It is a beautiful summer day in 2012. The sun is shining, the air
smells like freshly cut grass, and Rikke is taking her neighbour’s
brown Labrador for a walk. She is a busy woman, working inter-
nationally in finance, living partly in a suitcase and partly in a
London flat without a garden. Her life isn’t suited for a dog of her
own at the moment, so she enjoys every chance she gets to borrow
her neighbours doggy for a few hours.
But on this very walk, an idea comes to her mind: “There should be
a website for people like me to connect with local dog owners; I can
help them take care of their dogs”. She thinks about all of the mon-
ey people spend on dog walkers or kennels, and about the people
who leave their dogs home alone, when there are so many people
who would love to spend time with them for free. “Everyone could
benefit from it”, she thought to herself. And so, the idea for Borrow
My Doggy was born.
The idea of Borrow My Doggy was pitched at the Lean Startup
Machine, an intensive three-day workshop for entrepreneurs and
innovators starting up businesses, where it won the most votes. She
created a team “bursting with different skills” and set up a test run,
putting up posters in parks around London and creating a basic
website. Within only three days 85 people had signed up. Today,
Borrow My Doggy has more than 400,000 members across the UK;
around 5% of the UK dog population at 8.5 million.
KNOWLEDGE IS KEY
With entrepreneur parents and a background in business and
finance, Rosenlund knew she wanted to start up her own company
one day – but she did not see it being in tech or finance. She was
living by this business advice: “create something that solves a prob-
lem, not just for you personally, but go out and validate that a lot of
other people face the same problem.”
“I told myself I had to come up with an idea and from there I had
to build a business around it”, she explains.
And Borrow My Doggy became exactly that
– it didn’t start as a company, but more of
an idea she came across. Talk about a lucky
walk in the park.
A background in business like Rosenlund’s
is not compulsory when thinking about
going into entrepreneurship, but knowl-
edge is definitely key. When starting up a
company, “it should ideally be something
you have knowledge in, or you should find
a co-founder who has the knowledge so it
balances you,” she says.
“
When creating a
business, it has to
be based on
something, a
problem, you
really, really
care about
DO SOMETHING YOU ARE PASSIONATE ABOUT
Because in addition to knowledge, passion is key. “When creating
a business, it has to be based on something, a problem, you really,
really care about,” Rosenlund says. For her, that was making a pos-
itive impact on people’s lives. “Borrow My Doggy uses what I have
learned in my career, but at the same time it still has that aspect to
it of making a positive difference to the lives of dogs and people”.
By combining your knowledge and passions, it is easier to detect
and find a solution to a gap in the market. Additionally, your cus-
tomers will be able to see if your intentions are pure or not. As the
saying goes: “do it with passion or not at all”.
PITCH AND FUNDRAISE
Once you have found and perfected a business idea, the next
important step is funding, which will be key throughout your
business development and growth. “You need to go out there, you
need to figure out how to engage with angel groups (investors) and
get funding, and how you are getting your idea out to the world”,
Rosenlund explains.
As the company grew from a small start up to an innovative
community of hundreds of thousand members, Borrow My Doggy
relied on crowdfunding for further dev elopment. “Every year is
different, but you have to keep fundraising”, she says.
CARE ABOUT YOUR
CUSTOMERS
To gain momentum it is important that
your business is something that you and
your customers are passionate about, but
the relationship between the two is just as
important. In the corporate world, it is easy
to fall into the trap of emotionless business
decisions, but Rosenlund believes that “if
you care about your customers and create a
relationship, your company will gain a better
reputation, further recommendations and
growth”.
What moved Rosenlund the most to start up her company, were
all of the personal stories of the people who signed up. “There was
a family where a little girl was begging for a dog, but she was also
scared of them. The family didn’t want to get a dog and maybe give
it up because that wouldn’t be fair to the dog, so they wished to
borrow one first,” Rosenlund shares. “When I read that I just start-
ed crying, because I’d always wanted a dog but my mom is allergic
so we couldn’t have one when I was a kid”.
There was also an elderly man who had just had an operation and
needed help walking his dog, and a student who had grown up at a
farm in Australia and now missed his dog here in the UK. Rosen-
lund quickly realised that there was a real need and interest for
her company, and couldn’t help but be moved by their stories. She
began matching dog owners and dog borrowers manually, which
easily could mean sending 50 emails back and forth before coming
to agreements. But it was all worth it, if it meant she could help
people ‘share the love of dogs’. She made such strong connections
to her first customers that she now, years later, is still in contact
with some of them. That’s pretty pawsome. •
Visit Borrow my Doggy at www.borrowmydoggy.com
and @borrowmydoggy at social media.
Issue 01 • Dawn Magazine • 20