Zoopal Market Ambition

What the app could become — bought, earned and shared

Target 950,000 subscribers — 1% of US pet households

These are not predictions. This is what could happen if things go well.

Every figure here is the arithmetic of the settings on the left and nothing more. Zoopal has never measured a single download, so no number below is evidence of anything. The point of the sliders is to show which assumptions the case actually rests on — above all how a) often people share the app and b) how many of the people they share it with install it. Either could turn out far better than the default settings here, and either could turn out far worse. Reasoning for default settings is briefly described for several of the defaults.

Growth

People who share, each month 15%

Share of active users who send a Zoopal link in a month. No published benchmark exists for this.

Of those who look, who install 20%

A shared link opens on the web with no account needed. This is the share of those viewers who then install the app.

Cost of one user bought $2.00

The advertising budget is fixed, so the higher this is, the fewer users the same money buys. The project’s working band is $3 to $8.

Shelters signed up each month 6

Earned by someone on the team, not bought. They add up and never go away — until the reachable core below is used up. Six a month is 360 shelters by year five, a fifth of the 1,805 that carry the system.

Of a shelter’s adopters, who install 10%

A signed shelter does not deliver all of its adopters. This is the share who actually install. Untested — and it decides the whole size of the channel.

Still here a year later 65%

The best upper quartile of any app category is 60%. Trupanion, pet insurance, holds 82%.

Money

Of all users, who pays 10%

Duolingo: 12.5 million paying of 137.8 million monthly users, which is 9.1%.

Months paid in their first year 6

Someone who joins in month eleven pays for one month, not twelve. Six is the average if arrivals are spread evenly.

Outside the United States

Advertising abroad, next to the US 50%

A second market that adds users on its own money. Set to zero to switch it off. Half means every dollar spent in the US is matched by fifty cents abroad.

Year it opens 3

Nothing happens abroad before this year. Shelters never do — those relationships are American, so overseas runs on advertising and sharing alone.

Fixed Figures

Monthly plan

Annual plan

Of subscribers, share on monthly

Adoptions a year, one shelter

What the shelter program costs, a year

Shelters you can reach

Overseas price, % of US

Overseas, share who pay, % of US

Overseas cost of one user

Users, end of year 5 0

Subscribers, end of year 5 0

Yearly rate leaving year 5 0

US share of 95m pet households 0%

Five years, line by line

Metric	Year 1	Year 2	Year 3	Year 4	Year 5

Where the users come from

Only 3 methods of customer acquisition are in this model so far: money spent advertising in the US, relationships built with American shelters, and money spent advertising abroad.

Critically: “viral” sharing — among friends, or via public media like Instagram — multiplies all three, and that amplification does not have its own chart line. The effects are instead built into the existing three “entry doors.” At the default settings here (which you can change), every person Zoopal brings in directly becomes 0 users by the end of Year 5.

Break-even. Running the company costs $0 a year by Year 5, exclusive of advertising. About 0 subscribers cover that. Above that is surplus to grow our user base.

The same doors, as a share of each year

how the balance between them shifts

This bar follows whichever view is selected above. Both charts credit every user to the door they first came through — an adopter handed Zoopal at a shelter, the friend they shared it with, and that friend’s friend. The table above separates sharing back out, for anyone checking the work.