John Honchariw, CEO and founder of Companion, joined Cheddar News to discuss the first innovative device solely designed to entertain, engage and have fun with your dog all day long. "What we aspire to as a company is to be a supplement to the relationship you have with your dog," he said.

Closing Bell

A.I. That Helps Take Care of Your Dog

Let's take a look at what is shaking out in the world of IP OS startups and beyond. We're seeing all kinds of new applications for artificial intelligence and my next guest has come up with yet another one taking care of your dog companion is an interactive device for dogs, them engaged while you're not home with games training and yes treats. And after another round of funding, the company has now opened reservations to consumers. So joining me now is the founder and CEO of companion John John, thank you so much for coming. This is awesome. Tell me more about it. Thanks for having me. We love it. Um Companion is the first device that's solely designed to entertain, engage and have fun with your dog all day long. Um We couldn't be more excited to release it for public reservation and are super excited about what we're seeing so far. Ok, so how does it work? And what are some of the things it can do? Cool. Um It works by using treats uh a camera and an A I chip to understand how your dog is interacting in front of it. Basically what it does is make have fun with your dog. Engage in games to get to know it so that your dog wants to come from across the house and hang out with it. And there's three things we can help do for your dog, which is one, engage your dog. So that no longer do you see your dog kind of lonely by the door as you leave. But instead you can hear your dog having a blast of the sound of your own voice across the house. Two is practice all the basic obedience commands that help build and supplement the human animal bond or is like you and I might be proud of doing a couple 100 repetitions, companion can do 10,000 over the first six months. Um And then three is really help look for patterns and subtle things that might shift with how your dog moves to give you better insight into how your dog feels and to keep a watch out for anything you might want to go check. So are there sort of like actionable insights John that the system recommends as to how to work with your dog when you do get home? Yes. Um At the end of the day, like what we aspire to as a company is to be a supplement to the relationship you have with your dog. Like we want to be a helping hand to help you better understand your dog's behavior and help you practice and put lots of repetitions on all of the basic obedience commands that we know help with the human animal bond. So that involves not only that practice, it also involves letting you know exactly what your dog's experiencing along the way as your dog grows through the lessons and through the companion curriculum. What's the price point? I mean, this looks pretty fancy and nice. I know a lot of people are really, I, they take really good care of their pets and they definitely want them to be happy John. So how much might they pay for this? We love our dogs and you and Americans. I think in the US, we spend something like 100 and $25 billion on our pets these days. Um, the we are parents of these animals. We love them deeply and these are, these are, um, today there are a variety of folks out there who spend like $1000 on month on dog day boarding who might spend several $100 a month on dog walking. And the average US consumer, I think especially within this category spends like 100 and 20 to 100 and $50 on food. We've tried to make it really easy with the campaign campaigning costs two dogs, two dog walks a month. It's $50 a month. Wow. Now, what about for the device itself? Right, because that's kind of its own thing. In addition, I'm sure that the service charges Yes. So the what we're promising all of our early reservation holders is that we will make it so that you pay no more than $50 a month for both the hardware in addition to the software. And we want to make it really easy to folks who might own like a tonal, a Peloton but other similar smart hardware devices that you can own through rentals or financing at the end of the day. What we're promising our reservation holders is that they will pay no more than $50 a month for the companion service very quickly. How did they get one of these go sign up at W W W dot join companion dot com? We're well on the way to selling out the first two years of production here, we think over the next handful of months. Uh So we're, we're super excited. I think I just checked this morning. I think the next available ship date is July of 2024. So if this is interesting to you, if you want to check out some of the wonderful folks we've worked with whether it's on the animal health side, on the animal training side. Take a look at our website, join companion dot com reserve. Yours today. Ok, John Hunter founder and ceo companion John, thank you.