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XModern Animal Raises $75.5 Million to Upgrade Pet Care and Upend the Vet Industry
Sam primarily covers entertainment and media for dot.LA. Previously he was Marjorie Deane Fellow at The Economist, where he wrote for the business and finance sections of the print edition. He has also worked at the XPRIZE Foundation, U.S. Government Accountability Office, KCRW, and MLB Advanced Media (now Disney Streaming Services). He holds an MBA from UCLA Anderson, an MPP from UCLA Luskin and a BA in History from University of Michigan. Email him at samblake@dot.LA and find him on Twitter @hisamblake

U.S. pet ownership rose nearly 50% over the last year as Americans, hemmed in by the pandemic, embraced their furry friends. The surge propelled the pet industry past $100 billion in revenues and exacerbated demands on veterinarians already stretched thin.
With its hybrid telemedicine subscription service, Culver City-based startup Modern Animal is looking to grow by appealing to both overtaxed vets and the new rush of pet owners. On Friday, it announced a $75.5 million investment to help do it.
The company believes its model, which relies on 24/7, app-based care, access to beautifully outfitted clinics for users and a streamlined system for veterinarians, can help upend the way the industry traditionally does business.
"The problems we were trying to solve [when we started the company] were not actually related to the animal," said CEO and co-founder Steven Eidelman. They were related to the humans: the pet-owners and the veterinarians.
Eidelman is the former founder of Whistle, a pet health startup that made a 'Fitbit for dogs' and was acquired in 2016 for $117 million by Mars. He founded Modern Animal in 2018. It has now raised $89 million.
Its first clinic opened in April last year in West Hollywood. Unlike most drab veterinarian offices, Modern Animal's clinic boasts amenities like a "beautiful Oscar Gronner mural" and "Margo's Bark root beer in our fridge". Customers pay a $100 annual membership fee per pet, which grants them free exams and around-the-clock telemedicine. The company does not offer emergency care.
The new funding is split between a previously unannounced $35.5 million Series A led by True Ventures and Addition, and a $40 million Series B led by Founders Fund. With it, the company plans to open a dozen more clinics around California over the next 18 months — including facilities in Playa Vista, Pasadena and Studio City by the end of the year. The WeHo clinic has maxed out its capacity of around 4,000 fuzzy patients; Eidelman said the new clinics will be similarly sized.
Modern Animal has largely appealed to younger pet owners. Eighty percent of its human members are between 25 and 45 years old; only 10% of the clients are over the age of 55.
"There is a very different type of behavior that younger pet owners are exhibiting, and so we wanted to build a system that, looking to the future, is built for them," Eidelman said. Members make about five visits per year during their first year of membership, which is more than double the frequency of visits to a typical vet's office.
He attributes that stickiness to Modern Animal's free initial exams and how the company pays veterinarians, which discourages them from charging for extra services.
Layla (left), and her human, Modern Animal CEO and co-founder Steven Eidelman.
About 80 employees work at the company, split evenly between the medical staff and the business side. Flush with funds, Eidelman plans to go on a hiring spree, prioritizing operational and human resource roles to support the company's expansion.
Eidelman said one of the company's cornerstones is creating a good place for often stressed out veterinarians to work.
Dr. Christie Long, Modern Animal's head of medicine, said it's one of the reasons she appreciates the company. She has been a veterinarian since 2007.
"As a profession, we give so much of ourselves away, and we have a real problem with drawing boundaries," she said.
Modern Animal takes several steps to change that paradigm, Long said.
The medical team works collaboratively, so that during a telemedicine appointment, the on-call vet has access to the pet's health records, which may have been input by their colleagues from both in-person and remote visits.
Using telemedicine also allows for a more efficient allocation of the clinical staff's time and skills, Eidelman said, as less urgent matters can be addressed without requiring a potentially wasteful visit to the clinic. And unlike much of the vet industry, the company pays its staff a salary rather than on a fee-for-service basis.
"We pay a good salary to a doctor and expect them to work their 40 hours a week and then we expect them to go home. And we want them to go home," said Long. "We are attracting a younger group of veterinarians...I'm excited to see them raise their hands and say, 'the (old) model doesn't work for me.'"
In addition to the new funding, the company also announced three board members: David Bowman, former COO and CFO of Blue Bottle Coffee; Karen Boone, former CFO of Restoration Hardware and current board member of Peloton, Sonos and Rivian; and Tony Conrad, partner at True Ventures.
Eidelman said they bring value from their experience scaling businesses with a physical presence.
"The big opportunity we see is to fix this profession," he said.
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Sam primarily covers entertainment and media for dot.LA. Previously he was Marjorie Deane Fellow at The Economist, where he wrote for the business and finance sections of the print edition. He has also worked at the XPRIZE Foundation, U.S. Government Accountability Office, KCRW, and MLB Advanced Media (now Disney Streaming Services). He holds an MBA from UCLA Anderson, an MPP from UCLA Luskin and a BA in History from University of Michigan. Email him at samblake@dot.LA and find him on Twitter @hisamblake
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California Debates Data Privacy as SCOTUS Allows Abortion Bans
Keerthi Vedantam is a bioscience reporter at dot.LA. She cut her teeth covering everything from cloud computing to 5G in San Francisco and Seattle. Before she covered tech, Keerthi reported on tribal lands and congressional policy in Washington, D.C. Connect with her on Twitter, Clubhouse (@keerthivedantam) or Signal at 408-470-0776.
The United States Supreme Court called a Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks constitutional on Friday, overturning the country’s founding abortion rights decision Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court also upheld that there cannot be any restriction on how far into a pregnancy abortion can be banned.
When Politico first broke the news months before SCOTUS’s final ruling, a slew of bills entered Congress to protect data privacy and prevent the sale of data, which can be triangulated to see if a person has had an abortion or if they are seeking an abortion and have historically been used by antiabortion individuals who would collect this information during their free time.
Democratic lawmakers led by Congresswoman Anna Eshoo called on Google to stop collecting location data. The chair of the Federal Trade Commission has long voiced plans for the agency to prevent data collection. A week after the news, California Assembly passed A.B. 2091, a law that would prevent insurance companies and medical providers from sharing information in abortion-related cases (the state Senate is scheduled to deliberate on it in five days).
These scattered bills attempt to do what health privacy laws do not. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, was established in 1996 when the Internet was still young and most people carried flip phones. The act declared health institutions were not allowed to share or disclose patients’ health information. Google, Apple and a slew of fertility and health apps are not covered under HIPAA, and fertility app data can be subpoenaed by law enforcement.
California’s Confidentiality of Medical Information Act (or CMIA), goes further than HIPAA by encompassing apps that store medical information under the broader umbrella of health institutions that include insurance companies and medical providers. And several how-tos on protecting data privacy during Roe v. Wade have been published in the hours of the announcement.
But reproductive rights organizations say data privacy alone cannot fix the problem. According to reproductive health policy think tank Guttmacher Institute, the closest state with abortion access to 1.3 million out-of-state women of reproductive age is California. One report from the UCLA Center on Reproductive Health, Law and Policy estimates as many as 9,400 people will travel to Los Angeles County every year to get abortions, and that number will grow as more states criminalize abortions.
Keerthi Vedantam is a bioscience reporter at dot.LA. She cut her teeth covering everything from cloud computing to 5G in San Francisco and Seattle. Before she covered tech, Keerthi reported on tribal lands and congressional policy in Washington, D.C. Connect with her on Twitter, Clubhouse (@keerthivedantam) or Signal at 408-470-0776.
LA Tech ‘Moves’: Adtech Firm OpenX Lures New SVP, Getlabs and DISQO Tap New VPs
Decerry Donato is dot.LA's Editorial Fellow. Prior to that, she was an editorial intern at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.
“Moves,” our roundup of job changes in L.A. tech, is presented by Interchange.LA, dot.LA's recruiting and career platform connecting Southern California's most exciting companies with top tech talent. Create a free Interchange.LA profile here—and if you're looking for ways to supercharge your recruiting efforts, find out more about Interchange.LA's white-glove recruiting service by emailing Sharmineh O’Farrill Lewis (sharmineh@dot.la). Please send job changes and personnel moves to moves@dot.la.
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Advertising technology company OpenX Technologies appointed Geoff Wolinetz as senior vice president of demand platforms. Wolinetz was most recently senior vice president of growth at Chalice Custom Algorithms.
Remote health care infrastructure provider Getlabs hired Jaime LaFontaine as its vice president of business development. L.A.-based LaFontaine was previously director of business development for Alto Pharmacy.
Customer experience platform DISQO tapped Andrew Duke as its vice president of product, consumer applications. Duke previously served as Oracle’s senior director of strategy and product.
Media company Wheelhouse DNA named Michael Senzer as senior manager of Additive Creative, its newly launched digital talent management division. Senzer was previously vice president of business development at TalentX Entertainment.
Fintech lending platform Camino Financial hired Dana Rainford as vice president of people and talent. Rainford previously served as head of human resources at Westwood Financial.
Kourtney Day returned to entertainment company Jim Henson’s Creature Shop as senior director of business development. Day mostly recently served as business development manager for themed entertainment at Solomon Group.
Decerry Donato is dot.LA's Editorial Fellow. Prior to that, she was an editorial intern at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.
This Week in ‘Raises’: Miracle Miles Lands $100M, Fintech Startup Tapcheck Hauls $20M
Decerry Donato is dot.LA's Editorial Fellow. Prior to that, she was an editorial intern at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.
In this week’s edition of “Raises”: An L.A.-based footwear company closed $100 million to boost its expansion into the global market, while there were Series A raises for local fintech, biotech and space startups.
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Venture Capital
Miracle Miles Group, an L.A.-based footwear company, raised a $100 million Series A funding round co-led by IDG Capital and Sequoia Capital China.
Deno, a San Diego-based software development startup, raised a $21 million Series A funding round led by Sequoia Capital.
Tapcheck, an L.A.-based financial wellness startup that helps workers access their paycheck before payday, raised a $20 million Series A funding round led by PeakSpan Capital.
Gemelli Biotech, an L.A.- and Raleigh, N.C.-based biotech startup focused on gastrointestinal diseases, raised a $19 million Series A financing round led by Blue Ox Healthcare Partners.
Epsilon3, an L.A.-based space operations software startup, raised a $15 million Series A funding round led by Lux Capital.
Global Premier Fertility, an Irvine-based fertility company, raised an $11 million Series C funding round led by Triangle Capital Corporation.
Vamstar, an L.A.- and London-based medical supply chain platform, raised a $9.5 million Series A funding round co-led by Alpha Intelligence Capital and Dutch Founders Fund.
System 9, an L.A.-based digital asset market-making firm focused on the crypto altcoin market, raised a $5.7 million Series A funding round led by Capital6 Eagle.
Myria, an L.A.-based online marketplace of luxury goods and services, raised a $4.3 million seed round from Y Combinator, Backend Capital, Cathexis Ventures and other angel investors.
Binarly, an L.A.-based firmware cybersecurity company, raised a $3.6 million seed round from WestWave Capital and Acrobator Ventures.
Raises is dot.LA’s weekly feature highlighting venture capital funding news across Southern California’s tech and startup ecosystem. Please send fundraising news to Decerry Donato (decerrydonato@dot.la).
- Vamstar Raises $9.5M For Its Medical Supply Chain Platform - dot.LA ›
- MaC Venture Capital Eyes $200 Million For Its Second Fund - dot.LA ›
- Los Angeles Venture Capital News - dot.LA ›
Decerry Donato is dot.LA's Editorial Fellow. Prior to that, she was an editorial intern at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.