21:50>> Yep.

Nathan Latka

21:51Michael, makes sense. We're out of time. Let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, favorite book.

Michael Hamilton

21:56>> Catcher in the Rye.

Nathan Latka

21:58Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Michael Hamilton

22:01>> Mike Bloomberg is ultimately my favorite CEO.

Nathan Latka

22:04Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building peeva?

Michael Hamilton

22:11>> ASP.NET. Mhmm.

Nathan Latka

22:14Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night?

Michael Hamilton

22:19>> About seven.

Nathan Latka

22:21Okay. Very good. And I think you said mentioned not married, one kiddo, more kids?

Michael Hamilton

22:27>> One one right now.

Famous Five: Books, Tools, and Founder Advice

Nathan Latka

22:29Okay. And last question, something you wish you knew when you were or sorry. How old are you today and then something you wish you knew when you were 20?

Michael Hamilton

22:35>> I am 45 years old today. Something that I wish I knew when I was 20. Do not start a tech company unless you have a tech co founder or learn as much about code as you possibly can.

Nathan Latka

22:52They'll Yeah. And there you have it. Peeva.co launched to help you not only keep track of your dog or your animals in general in case they're lost or stolen, but also to make sure all your medical records from the vet perspective all stay in one place so you can have that history. They've shipped 300,000 of these chips. They believe about 176,000 have actually been installed and did over a million bucks in revenue last year with a

23:14team of 14 bootstrapped, which we love. Michael, thanks for taking us to the top.

Michael Hamilton

23:18>> Yeah. Thanks for having me.

Nathan Latka

23:22One more thing before you go. We have a brand new show every Thursday at 1PM central. It's called Shark Tank for SaaS. We call it deal or bust. One founder comes on, three hungry buyers, they try and do a deal live and the founder shares back end dashboards, their expenses, their revenue, ARPU CAC, LTV, you name it, they share it and the buyers try and make a deal live. It is fun to watch every Thursday 1PM

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