Shiv and Bertie
Hosted Bertie's 4th birthday, Carnaval, the July park hang, and every session of Chester's Tiny Tails.
Impact at a glance
$3,075
in savings for pet parents
238
active website users
80%
of care requests fulfilled
Featured in Bored PandaThis woman built the support system for dog owners she wishes she'd always hadHow loss became a real-world community for pet parents, built around trusted neighborhood support.Read the feature ↗- Role
- - Founder - Solo builder
- Timeline
- 6 months (Feb 2026 to Sep 2026)
- CHANNELS
- WhatsApp CommunityLiveWhere the village asks, answers, and shows up every day.WebsiteLiveThe public door in: rituals, recommendations, moments, and Chester's story.AppIn developmentOne place built for trust, care requests, and gatherings.
- Project
- 0-1
- Market
- San Francisco
AI overview
One-click summaryThe challenge
Pet care is heavily monetized
53% of U.S. households own dogs, contributing to a $158 billion pet industry. Yet affordable safety nets for pet parents remain severely limited. While pet parents spend $14.3 billion annually on essential services such as dog walking, boarding, and pet sitting, the market is largely made up of transactional platforms that monetize individual needs rather than building the trusted communities pet parents rely on.
$78
Average boarding cost per night
Sources: APPA (American Pet Products Association), 2026 report on 2025 pet industry spending ($158 billion total, 53% of U.S. households own dogs, $14.3 billion in other services such as grooming, insurance, and training); Care.com, Rover, and Wag published nightly boarding rates.
WHERE IT BEGAN
Chester is the heart behind the village
“I want to build what I wish he had had his whole life.”
Sonal with her dog, Chester
Chester was my Golden Retriever and my closest companion. When he was diagnosed with incurable liver cancer and pancreatitis, our life changed overnight. Then friends cooked meals, neighbors checked in, and I understood what it means to be raised by a village.
Read our storyHow might I ensure that no one ever has to raise their pet alone?
SYSTEMIC SOLUTION
So, day to day
My mission is simple:
To bring pet parents together and create a trusted support system that helps them navigate every stage of pet parenthood as a village.
And one day
The vision we are walking toward:
To build social infrastructure so every dog has a family that extends beyond their front door.
Building the system
The content model gives the community a memory. The information architecture turns that memory into action. The same source material moves through the website for structure, WhatsApp for immediacy, and in-person rituals for trust.
Memory
Content model
Action
Information architecture
Immediacy
WhatsApp community
Structure
Website and app
Trust
In-person rituals
EXPERIENCE BLUEPRINT
The whole experience, in one view
This map brings the principles, onboarding, main app, reciprocal help, and trust model together. It is a design blueprint for the app, not a screenshot of a shipped product.
Onboarding
Dog first, then a light introduction to the person and their neighborhood. Details grow over time.
Core loop
Ask or offer, see who responds, connect through shared history, and close the loop with reciprocity.
Trust
Verified humans, familiar dogs, mutual connections, and privacy controls make help feel accountable.
- People
- Dogs
- Events
- Match
01
One dog, one ecosystem
Every dog already has a small circle: the neighbor who waves, the walker, the friend at the park, the weekend meetup.
02
Ecosystems overlap
A second dog brings a circle of its own. Where they overlap, trust already exists, so help can travel between them.
03
The village matches
A request reaches the nearest people who already know your dog, and the circle widens from there.
Defining needs
Identifying needs through the community
Start in The Lounge
What people actually post
- Hi! I'm new, this is Maui
- Anyone know a good vet?
- Welcome to the village!
What pet parents need
- Trusted everyday support from people who know their dog
- Help when they travel, work late, or face an emergency
- Real advice instead of another transactional advertisement
- Recommendations: vets, groomers, sitters, and walkers vouched for by neighbors
- Rituals: recurring meetups anyone can join
- Moments: photos and videos from events
What pets need
- Familiar faces and a family beyond the front door
- Play dates with other dogs
- Predictable rituals: meetups, sniffari hikes, and walks that repeat
Building structure
Development
The generative and production stack
- Build
- Lovable, Claude Code, GitHub, Vercel
- Writing partner
- Claude
- Images
- ChatGPT
DID IT WORK?
Community in action
01 · Finding a lost dog
In San Francisco, you can report a lost dog, but cannot find one in real time.
The decisive test came when Bean slipped through a gap in the patio. One message pulled 50 people into the search, and people who had never met him kept searching until he came home. The system did not replace the community. It made it easier to activate.
One alert became a neighborhood search party
50
people
189
messages
~10
hours
01
Alert
Bean slips through a gap. One message activates the village.
02
Coordinate
Sightings, routes, and next actions move through a shared thread.
03
Search
People leave the chat and search the neighborhood through the night.
04
Reunion
Bean comes home. The system did what it was built to do.
Learning
No app mobilizes 50 people at 9pm to find your dog. People showed up because members already knew one another.
02 · Trusted care ecosystem
Saved $3,075 in pet care costs
Together, we've fulfilled 80% of care requests (20 out of 25), with the first "yes" coming in a median of just 4.5 minutes. By stepping up to cover 44 nights and 52 hours of care, we saved local pet parents $3,075.
Someone asks
80%
20 of 25 dated care requests received a yes.
4.5
minutes
median time to first yes
COST SAVED
$3,075
44 nights + 52 hours
$2,640 overnight + $435 same-day (capped at $60 a day) = $3,075
Through Sep 26, including stays already booked
How these numbers were counted
Overnight stays were calculated at a conservative rate of $60 a night. Shorter same-day care counts at $15 an hour, up to $60 a day. Some care gets arranged in DMs, so the real total is higher.
The need grew
Care requests grew from 1 in April to 7 in August.
Dated care requests by month · Apr to Sep 2026
1
Apr
2
May
5
Jun
5
Jul
7
Aug
5
Sep
25 dated care requests in total. September counts through Sep 24.
03 · Continuous engagement
Members kept the engagement up
Community-owned
Members wrote the conversation.
66%
Members 66%Founder 34%
Member share of written messages in both WhatsApp groups.
04 · Website engagement
People explored the parts built for engagement.
Google Analytics · Aug 5 to Sep 24, 2026
238
active users
2.5k
events
1m 10s
average engagement
Beyond the homepage
Rituals led deeper-page traffic, followed by community recommendations, shared moments, and Chester's story.
Rituals284
Recommendations157
Moments98
Chester's story96
TESTIMONIAL
What pet parents say
What pet parents say
“This group is like a second family. If you need help looking after your dog when you are away, with playdates, or just general questions about their well-being, you'll be spoilt for choice. Everyone treats everybody's dogs like their own ❤️”
Scaling beyond the founder
Members run the rituals
Member-led
The gatherings stopped needing me in the middle.
Nikita
Led the pet block party when I was sick.
Chester's Tiny Tails now runs every Sunday and Chester's Big Paws every Wednesday. Both started in the chat and repeat without being asked.
What changed my thinking
Learning
I shipped a live community platform, not a speculative concept. The work continues with a harder test: can the village travel beyond San Francisco without losing the familiarity that makes people show up?
- 01
Build around what already works.
The village existed around Chester before I named it. My job was to find the behavior and give it structure.
- 02
Familiarity is the product.
People show up for a dog they know. A shared identity can stretch that trust to dogs they have never met.
- 03
Measure how little they need you.
Member-led activity says more than a signup count. The next milestone is a village that can run without me.
- 04
Kill directions with a reason.
Discarded visual directions and language changes clarified the system: warmth beats polish, and explicit actions beat vague invitations.
The next test
Phase 2
Will this "micro-neighborhood" concept scale beyond my neighborhood?
The next phase tests whether the trust, rituals, and shared ownership that work at neighborhood scale can travel without becoming another transactional marketplace.
Mobile app user journey
The village, from first hello to trusted care.
- 01
Create a profile
Introduce yourself and your dog to the village.
- 02
Find your village
Discover trusted people, pets, and rituals nearby.
- 03
Ask for support
Post a care request, recommendation, or urgent alert.
- 04
Match and coordinate
Connect with someone who knows your dog and can help.
- 05
Build trust
Turn one helpful exchange into an ongoing relationship.
Find existing groups
Pre-existing neighborhood marketplace groups for dogs
Add local admins
One admin per neighborhood facilitates it all
MissionNoe ValleyBernalSoMaCastroPotrero
Integrating into the ecosystem
Partnerships with local pet centers, extending the village to shelter dogs too.
Chester's Village
A trusted network of neighbors around every dog
Local pet centers
- Vet clinics
- Trainers
- Daycare
- Rescues
Shelter dogs
Every dog gets a village, whether or not they have a home yet
The same system of trusted people, rituals, and care flows through partner pet centers, so shelter dogs waiting for a home are raised by a village from day one.