When Meggie Williams and her husband Sebastian weren’t satisfied with Charlotte’s pet care options, settling wasn’t an option.

Williams and her husband started The Waggle Co. in 2016 with the hope of bringing “white glove service” to the Queen City.

“We live uptown, and we realized our pets are our family,” Williams said. “So we were looking for a dog walking service we could trust that was going to be able to take care of our pets almost as well as we do, and we could not find an option that really thrilled us.”

At the time, Williams was the southeast regional manager for Move Loot Inc., and her husband was the director of operations for Charlotte-based startup YoDish. Williams said they were looking for a pet care service when they moved to Charlotte for their two goldendoodles, Stinson and Khumbu.

“We know what it’s like,” Williams said. “We’re obsessed with our dogs; they’re our family … We really identify and empathize with pet owners who feel like they have a lot of things to juggle.”

What sets the Waggle Co. apart?

Waggle prides itself on its employees, its process and its technology.

“Everything that we do is about quality,” Williams said.

She said the company’s employees go through a five-step recruiting and training program before they are hired. All employees are background checked and have experience in pet care.

One of the biggest differences between Waggle and other pet care companies is that Waggle’s 54 dog walkers are W-2 employees.

“We do that because we want to make an investment in our team, so that we can make an investment in the quality of service that we deliver to our clients,” Williams said.

In addition to the 54 dog walkers, the company has six office workers that provide on-call support for clients and dog walkers.

The company offers free, same-day scheduling, and a dog walker can make a visit within an hour.

Waggle provides real-time updates for clients that include text messages, reports, GPS-tracked walks, photos and visit summaries.

“At the end of every visit, the client has this peace of mind right away,” Williams said. “They know exactly what happened; they know when we got there, when we left, everything we did.”

Williams said this type of transparency underlies the company’s service.

“We’re here to earn our clients’ trust.”

CEO Williams and her husband, the company’s chief operating officer, graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill in 2010. Williams studied economics and international studies while Sebastian studied economics and public policy.

They met on Chapel Hill’s Stinson Street, inspiring the name for their dog years later.

After graduating, Williams and her future husband moved to New York City. She worked as a consultant for IBM; he worked as an analyst for management consulting company Accenture before becoming an IBM consultant in 2012.

Williams said she learned formative business skills at IBM.

“All of the things that I think I learned from a strategy consulting background have really helped us in this role,” she said. “How to think differently, how to run a healthy business, how to understand value, and that’s something that … I think started with my learning in a corporate setting, and then it’s been built on from that.”

The couple soon married, but instead of returning to the fast-paced, corporate world of New York City, they saved enough money to take a break from their jobs and spend nine months traveling the world.

Williams said the travel experience taught her a lot about herself and made her a more productive person. She said the trip also taught her and Sebastian how to empathize and connect with people.

“We try to take that back, and from a client standpoint, from our team, from our back-office team members, to our dogs — everybody has a story,” she said. “So how do we learn that story, and how do we take that story and help them have the lifestyle and the lives they want to have?”

After traveling, the pair settled in Charlotte and became immersed in the city’s startup scene before quitting their jobs to start Waggle.

Williams said the company has made over 40,000 pet-sitting visits and now has over 800 clients.

The company’s success in Charlotte, Williams said, can be attributed to the city’s pet-friendliness.

“People want to do what’s right for their pets,” she said. “And people want to make sure their pets are happy and healthy.”

Looking forward and outward

Two years after founding the company, Williams is hoping to expand the company beyond Charlotte.

While the company has no timeline for expansion, it hopes to expand regionally and then nationally one day.

“We’re really excited to take Waggle Co. into new cities,” Williams said.

In February, The Waggle Co. raised $750,000 in a seed round. Williams said the funding, led by Charlotte Angel Fund, will go toward resources to improve the company.

In a statement announcing the funding, Greg Brown, Charlotte Angel Fund’s administrator, said the fund is pleased to help the company expand.

“Waggle has done a great job of developing a model that brings a level of service its customers both trust and depend upon in the Charlotte area,” Brown said.

One improvement the company hopes to make is the development of a Waggle Co. mobile app to make client communication and transparency easier.

“I think this hyper-focus on delivering a quality service in a way that makes pet-owners’ lives easier, that’s why we’re here,” Williams said. “And that’s what we’re doing, and people really appreciate that, and they want that.”