Dog walking is typically the kind of business that you start up in the summer to save money for a car, while you wait the two or three more years until you’re old enough to actually get your drivers license. It also means it’s often a fly-by-night service, where professionalism is the exception, according to Entrepreneur.com.
At least, that’s what Paul Mann decided back in 2002 when he was looking for a pet sitter in Berkeley, Calif.
“I went through the yellow pages, and I couldn’t find anyone I felt comfortable handing my keys or my pets to,” he says. “That’s when I had my aha! moment.”
Soon after, Mann, who had co-founded a high-tech job placement firm and founded a software company, bought a bag full of leashes and launched Fetch! Pet Care. His idea had legs–thousands of them. Within a year, his small company had 1,000 clients served by 70 pet sitters and two full-time dispatchers