Riding Unicorns: Venture Capital | Entrepreneurship | Technology Nicolò Frisiani, Co-Founder & CEO at Lupa, on Building the AI Operating System for Vets, Enterprise Sales, and Scaling at Speed
Mar 4, 2026
Nicolò Frisiani, Co-founder and CEO of Lupa — building an enterprise AI operating system for veterinary clinics and backed by $25M+ in funding. He recounts pivoting from a consumer app to a clinic OS, using note-taking as the wedge, and learning veterinary workflows firsthand. He also discusses selling into PE-backed clinic groups, rapid fundraises driven by momentum, and the challenges of scaling enterprise SaaS.
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Pivot From Pet App To Clinic OS
- Lupa began as a consumer-facing mobile app for pet owners but quickly pivoted to build a full clinic operating system.
- After launching the app they found clinics were full post-COVID and valued operational fixes, so they broadened into a unified OS and later used note-taking as a wedge.
Founder Worked As Receptionist For A Month
- To learn real clinic workflows the founding team did hands-on research, including sending a co-founder to work as a receptionist for about a month.
- That month of unpaid leave exposed day-to-day pain points and directly shaped their product priorities.
Design For Enterprise Data First
- Selling into PE-backed multi-site groups adds an extra approval layer and requires enterprise features like centralized data and analytics.
- Lupa flipped architecture so the database lives at enterprise level, enabling partitioning, configuration and better analytics across sites.