Growing up the son of a prominent local veterinarian, entrepreneur Brandon Werber never thought he would have to search for a vet for his two French bulldogs.

But when one of his dogs ate a potentially poisonous household asparagus fern, Werber’s father was traveling overseas and couldn’t be reached.

“All of a sudden, I was just like every other pet owner — scrambling to find a vet when every hour counts,” Werber said. “It was a terrifying feeling.”

Werber found a vet, but he realized there was no quick and efficient way for pet owners to connect with a vet to get urgent advice.

Pet owners had to rush their pets to 24-hour emergency pet hospitals and then wait hours to be seen, even if all that was really needed was expert advice on how to handle a pet crisis at home.

So, the entrepreneur with one startup under his belt decided to launch another — this one focused on developing a platform to match pet owners needing care advice for their pets with veterinarians willing to provide that advice on demand. And in November 2018 Beverly Hills-based AirVet Inc. was born.

Just over two years later, AirVet has become one of the largest pet telemedicine companies in the nation — thanks in large part to a pandemic that forced both pet owners and veterinary hospitals to turn to online services.

The company started signing up veterinarians and opened its app to customers at the very end of 2019. In the 13 months since then, about 100,000 pet owners have used AirVet, and the company has signed up more than 4,000 veterinarians and veterinary hospitals.

“AirVet appears to be the largest veterinary telemedicine platform in the nation,” said Ted Root, a former chief executive of a pet pharmacy delivery service who now consults to the industry. Root estimated AirVet has access agreements with up to 15% of the estimated 30,000 veterinary practices nationwide.

Once Werber came up with the concept of a veterinary telemedicine network, he turned to investors who had helped fund his first startup — a loyalty award platform company that ultimately folded — and they put up $4 million in seed money to help him launch AirVet.

Werber and a team of software designers spent the next year developing the platform at a time when there were very few pet telemedicine operations.

“We were trying to develop a first-of-its-kind, Uber-like platform where vets could sign on when they had a break from their own practices and handle calls from pet owners facing a care crisis,” he said.

Another part of the platform was aimed at veterinary hospitals to help them streamline their services and allow for video visits with pet owners and their pets.
AirVet launched its pet telemedicine service at the end of 2019 — and the timing proved fortuitous.
Three months later, the Covid pandemic hit, forcing vets and pet hospitals to sharply limit services or reconfigure operations, so pet owners could remain outside by the curb.

At the same time, pet owners were fearful that they could risk Covid exposure by taking their pets to a veterinary clinic or hospital.