This Dog Poop DNA Company Makes Millions Testing Unscooped Poop скачать в хорошем качестве

This Dog Poop DNA Company Makes Millions Testing Unscooped Poop

PooPrints is like the "CSI" of doggy doo. » Subscribe to CNBC Make It.: http://cnb.cx/2kxl2rf Tom Boyd is 80 years old. He loves to play golf. He loves to make money. "I've had 17 businesses, and I never had one that didn't make money." His latest money-making endeavor tests dog poop left unscooped in public spaces. Using DNA, Boyd hunts down the dog's owner. His detective work will bring in up to $7 million in revenues this year. Boyd proves that entrepreneurs have a nose for profits, and they let that nose lead them wherever the profits are, no matter how smelly the destination. He's spent a lifetime starting and selling businesses. Thirteen years ago Boyd sold his last company and retired. "I made it a week, and I told my wife, 'I can't do this.'" He returned home to Knoxville, Tennessee, "and sort of passed the word around that I'd buy anything that walked and talked, if it was a business." Soon, a woman approached him about her medical research enterprise. "I said, 'I'll buy your company.'" The company Boyd bought was developing a blood test to predict early stage colon cancer. However, it presented an unacceptable problem. "In a research company, all you do is spend money," he says, "and I had never been at a company that didn't make money." So he started looking for opportunities to use the company's technology, including a DNA testing lab, to create a revenue stream on the side. He looked beyond humans to pets. Boyd created Biopet in 2008, a company which could confirm a dog's parentage using DNA, and also confirm its breed. The first product was no problem, but confirming a dog's breed was problematic. The DNA test did not look at enough markers to be 100 percent accurate. Then one day Chesleigh Fields, the lab's 35-year-old chief scientist with a master's degree in forensic DNA and serology, had an idea: Why not use DNA to figure out which dogs (and dog owners) left pet poop unscooped? She could use her background in forensics to bring awareness to a problem recognized globally as a health hazard. "You take an unknown, and you match it to a known," she says. Dog feces attract rats. She could create the CSI of dog doo! Boyd liked the idea and told his team to research the potential market. They discovered 40 percent of dog owners do not pick up after their pets. "For several years it's been ranked as the number one problem the [property] manager has," says Boyd. "If you live in a high rise in New York, you've got 200 dogs. Forty percent don't pick up," says Boyd. "That's 80 dogs. They go twice a day. That's 160 [poops]." He did the math in a country of 70 million dogs and decided, "We have a big, big market here, now let's go all out for it." They would call their product PooPrints, a name Boyd's friend came up with while drinking beers on his back porch. Tom Boyd estimates he spent a couple of million dollars getting PooPrints up and running, and he started landing sales at apartment and condo complexes in 2011. First year revenues were only about $160,000. "I gave them a mandate in the early days that they had to get me one account in 30 states, and I was willing to lose $1 million to do that," says Boyd. The company actually landed deals in 48 states the first year. The PooPrints system is now in over 3,000 complexes. PooPrints' business model works like this. If you live in a building where the program has been established, participation is usually mandatory as part of a lease or condo agreement. A dog owner swabs the inside of his or her pet's cheek and mails the sample in to Biopet, where a DNA sample is taken and entered into the company's World Pet Registry for $40. If a property manager finds unwanted poop on the ground, the manager uses a special kit to take a sample, put it in a solution and mail it to Biopet to be tested against the registry. That costs another $70, money that can be recouped if a guilty dog is found and the owner fined. "Once that dog goes in [the registry], he can be recognized anywhere in the world," says Boyd. Read more about PooPrints here: https://cnb.cx/2RlKrW2 About CNBC Make It.: CNBC Make It. is a new section of CNBC dedicated to making you smarter about managing your business, career, and money. Connect with CNBC Make It. Online Get the latest updates: http://www.cnbc.com/make-it Find CNBC Make It. on Facebook: http://cnb.cx/LikeCNBCMakeIt Find CNBC Make It. on Twitter: http://cnb.cx/FollowCNBCMakeIt Find CNBC Make It. on Instagram: http://bit.ly/InstagramCNBCMakeIt Find CNBC Make It. on LinkedIn: https://cnb.cx/2OIdwqJ #CNBC #CNBCMakeIt This company brings in $7 million a year testing dog poop DNA to catch non-scoopers | CNBC Make It.