Ken Ehrman had spent 25 years putting tracking technology on forklifts, trailers, and rental cars when his niece’s dog slipped past an invisible fence and was killed by a car. That loss convinced him the invisible fence was the last wired product left in the home, and that GPS had finally become accurate enough to replace it, so he built Halo Collar, the GPS dog fence he calls the iPhone for dogs.

Dave Knox: I want to start with the origin story of what led to Halo. You spent decades in the world of the Internet of Things, using it to track industrial forklifts, trailers, and rental cars. Walk me through the moment when you realized the highest value asset you could put that technology into was actually a dog collar.

Ken Ehrman: I was the CEO and founder of a technology company tracking high value assets like forklifts, rental cars, and trailers. But I also had a dog with an invisible fence, and I used it every day, so the idea was right under my nose. Then my niece’s dog got out of their invisible fence and was run over by a car and killed. That tragedy sparked the light bulb moment. I realized the invisible fence is the last wired product out there, and I knew GPS was now accurate enough for things like autonomous cars and drones. With Avis, we were telling them exactly what space number a car was parked in. It took that for me to realize just how big the opportunity was. That is what started Halo.

Knox: When you think about that origin story, how many dogs are lost every year or hit by cars?

Ehrman: Once this happened, I started doing the research, which is the first thing any entrepreneur does. I saw that 10 million pets are lost every year, and over a million dogs are hit by a car. I was floored. I had lost my own dog for a day once before, and it was a nightmare, but I didn’t know how big the problem was. Then I started thinking about it from a business standpoint. The invisible fence is something you can only buy by having someone come to your house, almost like hiring a gardener or a painter. I looked at how many times people were searching invisible fence on Google, and it was 500,000 times a month. Between the data on how many dogs are lost and hit by a car, and the demand I knew existed, because you are not searching that term unless you are looking to buy one, it seemed like a huge opportunity to use technology for good.

Knox: You had this amazing background from your time in IoT. What led you to jump into a consumer product, a different beast than the technology world you had experience in?

Ehrman: It was a very different world. In my old company, you had to have salespeople. When you are selling business to business, the standard way of operating is a sales force where each salesperson has a quota. If you want to do $100 million in sales and each rep has a $2 million quota, you need 50 people. That assumes they all hit their number, which they don’t, so you really need more like 75 people, plus the whole management and training infrastructure, the annual meetings, all of it. The effort that goes into building and retaining a quality sales force is so significant that when I thought about interrupting the existing buying process for the invisible fence, I realized this was a much better company on paper, because we didn’t need that huge infrastructure.

Building The iPhone For Dogs

Knox: Walk me through the early days. You built both a hardware product and a software subscription. How did that evolve from the first version of Halo to the fifth generation you are on today?

Ehrman: We had the invisible fence as our starting mindset. We knew we needed to be more effective than the invisible fence, and that was our number one concern. So we did not spare any expense on the first Halo to make sure it was reliable. We took the best GPS, cellular, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth technology and the best processor, because we knew the invisible fence cost $3,500. The goal was to make sure every part of the customer experience was world class. That meant you got a nice piece of hardware, almost like a cell phone, but there was also a monthly subscription for cellular communication. When your dog is not in Bluetooth or Wi-Fi range, you want to know where they are at all times, so every Halo Collar since the first one came with unlimited cellular. Early on we did not even charge a subscription, because as entrepreneurs we couldn’t figure out how to bill for it or control whether the collar functioned based on payment. Building that entire infrastructure took us almost two years. We essentially created the iPhone for dogs, and in many ways the technology is more advanced, especially on the GPS side. What we have learned in every generation, like the connected-fitness companies pairing hardware with a subscription , is how to make it work in all the different environments we see, whether that is the 2,000 different Wi-Fi systems customers have or every cellular network. Unlike your cell phone, it is not just AT&T or Verizon, it literally roams on every network. On top of that, the dog environment is very tough for something like an iPhone, so it had to be super rugged. You could have two dogs where one is biting the device on the other. A lot has been learned over the years, and it has all been about reliability and performance in one of the most difficult environments you can imagine.

Knox: Over the years, as you went from Halo Collar 1 to Halo Collar 5, the hardware itself changed. Miniaturization lets the device get smaller. What have you learned, and what has it allowed you to do for pricing?

Ehrman: A lot. Even the battery life: the Halo Collar 1 originally had only a 12-hour battery, and now we are up to over 50 hours with the Halo Collar 5. The four and five form factors are roughly 30% smaller than the one, two, and three, which all sat in the same enclosure, but with ever-improving hardware. The biggest factor in cost reduction, believe it or not, has been warranty performance. At the beginning the environment was really difficult, and 20% of the collars were coming back, failing because dogs were biting them or they were breaking in the environment. When you are shipping that many units and 20% come back, that is a huge number. So the expense savings really came from our ability to make a product where the return and RMA rates are now less than 1%. Like SharkNinja’s relentless product improvement , that reliability is a real cost lever. As a result, we have been able to lower the price, because we want to save as many dogs as possible, while still investing in R&D and everything else a business does.

Ninety Million Dogs, 600,000 Collars

Knox: Walk me through where the business is today. What has growth looked like over the last few years, and what are you expecting for 2026?

Ehrman: Growth has been both outstanding. Last year we did $100 million in sales. Our goal this year, and we are on track to meet or exceed it is 40% growth. Part of that is expansion beyond D2C into retail. We have been approached by the major pet retailers to be in their stores, and that is already beginning with PetSmart. This July we are in 25 stores. At the same time, we have sold roughly 600,000 collars since the beginning of Halo. That may sound like a big number, but there are 90 million dogs in the United States. To really make a dent in those lost and hit-by-car numbers, we are still at the very, very early stage.

Knox: Beyond your DTC business, what has the retail journey looked like, whether that is pet-exclusive online retailers or larger ones?

Ehrman: So far, Amazon has been the leader by a significant margin. We are on Chewy.com, Walmart.com, Petco.com, PetSmart.com and BestBuy.com, and we are moving into those physical stores. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses, but the bottom line is that if we are trying to interrupt the invisible fence purchase, most people are not searching for invisible fence on Chewy, because that is something you need someone to come install. What is great about Amazon is that anyone searching for a dog fence, GPS, or collar is going to find Halo now. We are doing roughly 30% of our sales on Amazon. Much like Bachan’s rise to the top of the platform , the magnitude of the opportunity is enormous. Amazon actually helps guide you to the right consumer.

Knox: Your move into physical retail is a big shift. Companies like Ka’Chava stayed direct-to-consumer for years before making a disciplined retail move . How are you thinking about that transition for Halo?

Ehrman: For us it is about interrupting the invisible fence purchase wherever the customer is. The physical stores matter because that is where a lot of pet owners still make decisions, and being on the shelf at a retailer like PetSmart puts us in front of people who might never have searched for us online. We are being deliberate about it, starting with 25 stores this July rather than trying to be everywhere at once.

The Compounding Math Of Recurring Revenue

Knox: One of the fascinating things about Halo is that you have the product and the subscription, so you have evolved into a razor-and-blade model. How do you think about pricing the hardware versus that recurring revenue?

Ehrman: The recurring revenue is something I never really experienced in my old company, so early on I was not as motivated as I probably should have been to make it happen. So I am very focused on keeping retention rates high, which means customers love the product. The rewards are massive if you achieve low return rates and high retention rates, and all of those are at all-time highs for us right now. Our two-year retention rates are in the 70% range, which is unbelievable for us, but we want it to be 100%. If you buy a fence for your dog, you should keep it for the life of the dog. That is something we will keep working on.

Why He Refused To Shock The Dog

Knox: Since day one you have positioned yourself against the invisible fence. But you took an interesting approach, because it is not just put this on and you are done. There is a real focus on training and methodology. What led you to that more nuanced approach?

Ehrman: Right away, I knew I wanted to do this but I did not want to shock the dog. That is an antiquated concept. So I asked who would be the best person to help us create a system that works as well as possible for dogs, and the only person I could think of was Cesar Millan, the Dog Whisperer. I asked everyone I knew if there was anyone else, and I had been an avid watcher of his show. It is amazing how much he understands dogs. Like Cole Hauser’s hands-on role at Free Rein rather than a name-only endorsement, Cesar was a true partner in the design. What he came up with is that when the dog gets close to the line, not at the line, they start getting preventions. It normally starts with a beep, and if they keep moving toward the fence it escalates to a vibration or whatever you want to add, until they stop or turn around.

Let me make a huge distinction. This is not a line they can cross. If it were a line they could cross, you would have to make it as powerful a shock as possible to deter them. This is more like a golf cart that beeps and makes you reverse until you get back to where you are allowed to be. When the dog nears the fence line, it beeps, it vibrates, and it can even add static, which is optional. It is not meant to hurt them, just to get their attention, and it continues until they stop and turn around. That is the fundamental difference between us and not only the wired invisible fence but every other GPS version, which just tried to replicate the line. We said the line is bad. My niece’s dog got past the line. So we continue giving preventions until the dog listens, which also means they can essentially train themselves. That approach, which we have a patent on, is critical to making sure dogs are successfully contained. To give you a number I am so proud of: in the month of June, Halo gave the beeping prevention 12 million times, and the dog stopped and turned around and did not leave the fence. Twelve million times in one month, Halo kept a dog from getting out. We can actually track how much of a difference we are making, and it is starting to make a dent in those numbers, at least for Halo users.

A Remote Hardware Company, On Purpose

Knox: As founder and CEO, you have made choices that went against the grain, from a fully remote culture despite being a hardware company, to how you thought about ownership versus stock options. Walk me through those choices and what they led to.

Ehrman: It is so against the grain that in almost every meeting I go to now, people tell me you cannot run a successful remote company, it is impossible. And I want to raise my hand. Our whole philosophy, and this was before COVID, back in March of 2018 when Halo started, was that we need the best in the world at every position. That was the simple but real approach. I knew we needed the best possible manufacturer, and I had been in this industry nearly 25 years, so I knew the company we had worked with on the Avis devices. They were experts in GPS, and yes, they were in Taiwan, so having all your R&D there was a little painful because I had to travel every few months. But they were the best people we could have had, and they were also doing the manufacturing, so you love having the designer and manufacturer together, because there is no finger pointing.

Cesar I already mentioned. For app development, the best people in our experience were from Belarus, believe it or not. They have since moved out, but we have about 45 engineers now living in Eastern Europe, developing Halo every single day. Then we added the best marketing people, and it did not matter where they were, because we were hiring seasoned professionals who were experts. Our CMO, for example, was the CMO of Equinox Fitness Clubs, so he knows subscriptions and world-class marketing. As for stock, it changed over time. At the very beginning, I made the people who wanted to get involved actually invest, so instead of giving them stock, they put up money and got stock as investors. The CEO of our app developer invested, the CEO of our Taiwanese manufacturer invested, our CMO invested, our COO invested. We asked the people who believed in the mission to put their money where their mouth is. Since then, as we have grown to almost 120 employees, our philosophy is that everyone should be an owner. I do not expect everyone to invest now, because the valuation keeps growing, but everyone gets stock grants every year so they are owners themselves.

Knox: Scaling is another area where founders sometimes move too early or too late. How did you know it was time to press forward, and what did scaling aggressively mean for you?

Ehrman: The aggressive scaling started when the RMA and return rates reached their all-time best numbers. Up until then it was really about raising money every year to get to the next level, technologically, in marketing, and in awareness, and that is what we did from our founding in 2018 until 2021. Every day I wanted to accelerate and do as much as we could, but the reality was we were not in a position to. We didn’t have the money, and I would have loved to run a Super Bowl ad back in 2020 to help with awareness, but we were not ready. Once the key metrics, like cost per acquisition, got to the lowest they have ever been, you accelerate. For me that was return rate, cancellation rate, and RMA rate, all very easy to measure. Like Article’s insistence on a real profit formula before scaling , those were the things we knew we had to get right, and since the launch of Halo 5 we have gotten those costs down as much as we can.

The Next Turn In Pet Tech

Knox: When you think about where pet tech is headed, what do you see as the next turn five years out?

Ehrman: It is interesting, because when you think pet tech, research tells us not many companies come to mind. Most people say Petco, PetSmart, or Chewy, and none of those are pet tech companies. So it is a huge white space for Halo to be, let’s call it, the iPhone for dogs. Beyond that, as it gets smaller and smarter, you can put it on cats, on all sorts of animals, and even on people, ultimately anyone who cannot use an iPhone. The brand has so much potential because the need is huge. All dogs need a fence. Five years from now I hope we are on a HaloCollar 6, maybe 7, and getting much closer to tens, if not fifties, of millions of dogs protected. They are like family members, but they do not understand that cars are dangerous, and they do not understand that if they run off to chase a deer or a squirrel they can end up somewhere they don’t recognize and be lost. This is happening in major numbers, so I hope that five years from now this is a problem of the past.