{"id":433164,"date":"2026-10-20T17:04:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-20T17:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/433164\/"},"modified":"2026-10-20T17:04:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T17:04:12","slug":"anna-skaya-built-a-pet-genetics-company-now-shes-funding-pet-startups-and-creating-something-new-this-time-in-miami","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/433164\/","title":{"rendered":"Anna Skaya built a pet genetics company. Now she’s funding pet startups and creating something new, this time in Miami.\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anna Skaya is in builder mode again, and her new company started much like her first successful venture: with a personal problem she wanted to solve.<\/p>\n

In 2016, a spark of curiosity about the genetics of her own cats led Skaya [pictured above] to launch Basepaws, a cat DNA-testing startup she\u2019d eventually sell to animal-health giant Zoetis in a nearly nine-figure exit.<\/p>\n

Now, it\u2019s her eyes. After a trip to Europe last year left her hooked on eye drops she couldn\u2019t find back home in Miami, Skaya spent weeks hunting for anything comparable, only to find \u201cwhite, plasticky bottles\u201d with no design or branding. Most formulas she tried had preservatives and stung her eyes. So she created Moisture Oyster, lubricating eye drops for daily use.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea was born out of my personal need and the recognition that it\u2019s a massive market,\u201d Skaya told Refresh Miami. \u201cWe do all this stuff for our hair, our skin, but not for our eyes. And we spend so much time in front of screens, which dries out our eyes. There\u2019s a real need.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

She negotiated with the manufacturer in the Netherlands to ship the product to the US. Two months after launch, sales have outpaced where Basepaws stood at the same point, she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Skaya said she wants to transform eye drops \u2014 a boring and unglamorous product \u2014 into a lifestyle and personal care necessity. \u201cNo one has disrupted this segment,\u201d Skaya said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Moisture Oyster\u2019s cute, mermaid-inspired aesthetic is a key part of that strategy. The teal and pink box comes in a sealed pouch with an iridescent central panel, giving it the look of a product that belongs on a Sephora shelf. The online store<\/a> features a redhead model reclining on a giant shell, covered in pearls.<\/p>\n

By focusing on a personal problem, a not-so-obvious segment with an unmet need, early commercial signal and a clear path to acquisition, Skaya is applying her own investor screening test to Moisture Oyster.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That founder-first perspective naturally informs her work on the other side of the cap table.<\/p>\n

From founder to funder<\/p>\n

After selling Basepaws to Zoetis, Skaya spent time searching for her next move. While exploring new concepts, she realized her heart was still in pet care, and that the fastest way to drive real innovation in the sector was to back other founders building in it.<\/p>\n

As general partner at Ani.VC<\/a>, a $35 million Miami-based fund launched in 2024 to invest in early-stage pet companies, Skaya is betting on the enormous potential for longevity innovation and for humanizing pet care. In the US alone, people are expected to spend $165 billion<\/a> on pets this year, with 95 million households having at least one pet.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThink about your favorite products for humans, you can probably make the same thing for pets,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2713<\/p>\n

Check your inbox for a confirmation email.<\/p>\n

Spotting those opportunities, and having the stamina to back them, comes from a career built on high-stakes execution.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ukraine-born Skaya is no stranger to extreme hustle. Early in her career she survived working for the Samwer brothers, German entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, founders of tech incubator Rocket Internet, infamous for cloning US business models like eBay and Groupon through ruthless business practices. By 25, Skaya was running Groupon in Russia. She went on to build two more ventures: Breakup Buddy, a social network of women bonding over breakups, and ad-tech company VisualDNA, which she ran in Russia from 2012 to 2015.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She returned to the US, enrolled in Singularity University and in 2016, a year she described as \u201cthe heyday of personal genetics,\u201d a talk by 23andMe founder Anne Wojcicki triggered a lightbulb moment. While recounting her investment in dog DNA company Embark Veterinary, Wojcicki said \u201csomeone should start a company and call it 23andMeow for all the cat people here,\u201d according to Skaya.<\/p>\n

\u201cI went home and bought the 23andMeow.com domain, and that\u2019s how the Basepaws story began,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Non-stop fundraising<\/p>\n

Over six years Skaya built the company as a solo founder, researching genetics, science and everything about the pet industry, and knocking on dozens of doors looking for investors.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody took cats very seriously. I never had funding rounds. I had six years of continuous fundraising. It never stopped, I just never had enough money. I was always trying to make more,\u201d she said. She applied four times to Y Combinator without success, and was rejected by Shark Tank the first time around.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But being dismissed repeatedly was a huge driver for her, she said. And her persistence and resistance, honed as a young cross-country athlete, paid off in a big way, earning her a $250,000 Shark Tank investment in 2019 that helped boost sales by over 16 times in a year and a half. It also put Basepaws on the road to a successful exit in 2022.<\/p>\n

It turned out a cat DNA test company wasn\u2019t just a cute idea. It became one of the largest feline DNA databases in the world. \u201cThat\u2019s really why Zoetis bought us,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Closing Pet Care\u2019s Funding Gap<\/p>\n

The exit revealed a glaring gap in the pet industry. In Silicon Valley, successful tech founders routinely recycle their capital and hard-won playbook back into the ecosystem. In pet care, Skaya noticed that flywheel barely existed: most founders who cashed out simply left the space. When an early Basepaws investor suggested they team up to fix that, Ani.VC was born.<\/p>\n

Today, Skaya uses that fund to search for founders with the same relentless drive she brought to Basepaws. Ani.VC has already backed 10 startups across animal health, pet tech, and consumer brands, writing pre-seed and seed checks ranging from $250,000 to $500,000.<\/p>\n

Though she moved to Miami in 2021 on a whim after years in Los Angeles, Skaya says she found more than just a home. She sees Miami as the ideal launchpad for the next wave of pettech and consumer innovation: a city with growing capital flow and an appetite for fresh ideas.<\/p>\n

Between Ani.VC and Moisture Oyster, Skaya isn\u2019t just funding startups; she\u2019s helping anchor a new tech vertical in South Florida. For a founder who spent years knocking on closed doors, building the ecosystem she once wished for feels like the ultimate full-circle moment.<\/p>\n

HEAR MORE from Anna Skaya on a recent episode of The #MiamiTech Pod: <\/p>\n

READ MORE IN REFRESH MIAMI:<\/p>\n

\"Adriana<\/a> <\/p>\n

Adriana Brasileiro is a Pulitzer Prize\u2013winning journalist and communications strategist based in Miami. She has reported and edited for Thomson Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and the Miami Herald, covering business, technology, climate and Latin America. A former communications leader at Meta, she is especially interested in South Florida\u2019s startup ecosystem, artificial intelligence and the people using innovation to solve real-world problems. Send pitches to abrasileiromia@gmail.com.<\/p>\n

\"Adriana<\/a>Latest posts by Adriana Brasileiro (see all<\/a>) \t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anna Skaya is in builder mode again, and her new company started much like her first successful venture:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":433165,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[225,227,226],"class_list":["post-433164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-hialeah","tag-hialeah","tag-hialeah-headlines","tag-hialeah-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/433165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}