Digital health · Veterinary care delivery
VetPronto
A Y Combinator company that sent veterinarians into people’s living rooms in fifteen US metro areas and raised $362,718 from 636 small investors on Wefunder. It sold itself to a rival in 2017, and in 2020 its chief executive published the post mortem.
The first hundred house calls
Before there was a company, there was one veterinarian with a bag, driving around San Francisco.
Brian Hur had been a Microsoft systems engineer before veterinary school, and had been practicing since 2011. When VetPronto started taking bookings in September 2014, Hur did the first hundred or so appointments himself. Only then did the company start contracting other area veterinarians: five part timers by the start of 2015, with a sixth about to join.
“Once I got into the veterinary industry, I noticed there were a lot of gaps in technology all the way through,” Hur told TechCrunch in January 2015. “And since getting out and practicing medicine, I’ve really focused on bridging those gaps and making sure that veterinary medicine can be upgraded for the dot-com era.”
The pitch was simple arithmetic. A house call cost $129. Diagnostics added $99. Vaccines were $25 each, capped at $60. The veterinarian took a flat $100 per call, which the company argued removed any reason to upsell. There was no clinic, so there was no rent.
Why anyone thought this would work
The clinical argument was real. Katherine van Ekert, a veterinarian and co-founder, told Denver7 in February 2017 that a frightened animal in a waiting room produces bad data: blood pressure, heart rate and other vital signs run high when a pet is stressed. Her company, she said, was seeing pets about twice as often as a traditional clinic would, and was seeing animals that had never been to a clinic at all.
“There’s obviously a lot of pets out there not getting the care they need,” van Ekert said. She was careful about the limits: anything needing sedation or anesthesia still had to happen in a clinic, and she put a house call’s coverage of clinic services at about 90 percent.
The commercial argument was the one every 2015 marketplace made. Uber worked, so on demand veterinary care would work. The Veterinary Information Network counted at least six such startups in three years, from VetPronto and InstaVet in 2015 through KwikVet in 2018.
Four founders and a dispute
TechCrunch named three founders in 2015: Hur, Joe Waltman and Soren Berg, the last two having sold their email marketing company RestEngine to Twitter in 2012. Van Ekert, an Australian veterinarian who had worked for the RSPCA and in Victorian government animal welfare policy, is also described as a co-founder and signed SEC filings as chief operating officer.
The team did not stay whole. Writing about Y Combinator in September 2016, Waltman described a dispute in which “two of the co-founders wanted to replace the third co-founder,” a negotiation over unvested options and back pay that he credited the accelerator with defusing.
Distribution, at least, was cheap. In 2016 Waltman paid an Upwork researcher $781 for 1,842 journalist contacts, about 42 cents each, mail merged all of them, and got 62 expressions of interest.
Asking 636 strangers for money
In September 2016 VetPronto did what most venture backed startups do not: it filed a Form C with the Securities and Exchange Commission and opened an equity crowdfunding round on Wefunder, selling SAFEs in one dollar increments with a $50,000 minimum and a $1,000,000 maximum. Wefunder reports the round closed at $362,718 from 636 investors, about $570 each.
The pitch page claimed 3,500 customers across two markets, more than 50 veterinary professionals, 35 percent gross margins and 15 percent compounded monthly growth. The financial disclosures filed in the same offering do not line up with that.
The sale that was not an exit
On November 2, 2017, Vetted, a Los Angeles company that had raised $3.3 million months earlier, bought VetPronto. TechCrunch reported cash plus equity, with the cash portion below $3.3 million, and said VetPronto had raised about $1.3 million to date. The combination roughly doubled Vetted’s customer base, to around 10,000.
Vetted shut down in late February 2020, telling clients that the “challenges of successfully scaling a startup in our industry are staggering.” On May 21, 2020, Waltman published a piece titled “VetPronto is being euthanized.”
“Although we technically ‘sold’ the company to Vetted Petcare, this is not a happy ending for shareholders or founders. We are effectively going out of business,” he wrote.
What is proven, and what is still claimed
| Evidence | What the record shows | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| Form C, Sep 9, 2016 | VetPronto - Mobile Veterinarians Inc., CIK 0001681978, Delaware, formed May 21, 2014. SAFEs at $1.00 per unit, $50,000 minimum and $1,000,000 maximum, through Wefunder Portal LLC for 3.0 percent of a successful raise. Seven employees. | Public record |
| Form C/A, Nov 3, 2016 | Amendment note: “Changed deadline date to November 10th and include updated business plan and transcripts for video.” The deadline moved four months earlier, not later. | Public record |
| Reported financials | Total assets $85,834, $266,801 and $340,375.54 for 2014, 2015 and 2016. Net loss $13,510, $602,419 and $398,861. Revenue is reported as $0.00 every year, against cost of goods sold of $23,760, $435,194 and $728,722. | Public record |
| Revenue line versus pitch | The offering page advertised 35 percent gross margins and 15 percent compounded monthly revenue growth. A company with those numbers has revenue. Either the figures went into the wrong field or the filing understates the business. No correcting amendment was filed. | Claim differs from the filing |
| Missing follow-ons | One annual report, for 2016, signed by Waltman as CEO and van Ekert as COO. No Form C-U progress update, no Form C-TR termination of reporting, and no Form D under the company name. | Not found |
| Footprint and sale date | Fifteen metros listed in trade coverage in November 2017. Van Ekert later recalled 13 states at peak and dated the sale to 2020; TechCrunch dated it November 2, 2017. | Accounts differ |
| California practice law | Business and Professions Code section 4853 requires every veterinary premises to be registered under a responsible licensee manager, and says it does not authorize a corporation other than a licensed veterinarian or a veterinary corporation to furnish veterinary services. | Public record |
Read plainly: this was an operations company, and the operations are the evidence. The filings show a business that grew, lost money at a decreasing rate, went to retail investors because institutions would not lead a round, then sold for less than the buyer had just raised. The unresolved item is the revenue line, reported as zero for three straight years by a company whose own offering page was selling growth percentages.
What to watch
- Whether anyone makes the model work. The Vets raised a $40 million seed in January 2022, merged with BetterVet in October 2024, then canceled every appointment on July 21, 2025.
- HomewardVet, a franchise attempt launched after that collapse, closed on April 30, 2026, seven months in. BlueSky At-Home, launched in December 2025, inherited its referrals.
- The clinic model taking the capital instead. Bond Vet raised $170 million from Warburg Pincus in October 2021 and merged with Small Door in July 2026.
- Where the founders went. Waltman became the first executive director of GiveCrypto.org in 2018. Van Ekert now runs Goldie, a veterinary transcription tool.
In their words
“Once I got into the veterinary industry, I noticed there were a lot of gaps in technology all the way through,”
Brian Hur, co-founder, TechCrunch, 2015 · Independent
“We were bootstrapped for the first eight months, and that forces you to be more concerned about cost,”
Joe Waltman, co-founder, TechCrunch, 2015 · Independent
“There’s obviously a lot of pets out there not getting the care they need,”
Katherine van Ekert, co-founder, Denver7, 2017 · Independent
“We never figured out how to acquire pet owners on a cost effective basis.”
Joe Waltman, CEO, wind down post, 2020 · Founder
“We were never able to convince a professional investor to take a significant stake in the company and sit on our board.”
Joe Waltman, CEO, wind down post, 2020 · Founder
“That didn’t work for a veterinary business, where we were paying highly-qualified professionals high hourly rates.”
Katherine van Ekert, Vet Practice Magazine, 2024 · Independent
“After seven months of operating under this structure, we’ve learned that house call veterinary medicine is not well-suited to a corporate model,”
David Hoe, CEO, Mobile Veterinary Specialists, VIN News Service, 2026 · Independent
Related companies
Sources
- Public recordForm C, VetPronto - Mobile Veterinarians Inc., CIK 0001681978
- Public recordForm C/A
- Public recordForm C-AR, fiscal 2016
- Public recordBusiness and Professions Code section 4853
- Public record16 CCR section 2030.2, mobile clinic standards
- IndependentVetPronto Brings Veterinary House Calls To San Francisco
- IndependentVetted buys VetPronto in yet more on-demand consolidation
- IndependentStartups seek to remodel veterinary house calls
- IndependentThe Vets cancels all appointments amid apparent closure
- IndependentHomewardVet closes, only seven months after launch
- IndependentVeterinary house call service comes to Denver
- IndependentKatherine van Ekert’s individual streak
- IndependentVetted Shuts Down
- IndependentVetted Buys VetPronto: Veterinary House Call Providers Consolidate
- IndependentBond Vet and Small Door Merge
- FounderVetPronto is being euthanized
- FounderVetPronto’s experience with Y Combinator
- CompanyVetPronto offering page and pitch
Profile researched and written by Healthcare Discovery. Last updated September 29, 2026.
