BistroCat started as the brainchild of serial entrepreneur Peter Franklin, aimed to revolutionize the cat food industry. Prior to launching the company, Peter sought to introduce the product idea to the market to gauge customer sentiment and buying intent, before deciding whether the product was investable or not. StratDev was faced with a challenging task – finding product market fit, capturing preorders, and doing so profitably for a product that did not yet exist. Despite the difficulty, we embraced the challenge.

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Success for BistroCat hinged on the discovery and understanding of existing intent within the market, and how to turn that intent into profitable purchases with a never-before-seen product. StratDev’s market research revealed that 30,000 people in the United States per month were already searching for automatic wet cat food feeders – their search intent was driven by concerns for their cat’s health. These insights suggested that purchasing decisions for an automated wet cat food feeder would likely be emotionally driven.

With this knowledge, StratDev developed testable website landing pages and funnels to run hyper-targeted paid search and social campaigns that focused on cat owners’ love for their pets and the benefits of an automatic wet cat food feeder in maintaining a healthy diet while the owner is away.

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Within a 75-day test period, StratDev generated thousands of positive responses to the product, validating the product market fit. We even secured preorders with customers’ credit card information for the product, which was not yet in production. By the end of the test period,StratDev had successfully generated profitable preorders, paving the way for an initial investment round for BistroCat, which led to the BistroCat community amassing over 200,000 cat owners.