Yes, you read that right, Dogster & Catster are profitable. August exenses included three full-time salaries, roughly 80 hours of contractual services, 7 rented servers, our Potrero Hill office, a party and a bunch of they-sure-do-add-up-don’t-they expenses. However, we offset that and then some thanks to higher than expected revenues for site sponsorship, CPM advertisers, boutique advertisers, bulk advertising, paid user subscriptions as well as our revenue from store sales and pet-friendly travel bookings. The fact that Nintendo and ASPCA just committed to sponsor-level support and others are in final negotaition really helps me feel that it’s no longer crazy to think it’s so crazy it just might work.

The real pleasure of this event is that we’ve been able to switch our mindset from save-every-penny-we-can to what-extra-endeavor-can-we-take-on-now. Our first spending baby step was to hire an amazing engineer and old friend Moss Gross to program a barktastic set of community-related features that we thought we had to put on hold while we prepare for The World’s Coolest Dog & Cat Show, which is another thrilling product we’ll be launching in early October. Moss’ first day marked the first moment in Dogster history that a line of code was not written by John Vars or myself, which along with getting my first Dogster paycheck and being profitable is one of my most pleasing company milestone.

I’ve never run a business before. In fact the closest I’ve gotten to running a business before is running from someone else’s - many in fact. This achievement could not have happened without the partnership with John and Steven, which is already a year old with many experiences under our belts. But you have to love it when a plan comes together … don’t ya Hannibal?