Small Door, a tech-powered vet, raises $40M for more clinics

Small Door, a tech-powered vet, raises $40M for more clinics Cara Eisenpress

Membership costs $169 per pet per year and includes one annual exam, telehealth at any time of day and a guarantee of same or next-day appointments. But the super pet lovers come in more frequently than that, Guttman said, to the point where the company has among the highest engagement rates in the industry, measured by frequency of visits and the average revenue for every Spot or Max.

Small Door is not alone in making a play in the burgeoning pet-care sector. In the 2021-2022 National Pet Owners Survey, 70% of U.S. households said they owned a pet, compared to 67% in 2019. Spending on the cats and dogs (and fish and birds) soared to $123.6 billion in 2021, up from $97.1 billion two years earlier, according to the American Pet Products Association. Several other New York City companies have taken part in the growth, including publicly traded dog-product brand BarkBox, and direct-to-consumer pet food firms Cat Person, The Farmer’s Dog and Smalls.

The latest round brings the startup’s total funding to $63 million and puts Small Door ahead of its goal to open 25 locations by 2025. The company has around 10,000 customers and 132 employees, including a tech team of 10 who run the mobile site used by 90% of all pet owners.

“We felt that was the only way to build the kind of business we wanted was to invest in tech,” Guttman said. “Every medical record is digitized. There are no paper files.”

The Flatiron firm’s last raise, $20 million in April 2021, was an example of how tech-enabled firms are delivering a needed boost to retail real estate in New York City and other metro areas. In 2020, Small Door had just one clinic in the West Village. Since mid-2021, it has opened four more in New York City—in Gramercy, the Upper East and West Sides and Williamsburg—and has several each under way in both Boston and Washington, D.C.

The new round of funding will go towards six additional openings outside of New York City, with the first Boston opening happening in the next several weeks. After that, Guttman said the company plans to open 11 in 2024 and at least that in 2025.

That will include others in pet-dense areas of the New York City metro area, likely including spots in Brooklyn and Queens.

“There is definitely capacity to open several more in those markets,” Guttman said.