Xconomy: Q&A with PetDesk CEO Taylor Cavanah on Building a ‘Slower-Growth’ Startup

Earlier this month, PeakSpan Capital helped PetDesk raise $12 million to expand its offerings beyond veterinarians, to pet groomers and boarders. Xconomy has a Q&A PetDesk CEO Taylor Kavanaugh which covers why they chose to work with PeakSpan, and what this investment means for their growth.

On how they got started:

“One day I looked down and saw Molly, my little shih tzu, and one of her eyebrows was missing and her paws were all chewed up, and I just realized that while she had been keeping me sane—I would talk to her, bounce product ideas off of her—I had been being a terrible pet parent. I called up Ken and said, “maybe we should look at this vet space thing.”

On how they chose PeakSpan:

“On the private equity and growth equity side, we’re a platform, so they all wanted us to acquire companies and sell those things to the veterinarians too. We still want to keep the door open for this billion-dollar consumer vision that we have, so we found ourselves right in between. I had actually decided last year, let’s just go our own route, I’m done talking with investors. Then, San Diego Venture Group had an event at a Padres baseball game, and I decided to go. I ran into Matt Melymuka from PeakSpan, talked to him for about 20 minutes, and thought: “Oh, I think I’ve found the one firm that is philosophically aligned with our ‘tweener’-type company.”

The entire Q&A is well worth the read.

Xconomy: Q&A: PetDesk CEO Taylor Cavanah on Building a ‘Slower-Growth’ Startup