Social Puppy

Hello fellow hunters and makers! tl;dr Over 3 millions dogs are given up for adoption in the US each year. Unfortunately, it's often by well-intentioned people that weren't able to handle training their dog in the impressionable early days. This app is designed to guide people through the more subtle aspects of raising a dog so that they can have a wonderful companion for life. Through a gamified #12weekpuppychallenge, the app guides new dog owners through house training, leaving the dog home alone, socialization, and of course, some tricks as well 🎓 ... but since we're a community of makers, let me tell you the background of how this app came to be. I made this app to help my girlfriend and I raise a great dog. We wanted our dog to be friendly, chill, and a well-behaved companion when we bring her to the office, on trips, or leave her alone at home. After doing a ton of research, I found a new approach to dog training that got me really excited: positive reinforcement. I then scoured through as many books on the topic as I could and started to look for a good way to plan our training regime and keep track of our progress. Most of the apps out there are focused on teaching your dog tricks, but I wanted something to make sure we had a plan for basic obedience AND socialization. Since I couldn't find the product I wanted, I ended up doing what we all do: I made a spreadsheet 🤓 After sharing the spreadsheet with some friends, I decided to turn it into a free newsletter that anyone could sign up for. That was the moment when I got really excited about the idea because I was getting excellent open rates and very heartfelt feedback from subscribers. That's when I decided to go all in and applied to y-combinator's Startup School. Thankfully I got accepted into the fall 2018 cohort in a mentored group. It was a really helpful experience and I would love to do something like that again. It forced me to focus, be brutally honest with myself, and put a hard deadline on launch day. I launched the app at the end of 2018 and have been iterating since. Although I love to share my MVPs, I didn't feel it was good enough to share on PH... UNTIL TODAY 🚀 My long term goal is to help as many dog owners as possible get through the challenging first few months with their furry companion. Over the coming months I'll be implementing a paywall so that I can continue to work on this (hopefully full time). I would love to hear your feedback on the idea or the app itself. I'm also happy to answer any questions from business to technology to marketing... because I am juggling it all #startuplife Lastly, a big thanks to all the makers out there sharing their stories. I've been a wantrepreneur for a long time and couldn't have taken the leap without the inspiration gleaned from your launches, Tweets, and mentorship 🙌 Keep on shippin'

Love this app! We used it constantly when raising https://www.instagram.com/jack_t...

Hey @larsvedo congrats on the launch! This app helped my friend raise a puppy when the app was in beta 🙌

Love this! I definitely would have used this had it existed when I adopted my puppy!

Wow! Amazing!

@larsvedo Hey! such a cool idea with the guides. what are your plans on growing the number of users relying on the guides as a way to raising their dogs better? and do you know how many come back week after week?

interesting social feed. Would be cool if you could follow certain pups specifically... might gamify it a bit with some friendly competition

Pros:

awesome progress tracker with realistic socialization goals and tricks to master

Cons:

n/a