Whistle Labs Inc. is a subsidiary of
Mars Petcare
Mars, Incorporated is an American multinational manufacturer of confectionery, pet food, and other food products and a provider of animal care services, with US$40 billion in annual sales in 2021.
Mars was ranked as the fourth-largest priva ...
headquartered in
San Francisco, California
San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...
. It produces and markets the Whistle GPS Pet Tracker, a device worn on a pet's collar that monitors its activity and location. In addition to pet owners, the devices have been used by
veterinary researchers.
Corporate history
The idea for Whistle grew out of their first
CEO
A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...
Ben Jacobs' experiences on pet-care accounts at
Bain & Company
Bain & Company is an American management consulting company headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. The firm provides advice to public, private, and non-profit organizations. One of the Big Three management consultancies, Bain & Company was fou ...
, and was developed with
COO
COO or coo may refer to:
Business
* Certificate of origin, used in international trade
* Chief operating officer or chief operations officer, high-ranking corporate official
* Concept of operations, used in Systems Engineering Management Process
...
Steve Eidelman while researching the pet-care industry for venture capital firm DCM.
They hired Kevin Lloyd as
CTO and the three founded Whistle in 2012.
The company started with 20 employees and raised $6 million in a venture funding round led by DCM.
Other investors included the former CEO of Mars Petcare and the President of Humane Society Silicon Valley.
[
Whistle's first product, an activity monitor for dogs that tracked their exercise, was released in 2013.] The company raised an additional $10 million in a Series A funding round and $15 million in Series B. A February 2014 agreement with PetSmart
PetSmart is a privately held American chain of pet superstores, which sell pet products, services, and small pets. It is the leading North American pet company, and its direct competitor is Petco. Its indirect competitors are Amazon, Walmart, ...
placed the Whistle device in all the company's stores and led to co-marketing efforts. Whistle also began working with veterinary schools to analyze the data collected from the app. For example, in 2014 the Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
used data from Whistle devices for their research on chronic pain
Chronic pain is classified as pain that lasts longer than three to six months. In medicine, the distinction between Acute (medicine), acute and Chronic condition, chronic pain is sometimes determined by the amount of time since onset. Two commonly ...
conditions in dogs; and researchers at the College of Veterinary Medicine at North Carolina State University
North Carolina State University (NC State) is a public land-grant research university in Raleigh, North Carolina. Founded in 1887 and part of the University of North Carolina system, it is the largest university in the Carolinas. The universit ...
have used it to study epilepsy
Epilepsy is a group of non-communicable neurological disorders characterized by recurrent epileptic seizures. Epileptic seizures can vary from brief and nearly undetectable periods to long periods of vigorous shaking due to abnormal electrical ...
in dogs. The company also has an advisory panel of veterinarians.
Whistle began experimenting with the SigFox internet of things
The Internet of things (IoT) describes physical objects (or groups of such objects) with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other comm ...
network for its devices in May 2014. In January 2015, the company acquired Tagg, a competing startup based in San Diego
San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the List of United States cities by population, eigh ...
, for an undisclosed sum for its battery life and location-tracking intellectual property, and Tagg's CEO, Scott Neuberger, joined Whistle. Tagg had started as a Qualcomm
Qualcomm () is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Diego, California, and incorporated in Delaware. It creates semiconductors, software, and services related to wireless technology. It owns patents critical to the 5G, 4 ...
subsidiary in 2010 and released its tracking device one year before Whistle. By 2015, Whistle had distributed 100,000 devices and had about 40 employees.
In April 2016, Whistle was acquired by Mars Petcare, the pet product subsidiary of the food and candy bar maker Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, only being larger than Mercury (planet), Mercury. In the English language, Mars is named for the Mars (mythology), Roman god of war. Mars is a terr ...
, for $117 million.
Products
Whistle produces and markets wearable monitoring devices for pets. The Whistle Activity Monitor, which is sometimes called a "Fitbit
Fitbit (stylized as fitbit) is an American consumer electronics and fitness company. It produces wireless-enabled wearable technology, physical fitness monitors and activity trackers such as smartwatches, pedometers and monitors for heart rate, ...
for dogs", tracks the duration, time, and intensity of a pet's exercise, then gives the data to users over Wi-Fi networks or to a phone app using Bluetooth
Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is limi ...
. The GPS pet tracker is for finding lost pets. It also produces an alert if the pet's behavior changes, for example a reduction in sleep, indicating anxiety.
The GPS and location tracking product was announced in May 2014. An integration with Jawbone Up that May allowed Jawbone users to compare their exercise to their dog's in the same app. In February 2017, Whistle 3 was introduced. It is half the size of prior models and intended for smaller dogs or cats.
Whistle started with a model called Whistle 3. They released Whistle GO in 2019. Whistle GO is an earlier version of the Whistle brand but is an improvement of the Whistle 3. Its main features are GPS locations tracking, and health and fitness monitoring. Whistle GO has an improved battery life and provides more health information than its previous model.
References
External links
Official website
{{authority control
Pet equipment
Companies based in San Francisco
American companies established in 2012
Mars, Incorporated
2016 mergers and acquisitions
American corporate subsidiaries