AstroPaws

When OpenAI released ChatGPT 3.5 in 2023, I was amazed. I don’t think we have internalized the role that AI can play in society just yet. Being creative has never been easier. A plate has never been able to be this full!

The idea for AstroPaws came to me in a dream. My wife and I had been struggling training our new puppy Giuseppe. He was a corgi, stubborn as a donkey and loud as Ford F150.

Whenever I took him to dog parks that summer, I was suprised to find so much comradery in these characteristics. Turns out, pretty much all corgis are like this! I also watched other breeds interact with him in basically the same manner. no one gets zoomies like doodles. Never mess with a frenchie’s ball.

Recognizing the similarities they all had, the thought came to me that it would be pretty easy to generate horoscopes based off breed tendancies with the help of AI. My long time best friend and business partner, Idan Rafaolovitz agreed. So we made some mock-ups and found a really great developer on Upwork.

The intial development for AstroPaws only took a few weeks. It took 7 rejections from Apple before we were able to go live.

Contrary to popular sentiment regarding Apple’s policing of the App Store, my hindsight view of these rejections was that they were quite helpful. Apple had us develop terms and other legal docs, we built out more useful functionality, and made sure bugs got squashed. These were important, practically free consulting tips that let us put a fun app on a marketplace.

In it’s first 6 months, we added social media-type functionality, letting pet owners add playmates, post pictures, and chat with their friends. Almost 500 people have enjoyed our app since.

To monetize our success, we partnered with companies in the pet insurance world to connect our users and website visitors with. We receive a small commission in return. Our annual revenue from these partnerships made this project the first successful revenue business I’ve made.