Pet-Loving FEMBAs Create PetSnap

Five Pet-Loving FEMBAs Bring Pet Health and Wellness Management to Your Smartphone

Love your pet?

Want to be the best pet-parent you can be?

In 2012, Matt Rose and his wife Kate learned that their dog, best friend and ski buddy Barlow had cancer. Barlow fought the disease for almost two years. It was an emotional time, and Matt and Kate felt overwhelmed and confused tracking all of Barlow’s medical records, appointments and medications. They were concerned that they or one of Barlow’s many vets might miss (or misplace) something critical in all of those paper records.

Matt and Kate Rose posed with Barlow for their engagement photo in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado

Matt formed a team of FEMBA classmates at UCLA Anderson to build an app that could combine all of Barlow’s paper records in one safe place, and allow Matt and Kate to keep that information with them in case of emergency, and easily share it with vets, dog sitters or friends.

The team talked to a lot of pet owners who needed anytime access to their pet’s health information, and PetSnap was born.

Their team of five FEMBAs is changing the way you take care of your furry friends with their free mobile website and app, PetSnap. PetSnap is a pet health management platform that allows pet owners and veterinarians to collectively manage animal health from a computer or mobile device. It helps pet owners organize, digitize, and share their pets’ health records, and also set reminders for appointments, medications, and/or treatments.

When Barlow got sick with cancer, Matt was introduced to the problem of not having all Barlow’s medical history succinctly in one place.

PetSnap empowers pet owners to manage their pets’ health as well as they manage their own. As lifelong pet parents, the team at PetSnap truly believes that their platform can help make a difference in the health and well-being of animal family members. And the community seems to agree – PetSnap had a great response at last summer’s FEMBApalooza, signing up over 300 attendees.

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, during a mentoring session with PetSnap on campus, agreed that “This lowers the stress of being a pet parent. It makes them feel good and that they are taking better care of their pet.”

You can support PetSnap. Like all start-ups, PetSnap needs to gain momentum. Two actions that will support PetSnap:

1. Download their iOS app
2. Refer PetSnap to your pet-owning friends

For more information about PetSnap, you can download their iOS app, visit their website at www.petsnapapp.com, view their 1-minute demo, or engage with them on Instagram or Facebook. The team would love to talk to you more about their product and how it can be improved to help you and your pets. Email matthew.rose.2016@anderson.ucla.edu

Stop them in the hallway if you see them!

Front Row, L-R: Rich Headley FEMBA ‘16,  Isadora Dantas FEMBA ‘16,  Frankie Judy FEMBA ‘16

Back Row, L-R: Matt Bailey,  Matthew Rose FEMBA ‘16,  Rex Hatch FEMBA ‘16

In the middle, held by Matt is Eddie. About half a year after Barlow passed, Matt’s wife Kate found Eddie wandering alone and unidentified in Koreatown and rescued him.

I want to thank Rich and Matt for generating this update on PetSnap. We’ll keep more updates coming as they proceed.

Additional story-lines include (Aren’t they busy!)

• PetSnap utilizing the new UCLA Anderson Venture Accelerator space for their development efforts
• Matt Rose winning the 2015 Wolfen Award
• PetSnap currently at the semi-final level in Baylor University’s New Venture Competition. Waiting to hear if they make the finals.
• PetSnap being semi-finalists in the UCLA Knapp Venture Competition
• PetSnap earning second-place at the IE (Spain) Venture Competition
• PetSnap currently prepping to enter Oregon’s competition
• PetSnap entering the UCLA Law School Lowell Milken Institute Sandler Prize for New Entrepreneurs
• PetSnap entering the ITA Venture Competition this Spring
  (They’re seeking an engineer to joing the team for this one, if you’re interested!)

 

 

UCLA Venture Accelerator Launch Party

All the stars are here at UCLA Anderson this afternoon for the launch party of our new Venture Accelerator!   Above is Dean Judy Olian, welcoming everyone. 

 Above, l-r, Aniruddha Mukherjee new Femba 2019, Jeff Locke Punter for the Vikings and UCLA alum, and Entrepreneurship Professor George Abe.   

  

Above Tamra Johnson Femba 2012 Co-Founder and Partner 79 Studios, and Saujin Yi MBA 2007 Founder and CEO 79 Studios.  Tamra and Saujin met at MIT, then reconnected at Ucla Anderson and created 79 Studios.  79 Studios uniquely and effectively empowers women in entrepreneurship and leadership. 

 Above, two alumni, both creating new companies: Mohtadi Nadjar full time MBA with his new brand of olive oil OLIVI, and Ed Cho Femba 2013. 

2016-The Best Year Ever. (Why the heck not?)

[It’s Monday night, January 11, 2016. Alabama won the National Championship about an hour ago. I wouldn’t know, because I fell asleep next to my three-year old. But I’ve woken up and I’m posting this blog, with some of my thoughts and plans to make 2016 the “Best Year Ever.” I wrote these thoughts last Friday morning. This post will be a test, to see who’s up late studying on Monday night, and needs a break.]  🙂

Greetings from Il Tram, Anderson’s coffee shop. It’s the first Friday morning of the new year, and I’m on my laptop, writing my first blog of the year 2016.

Hope your holidays were restorative. My wife and I traveled 15 days, from Rhode Island to New Jersey to one country (Texas, my original home), with our two boys, aged 8 and 3. Returning to work Monday was bewildering. Where’s my parking pass? What’s my password? What’s my name? Forgetting the basics is the sign of a vacation well-lived.

Sunday, January 3, we flew home to LAX on Southwest. Watching the arriving bags, every other young person I saw was wearing a UCLA sweatshirt: The Bruin tribe was coming back together.

So.

Still have your New Year’s resolutions? It’s only been 8 [now 11] days, so I hope they’re still real for you. If you’re having trouble, here’s something else to try: naming your year and sharing your goals (with the assumption that your goals came true).

I myself don’t have much success with New Year’s Resolutions. But one thing I do that works for me is to NAME my year, like

  2016 The Force Awakens

Actually I’m choosing something less poetic, but equally solid

  2016 The Best Year Ever

What’s the point of naming the year? It’s like naming a chapter. Chapters have a beginning, a middle and an end. Chapters have characters, and characters have adventures, and adventures have danger and heroism and outcomes, good and bad. Mostly, chapters are worth reading.

A book without chapters, one long list of words with no breaks, well that’s not a book I want to read. But a book with chapters, a story, that has power. I need to bracket life to keep my power going. And that’s why I like to create a theme for each year.

So. 2016 The Best Year Ever.

After naming the year, let’s do a Stephen Covey exercise and begin with the end in mind. Let’s assume that the chapter of life called “2016,” replete with dangers and heroism and outcomes, has happy endings. Let’s go forward to December 31^st and write some summary headlines to this “Best Year Ever” from within FEMBA admissions and my accountability.

Macro-Headline #1: The FEMBA Class of 2019 stands on the shoulders of giants

Story: In the face of market contractions for all part-time MBA programs in SoCal, UCLA Anderson continued to attract and matriculate a growing student body. Building on the record-smashing class of 2018, the new entering class is even stronger with improved metrics for women, diversity, academic background, advanced degrees and geographic diversity. The FEMBA program has surpassed the UCLA Law School and is now the largest graduate student body of over 120 graduate programs at UCLA.

Macro-Headline #2: UCLA Anderson hosts the 23^rd Part-Time MBA Deans’ Conference

Story: You know MBA rankings? Those pesky creatures that we love and hate—that we hate to love, and love to hate? Well, 50% of the US News & World Report ranking for part-time MBA programs is based on peer-assessment: Deans voting on programs.

UCLA Anderson won the bid to host the 2016 Conference in October at the brand new Meyer & Renee Luskin Conference Center in the heart of the UCLA campus. Under the leadership of Deans Margaret Shih, Gonzalo Freixes and yours truly, in partnership with Dean Judy Olian and with the contributions of peer-school and industry leaders, and with a special sparkle brought by our FEMBAassadors, UCLA Anderson delivered a professional, high-quality, content-rich conference addressing the current state of part-time MBA curricula across the world and looking out into the 10-20 year future of professional MBA education.

The conference left a “10-year-plus good impression” on the attending thought-leaders of part-time MBA education. They got to see UCLA, Anderson, FEMBA, GAP, Flex, FEMBAssadors, Global Immersions, the new Accelerator, and more, and they liked what they saw.

Macro-Headline #3 FEMBApalooza 5 shatters all precedents: catalyzes whole new levels of community

What’s more to say? FEMBApalooza continued to evolve into a community-building, culture-enhancing moment in the annual FEMBA calendar, connecting new and current and alumni FEMBAs with family and friends and faculty.

Micro-Headline #1    All admissions team members experience robust professional growth and development

Micro-Headline #2    FEMBAassadors continue to evolve as the secret weapon in FEMBA’s recruiting excellence

Micro-Headline #3    Dylan writes a white-paper, or possibly a book, about the positive growth and development of FEMBA over the last decade

Athletes visualize making the pass, or completing the shot. I’m visualizing 2016 as a year that surpasses my small dreams and accomplishes much bigger goals. How I have access to bigger results is in sharing these goals with you: Building a great Class of 2019; Hosting the Part-Time MBA Conference in October; Delivering the best FEMBApalooza ever.

By sharing our goals, we find new synergies, we create new connections, we have better results and more fun too.

I invite you to take some time and write some of your goals for 2016. Give your 2016 a name. Or steal mine, “2016, the Best Year Ever” and then share your goals and your name with your friends and colleagues.

In my experience, this practice of naming the year and sharing my goals with powerful people, it has a lot more staying power than any New Year’s Resolution that I might make on my own. A New Year’s Resolution made on my own is only as strong as my will-power, just one chocolate-covered donut from disaster. But, a Year with a Name, and goals that are public, in community, that has a much higher degree chance of success.

Give it a try. Why the heck not?

See you on campus.

—Dylan, signing off from Culver City on a Monday evening