Richard Nilsson, My Pet Go: Revolutionizing pet health care and insurance with wearable pet tech

welcome to another coo wisdom B with Richard Nelson today with us he is CEO at myed go uh Harvard educated started a bunch of companies living in Singapore live lived in Hong Kong too just like myself beautiful place of the world there and I am eager to visit Singapore as well cool guy all together uh we're going to talk about uh his past tennis career I had

a very short and shitty tennis career I still love this sport don't play a battle nowadays which is amazing and it's going to be a fun one spire.com is sponsoring that one that's my podcasting company if you want to start your own podcast skel it and monetize it you can go to spire.com Richard welcome to the BD tell me a bit more about yourself and about what

you're up to nowadays thank you Charles for having me um always always fun to to meet like-minded people and to to share anything if it makes sense to anybody else or if anybody can can get inspired or um find a nugget that they can apply in some way uh in their own life so so look um born and bred in in Sweden sort of uh tried to become a tennis pro um didn't really work out for me I had a knee issue but uh but but loved the game um you know dabbled a bit in golf um and my golf coach always said look you you know how to play tennis you got to run to the ball then you got to stop then you got to hit here you got the ball laying down

you just got to hit the ball and still you can't really do it so so not so good in golf a little bit better in tennis um you know at the age of uh 21 I sort of migrated to Hong Kong to start you know to get into sort of technology and this is sort of 2005 so post.com uh crash and I saw with two other friends this opportunity to start a sort of luxury lifestyle digital online first magazine daily updated with a community um where people could congregate and talk about passions in life be it Motors mechanical watches um you know Fashion Beauty whining and dining travel uh whatever whatever sort of um you know was or is their passion and and they could sort of uh share ideas photos uh conversations etc etc

we also had a city guide um and and an EV Sky a little bit like a timeout but very curated uh more sort of targeting the yappies and the early adopters in the Hong Kong market fast forward we ex we we sort of launched that in Singapore I moved then to launch it in Singapore appli the same sort of you know thesis um you know build up readership uh across the magazine sell you know uh different sort of AD Solutions um when we started we were trying to attract the caring group and the lbmh and the Independents like Rolex and pek and and you know everybody said look uh digital is not going to be something for us you know we we go in glossy print we go Billboards you know that's what we do

um and you know we we tried so hard with with caring and with Gucci which I don't think was was owned by by caring at the time but uh they said look we're we're never going to advertise digital so just stop stop uh you know um pestering us with your phone calls and your your media kits and whatnot um towards the end when we sold that business to to a German conglomerate caring was a number one Advertiser and and and the number one within their sort of um portfolio was Gucci so so you know we we managed to convince them eventually um but but uh yeah so that's that's a I guess a a sort of quick int to 35 years of my life 40 if I'd have to relaunch DTC business because my first

neut Tropic uh well my first business was a neut Tropic supplement for the brain I think I'd go in the luxury Market how it would to be precise I'm in Waka right now so it's the land of mcal here I'd probably sell custom bottles of mcal with the finest quality of mcal of course probably cost me like six bucks per bottle and I'd sell them at like 6,000 or something like that um what do you recommend that I do in terms of marketing should it be like full e-commerce if it's if it appeals to a luxury class of people I'm not too into like physical events and stuff like that so how should I Market that yeah look I if if you're going to price it at 6,000 a bottle I would do very personal

uh in-person events I think that really works where you bring down the people that have a particular nose for tequila and mcal and and that type of of spirit and you curate a nice experience for them and and you have products that they can can bring home they can pay there then and there and they can bring them home with them and so you know you do that in a very nice atmosphere yet somewhat intoxicated right and um and you get you play a little bit with guilt and so you give them a nice experience and you know you say you don't want anything in return but they're going to feel a bit guilty so they're going to pick up a bottle if if if obviously you've invited the right crowd that that can spend

that type of money but look I I done a lot with luxury Spirits uh very very fine uh products and and you know doing online advertisement that's good maybe for building a brand uh in in the awareness but you're not going to sell 6,000 uh bottles of of Mescal um I think I think it's going to be hardship even even the craziest of Bitcoin guys that have

a thousand coins and no clue what to do with them wouldn't even go for that I mean even those guys would would kind of hesitate I think right well there there would be a value of reselling these bottles and they would be very unique you know um they would be made by a bot also that's the controversial thing um would be made according to the design that

you want right and with your name and and all of that with AI actually so AI would help in the design of that and it would be a bot so at the event the bot could build their bottle and fill in the mcal just right in front of them would be an elegant machine as well like presentable to the public um but yeah let's see about that one seems a bit complex you're into pet Tech which is a quite an interesting Niche um increase your pet's longevity that's quite interesting tell me how you got that idea and why that market right so so I'll go back to sort of the end of of Lifestyle Asia before we we sold that to to this this German conglomerate um we we sort of realized that media was

having a challenging time against the platform players being Google um Facebook metha obviously Tik Tok and all the other guys where everybody gave away their content for free and but but obviously the users were there and and you know they were um essentially data mining they were extracting so much data they could sort of with with a Precision really start to to eat up you know I

think at the time 2016 17 they were eating 90% of all the the the uh the budget Pi that were there for all media players right and that was how powerful they became and so to me it was okay look we got this beautiful Niche target audience um and we know where they live we know roughly what income they have we we we have these sexy data points but we don't have the same type of data and so I said to myself I probably should leave this industry like I made this exit take the money go do something else and pet parent myself love the space started looking at what was going on in the US market in Europe and I said look I think I think there is a lot happening here it's a

highly analog industry still and there is you know if you look at the the micro and the macro you can see you know the one of the simple uh data points would be that majority of the pet owners today are millennials or jensy and so these are datadriven people they have an aura ring or a whoop strap or an Apple watch um if not a combination they're looking at you know their own sort of um Health Data uh on a frequent basis they do everything they live on their smartphone um they do all their daily weekly monthly Shores um on their smartphone it makes sense to do the pet shores as well on the smartphone it makes sense to track the health of the pet as well and look at data points because hey pets

don't talk right so how do we give them a voice to explain how they're feeling physically and emotionally and I you know so we sort of said look how can we how can we explain those parameters how are they feeling physiologically and how are they feeling sort of emotionally and and the way to do that is to leverage sensor data extract those data points H from predominantly

an acceler meter a gyroscope and a few other sensors and you take the XC and Y values and you plug them into algorithms and you would have to use either scg or BCG or P PPG to decide which scientific route you want to take we've taken BCG so ballistic cardiography where we look at how the blood mass is Shifting in the in inside of the the pet uh using various sensors and then but you know that's one part then you got to build the alos and then you got to sort of validate that with with medical equipment so so the idea was really to to kind of you know give pets a voice of their own and and ensure that caretakers can become more obedient and and better caretakers uh for their pets man I

see business genius behind that business uh are you raising funds this year we have been raising funds um for this business since day one pretty much I mean I'm I'm the largest investor um so so we are raising funds we have been raising funds and look the the issue with the pet Tech sector broadly speaking is a lot of people especially the Venture Capital guys they don't

quite get the sector they've seen very little deal flow um they haven't seen any big successes apart from maybe chewy and and and and and and a couple of household names out there globally so so one of the reasons I'm actually not in Singapore at the moment I'm in Barcelona I've I've relocated and the reason why I've relocated is that the market is different in in Europe

and us and I needed to get out of the Asian time zone because I was having calls two in the morning uh Singapore time and a 20-hour flight to New York and and you know so in Barcelona I got this this great sort of ability to to get out but yes we're raising money we're looking at doing something with a very large strategic I'm going to London on Monday so let's see what happens but but I mean there are other nuances to what we do which which I didn't dig in uh to but I guess can uh announce it here first and that is that we've we've looked at the Vitality model which is um across human health insurance 25 years ago there is this South African company uh called um Discovery and they they

launched a brand called vitality and this South African group is a conglomerate so they they're an insurer they're a bank they they got you know their their their hands in in many different Industries and businesses but what they launched with Vitality I think was very genius in that they went to Fitbit and bought a bunch of fitbits and then they went to their um their to a

bun to the top tier segment of their um maybe not top tier but to a segment of their uh human health insurance customers and said look if you um if if you download this application and if you follow the the the shores that you need to do in your daily step count in eating healthy and going for you know Health screenings and if you do this we're going to give you a possible reduction of your premium up to 25% in your insurance all you have to do is to take this Fitbit wear it pair the data with the application and feed that data into the application and so it's almost like you know you're incentivizing a person to become more obedient to better look after themselves and so that person will then require less intervention

and and the data that they've managed to push out from that you know having been around for 25 years is is is astounding you know 13 to 21 years longer lifespan and you know uh 40% lower lapse rate for the insurance companies so they've now taken this concept to 16 other insurance companies and they're all over the world they're in Japan with sumo they're in they're in

us with with John um with with with manual life and and and um you know in in Spain with generali etc etc so we've also launched and built on top of what we have a similar thing we call Longevity and that is our longevity product that is the same thing you know uh the right amount of exercise we're rewarding you for that uh but not too much and and you know the right amount of of of sort of uh food um supplements you know giving deworming tablets at the right time going for your preventative uh sort of Health screenings doing Dental scaling brushing the teeth daily you know the right amount of of of sort of grooming and and cleaning ears and cutting Nails the pets can grip better and all of these things lead

to a healthier pet that will require less intervention so we're the first in the world to launch this which we call Long longevity and it's something that um you know all the pet insurance companies we talked about this they're they're very very excited about this particular product but it's the same thing we're instead of using Fitbit we use our own monitors because we're the only one kind

of doing Health wellness and and Longevity at the moment what about the discipline aspect of it what do you think of uh Shock Callers um would there be a better feature to discipline your pades to instead of making a noise or physically correcting them in the collar look I don't play in that Arena of Correctional colors or uh you know the containment Arena where you're trying to

contain the pet um Cesar Milan has partnered with a company that that does that thing it's a massive thing that sits around and they give electroshocks and they're trying to contain the pet and and while I think it might be necessary for certain uh breeds and and so on and so forth I think there are um more Humane ways to to train a pet and and I don't think violence is is the way to do it I think I think you know uh and that's also part of what we're doing trying to do is to educate you so if you get a monitor early on in life try to hold your hand through that Journey um as you progress through the Journey of being a pet owner and I think you know education is often

the the that lacks with okay you don't understand your pets your pet is behaving this way there are better ways to get your pet to be obedient and maybe you're not paying attention maybe you're feeding the pet you know maybe you're you're not feeding your pet at all uh maybe you're not taking your pet for for for the right amount of exercise right like if you got

a you know a husky you got to exercise the pet right if you have like what I have which is a multis it's an it's essentially a toy breed indoor dog that can get enough enough exercise walking inside right uh you don't need to take it out apart from you know poo poo and PP right um obviously I do walk my dog I'll just make that clear yeah i' actually integrate the future and there seems like a low hanging fruit not a shock but um you know like AI which if the dog barks for some unwanted reason right because there can be some wanted reasons well you play a noise of the OWN saying a or or no um yeah and that that could be interesting and if the dog is behaving well the AI

could also release like Pleasant smells you know in the air and good dog um that that could be pretty nice as a feature yeah yeah absolutely yeah I mean look you can do a lot of things right um like like the the the issue is you're you're going to have to find a balance between the size of the Monitor and the battery and the features right so the smaller the size of the monitor the smaller the battery you can put inside and the more features you want to have the more things you're going to crank on the more things you crank on inside the more the more energy it's it's it's it's going to to to consume so your issue is always to strike a balance right our monitor is the size of like that

right which is your earpod case more or less but um but we have the idea of bringing that down 35% while increasing battery life 50% so in theory that's a really really hard thing to do I think I think having a sound emitter is a simple thing to do right um and you could probably program that in a way where the pet owner can talk into the application and record something and then that could then be transferred into to to the hardware itself uh it's all it's all possible um I think I think it depends on you know know price point you know how much do you want to charge ultimately I think the issue with a lot of wearables is that they're too expensive right so um you know are you a data play

or are you a hardware play I'm a data play right you know we're we're we're Data Business we we have no desire to try to be a hardware business we you know we we have you know I i' I'd love to be apple but to become apple and and be truly a hardware guy I mean you can argue that apple is not apple is an System model right but but they're very good at Hardware so with Samsung but you know a lot of the other guys have lost out right right but I don't think also it's rocket science to shape the collar in a way that let looks less cumbersome this is probably like one of the versions it could definitely be improved I think the visuals are quite important for the owner because it's

yeah it's their pet you know and their health and they're like oh is this going to explode on my dog neck you know um is it impermeable and and stuff like that or will my dog hate it you know like does it look cumbersome because as humans we really much project ourselves in the dogs right like me when I look at my first right now my dogs don't have any collar they really do um because I just picture myself with that a dog a collar you know and it's like oh it's not mustn't be super comfortable um but other other than that I'm super bullish on the startup I'm actually curious about the science be behind what you're monitoring so let's say that the heartbeat is irregular then my betet is at the risk of

having a heart attack and I need to take him to the vet before happens um what are the other the other causes or symptoms that you monitor of bad stuff that could happen to my pets so so our our sort of thesis is um you know people should not need to be a data scientist to understand what you're trying to tell them through the data point so so Step One is like okay let's let's extract this data and then explain that in a Layman way right so that's step one right so that's First Dimension I think a lot of companies wearables uh both in the pet and human space they fail at that first Dimension it's just a little bit tricky to understand the data right um to that the second dimension we've put in

place is would it not be very helpful if you could explain what this data actually means and what the user can do with the data right so how does it change their life or rather their Pet's life and so and the and so that's our second dimension um and the third dimension we've put in place is how do we then connect if we spot abnormalities and issues

in the data how do we then connect the caretaker to a service provider or a product that can fix this issue and that's what we call our ecosystem model so that's the myet go ecosystem model and and so essentially coming back to your question um as we spots so we look at heart rate variability pulse rate variability respiration rate temperature uh so on the back of the

monitor we got a temperature gauge which is just like a a a a you know normal temperature sensor um and it will tell you whether the temperature is high or low right and you want to look at look out for things such as fever obviously but you want to look out more so for for heat stroke if you're in a hot country for instance or if you're in a cold country the other way around right hypothermia um and and so that's what we call the four kind of um you know Health markers that that we're looking at right but then we look at a lot of other things like Behavior traits itching licking scratching resting movement mobility and all these other things that are telling there giving us some kind of indication on what's happening

in the Pet's life and and and you know our philosophy is if we spot an abnormality in the data we sort of give you a push notification and you know it can just be the fact that you come home um after you've been out uh drinking Mescal for a few hours with your mates you come home your your dogs are super excited to see you coming home right so they run to the door they get excited and that might give an indication that okay you know HRV has gone up but that push notification would say look we've just detected this don't don't be alarmed just pay attention to it right now if that value will be sustained for say half an hour or whatever the parameters we we have there depending on which type of

value it is we would then give you a second notification which you can open up and it it can triage that date and tell you this is now you know in the danger zone here are the reasons why this value could be elevated and here are some solutions for you that could be a solution to click and get instantly connected to a televet or to get uh or if you have a vet that you prefer that you that you plugged in during setup of the application you can speed out your vet now the Health Data can also be shared through a dynamic link directly to that vet on the other side be it your personal vet be at a televet and so they can triage that data and see what has happened over the last

uh day or or you know 24 hours or or whatnot love it Richard uh quite on your startup where can people find out more about you on the startup they can go to my petg go.com um and you know we we're not overly social in that we're we're blasting a lot of things on social media uh we probably should get better at that but but we've worked I mean 2023 was let's say the year of a pivot right and we worked very hard on this new anchoring into insurance and you know our take on Vitality um so probably myet go.com is the best way to to look um at the Venture if you want to look at me go to my LinkedIn which is yeah Richard Nelson just you'll you'll find me Richard know a

myit go you can put and you'll find me well with two s's two s's that's right that's