Examiner.com Interview

When was your company founded?
Cute as Hell was founded in October 2008 in sunny Venice, CA. Our beta launch was March 13, 2009.

What's the story behind how you started the company?
My wife and I were looking for a website for our pets - a dog and two cats. We found a few pet-related sites, but none of them had the functionality we wanted while still being well designed, easy to use, and uncluttered. Having a strong creative background and having worked on quite a few start-ups, I figured why not build my own - and voila - Cute as Hell was born.

What is your company all about?
Cute as Hell is a new community and shopping site made exclusively for pet people. It's a place where your dog, cat, fish, or anything else for that matter, can have their very own pet profile with photos, friends, comments, and more. You can also win fabulous prizes going head to head in the Thunderdome (an NCAA-style bracket competition where you can win cool prizes), rate products, and buy hand-selected products that have been reviewed by the community.

Coming soon: ask pet-related questions, find a shelter, donate to pet charities, locate pet services like vets, groomers, dog walkers, rescue organizations - and more!

How is your company different than your competitors? Competitive advantages?
We're trying to keep it simple and we're always thinking about what will create the best user experience. We have large photos, a clean design, simple navigation, and an easy-to-use interface. Most of our competitors focus on jamming as much content (and ads) onto the page as possible and forget about the most important thing, the animals. It's all about the pets with us.

We've implemented a simple, yet very viral component called a "Cuteness Rating" which has turned out to be extremely popular with our site users. You can "plus" the Cuteness Rating on any pet you like. The higher your Cuteness Rating, the better odds you have at competing in the Thunderdome.

What are the main challenges your company faces?
We have the same challenges as any unfunded start-up - if you don't have an active, growing community that gets people to come back over and over again, you don't have a site. So our user acquisition strategy is the key to the site's survival. Fortunately, it seems to be working. Seven days after the site's beta launch we had over 1,000 pets and almost 3,000 photos added to the site, and we received over 100,000 page views. These are huge numbers for the first week of a newly launched site that has no budget for PR and advertising. Word of mouth, SEO, and our own viral marketing efforts have gotten us to where we are today and we are excited about what the future holds!

We're also working on some strategic partnerships and sponsorships that will make our prize package offerings even better and will give us the ability to continue to launch new features at a steady pace.

Finally, what's your goal for the next few months?
The current version of Cute as Hell is just the beginning. Over the next few months we'll be adding a pet services section where you'll be able to find local animal shelters, vets, groomers, pet sitters, dog walkers, etc. We'll also be adding informational breed pages, videos, an iPhone app, and a new "hot or not"-style section open to registered and non-registered users called the Battlezone. The Thunderdome and upcoming Battlezone will get people to come back to the site over and over again to see how their favorite pets are doing and to meet new cute pets. So, stay tuned! We're one week in and thrilled at the reception so far. We're hoping to bring something new to the table that resonates with pet people just like us.