Emerson Smith founded HappyDoc in 2023. The firm recently raised $2.2 million. (Courtesy HappyDoc)
Most veterinarians didn’t get into the field because they loved to write.
That’s why Emerson Smith founded HappyDoc, an AI notetaker for pet providers.
“It’s tragic just how stuck vets feel,” Smith said. “All this administrative stuff has nothing to do with what you studied at vet school. We’re saving you all that time.”
Denver-based HappyDoc recently closed a $2.2 million funding round, the company’s first outside institutional investment. The round was led by Range Ventures, the Mile High firm that pulled from its $39 million Fund II, and also backed by Service Provider Capital and Kickstart Fund.
HappyDoc aims to streamline the normally tedious writing process that follows a typical vet’s roughly 100 weekly appointments, Smith said. Doctors just hit the record button on a computer, tablet or phone, and HappyDoc’s software listens in and writes a report about the appointment that can be tailored to the vet’s preferences.
Those reports then appear in the medical records systems the vast majority of clinics are already using, Smith said, making for a low-effort process that frees up an estimated one to three hours a day.
HappyDoc has been used by 2,000 vets in more than 1,000 offices around the country since launching in summer 2023, Smith said. He said growth has been exponential, with more than a fifth of reports written in the last 30 days. The company has largely landed customers through conferences and word of mouth.
“We really haven’t done any marketing til this recent raise,” Smith said.
A graphic showing HappyDoc process of converting recordings into reports for medical records. (Courtesy HappyDoc)
HappyDoc costs $150 per doctor for a month, with larger practices getting a reduced price. With the average appointment between 15 and 30 minutes, Smith said, using the AI assistant can open up slots for more billable sessions.
Those run pet owners an average of $200 to $250, Smith said, meaning clinics make the subscription back in a day or two.
“This is the best ROI I’ve ever sold on anything — which, at some point, maybe I should raise my prices,” Smith said.
But with several competitors popping up in the last several months, he doesn’t want to lose his year-and-a-half head start.
“Even though our product is light years ahead, we don’t want (price) to ever be a question,” Smith said.
The Atlanta native moved to Denver two years ago after a stint in Silicon Valley selling software. Smith said owning his own tech company was always the goal, and despite having no personal connection to the veterinary industry, he saw an efficiency gap.
After interviewing vets and consulting an aunt who works at a vet pharmaceutical company, his hypothesis was proven correct.
“They’re so overlooked by a lot of high tech and are operating on these ancient softwares,” he said. Many vets he spoke with said they’d be catching up on notetaking for several hours after their practices closed.
Most of the $2.2 million will go towards expanding the engineering and product teams to continue adapting HappyDoc to those “ancient” vet clinic management systems, he said. The most widely used one, Avimark, was founded in 1988, making it difficult to implement technology built nearly 40 years later.
Smith has already hired two more engineers with the investment, which brings its total to five.
“There’s a lot of really cool stuff that we wanna make, but the integration is very difficult,” Smith said. “If we wanna do deals with these large firms with hundreds of clinics, we have to integrate.”
He and his team also plan to roll out a data-analytics dashboard early this year to capitalize on all the information they collect from the recordings. Typically, vet offices hire consultants to shadow doctors and give feedback on how to communicate more effectively and capture industry-wide trends.
But HappyDoc hopes to solve that problem as well.
“We’re getting a couple thousand hours of audio data coming in every day, so what interesting data and insights can we pull out of those conversations?” he said.
Smith hopes to expand into horse and other large-animal operations in 2025, with eyes on moving to clinics internationally. He said HappyDoc can listen to 30 different languages but can output only in English at the moment.
Expanding into human health would make a lot of sense, Smith said, and was actually part of the company’s original plan. But health law presents a host of potential privacy concerns.
“The market to sell to vets is big enough for us to grow a very nice business,” he said. “And there’s no HIPAA. People don’t care if they record conversations about their dogs.”
Smith said that his company did nearly $1 million in revenue in 2024. But another decision about how to build awaits him this year.
“We’re not profitable at this point, but we can get there next year if we wanted to,” he said. “But that comes back to the question of going to profitability or raising again.”
Emerson Smith founded HappyDoc in 2023. The firm recently raised $2.2 million. (Courtesy HappyDoc)
Most veterinarians didn’t get into the field because they loved to write.
That’s why Emerson Smith founded HappyDoc, an AI notetaker for pet providers.
“It’s tragic just how stuck vets feel,” Smith said. “All this administrative stuff has nothing to do with what you studied at vet school. We’re saving you all that time.”
Denver-based HappyDoc recently closed a $2.2 million funding round, the company’s first outside institutional investment. The round was led by Range Ventures, the Mile High firm that pulled from its $39 million Fund II, and also backed by Service Provider Capital and Kickstart Fund.
HappyDoc aims to streamline the normally tedious writing process that follows a typical vet’s roughly 100 weekly appointments, Smith said. Doctors just hit the record button on a computer, tablet or phone, and HappyDoc’s software listens in and writes a report about the appointment that can be tailored to the vet’s preferences.
Those reports then appear in the medical records systems the vast majority of clinics are already using, Smith said, making for a low-effort process that frees up an estimated one to three hours a day.
HappyDoc has been used by 2,000 vets in more than 1,000 offices around the country since launching in summer 2023, Smith said. He said growth has been exponential, with more than a fifth of reports written in the last 30 days. The company has largely landed customers through conferences and word of mouth.
“We really haven’t done any marketing til this recent raise,” Smith said.
A graphic showing HappyDoc process of converting recordings into reports for medical records. (Courtesy HappyDoc)
HappyDoc costs $150 per doctor for a month, with larger practices getting a reduced price. With the average appointment between 15 and 30 minutes, Smith said, using the AI assistant can open up slots for more billable sessions.
Those run pet owners an average of $200 to $250, Smith said, meaning clinics make the subscription back in a day or two.
“This is the best ROI I’ve ever sold on anything — which, at some point, maybe I should raise my prices,” Smith said.
But with several competitors popping up in the last several months, he doesn’t want to lose his year-and-a-half head start.
“Even though our product is light years ahead, we don’t want (price) to ever be a question,” Smith said.
The Atlanta native moved to Denver two years ago after a stint in Silicon Valley selling software. Smith said owning his own tech company was always the goal, and despite having no personal connection to the veterinary industry, he saw an efficiency gap.
After interviewing vets and consulting an aunt who works at a vet pharmaceutical company, his hypothesis was proven correct.
“They’re so overlooked by a lot of high tech and are operating on these ancient softwares,” he said. Many vets he spoke with said they’d be catching up on notetaking for several hours after their practices closed.
Most of the $2.2 million will go towards expanding the engineering and product teams to continue adapting HappyDoc to those “ancient” vet clinic management systems, he said. The most widely used one, Avimark, was founded in 1988, making it difficult to implement technology built nearly 40 years later.
Smith has already hired two more engineers with the investment, which brings its total to five.
“There’s a lot of really cool stuff that we wanna make, but the integration is very difficult,” Smith said. “If we wanna do deals with these large firms with hundreds of clinics, we have to integrate.”
He and his team also plan to roll out a data-analytics dashboard early this year to capitalize on all the information they collect from the recordings. Typically, vet offices hire consultants to shadow doctors and give feedback on how to communicate more effectively and capture industry-wide trends.
But HappyDoc hopes to solve that problem as well.
“We’re getting a couple thousand hours of audio data coming in every day, so what interesting data and insights can we pull out of those conversations?” he said.
Smith hopes to expand into horse and other large-animal operations in 2025, with eyes on moving to clinics internationally. He said HappyDoc can listen to 30 different languages but can output only in English at the moment.
Expanding into human health would make a lot of sense, Smith said, and was actually part of the company’s original plan. But health law presents a host of potential privacy concerns.
“The market to sell to vets is big enough for us to grow a very nice business,” he said. “And there’s no HIPAA. People don’t care if they record conversations about their dogs.”
Smith said that his company did nearly $1 million in revenue in 2024. But another decision about how to build awaits him this year.
“We’re not profitable at this point, but we can get there next year if we wanted to,” he said. “But that comes back to the question of going to profitability or raising again.”
