Hasta La Gadget!

“The average dog is a nicer person than the average person.”

– Andy Rooney

Yes, it’s become exceedingly clear that the Internet has entered into a prodigious, lascivious (and hilarious) relationship with cats. But, at the end of the day, when it comes to the title of “Man/Woman/Child’s Best Friend,” it’s the friendly neighborhood pooch that takes the cake. In my own experience, even when The World thinks you’re an idiot, life gets you down and you’ve forgotten to feed Barkles Barkley, their tails are still going to wag — just at the sight of you. Sure, they may have questionable taste, but there’s probably no better representation of unconditional love than your local canine.

If what Rooney says is true, then it probably helps explain why some dogs have it better than some actual humans. (Exhibit A.) Lately, humans, at least humans in Silicon Valley, have become enthralled with wearable health tracking devices. So, considering there’s already a Birchbox for Dogs, it was only a matter of time before dogs got their own Fitbit. Enter: Whistle, a new startup launching today that wants to be the go-to activity tracker for dogs (and dog lovers).

Now, diligent readers of TechCrunch may say, “but, Rip, there’s already a Fitbit for dogs!” I’d advise them to go outside once and a while, but they’d also be correct. Last month, Jay Donovan wrote about a startup called FitBark (!) that is embarking (!) down a similar path. If nothing else, entrepreneurs take note: The emergence of a Facebook for dogs, a Birchbox for dogs, an Airbnb for dogs (times two), a “Find my iPhone for dogs,” and an Uber for dog walking proves we have an active dog startup market on our hands.

Next: DogCrunch? BarkMeme? (Yes, we’re hiring.)

Now, let’s just get this out of the way, since it’s one of the obstacles that a startup like Whistle is going to face: The idea of a Fitbit or a Nike+ FuelBand for dogs is kind of ridiculous. Crying “Bubble!” or rolling your eyes for 10 minutes over the idea of a dog startup market almost goes without saying. No doubt there are plenty of people who will see this as a perfect example of Silicon Valley going too far. (Here’s Will Ferrell putting a fine point on the matter.)

And, yes, when one looks at Whistle, it’s easy to imagine a bunch of former VCs and private equity types sitting around a table, doing some market analysis and applying every successful tech company formula to the dog market in the hopes of finding something that works and raising a few million bucks. However, no offense to FitBark, but the Whistle founders want to go beyond just being a “Reasonable Device for Pet Owners” to build the next big tech-savvy pet brand around a killer line of devices and products — starting with an activity tracker.

As evidence of just how serious the company is (or, for naysayers, the growing “blubble”), alongside its launch, the company announced today that it has raised $6 million in Series A financing led by DCM Ventures, with contributions from a long list of investors, including Red Swan Ventures, Humane Society Silicon Valley President and former VP and GM of Intuit Carol Novello and Pinnacle Foods CEO and former Mars President Bob Gamgort, among others.

Guitar Hero co-founder and Throttle Games CEO Charles Huang, Rapleaf co-founder Dayo Esho, former VP of Operations at Nest Labs, Sling Media and Virgin, John Gilmore, have both joined the company as advisors, along with several other prominent local dogs, and DCM partner and Sling Media co-founder Jason Krikorian joined Whistle’s board of directors as a result of the round.

Again, the real interest in Whistle (and in this space) can be found here and in one of Saturday Night Live’s best re-occurring sketches: Dog Show, which parodies the overzealous and obsessive dog owner. Jokes aside, today, not only does everyone have a dog, but people are willing to go to great lengths to spoil their dogs, especially if they don’t have kids. To that point, there are now more dogs in the U.S. than there are children, Krikorian explains, and Americans spend over $50 billion on their pets every year (see the APPA’s stats here).

Not only that, but a study from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (via Quartz) recently found that people spend an average of “1 percent of their annual budget on their pets,” which is more than they spend on booze and clothing.

Whistle is going after this audience by branding itself as a company that’s dedicated to helping pets live longer and healthier lives — a mission that’s easy to get behind.

It’s also brilliant that Whistle is starting to build a community that is dog-dedicated, particularly this page of “founding hounds.” The page is hilarious and is a great example of how Whistle is already making smart branding decisions, being “real” and acting like another dog owner you’d be happy to stand and talk to in the park. (Not often the case.) It makes the company more relatable, to dog fanatics or not.

This starts with its first (flagship) product, a wearable activity tracker that connects to your dog’s collar. Similar to other Quantified Self devices, Whistle’s circular, metallic gadget contains a three-axis accelerometer designed to measure a wide range of motion, and rest, which the startup believes can act as key indicators of canine health.

The gadget also includes both WiFi and Bluetooth capability, allowing it not only to record location-based activity data, but transmit that information to Whistle’s dashboard, which owners can access via the startup’s smartphone apps or via the Web. The device’s location sensing capability is fairly broad, but Whistle co-founder Steve Eidelman (Disclosure at the end of the post) tells us that it can pick up on whether your dog is at home, or, say, riding in the car with you, based on which network it’s accessing (Bluetooth or WiFi). And, by the way, health and activity tracking entrepreneurs, if a pet company can do auto, remote Bluetooth-powered data sync, so can you. Don’t launch without it, you’re insulting your users.

Like the better examples among the Fitbits, Basis(es), FuelBands and Ups of the world, the real key to Whistle’s concept is not its device or apps, but its cloud platform and the data crunching it’s doing behind the scenes. Eidelman tells me that the company has been working with a lot of the biggest pet companies, veterinary clinics and so on to aggregate dog health data and break it down into categories. The more data it collects, the more the startup can build an accurate picture of health patterns and where your dog should ideally fall on that map based on its age, breed, weight and activity.

As it pulls in activity data in realtime, Whistle then weighs those indicators against its dataset (and “doggie demographic information,” as I’m calling it) to see just how well Fido is, or isn’t doing. And, really, dogs could care less about how many miles they log each day chasing cars, it’s really about the owner. If we assume the average dog owner wants to treat their pet well, then Whistle provides them with the benchmarks from which they can glean their success rate. Activity levels looking pretty low? That’s on you, pal, not your dog.

Plus, dogs generally have to be in a lot of pain if they’re going to outwardly show it. Generally, they’re going to suffer silently. (See? You just unconsciously bought into Whistle at the thought of a sad, whimpering dog, didn’t you?) With the ability to track your dog’s general activity and health levels in realtime, there’s a better chance that you will be able to identify problems before they get out of hand — or so the thinking goes.

And, if you’re willing to go with it, the real genius here is that, because Whistle is really playing into the motivations of the dog owner (not Fido himself), if they can convince you to buy their health tracker, they can then up-sell you on a string of other dog-focused products and services. Since Whistle is just launching today, they haven’t gotten there yet, but plans are in the works. Eidelman wouldn’t say what they’re working on next, but it is clear that the startup intends to become a brand (with a line of products), rather than simply holding fast to the “Fitbit for pooches” space.

Unlike, say, Amazon which sells hardware at a loss to get you using its other services, at the outset, Whistle is giving its apps, analytics and cloud service for free to get you to buy its hardware. The gadget will run you $99, which although it may seem like a lot, really isn’t for avid pet owners who will spend ten times that in a couple of weeks. Whistle is taking the same approach as RunKeeper (or Runtastic) in that it wants to build a platform and eventually stake a claim to the “pet graph.” Though my eyes just involuntarily rolled, this means that as more of these devices pop up, if Whistle can be the data platform which they all connect to, it would potentially be holding the keys to the kingdom.

But that’s getting a little ahead of the tail. While companies can always generate a little revenue from selling to really passionate, committed audience on their own site, the key for companies like Whistle is retail. More specifically, retail partnerships. Considering people spend $50+ billion on pets every year, somewhat surprisingly, a small group of pet franchises own most of the marketshare in the industry.

Recent market reports from IBIS show that “more than half (63.8 percent) of the pet store industry’s revenue comes from two specialty supply retailers: PetSmart and PETCO,” with the long-tail consisting of small franchises and family owned stores, for example. PetSmart and PETCO both have about 1,200 stores in the U.S.

The other opportunity going forward, co-founders Steve Eidelman and Ben Jacobs tell us, is in ramping up its relationships with vets. Companion animal ownerships in the U.S. jumped from 62 percent to 68 percent, as pet ownership has been shown to reduce stress and tends to increase in tough economic times. Hey, people need something to cheer them up. The American Veterinary Medical Association found that dogs are more likely to be taken to the vet than cats.

Just as M.D.s are for their human owners, veterinarians are increasingly enrolling their patients in wellness plans and programs, as total patient enrollment rose to 22 percent (from 14 percent the prior quarter). There’s not a huge amount of competition in the “Fitbit for dogs” space, so the more Whistle can get its products in front of vets, the more likely they are to become lead-generators for the startup’s products.

For Whistle to become a viable company, getting its products into PetSmart, Petco or the equivalent (and building these relationships with vets) will be critical. If they can do that, and even perhaps capture an entire aisle, they’ll be rolling in dog treats.

For more, find Whistle at home here.

[Disclaimer: Though all of my posts should be taken with a grain of salt, for sake of full disclosure, I should say that I have known Steve Eidelman for several years and consider him a friend. While I have no personal financial stake in Whistle, I do admit a bias insofar as I hope they achieve fame and glory, alhough, admittedly, this can be said for the majority of startups I cover.

Disclaimer #2: I like. DOGs.]

Image credit: Cleanme.us / Alan Lomax

Back in September, Glooko announced the release of a new version of its iOS app, a digital logbook which helps people with diabetes track their blood glucose levels from their smartphone. The new app brought support for six additional glucose meters, meaning that Glooko is now compatible with more than 17 different devices — a sign of the headway the startup has made in its march toward meter agnosticism. Diabetes, as with any condition that requires constant monitoring and tracking (often via multiple devices), has been in sore need of better data and device interoperability, and Glooko is on a mission to do just that.

While there are a ton of digital logbooks in the app store for those who regularly check blood sugar levels, most require users to enter data manually. Since launching in late 2011, Glooko has set itself apart by allowing them to download readings from multiple devices automatically. However, up until now, Glooko’s Logbook Charts — an app that gives users robust analysis and visualizations of glucose data — has only been available in Europe, but that changed today, as Glooko announced that has received 510(k) clearance from the FDA, allowing it to expand distribution and bring products like Logbook Charts to the U.S.

This is a significant achievement for Glooko, especially considering that FDA approval isn’t something that comes easily or that happens overnight and can require months or years of effort to meet the government’s stringent regulations. But now that it has regulatory approval as a Class 2 device, Glooko is clear to sell its products over the counter as well as directly to consumers. It also allows the startup to begin courting healthcare providers, which gives them access to a huge market of potential institutional customers.

With the nod of approval from the FDA, the startup is also announcing today that it has new leadership at the helm, as Rick Altinger joins Glooko as CEO and Dean Lucas as its new VP of product development. Altinger is the company’s first CEO and brings over 15 years of industry experience in healthcare services, serving most recently as an executive at Intuit Health, where he led the company’s acquisition of Medfusion.

Lucas, too, is a veteran of the healthcare industry with 17 years of experience under his belt, having led interface and product design for both Doximity and Epocrates — the latter of which was recently acquired by Athenahealth for $293 million. He will also reportedly has plans to help bring Glooko to Android, which is welcome news to Glooko users who have endured a long wait for an iOS alternative.

The Center for Disease Control has reported that 25.8 million Americans — 8.3 percent of the population — have diabetes and an estimated 79 million have prediabetes, making it one of the most pervasive diseases in the U.S. As a result, there’s a huge opportunity for digital health startups in leveraging technology to help those who suffer from the disease to better manage its symptoms. Startups like Glooko and Omada Health represent the next generation of care and prevention, finally helping the country address a critical disease that costs it $200 billion each year.

“Lack of support across multiple meter types and differing data transfer methods have long withheld a truly unified diabetes management solution,” says the company’s new CEO. “By creating a universal diabetes management platform, Glooko is beginning to crack the code, and I look forward to continued innovation and implementation of Glooko across healthcare as a unifying force in a disjointed ecosystem.”

To date, Glooko has raised $3.5 million in funding from The Social+Capital Partnership, Bill Campbell, Vint Cerf, Judy Estrin, Andy Hertzfeld, Venky Harinarayan, Russell Hirsch and Xtreme Labs.

The next time your doctor says, “I have an app for that,” try not to punch them in their stethoscope. Why? Because they just might be using AliveCor. For those unfamiliar, the San Francisco-based company is the maker of a low-cost, clinical-grade mobile heart monitor (fondly known as an electrocardiogram, or ECG, monitor) that fits over the back of your iPhone.

This is not the first we’ve heard of nifty mobile ECGs or heart monitors. (See our coverage of Mio, Cardiio and SmartHeart, for example.) AliveCor has been in development since 2008, but today it became part of an important step forward for mobile health (and heart health), as it received FDA approval — or 510(k) clearance — for its mobile heart monitor.

FDA approval is not something that comes easily, or happens quickly, and for that reason many startups avoid constructing (or pitching) their apps, services or software as “medical” devices, that prescribe advice or treatment and rather go for utility as a general health or wellness service. But co-founders Dr. David Albert, Bruce Satchwell and Kim Barnett said recently that their “aspirations are significant” and that they’re out “to make a difference,” and FDA clearance was the first step. (In fact, the founders were granted U.S. Patent No. 8,301,232 for the device and technology. An auspicious one-two punch for AliveCor.)

With FDA Class II clearance under its belt, AliveCor is now selling its ECG monitor on its website for $199. To receive one, doctors need to input the necessary information (and ID numbers) to prove that they’re in fact registered physicians and, within the next few months, AliveCor will begin more aggressively reaching out to doctors to encourage them to prescribe the monitor to their patients, likely at a lower price (around $99), according to MobiHealthNews. If the company receives its next order of 510(k) clearance from the FDA, it will then begin selling its device over the counter in drug stores and the like.

As to how it works: AliveCor’s ECG monitor comes with two electrodes embedded in casing that can be snapped onto the back of an iPhone 4 and 4S. The device is then launched via the startup’s corresponding iPhone apps, which allows a patient to take ECG readings by either placing the sensors directly over their chest or on their fingers.

Once the reading is taken, the ECG data is transmitted wirelessly to the company’s cloud service from the heart monitor through its proprietary communication protocol, which requires no pairing between the iPhone and the device. This allows patients to store their readings in AliveCor’s secure cloud database, where they can be accessed for later analysis, or shared and printed via its website.

In terms of use cases, the co-founders see the device as providing an easy way to screen for cardiac arrhythmias or atrial fibrillation, both in-office and remotely, allowing them to monitor at-risk patients or those who’ve recently had surgery. As someone who has undergone heart surgery (ablation as well as having been treated with medicines), I am somewhat biased, but can attest to the importance of having a device that allows one to easily and remotely monitor heart rates post-surgery — and being able to do so via a casing that is compatible with the devices we carry with us everywhere? That has real life-saving potential.

The company now wants to create a more universal casing that is compatible with the different generations of the iPhone, as well as with Android devices. In addition, according to MobiHealthNews, AliveCor also plans to launch a “pad version” of its heart monitor, which will allow patients to get ECG readings by placing the palm of their hand on the device. This could then be implemented in doctor’s offices or health kiosks. All of these will require additional FDA approval, so today’s clearance was just the first step in an ongoing process that will take time.

But it’s getting easier to imagine a time when, a year or two from now, AliveCor (or a device like it) will be compatible with all of the major mobile form factors and available over the counter in major drug store chains and in doctors’ offices. While we all get plenty of mileage (and enjoyment) from the advances mobile technology has allowed in photo-sharing, social networking and finding restaurants, what mobile tech can do for health can be truly life-changing — and life-saving.

Soon, we’ll be able to detect heart abnormalities before they reach a critical point and, using data collected from our always-in-pocket devices, advance our understanding of correlations between behavior and risk, and so on. Technology still has most of its utility or application in what happens after a medical event or trauma, but the more it moves toward prevention, the more it can make a real difference.