When Brooke Acton welcomed a puppy during the COVID-19 pandemic, she did so without fully knowing the right questions to ask. At the time, the puppy market was experiencing unprecedented demand, and people were paying high prices, occasionally getting scammed by professional-looking websites. In such a climate, Canadians looking for a dog were not incentivized to dig deep into where their dog came from and if it was the right fit for their lifestyle.
Brooke’s love for her puppy, combined with her passion for addressing the issues in the dog-breeding marketplace, led to the creation of Paction. Paction is an accountability-based marketplace that matches the most responsible breeders across Canada with people who are looking to get a puppy.
Paction helps prospective owners throughout the process by empowering them to ask the right questions. Brooke touched on three important questions that every prospective dog owner should be asking:
- Can I really afford this? One of the most common reasons dogs get surrendered is because owners are not aware of the financial responsibility of taking care of a dog
- Does this dog breed match my lifestyle? Often people can romanticize a breed, but they may not be able to give that dog a healthy life with the exercise and enrichment it needs of that particular breed. “If you’re in a small condo in the city, you shouldn’t have a Border Collie that needs to run for hours a day on a farm,” Brooke explained.
- What does responsible breeding look like? There is a large gap between what responsible breeders are doing and what the average Canadian dog lover understands about that process. Paction focuses on bringing that knowledge from the breeding world to puppy shoppers.
Paction also works to increase public awareness through different educational initiatives. An example that the company is very passionate about is health and genetics screening of breeding dogs. Brooke explained how many puppy shoppers struggle to distinguish between a standard vet health check - their first set of shots and deworming - and what was done upstream regarding the health and genetics screening of the breeding pair. “The most important thing is: did you select a dam and sire that don’t carry the same recessive genetics that are going to cause devastating effects in the litter of puppies?” she said. In response to this issue, Paction released “Making Science Simple”, a free course to educate puppy shoppers on canine genetics.
As an entrepreneur who has combined personal passion with business, Brooke offered some advice and insight on challenges for students who may be interested in a similar path:
- Make sure you’re addressing a problem that needs to be solved. Brooke explained that many entrepreneurs approach their ventures with the mindset of creating a business as opposed to solving a core problem, “If there is not a big outstanding problem then no one is really going to care about your product”.
- 10X it. “If you’re not doing something that’s 10 times better than a solution that currently exists, you’re probably not going to be able to a make a go of it.”
- Don’t overlook the importance of deep domain expertise. It was crucial for Brooke to understand the jargon and sensitivities around the breeding world. Since she could already identify with the consumer side of Paction’s two-sided marketplace, gaining domain expertise was a challenge and a crucial aspect of the company’s operations.
- Technical skills are important. Technical Founder, Tyler Hunt, discussed the importance of technical aspects such as Search Engine Optimization. Brooke and Tyler explained how ensuring that Paction is on the first page of Google is important. “Not just building a good product but finding a way to make sure that everybody discovers your product has been challenging,” Brooke said.
- Prioritize. Brooke identified prioritization as the number one challenge of handling a complex business with multiple stakeholders. “It’s putting out fires and determining which fire is the most important one to fix first”. Her advice: get involved in many difficult projects when starting out to become more intuitive about prioritization.
Brooke described Paction's goals as "elevating the entire experience to make sure that the breeders who are continuing to be recognized and financially rewarded are the ones who are the most passionate and doing the best job that they absolutely can." Beyond the marketplace, Paction is committed to promoting a more honest understanding of what dog ownership truly requires. "To continue to elevate that standard of responsible dog ownership — that is our ultimate goal."