Mercer Island family starts pet health company, seeks investors

Aiming to help veterinarians connect with pets and their “parents,” an Islander and his father decided to create an app that guides patients in deciding when pets need care. The co-founders have already raised $400,000 for their pet tech startup, Petriage.

Allon Freiman is the CEO of Petriage, and his dad, Shlomo Freiman, is its chief veterinary officer. He owns the Animal Hospital of Factoria, where he works as a family vet.

They thought they could use technology to help families decide what to do in medical emergencies involving their furry friends. The core feature of the Petriage platform is its Symptom Analysis tool, which empowers pet parents by providing them with actionable information while also engaging their family vet.

According to its Facebook page, Petriage “predicts urgency, makes intelligent recommendations and informs your vet.” The goal is not only to solidify the connection between family vets and their clients, but also to reduce unnecessary costs to pet owners and generate new revenue streams for veterinarians.

The idea for the company came from a scary experience with a family friend, Casey Olives, who now works as the company’s data science lead, and his dog, Bodhi. A few years ago, Dr. Freiman received a call late at night from Olives, who was on the way to the emergency hospital after discovering that his dog was having a seizure.

The vet determined that since the seizure was quickly resolved this was not, in fact, an emergency. Though it was distressing to see Bodhi in this state, he could be monitored at home and seen at the office the next morning. But that isn’t always the case.

“The days are over in which vets can turn their door sign to ‘closed,’ and expect their clients to wait until morning to get help,” Allon Freiman wrote in an email. “To satisfy client needs in today’s on-demand economy they need to become ‘brick and click’ vets.”

Petriage enables vets to do so by offering a telemedicine service that empowers their clients and engages them in the remote care of their patients. Using the app, clients can input symptoms and receive real-time results via an “assessment of urgency,” which ranges from “non-threatening” to “emergency.” Their family vet is updated and engaged with each Petriage recommendation.

“Unlike many of our competitors whose technology effectively subverts the relationship between vets and their clients, Petriage is committed to ensuring that pets benefit from the continuous engagement of the family vet in their health care,” he wrote.

The company was founded in 2016, and since then has self-funded $150,000 and raised $250,000 in a friends and family round. It is currently in $2 million seed round, after which it is hoping to hire more employees.

Allon Freiman is currently the only full-time employee. He studied sociology and American ethnic studies at Willamette University, and recently earned master’s degrees in sports administration and nonprofit leadership from Seattle University. He is also the founder and president of Homecourt Hoops, a nonprofit that aims to improve the quality of life of Ghanaian youth through education and basketball. He graduated from Mercer Island High School in 2006.

“In creating Petriage, we reimagined how best to help pet parents manage the care of their pets,” according to its website. “We believe pets enrich our lives and bring out the best in us. Pets are beloved members of our family, and deserve the best care possible.”

See www.petriage.com for more.