SNAP Founder Darrell Lerner Sells Pet Dating Platform AllPaws To PetSmart

24th October 2016 Emma Woodley

AllPaws, the mobile & online platform for finding your perfect pet, has been acquired by PetSmart Inc.

The platform, which matches users with pets available for adoption, was founded by Darrell Lerner, the co-founder of SNAP Interactive.

The tool works in a similar way to many dating platforms, matching its users with potential pets based on filters like age, gender, location, breed, training stage, temperament and energy-level.

And the company has now been acquired by PetSmart, the leading retailer & resource for pet adoption in North America, to help boost its adoption programme.

Michael Massey, the President and CEO of PetSmart said: “Pet adoption is core to our purpose-driven business, and the acquisition of AllPaws offers a smart technology platform to accelerate our in-store adoption programme even further.

“Our leadership role in pet adoption has led to a record-setting seven million pets adopted from our stores since we started the in-store adoption program in 1994.”

As it stands, around 5,000 animal rescue services and shelters use AllPaws as a way of promoting available pets across North America, the site seeing over 800,000 visitors every month.

Darrell Lerner, the founder of AllPaws, said: “We are thrilled to join the PetSmart family and to contribute to its mission of helping save pets’ lives through adoption.

“When we set out to develop AllPaws, we wanted to take a fresh and modern approach to pet adoption that combines a sophisticated, user-friendly functionality with deep social integration in order to connect prospective adopters with the best pet match possible.

“With PetSmart’s scale and PetSmart Charities adoption program leveraging more than 1,470 stores that serve as adoption centres, we believe AllPaws has found its forever home with PetSmart.”

Lerner co-founded SNAP Interactive in 2005 with his brother Cliff, working at the company for over seven years, taking SNAP public and seeing its flagship product AYI.com generate over 70m total installs.

Read our interview with Lerner here.