September 27, 2019 2 min read

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When Daniel Rotman was 10 years old, his sister gave him a cat. Gingy went through junior high, college and post college with him. 

“She was my baby,” he says. “She went from being her normal purring, amazing affection self to rapidly lethargic and all of a sudden just stopped eating. It seemed to me like it was overnight. That obviously stressed me out. I rushed her to the vet and $5,000 later I was able to extend her life by six months only to find out that she was suffering from a terminal disease. This apparently had been festering in her body for a very long time and she was able to hide it like all cats are because that’s what they’re built to do, until she was in so much pain that she couldn’t hide it anymore. I was so frustrated by that.”

That frustration led Rotman to start Pretty Litter, a direct to consumer pet wellness platform. “We create products that help pet owners keep tabs on their cat’s health.” He started with a product that changes colors when it detects anomalies in a cat’s urine. “So, if a PH level is off, alkalinity is high, acidity levels are off, it’ll turn into a blue, green or a red. Giving a cat owner early notice that something might be wrong with their cat, which is super important because cats are super stoic creatures.”

Rotman sat down with Jessica Abo to discuss his company’s success and how you can become a leader in your industry.