US startup adoro came to us with a vision for doing pet insurance differently. Together, we turned their idea into a digital solution that reaches pet owners on every device, keeps their pets front and center, and earns their trust.
Pet insurance is one of the fastest-growing corners of the insurance industry. As veterinary costs continue to rise, more pet owners are getting their pets insured, but the experience is often outdated and unnecessarily complicated. Confusing coverage, slow claims, and fine print can make an already stressful moment even harder. Adoro was founded to change that.
After years working in the industry, adoro founders Tricia and Gavin knew exactly where it fell short, and set out to do better: insurance that is transparent, personalized, and simple enough to manage from your phone.
Adoro came to us with an idea, deep industry knowledge, and a pretty ambitious deadline: get to market in time to capture customers at the start of the new year, when many policies are signed.
Innovation, unleashed
Working at startup speed, we designed and built adoro’s digital experience from the ground up, including the marketing website where prospects discover adoro and receive a personalized quote, and a customer portal where pet owners manage policies, submit claims, and track reimbursements from any device.
Insurance has traditionally been viewed as boring, but these are products that touch every consumer across the country, and in some cases across the globe, and they have enormous financial impact on their lives. Having the opportunity to build a product from scratch that could potentially touch tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of loving pet owners, that’s really exciting.
ADAM KURZAWA, HEAD OF STRATEGIC GROWTH FOR NORTH AMERICA, INFINUM
Another challenge was building for both web and mobile without slowing the team down. Instead of building two apps from scratch, we wrapped the existing web app in a native shell using Capacitor, delivering a native mobile experience from the same codebase. Every improvement shipped to the web automatically reflects in the app for users. For an early-stage company, this was faster and more affordable.
Insurance that feels like care, not paperwork
Following Purpose-Driven Design, our proprietary framework for solving design challenges, we brought users into the conversation from the start. We interviewed pet owners across the full spectrum of the market and learned that most people buy pet insurance after being burned by a big, unexpected vet bill, so they arrive skeptical, overwhelmed by coverage options, and wary of fine print.
The solution was designed to address these pain points. The quote flow asks only what’s necessary to get to a price. Instead of pushing a single number, adoro offers plans tiered around the user’s budget, with recommendations tailored to each pet’s age and breed, and every detail open to customization, with pricing refreshing in real time. Coverage and pricing stay transparent throughout, with nothing hidden until after enrollment.
Claims, the industry’s biggest frustration, take just a few clicks: select the pet, describe what happened, snap a photo of the invoice, and submit. And the entire experience meets WCAG 2.2 accessibility standards, so no pet owner is left behind.
Built to grow with founders’ ambition
After the initial launch and months of feature evolution, we prepared adoro for what’s ahead. Through a structured knowledge transfer, we onboarded adoro’s engineering team and internal project manager, giving them everything they needed to confidently take the solution forward.
Adoro plans to expand into more states, which brings another layer of complexity: state-by-state regulatory differences. We built the solution with those differences in mind from the start, so the platform is ready to adapt as adoro enters new markets. We’re proud of what we built together, but even more excited to see where they take it next.
For a deeper look at the project, read the full case study.
Have a big idea of your own? We’d love to hear more about it. We can help take it from a napkin sketch into the hands of users worldwide.