8. If I Were You: The Next 90 Days

Date: 30 Sept 2026 · Gates and pivots: WHAT-TO-DO-AND-AVOID §5 · Month 0–24: 11

The single most important thing

Get 10 English licence holders paying ≥£15 for inspection-ready records before you build anything, then prove at day 45 that the tools they already use fail them at inspection.

Segment: licensed dog home boarders and small day cares (1–5 staff) in England.
Job: "Keep my licence records complete every day, so any inspection, announced or not, takes ten minutes."
How: start with a hands-on kit: a register spreadsheet mapped to condition 9.1 / 17.1, a daily-log sheet, an inspection-pack checklist, and a 30-minute records review. Charge for it. Automate only what you've done by hand for 10+ boarders.

The plan fits ~15 hrs/week. Full-time founders run the same weeks with the higher targets in brackets.

Week-by-week

Weeks	Goal	Exit criteria
1–2	Lead list and discovery. Pull the public licence registers from 20 councils into one sheet (name, activity, star rating, renewal date). Sign a licence-holder advisor. Book and run 15 calls (full-time: 25). Ask about their last inspection: what was asked for, how long it took, what they use now, what the licence cost, what went wrong.	300+ holders in the sheet (full-time: 1,000). Top 3 pains written in the boarders' own words, with a time or £ figure attached.
3–4	Paid hands-on pilot. Sell the kit plus records review at £15–25. Check the PECR rules for emailing sole traders first; use phone, letters and the association where email isn't allowed.	6 paying (full-time: 10). If fewer than 4 will pay, the pain isn't real in this segment: switch to day cares once.
5–6	Day-45 kill test. Find 15 holders who already use KennelBooker, Revelation Pets, Animal Database UK or another tool. Trial those tools yourself and generate their best inspection output. Show boarders your hand-made pack beside it.	≥5 of 15 say their current tool fails them at inspection and they'd switch. If fewer: stop, or pivot to the inspection-pack add-on that imports their exports.
5–9	Build the thin v1 (web app and PWA): licence details, register with missing-fields view, vaccine gate, time-stamped daily log (under 10 seconds per dog), medication and incident books, one-click inspection pack, spreadsheet import, automatic backups.	Pilots move from the spreadsheet to the app. Each pilot logs every dog daily for 14 days.
10–11	Free acquisition hooks. Publish the free inspection checklist, 5 SEO pages, and approach the Association of Dog Boarders with a member offer and a webinar. Start renewal-timed outreach to the register sheet.	1 association conversation held. 30+ trials started (full-time: 60).
12–13	Measure and decide.	15 paying accounts (full-time: 30), ≥60% still paying after month 1, every pilot logging daily for 30 days, ≥1 real inspection passed with the pack. Hit: go to phase 2. Miss: cut to register + daily log + pack, change the segment, and re-test.

Kill criteria (write these down now)

Day 45: fewer than 5 of 15 existing-tool users see a gap. Stop, or become an add-on.
Day 90: fewer than 8 paying accounts, or month-1 retention below 50%. The wedge is wrong. Don't add features. Change the segment or the pitch, once.

The one thing to stop doing

Stop thinking of this as boarding-and-daycare operations software. Every hour on run maps, grooming, POS or a US launch is an hour spent losing to Gingr and Revelation Pets. The only question for 90 days is whether English licence holders will pay for records that make inspection painless.

A close second: stop using the name "KennelBook" publicly. KennelBooker is a competitor.

What stays on the long-term roadmap (only after proof)

Online booking and owner intake that fills the register automatically.
Signed consent forms and staff training records.
Stripe Connect deposits with an opt-in platform fee (month 9+).
Import from KennelBooker, Revelation Pets and Gingr exports.
The Plus plan for kennels and catteries.
Only then, Wales or Scotland, each as a separate rulebook.