Natasha Ashton wanted more competition

Natasha Ashton had a suggestion that could make a founder’s investors sit a little straighter: bring in more competitors. Petplan, the North American pet insurance business she co-founded with her husband, Chris, needed Americans to understand a category that was still unfamiliar. A rival could take a customer. A rival could also help explain why the category existed. Ashton was willing to see both possibilities.

There is a photograph of the couple with their dog Monty against a yellow wall, surrounded by brightly colored, tree-like sculptures. It is a fair introduction to the business they built. The founders look approachable. The dog looks entirely at home. The room has declined to observe the usual insurance-office dress code.

Her work ran through that combination: a serious commercial undertaking presented in the language of people who liked their pets. Before the magazine, the pinboards and the partnerships, however, there was a place at Oxford that almost did not happen.

The library before the boardroom

Ashton entered St Edmund Hall in 1993 to study Modern Languages, specializing in Modern Greek. She later recalled nearly abandoning hope of going to Oxford before a telephone call suggested that a few places might remain at the college. She took the chance. The invitation came with a warning that the Hall was taking a chance on her, too.

In her account, that admission became a lasting obligation to make the opportunity count. The college also supplied a consequential introduction. She met Chris, who studied Geography, in the library. They later married at the Hall. She remembered the small irony that their wedding was the first occasion on which they had both been in its chapel together. The library, evidently, had done the preliminary work.

By 2001, the couple had moved from Britain to begin MBAs at Wharton in Philadelphia. Ashton’s earlier working life had included a Greek manufacturing company, an IT recruitment business and a small import venture in the UK. Insurance was another turn in a career that had already crossed languages, countries and kinds of work.

Their business idea would be developed in an unusually useful setting. A university could provide expertise, classmates and people willing to question a plan before the plan became an expensive commitment. Ashton used that setting. The couple’s eventual company carried relationships formed during those years into its working life.

A prize is a beginning

In 2003, Ashton, Chris and classmates Laura Bennett and Alex Krooglik won the Wharton Business Plan Competition with PAWS, a pet insurance concept. The finalists had been selected from 151 teams. First place brought a $20,000 prize. For a student venture, those were tangible reasons to feel encouraged.

The team did not remain one company. The Ashtons went on to build Petplan in Philadelphia; Bennett and Krooglik founded Embrace in Cleveland. One winning plan had helped produce two competing businesses. The separation also meant that the Ashtons had to take on responsibilities their former teammates had handled.

Looking back in 2008, Natasha acknowledged how optimistic the timetable had been: “We thought we’d be up and running within six months.” A competition could reward a convincing proposal. Getting investors and an insurer behind an operating business demanded further persuasion. The distinction mattered every time another meeting ended without everything in place.

Petplan USA launched commercially in 2006. Getting there involved securing an underwriter and licensing across all 50 states. The Ashtons also approached the established British Petplan business about partnering in the American market. Their educational credentials helped open doors; the doors still had to lead somewhere.

Ashton later described two years of financing the venture through credit cards. It is an uncomfortable detail in an otherwise tidy entrepreneurial biography. A prize has a ceremony and a photograph. Borrowing to keep going has a statement arriving through the post.

Inviting the rivals in

Once the business could sell, it had to find an audience that understood what was being sold. Ashton and Chris had come from a country where pet insurance was more familiar. Their American venture faced the prior task of making the service intelligible. A customer needed a reason to consider the category before comparing brands within it.

That explains her unusual appetite for competition. She saw other businesses as contributors to public awareness, particularly across a country as large as the United States. Her 2015 explanation treated public awareness as a reason to welcome more companies into the market.

“Competition is good because it generates awareness, especially in a country this vast.”

Natasha Ashton, 2015

The argument leaves room for commercial rivalry. Petplan still needed a recognizable offering and a reason for people to choose it. But obscurity was a shared obstacle. An industry with several companies explaining itself might reach people that one company could struggle to reach alone.

Her old teammates’ company makes the point particularly interesting. Embrace was both a competitor and another venture emerging from the same Wharton plan. The original collaboration had ended; the broader work of introducing Americans to pet insurance continued through more than one organization.

Ashton’s position changes the way the marketing that followed should be read. Its job included attracting attention to Petplan, certainly. It also had to give the audience a comfortable way into a subject they might otherwise ignore. For that, the company found formats with more personality than a policy document.

A magazine, a pinboard, a personality

Petplan launched a print magazine called fetch! Publishing gave the business room for material beyond a sales pitch. A magazine could be encountered, read and kept. It allowed the company to speak through an editorial product while building familiarity with its name. An insurer had given itself a reason to appear on a reader’s coffee table.

Ashton’s approach to experiments was practical. She favored trying small initiatives, stopping quickly when they failed and putting more resources into the ones that worked. The magazine sat within that broader willingness to test ways of reaching people. A marketing budget could disappear remarkably politely if every persuasive vendor received the money they requested.

Pinterest offered a different kind of publication. Petplan’s boards showed its team, pets and office, alongside material for animal lovers. Board names included Breed All About It and Tails of the Unexpected. The tone made sense for a business whose customers already had a subject they enjoyed looking at.

The campaign’s entry in the sixth annual Shorty Awards credited Ashton along with the creative, communications and interactive marketing team. It reported an 87 percent increase in new site traffic, a 35 percent increase in page views and a 12.5 percent increase in insurance quote requests in the following quarter. These were the team’s historical campaign results, rather than a prediction for anyone else’s pinboard.

Her Pinterest strategy sought to engage pet owners visually before asking them to consider an insurance message. The sequence is revealing. The animals supplied an immediate connection. The service entered a conversation the audience had already chosen to join.

Ashton enjoyed making things and working with data. She regarded a brand’s visual appearance as a competitive advantage. The pinboards brought those interests together: something people wanted to see, followed by a way to examine what they did next.

When two people become a company

Petplan reached No. 123 on the Inc. 500 in 2011. By 2013, it had topped $50 million in revenue and employed more than 100 people. The company the Ashtons had once financed themselves now required a larger organization to deliver its promises.

By 2012, Natasha was discussing the need to delegate as the business expanded. The founders could no longer be involved in every part of the operation. Internal discussion boards offered a way for employees to contribute ideas and keep information moving. Listening had to become part of the company’s arrangements, rather than depend on two people being everywhere.

The office also gave prospective employees a reasonably clear preview of its personality. Bright colors, animal figures and visiting pets formed part of the environment. Affection for animals mattered in hiring. Someone accepting a job there was joining a workplace with an unusually literal interpretation of company culture.

The same playfulness reached the executive titles. Chris used Left Paw; Natasha used Right Paw. In 2014, the company announced a marketing agreement with AARP after years of negotiation. The contrast is pleasing: paw-related job titles on one side, a large national membership organization on the other. The jokes coexisted with patient commercial work.

Recognition followed, including the couple’s 2013 EY Entrepreneur of the Year award in Greater Philadelphia and Ashton’s later inclusion among Philadelphia’s Most Admired CEOs. The awards mark public milestones. Her comments about delegation give a closer view of what growth demanded from the people receiving them.

The next room

Petplan appointed Paul Guyardo CEO in 2019, and Warburg Pincus acquired the company that year. In 2022, the business completed its transition to Fetch by The Dodo. Ashton’s founding chapter belongs to the history of today’s Fetch; her subsequent career has taken her into other rooms.

In January 2021, Houwzer announced that she was joining its board. The real estate company used salaried agents and a different fee model from conventional brokerage. It wanted her experience of introducing consumers to unfamiliar services and building a recognizable brand. Those were problems she had spent years working on, even though the product had changed.

Her current Oxford biography describes board work, growth strategy and educational philanthropy, with a particular interest in women’s advancement. In October 2025, she was elected a St Edmund Hall Fellow. The connection begun with a chance at a place in 1993 had acquired another chapter.

There is a continuity here without the need to pretend that every step was planned. Oxford offered an opening and a partnership. Wharton supplied a setting for an idea. Petplan required years of explanation, experimentation and decisions about whom to trust with the work. Later appointments drew on that experience.

The argument for more competition remains a useful window into Ashton’s judgment. She recognized that another company could help make a subject understandable. Her own brand did its share with a magazine, a pinboard and an office that welcomed the creatures at the center of the business. Monty, in the photograph, seems satisfied with the arrangement.