FluentPet

Key numbers

The product

FluentPet is a system of recordable sound buttons arranged on interlocking, non-slip hexagonal tiles called HexTiles. Owners record words like 'outside', 'play' or 'love you' onto each button, and pets learn to press them to communicate needs and feelings. It solves a real problem for pet owners: the frustration of not understanding what an animal wants, which often shows up as barking, scratching or anxiety. Kits start around $30 for a two-button tester and run to roughly $200 for deluxe multi-button sets, sold direct-to-consumer through fluent.pet. Unlike generic talking buttons on Amazon, FluentPet is grounded in cognitive science: its HexTile layout is inspired by the Fitzgerald Key used in augmentative communication, sound quality is engineered for pet hearing, and the WiFi-enabled Connect version sends button-press notifications to an app. The company also runs the How.TheyCanTalk research initiative with UC San Diego, and its buttons were used by Bunny the Sheepadoodle (@whataboutbunny), the most famous 'talking dog' on TikTok.

How they did it

Founder Leo Trottier is a cognitive scientist who studied at the University of Toronto and was a PhD candidate at UC San Diego; he previously built CleverPet, a game console for dogs that went through the Techstars Qualcomm Robotics Accelerator. When social media lit up with dogs 'talking' via buttons, Trottier studied the Facebook groups devoted to the phenomenon, engaged pet parents over Zoom, and bootstrapped FluentPet, which launched in June 2020. Demand was immediate: the first day of sales brought in $20,000, and within about a year the company had done around $5 million in sales without spending a dime on advertising. The breakout moment came from Alexis Devine and her sheepadoodle Bunny, whose @whataboutbunny videos drew millions of followers and made FluentPet buttons ubiquitous on TikTok and Instagram. By 2022 the San Diego Business Journal reported 5 full-time employees, $7 million-plus in cumulative revenue and a 2022 TITAN Business Award; the brand has since sold over 2 million buttons and logged more than 50 million button presses while feeding data into peer-reviewed animal-cognition research with UC San Diego.

Why it worked

• Perfectly positioned for a viral moment: when Bunny the dog made 'talking pet' videos explode on TikTok, FluentPet was the original, science-backed product behind the trend - all with $0 in paid ads.
• Founder-market fit is exceptional: a UC San Diego cognitive scientist turned a research topic (interspecies communication) into a consumer product.
• A hardware-plus-community moat: HexTiles, Connect app notifications and the How.TheyCanTalk research study give owners a reason to buy the system, not just a button, and keep expanding it.
• Lean and profitable by design: 5 employees and DTC-only sales generated $7M+ revenue, with user community and UGC doing all marketing.