Episode 22: Revolutionizing Urban Dog Care With Ana Malhotra

Well, hello everyone. It's Melissa Reeves with the Mind Movie Makers episode. And I'm very excited to have Ana Malhotra with me today. she is the founder or co-founder of Rome. And wait till you hear what she's doing to change the world. so welcome, Ana. How are you?

speaker-1 (00:25.43)
I'm so good, Melissa. Thank you for having me. It's so nice to see you again.

speaker-0 (00:29.588)
thank you. So the two of us were introduced through the show Founders Live, which is a show that we do here in Seattle frequently. and we have five presenters who are brought to me, and you have 99 seconds to pitch to this room of people who are going to vote on their favorite favorite founder, and then you win a whole bunch of glorious prizes and accolades, right?

How was that experience for you? Especially knowing that you were going to have to pitch your business in ninety nine seconds. That's a minute thirty nine, y'all. That's it.

speaker-1 (01:07.628)
yes, I mean I was very excited when I found out that I'd get to pitch. It did not occur to me how short 99 seconds was until I had to put together the deck and I met with you. but you know I've I've been following Founders Live for a while, so I was very excited to finally get selected. And I didn't know that they were going to require this kind of pitch review, and I'm so glad they did, because to be honest, I don't think I would have done it.

Or going out of my way to get my deck reviewed before the show.

speaker-0 (01:39.128)
What do you think is the most intimidating part when you're realizing you only have ninety-nine seconds?

speaker-1 (01:45.886)
getting through it on on time because you know, everyone is like, we will cut you off at 99 seconds. So it I felt like I'd be embarrassed to get cut off. So that was the scariest part, is just not getting it done in time and having to get cut off.

speaker-0 (02:00.94)
really have to kind of I mean when you get it so here's the thing when you have time constraints I think that they're actually really good because what do they do? They make you have to be concise. They make you choose what's the most important thing that I need to convey to the audience in a very short amount of time. So it's almost like the Netflix description of a show.

Right. It's like the show goes on for an hour, but they have to describe it in one sentence, like to get you to want to watch it. And that's why I think the 99 second pitch or even a two-minute pitch is so smart for every founder to make sure that you're developing because you can also, you know, use it even at a cocktail party. I always use the cocktail party. You know, someone's like, what do you do? And you can start to kind of use that reduced sized pitch for for a lot of different needs.

Have you have you experienced that?

speaker-1 (02:56.94)
Hundred percent. it's one of the previous pitch competitions I did was a five to seven minute pitch. So if somebody just asks me on the street, what am I doing? I'll be giving them the long form and I've lost them in minute two. But if I know my ninety-nine second pitch, I I can just, you know, put it out there, not lose their attention and just be able to like go through follow up questions.

speaker-0 (03:21.172)
Yeah. And when you have the five to sevens or even tens, you know, like when you get more time, that really is just saying, I get to show more aspects to this idea. I can show more even charts. And I am not anti-chart. I'm just careful with people when they flash charts right away. Because what we want to do is we want to engage the listener with a story instead of just a chart, right?

And so those those charts and those those more complex offerings that you have fit into your five to seven minute, but they don't have any time in the 99 seconds. So you have to be very discerning, right?

speaker-1 (04:04.672)
100%. And I think the storytelling take has a few purposes, regardless of the length of the pitch, right? In 99 seconds, like in an audience like founders live, a lot of them are individuals, people are interested in entrepreneurship or angels, and they want to be intrigued by the concept. And that's really all you have time to do in 99 seconds. In a longer pitch, a good story also keeps people's attention over that longer period of time, right?

Cause after some point if you're just babbling on about what you're building, you lose attention. But if you do it the right way and actually tell the story, have like a climax and a, you know, things like that, you keep people's attention even for the longer period.

speaker-0 (04:47.81)
Well, I actually I agree with you completely. And and you know, I actually think that every slide of a founder's deck is a story slide in many ways, right? So you have the problem, which is the story, right? And you opened with that, and we're gonna see that in a few minutes. The solution is the vision story. It's how are you going to do this? What is it gonna take? Your traction is your success stories, right? And so those are all stories. Your team is a story of the talent of what you got.

You know, and then I think the only thing that you don't really have, I mean, the numbers story, obviously, like what what have you done? Well, how how are the numbers looking or how are you projecting the numbers? What's that story? So storytelling is moving through the entire deck. So if we can have your entire presentation be telling the full arc of what you're offering page by page in an edutaining kind of way, you're gonna get more attention and they're gonna remember you more.

I wish that people would trust me on this. They're gonna remember your story far longer than your pie chart.

speaker-1 (05:52.706)
Hundred percent. I I I think I don't even know my own numbers anymore, but I know my story.

speaker-0 (05:59.048)
The numbers move fast. So tell us about Rome. Just just give us a real high summary. You you know, you don't have to do the two minutes yet. We'll we'll pull up your deck a bit like just your founder story.

speaker-1 (06:11.714)
100%. So we're on a mission to reimagine what urban pet care looks like. And right now, though, we're focused on yard sharing because we think the core of a pet's physiological needs is the ability to be able to exercise, whether that's for physical or mental needs. And so in an urban setting, that's a need that cannot be fulfilled very easily by most pet parents.

and we me and my co-founder, who's my husband, we felt that ourselves we lived in an apartment. We have this high energy husky. at first, as a puppy, he kept getting sick at public dog parks, eventually developed reactivity, which means he's so anxious around other dogs that he latches out. And so we had to stop going to public dog parks completely. And we did this thing where we would go to tennis courts and public fields, knowing, you know.

If we weren't allowed there, it was technically illegal, but we were so desperate. and so we we needed a place to let him play off leash, and those were the only places we could find. And then at some point, you know, it wasn't working consistently. There was a bit of or a lot of guilt that we felt that we couldn't provide for our dog, even though we brought him into this environment, into this apartment. We didn't have a yard of our own.

And we were just sick of complaining. So we just decided to solve it for ourselves. And the product is yard sharing and we named it after our dog Rome. And that's that's kind of how we started.

speaker-0 (07:48.214)
I just love that. It's just so creative and thinking out of the box, you know. So why don't we pull up your deck? Let's let's take a look at it. So while you're getting that, you know, so what you're gonna see is you're gonna see Ana opening with her story. I want you to pay attention to the simpleness of her slides because we were just talking before we turned the record button on that there are two types of decks. Your speaker's deck, which should be simple, so that we're paying attention to the words that the speaker is doing.

And then there's your leave behind or your shared deck, the one where you're not there speaking, and it's going to have to talk to you or talk to the person reading it a little more in detail. Most people are putting up their shared deck when they're actually speaking. And that's where your audience derails. Okay? Because they're trying to listen to you, but now you've got so much on the slides you want them to read and they don't, they can't take it all in. So when I was coaching you.

How many times did I say take that off? Take that off. We don't need those words.

speaker-1 (08:49.07)
So many types. So many types were almost every slide. But it was a good thing.

speaker-0 (08:56.81)
It's a good thing, but you can put them back on for your shared deck, right? Does that make sense? I want everyone to make to start to really understand this because it can be a game changer in your audience's retention of how you're presenting your idea because you didn't overwhelm them. Okay, so in this particular slide, because we've been holding on it for a little while, we've got the nice big beautiful logo. She's got her sub, like her tag of what they're doing, and then her name and how to reach her.

As well as where you can get the app. Okay. Perfect. Because this slides up for a while. But the rest of the time your slides are moving. And we don't know an audience's ability to read. Like I'm a slow reader. I I I I think it's because I'm an actor and I will read things and I've got expression going on. Like I can't read things really fast. Other people read really fast and they're reading your slide before you're even done with it. And so that's why I want people to feel controlled.

so that you're you're you're reaching as many people in your audience as possible in a timed way with your slides supporting you and not upstaging you. Okay. And I thought you did a really good job. You had the natural instinct when you first came on board as as a founder that I typically don't see. You know, usually it's pretty much shared decks, but we still have chance. We still have chance to to clean it up a little bit. So why don't we do this? I will stop talking.

And let's see you give your pitch and then we'll we'll review back after that. Okay. So whenever you're ready, ladies, gentlemen, and everyone who's who's a human being, please welcome Ana Maholtra with Rome.

speaker-1 (10:42.2)
Thanks so much, Melissa. Rome is yard sharing built for dogs. Meet Helios. He's a good boy, friendly with humans, but becomes anxious around unfamiliar dogs, making traditional public dog parks unusable for him. And his human Megan, like millions of apartment dwellers, doesn't have a private outdoor space where he can play safely without a leash on. Dogs like Helios is why we've built Rome.

With Rome, Megan can find a backyard in her neighborhood that Helios will love, select the date, duration, and time that works best, and just pay to reserve. The only dogs and humans that will be there are the ones that Megan brings with her. And backyards are hosted by folks in Megan's neighborhood like Amy, pictured with Amy as Zeus, her beloved companion of 14 years. Unfortunately, Zeus passed from cancer in December of last year. And now Amy continues Zeus' legacy by hosting her yard in his honor.

There's a bit of every suit, bit of Zeus everywhere when you visit her space, and we're honored to be part of Zeus's legacy. Amy hosts her yard by providing photos and details about the space, and she sets her own availability and hourly rate. She earns with every single booking and can watch her earnings grow. Amy now spends her time traveling the world and earns a passive income with Rome. We started growing in Seattle and just launched in Austin, and we're seeing 100% month over month growth into just

Transactions on the platform. Rome earns a take rate of 25% of every transaction. I'm currently working on Rome full-time, and my co-founder built Rome from scratch. We have an amazing product and marketing lead, and our advisor was the 40th employee of Rover. We're also backed by Jason Calicanas. And I'd be remiss not to mention the most important member of our team, which is Rome the Dog. And we're currently prepping to raise our pre seat. So if you're interested, you can reach out.

Thank you so much. Again, we're a Rome Yard Chain Built for Dogs. And I'm Ana, co-founder and CEO of Rome. Thank you all for so much for your time.

speaker-0 (12:41.344)
All right. Very nice. Very, very, very nice. So we have the QR code here at the end. Where where are you taking us on that one?

speaker-1 (12:49.122)
This should go straight to our website.

speaker-0 (12:51.278)
Perfect, perfect. Because we love and never put a QR code in until the end. Until the end. but congratulations. Good job. Good job. Good job. so so what kind of questions are you getting when people are seeing your presentation now? What what what are you hearing most after they've seen you explain it?

speaker-1 (13:11.442)
the very first thing that comes up is usually the trust and safety piece. you know, these are people showing up with their dogs to other people's yards. They don't know each other. so the questions are sometimes also who is picking up after the dog? And where we get have an easy answer, it's always the guests, the the people that are visiting. we'll have questions around liability and damage protection. those are

usually the first mental hurdle, you know, that people go through in in this kind of two-sided relationship. And then after that, it's just logistics, you know, how how much are people charging our responses? People pick their own rate, hourly rate, and and so on.

speaker-0 (13:57.91)
Okay, cool. You can unshare if you want. We can just have a conversation. but I I I really and I really enjoy there's a lot of heartfelt messaging in there. But your numbers. See, when the finally got to she showed her numbers, it was an easy chart for us to read, right? It wasn't overcomplicated. I mean, it was just like cocky stick, you know. but but I always encourage that, especially again when you're in a fast pitch.

You've got and you want to use some numbers. There's nothing wrong with it. It's just if you're doing too many of those charts. But yours was nice and clean, really easy, very user-friendly. as far as a person who would want to rent their yard for this passive income, are they required to get special insurance? Like what kind of what what does it take to be a partner with your app?

speaker-1 (14:50.61)
right now the only real requirement is that the space is you have control over it and it's privately accessible. That means you don't have to go through someone's house or like a building to get to that space. There should be a way to get to it. in terms of insurance, you know, most people have homeowners or renters insurance. We don't look for it at this time. but we are going to be introducing our own insurance that applies to our host.

And through that policy, maybe the insurance provider has that requirement that you have to have your own insurance because what they're providing is supplemental. But at this time, really, really no requirements.

speaker-0 (15:32.8)
Okay. All right. and I love that she could travel the world. I guess she has someone that like would help her manage it. So so do you do you have ratings for people like Lyft drivers get rated, Airbnb people give reviews? Do you have those kind of guardrails in place?

speaker-1 (15:52.632)
coming soon. So part of our we're basically launching a set of features under our trust and safety kind of principle. And so with that is writing some reviews. We're going to introduce verified yards, which means the Rome team has gone out and actually checked whether or not the yard, how it's described, is what it's actually like. and we our plan is to update that on a monthly basis. So

We will even tell our guests like this was last checked on this date. And so the way the yard is described on the platform is what you'll actually get. so we'll even redo the photos, make sure like season to season that they're updated and so on. so we're a lot of those features are still being worked on. and because they're so important, we want to do it right.

speaker-0 (16:44.59)
Absolutely. And and as a founder, you know, you have your idea and then it grows. And then it grows. And then it grows. Yeah. So where do you see yourself with with Rome you know, three years from now?

speaker-1 (16:57.918)
three years from now, we do think we'll be in, you know, we'll be nationwide and we'll get to start exploring what comes after yard sharing. So I think I mentioned during our summary pre-pitch is our long-term vision is reimagining urban pet care and yard sharing is just the beginning of it. and we know that this is a core need, but what comes next? You know, we have like all that space to explore.

I don't want to think too much about it because I get overexcited and explore things, but I we need to, you know, finish what we started here. So we don't know exactly what is going to be the number two product or what we're going to introduce to Rome, but we do think we'll be going beyond yard sharing within like the three to five year month.

speaker-0 (17:46.306)
Very cool. Very cool. And and you said you were in your pre seed raise. How's that how's that working for you?

speaker-1 (17:52.226)
Right. Yeah. So we're actively taking angel investments, you know, small checks if people are interested in investing. we've had one investor is launch, they're an actual, you know, pre-seed seed firm that we did a pre-accelerator with. And at the end of the accelerator, we pitched to them and they chose to do a small investment in us.

Our next check came in again, it was all inbound. So, you know, these are more coming organically. We don't want to go out and pitch to investors yet, but we are doing intros, qualifying them, understanding if we're a good fit based off of what their thesis is and our current size. But probably early next year we'll formally say, hey, we're raising. if you're interested, we'd love to pitch to you.

speaker-0 (18:42.198)
Yeah, yeah. Well there's a lot of dog owners in the world. And the fact that you know and again, the founder's story is always so interesting because it was similar to your story with your dog, right? And and then you found, you know, what was the what was the first dog's name? The good boy?

speaker-1 (18:58.764)
Rome. Helios? Helios. Yes, yes.

speaker-0 (19:02.722)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's it's a common problem, you know, it's a common problem. And they do need exercise and they do need to have fresh air and they do need to be able to run around and do their thing, right? So you've noticed something and I think that's really great. I always say that there's three types of entrepreneurs. There's those that are fixing something that's broken, t or two, they're expanding on something that is ready for that next level, or they come up with something that no one's ever thought of before.

I don't know. Which one are do you think you are?

speaker-1 (19:35.194)
I think maybe somewhere between the first and the last. you know, we we're in this our competitive landscape is very, very narrow. it's hard to say, you know, we can't completely take credit that we came up with this idea completely by ourselves. We do have a direct competitor. But what we are able to do is enter this market where there's so much more to do in there.

I think, you know, private yard sharing is not something that's thought about even by the people who are really going struggling with the problem. like people who have these reactive dogs like we do, trying to find a product or a solution out there that's, hey, I just want to rent somebody's backyard by the hour. It's not a first thought. the same way that people think about, I need to find a pet sitter.

They now know that they can go to rover. It's a common like solution that people think about. Reaching out to their network for a sitter is a common thing that people think about. But renting out a space, an outdoor backyard at an hourly rate is not something people think about yet. So the status quo is still needs to be disrupted, is what I'm trying to say.

speaker-0 (20:56.694)
Yeah, go to market strategy, right? But yeah, but you know, so since you said it it's the r you you called it the reactive dog. So a dog that's just not really he's you know, if he had been a teenage guy in high school, he might be wearing the leather jacket smoking the cigarettes out by the

speaker-1 (21:16.472)
Yeah, I could see that. And it's so funny. my let me see if I can this you saw Rome in the deck, right? This is a he's a pretty good looking dog. I actually call him a dumb jock because he gets so much attention because he's such a good looking dog. But you know, there's nothing really going on.

speaker-0 (21:39.116)
And he's got some social skills. And you know, yeah, but yeah, there are. I mean, it it even happens in cats too. You know, there are some cats, like my sister has a cat, we call it Casper because she's never been really able to see it. It came in and it just hides all the time. And she's trying to get the social skills. But there are these situations with animals, you know, where in fact, I know people who are like pet whisperers and stuff, those could be great channels for you, you know. Right.

speaker-1 (22:05.996)
And it's un absolutely and what we're seeing, what's unfortunate, is that some dogs they don't have these social issues, but the public dog parks are creating them. Yeah. Because they'll have one of our own customers told us that my dog used to be great at public dog parks. he got attacked and now he's reactive. so there's this kind of unfortunate like cycle that's happening that

Reactive dogs are creating more reactive dogs, and then, you know, and then they'll just and if they're all hanging out in public dog parks, they're either fighting each other or creating more reactive dogs. So we we think the core of the problem is the lack of safe spaces. if if every dog was given an opportunity to work on their behavior before they're introduced to each other, I think you know, we'd have a lot less reactive dogs, but it's

Almost an unreasonable ask in the current status quo because people are not even aware that public dog parks are not the best place to socialize dogs in the first place. They need to become learn good social behavior before they come to public dog parks, not within the park itself. And that's that status quo that we we didn't know that as first-time dog parents. And more and more people are starting to talk about it. more dog experts are

Being vocal about public dog parks are not the right place to go, but we're just not there that it's like common knowledge.

speaker-0 (23:42.252)
We gotta get you on podcasts so can talk about this more.

speaker-1 (23:45.07)
Yeah. Yeah.

speaker-0 (23:49.31)
Well I wish you the best. You know, I'm excited for you. You did win Founders Live that night, so congratulations again. And

speaker-1 (23:56.738)
Thanks to you.

speaker-0 (23:59.326)
No, I mean, okay, no, no, it isn't just to me. I helped you, but you got up there and did it and you had four minutes of question answering that you had to do and you did a great job all the way through. It was it was just a really well done presentation. And a lot of people were that was a pretty strong show. The a lot of people were bringing their A game in there. and most shows they do. Sometimes we have a weird show where, you know, like we had one recently where everyone kept getting sick last second. No. It's just the winter, but

speaker-1 (24:26.516)
no

speaker-0 (24:28.786)
yeah, you were you you did a great job. So I wish you all the best. You know, keep doing what you're doing. enjoy the journey. Enjoy the journey.

speaker-1 (24:41.546)
trying I'm trying on the hard days I have to remind myself that but yeah thank you so much Melissa

speaker-0 (24:47.404)
Yeah. Okay. So so watch out for Rome. and if you wanna reach Ana, you can reach you what on is LinkedIn the best way or to go to Rome. What like what what should they do to find you?

speaker-1 (25:00.61)
Yep, LinkedIn is I'm I'm very active on LinkedIn. So if you send a connect message and just let me know that you're reaching out through a Story Fruition podcast, I'll make sure to accept and respond.

speaker-0 (25:14.632)
that's cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, great. All right. Well, another day in the life of a founder. Good for you. Entrepreneurs change the world. And we we wouldn't be a world if we didn't have the the the creative thinking that entrepreneurs come up with. So thank you. And the dogs, thank you. A lot of wagon tails, I'm sure. Really helping. Yeah. Okay. All right. So with that, I want to say thanks everyone for watching. And like we said at the Mind Movie Makers, we are helping founders.

And executives become better presenters by being very cognizant of the words they use so that the audience can absorb the message that they want to send without upstaging themselves. It takes work, but it's fun, it's rewarding, and Story Fruition specializes in this. Okay. So have a great day. We're moving into the holidays. Have an awesome holiday season. All right. Thank you.

speaker-0 (26:11.209)
And