Board Member & Investor
Why I Joined Zoom Room
A private equity investor who reviewed hundreds of concepts and found one with no competitors.
About Anthony Polazzi
Anthony Polazzi is a senior executive with over 25 years of experience in acquiring and advising businesses across private equity and leveraged finance. Throughout his career, Anthony has reviewed hundreds of transactions and executed more than 50 acquisitions, with continuous post-closing involvement in strategic planning, process improvement, financial reporting, and recruiting top executives. His breadth of experience spans the restaurant, retail, and consumer products industries. Anthony joined the Zoom Room board in 2017 and is also a multi-unit Zoom Room franchisee, making him one of the company's most deeply invested partners. Outside of work, Anthony spends most of his time helping raise his four children and his Labrador, Piper.
By Anthony Polazzi, Board Member
On behalf of my investors, I review hundreds of local and emerging concepts that want to grow into national brands. The vast majority of them have a decent product and a decent pitch. Very few of them have true differentiation from their competitors.
Zoom Room was different. It was the only concept I had ever reviewed that did not have a single regional or national competitor operating its economic model.
Let me say that again, because in 25 years of evaluating businesses, I have never been able to say it about anything else: there is no one doing what Zoom Room does at any meaningful scale. Not in dog training. Not in pet services broadly. The competitive set is fragmented mom-and-pop trainers and big-box pet retailers who treat training as an afterthought. Neither of those models produces what Zoom Room produces.
That alone would have been enough to get my attention. But what kept it was the unit economics.
The Model
When I first looked at Zoom Room's numbers, the thing that stood out was customer loyalty. I have evaluated businesses across restaurants, retail, fitness, and consumer services. Zoom Room's customer retention and lifetime value are among the highest I have ever seen in any category — on par with brands like Apple or Starbucks. The ratio of what a customer spends over their lifetime to what it costs to acquire them is extraordinary, and in the top quartile it is almost unheard of. Most franchise models would be ecstatic with a fraction of those returns.
That kind of loyalty does not happen by accident. It happens because the product delivers a genuine emotional payoff every single time someone walks through the door. Zoom Room's clients do not come once and leave. They come back week after week, year after year, because the experience is designed to make them feel successful. Their dog listens. Their dog improves. They feel like a better dog owner. That feeling is the product — and it is remarkably difficult for anyone to replicate.
The group class format is what makes the economics work at scale. Unlike traditional one-on-one dog training, where revenue is capped by the number of hours a trainer can work, Zoom Room runs group classes where the trainer's cost is fixed and each additional dog fills existing capacity. It is a one-to-many model with natural operating leverage. As a class fills, the margin expands meaningfully — without adding a dollar of overhead.
The Founder
I have backed a lot of founders. The ones who build enduring businesses share a few traits: they are obsessive about the details, they think in systems rather than transactions, and they are willing to be patient. Mark Van Wye is all of those things.
Mark's vision was not to build a dog training company. It was to build the infrastructure for modern dog ownership. He saw that what people truly want is a socialized dog — a dog that is calm, confident, and welcome in real life — and he engineered an entire system to deliver that outcome. The curriculum, the pricing, the class structure, the trainer onboarding, the retail attachment, the repeat-visit design — every piece of the model is deliberate. The #1 bestselling dog training book in America for five years running did not happen by accident either. Mark understands both the subject matter and how to teach it at scale through other people, which is the essential skill of any franchisor.
When I see a founder who has spent nearly two decades refining a model until it works with a small number of staff who do not need prior training experience, I pay attention. When the model also produces strong margins, consistent same-store sales growth well above the industry benchmark, and customer retention metrics that rival the best subscription businesses in any category, I invest.
Why I Put My Own Capital In
Most board members advise from a distance. I did not want to do that with Zoom Room. I became a multi-unit franchisee because I wanted to see the model from the inside — as an operator, not just an investor. And what I found confirmed everything the data suggested.
The buildout is efficient. The operations are lean. The customers are genuine advocates. The recurring revenue profile is real, not theoretical. Piper, my Lab, has been through more Zoom Room classes than I can count, and she is living proof that the product works — she is calm, confident, and welcome everywhere we go.
Where We Are Now
In the past year, Zoom Room has assembled a leadership team that would be unusual for a company ten times its size. The former CEO of Petco is our incoming chairman. Our CFO ran strategy at Petco and led a major IPO at HP. Our COO built and operated Orangetheory studios for decades. Our Chief Growth Officer designed experiential retail for Starbucks and Whole Foods.
That caliber of talent joining a franchise system at this stage tells you everything about where this is headed. In private equity, we have a simple heuristic: follow the operators. When people who have already been successful at massive scale choose to be here, the signal is clear.
Zoom Room is on a path to national scale. There are no national competitors. The unit economics are proven. The team is in place. And the category — socialization for dogs — is still wide open.
I have looked at hundreds of franchise opportunities in my career. Zoom Room is the one I chose to build my own portfolio around. That is the strongest endorsement I can give.