Whisker
Whisker: Turning a Robot App Into a Pet-Centered Experience
When I joined Whisker, the app was essentially a glorified remote control for the robots. You could start a clean cycle, adjust settings, and… that was about it. But from the beginning, I had a hunch: people don’t actually care about their robots — they care about their cats.
To prove (or disprove) that hunch, I dug into user research, app analytics, and the robot’s button-press logs. The pattern was unmistakable: engagement was heavily skewed toward the robot itself, not the app. Users weren’t looking for more ways to control hardware — they wanted deeper insights into their cat’s behavior, health, and routines.
With that in mind, I began shaping a new product strategy. The only problem? The existing app framework wasn’t built to support anything close to what this strategy required. It simply couldn’t scale.
So I created a presentation for the executive leadership team and product management. To illustrate the challenge, I borrowed a clip from MythBusters — the infamous “you can’t fit 10 pounds of… stuff… into a 5-pound bag.” For Whisker, that “stuff” was data. I chopped the video, rewrote the voiceover, and delivered a (slightly cheeky) reminder that our future depended on building a scalable system instead of trying to cram insights into an app never designed for them.
There was definitely some pressure in the room — big change, big investment, big questions about ROI. So I showed the data behind the strategy. Once leadership saw the numbers, things started to click. I followed with a vision video showing how the strategy would work, and that’s when the lightbulbs went on. The team green-lit the direction.
That combination — data, storytelling, and a little humor — aligned everyone and set us on a new path.
A New Chapter: From Robotics to Real Pet Insights
This shift marked a new chapter in Whisker’s story. Robots are still important, but they’ve moved to the passenger seat. The spotlight is now on the cats.
The new strategy focuses on turning raw, unstructured behavior data into meaningful insights: changes in frequency, timing, duration, weight, and even the “type” of output from bathroom visits. By pairing this with input-based signals, we could start identifying patterns, anomalies, and early indicators of potential health issues.
We’re still in the early stages, but even with today’s capabilities, users have already shared how Whisker products helped them detect emerging health concerns. Those stories validate the direction — and they show just how much impact this approach can have.
Our newest Pro model pushes this even further. With two cameras — one outside the litter box and one inside — and Whisker’s custom cat-detection LLM (which recognizes individual cats with high certainty from minimal embeddings), owners can literally see and understand their cats’ lives in a new way.
This is just the beginning. And I’m proud to help shape a future where cat owners can make better decisions, catch issues earlier, and feel even more connected to their pets — one happy purr at a time.
