Pet health innovation often begins inside a clinic or a lab. Sometimes, it begins at home, shaped by long nights, difficult diagnoses, and unanswered questions.
Vadim Gusakov’s journey into pet tech started exactly there. As a dog owner, his personal experience with late-stage detection of a serious canine heart condition exposed a gap many owners and veterinarians quietly face between visits. That moment became the foundation for Veeeet, a pet health app built around prevention, structured observation, and smarter data use.
In this PETBIZS Founder’s Interview Series, Vadim shares how lived experience, veterinary collaboration, and thoughtful use of AI are shaping a new approach to daily pet health management.
Let’s Start the Interview!
Thank you, Vadim, for joining the PETBIZS Founder’s Interview Series. Before we explore Veeeet, we’d love to start with you. Could you share your professional background, the experiences that shaped your thinking, and the moment you first realized you wanted to build something for the pet care space?
My personal history led me to pet care. Since 1998, our family has had Irish Wolfhounds — they are amazing dogs, huge and loyal, but unfortunately, they often have health problems. Our dog was diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy too late. A difficult struggle for every month of his life began: strict medication schedules, endless tests, anxiety.
Talking with our veterinarian friends, we kept coming back to the thought, “What if we had noticed the symptoms of the disease earlier?” We realized that we could combine our backgrounds (I have experience in analytics and consulting, my wife has experience in digital design and UX) with our friends’ veterinary expertise to create the Veeeet mobile app, which will be a proactive health assistant that helps pet owners notice symptoms of disease in time.
Veeeet is still in its pre-launch phase, which makes its origin story even more interesting. What specific gaps or frustrations in current pet care systems pushed you to start working on this concept, and why did you feel existing solutions were not addressing them effectively?
First of all, we needed a convenient tool for tracking and analyzing changes in our pets’ health. We couldn’t find anything like it, so we decided to make it ourselves.
Second, the app should not just store data (there are many such apps), it should help actively use pet data for personalized (precisely personalized) health recommendations. Plus the doctor should have quick access to comprehensive information about the pet’s health.
And third, the app should be easy to use. For example, the ability to instantly recognize test results written on a paper form using AI and analyze them immediately. Or to make voice notes about your pet’s health, convert them to text, and store them in a convenient format. The easier and more natural it is to use the app, the more useful it will be for your pet’s health.
As you shaped the idea of developing Veeeet, how did your early assumptions about pet health management change once you began speaking with pet owners, veterinarians, and industry professionals?
Our key idea is a digital twin of a pet. This approach allows us to effectively collect, store, and analyze information about a pet. We started with a fairly early model and gradually developed it, adding new features. On the other hand, we saw that some of the app’s features, such as the calculator for predicting pet weight and food requirements, were not in high demand. Therefore, we implemented these features in a minimal form, as a foundation for the future.
From your perspective, what are the most overlooked challenges pet owners face when managing health between veterinary visits, and how do these gaps affect long-term outcomes?
Our veterinarian friends say that owners most often overlook three things: changes in behavior (for example, the dog has become less playful), weight problems (gaining weight gradually, imperceptibly), and the first signs of joint or heart problems. And, our dog with cardiomyopathy is just such a case. The symptoms were there, but we were able to notice them.
Pet health data often sits in disconnected systems. How does this fragmentation impact veterinarians, clinics, and owners, and why do you believe this problem has persisted for so long?
Test results are stored at home in a folder, X-rays remain at the clinic on a flash drive, vaccination records are in the veterinary passport, and notes about the dog’s unusual behavior are stored in the owner’s head. When you visit another doctor six months later, you have to recount everything again. Or not recount it, because you have forgotten the details.
Only relatively recently, thanks to advances in digital technology, has a real opportunity emerged to solve this problem and connect all the data into a single network. And I hope that Veeeet will become one of the useful tools for solving this problem.
Veeeet introduces the concept of an AI-driven digital twin for pets. For readers new to this idea, how would you explain its purpose and practical value in everyday pet care?
Imagine that your pet has a dynamic digital copy that lives and changes with them.
A digital twin is a structured model of your pet, where all key data is collected in one place: questionnaires, diagnoses, medications, behavioral characteristics, environment, breed risks, photos, and videos. Adaptive questionnaires (CAT), profile, genetics, and environmental context transform the owner’s subjective observations into numbers and graphs that can be tracked over time.
Hybrid intelligence works on top of this data: logical protocols plus an LLM layer that “translates” complex indicators into human language, providing personalized recommendations.
Since Veeeet is still under development, how are you validating that the insights generated by AI remain responsible, supportive, and aligned with veterinary science rather than speculative guidance?
The first is professional veterinary testing of AI settings. We make every effort to filter out irresponsible or speculative answers. Plus, we plan to develop our own LLM.
In addition, the app has a built-in symptom checker based on classic diagnostic protocols. It is not AI and cannot personalize responses or accurately take into account the specific health characteristics of a pet. However, the symptom checker is based on generally accepted, stable veterinary diagnostic algorithms.
We also always emphasize that Veeeet is not an online doctor. It is a decision-making support tool that provides a “second opinion,” shows the full range of options for a given situation, and helps the owner prepare for an in-person consultation with a veterinarian. But in no way does it replace a visit to the doctor.
What role do experienced veterinarians play in shaping the logic, boundaries, and medical relevance of Veeeet’s system during this pre-launch stage?
They definitely play a key, leading role. The structure and questions of health questionnaires, symptom checker algorithms, digital twin architecture, and content preparation for reference guides built into the app are all the result of the work of experienced veterinarians. We rely on real clinical experience, not the fantasies of IT developers.
AI in animal health can raise concerns. How are you addressing skepticism from veterinary professionals who may worry about misinterpretation or over-reliance on technology?
Veeeet is not an LLM wrapper. We help you collect and structure information about your pet correctly. We honestly say that Veeeet does not replace a doctor. We help owners prepare for a visit to the vet in the best possible way. Even if you turn off the AI layer, the app still offers tremendous value — structured medical history and data on the dynamics of the animal’s condition.
How do you plan to position Veeeet as a support tool that strengthens the vet-client relationship instead of competing with clinical decision-making?
In veterinary medicine, patients cannot communicate their symptoms. Structured observations by the owner are the best information a veterinarian can rely on. We view Veeeet as a tool that makes visits to the clinic more informative. The owner feels in control and confident, while the veterinarian obtains a clear picture of the situation. It is a win-win for both parties.
Importantly, Veeeet makes pet health observations regular and part of the daily routine, making the information collected by the owner about their pet particularly useful.
Building a pet tech platform before public release comes with unique pressure. What has been the most challenging aspect of developing Veeeet so far — technology, data accuracy, industry trust, or something else entirely?
Technical problems are complex but solvable. It was much more difficult to find functionality that would be of maximum benefit to our client. We are constantly testing hypotheses: what people will actually do regularly, and what will remain a pretty button that no one will press.
How do you decide which features to prioritize when feedback comes from pet owners, vets, and potential partners simultaneously?
As Veeeet moves toward launch, who do you see as the core user in the early stages, and how might that evolve over time?
Our first users are “responsible urban professionals” (aged 25–55). These are people who value a preventive approach and are accustomed to managing their lives through digital services. Over time, we plan to expand through partnerships with clinics, insurance companies, and breeders, making Veeeet the industry standard.
What types of partnerships — clinics, insurers, pet brands, or service providers — do you believe will play the biggest role in scaling the platform responsibly?
First and foremost, insurance companies. Prevention and early detection of risks directly reduce their costs. This is a classic win-win model. We also see great potential in pet product brands (negotiations are already underway). Veterinary clinics are the most demanding segment, and we are just getting ready to negotiate with them. But I think they can play a key role in scaling up.
Once Veeeet launches, what early success markers will matter most to you beyond downloads or user numbers?
This is retention. The market has seen many apps that are downloaded and forgotten after a day. For us, success is when the owner regularly updates data and uses Veeeet as an assistant in decision-making. At the MVP stage, our goal is 5,000 active users, based on whose data we will refine our product.
How do you see AI-supported pet health tools reshaping preventive care over the next decade, and where do you hope Veeeet fits within that future?
I am confident that the role of preventive medicine tools will grow. I believe that the future lies in the formation of a unified ecosystem that will bring together owners, veterinarians, analytical tools, and data sources such as wearable devices. I want Veeeet to become an important part of this ecosystem, defining approaches to pet data management and helping to transfer the best trends and developments in veterinary medicine to a digital format.
For founders entering the pet tech space today, what lessons from your pre-launch journey would you want them to understand early?
First, talk to users before writing a single line of code. This is the only way to gain a real understanding of the issues that are truly important to your users. Second, view your startup as a series of experiments. Don’t be afraid to kill ideas that don’t work. And third, remember that this is a marathon. Support from mentors and the community (as in our case with the acceleration program) is vital to avoid burnout.
Finally, for PETBIZS readers across veterinary, business, and pet services, what should they know about Veeeet’s mission as it prepares to enter the market?
We know what it’s like to be a pet owner — we’ve been through it ourselves with our Irish wolfhound. We understand how hard veterinarians work and the burden they carry.
That’s why our mission — revolutionizing pet care by providing AI-powered personalized insights and proactive health management for every pet — is not just words. For us, it’s concrete: to make sure owners sleep more peacefully, doctors get the full picture in minutes rather than half an hour of questioning, and pets live longer.
Veeeet’s story stands out because it does not chase trends or replace clinical judgment. Instead, it focuses on structure, clarity, and better conversations between owners and veterinarians. Vadim’s vision reflects a growing shift in the pet industry toward preventive care supported by data that actually gets used. As the platform moves closer to launch, its success will depend on trust, retention, and real-world value inside exam rooms and homes alike.
For PETBIZS readers across veterinary medicine, pet services, and pet tech, VEEEET offers a clear signal of where the industry is heading next: connected records, informed owners, and smarter decisions made earlier, not later.
