Every month we feature members from the Everything Marketplaces community to help highlight their story, marketplace journey, and share more about what's ahead. In this member feature we highlight Ana Malhotra, who's the Co-founder & CEO of Rome. Rome is a very early, but exciting marketplace that’s building the future of yard-sharing for dogs.
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So what’s your background briefly and what led to the idea for starting Rome?

I was working at AWS as a Security Solutions Architect in downtown-ish Seattle with Sahil (then-boyfriend, now-husband). We lived in a high-rise apartment with our reactive dog and a dog run that was just big enough for dogs to do their business. A reactive dog is one that over-reacts, usually by barking or lunging, to certain triggers. In our dog’s case, he over-reacted to other dogs, which made going to the dog run in our apartment difficult and going to dog parks for off-leash play impossible.
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We tried a bunch of different alternatives to dog parks: tennis courts, baseball fields, and even asking our friends to give us access to their apartment rooftop. We just wanted to give our dog a safe space to run around without a leash on and without other dogs around. However, nothing was working consistently, so we decided to solve the problem ourselves in the form of a yard-sharing app that’s built for dogs and we named it after our dog– Rome.

What were some of the first steps you took to start Rome? What were some of the biggest challenges you faced?‍‍‍

The first thing we did was incorporate. We knew we didn’t have to immediately, but it gave us a sense of commitment and accountability. Not everyone is in a position to dish out that kind of money for just an idea, but we were fortunate enough to be able to, so we did!
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One of the earliest challenges we faced once we started the marketplace was building out our supply (it’s still difficult!), which I speak on more in a later question.
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What’s the problem that you’re solving for and how has building Rome as a marketplace proven to be a great solution?‍

A recent article came out on The Seattle Times, titled “Dogs in Seattle parks lead to complaints; owners say there’s nowhere to go” does one of the best jobs of explaining the problem. In short: the number of dog parents that live in apartments with dogs is rising and public dog parks are not meeting their needs– so where do they go for safe (and legal!) off-leash exercise and play? 
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Rome as a marketplace is the right solution because it allows us to 1/ scale and 2/ provide variety in our supply. A brick-and-mortar solution that requires us to lease out land for private play sessions requires a tremendous amount of up-front capital, especially in a city like Seattle. More importantly, it doesn’t scale to meet the high demand. Next, working with both individuals with backyards / farmland as well as businesses that have underutilized space gives dog parents a wide variety of spaces to choose from. 
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How have you approached solving the initial cold start problem, start creating transactions, and get the flywheel spinning for Rome?‍

The first thing we did was try to build out our supply. This was our hard side, and we weren’t worried about our demand side because we knew it would come fast.

We leaned into our personal network in Seattle for the supply, which wasn’t robust, given our personal network was made up of millennials and genZ that lived in apartments. However, we scraped up just enough to provide social proof to other potential customers.

Once a yard is onboarded, we build out demand within a 1-mile radius of that yard. Then, we find more yards within that neighborhood and keep going until we’ve built out the entire neighborhood (which is our atomic network).
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What’s been the biggest learning so far?

Don’t let "we’re too early" or "we’re too small" hold you back from taking the next step. The only person thinking that is you. I learned this lesson when I was too scared to approach my first business host. Turned out, they were the easiest customer to sell to!
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How big does Rome get and what’s needed to get there?

I believe Rome will become the next-gen of urban pet care and yard-sharing is just the beginning. When we look at pet care as a whole, there’s a wide variety of un-met needs. However, the physiological need for exercise is a foundation for the well-being of dogs, so that’s where we’re starting. I can’t wait to be playing in this $100B+ market.
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What’s exciting and ahead for Rome that you can share with us?

We have some really exciting partnerships coming up with a big name in the pet space! The first collaboration will be launching mid-February, and you should be seeing a lot more of the partnership throughout the year, including new city launches!

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Connect with Ana in the Everything Marketplaces community. ‍‍