Five principles. One promise.
The work is built on commitments that cost nothing to make and everything to break. They are absolute. They survive any sale, merger, or acquisition of this company.
The five principles
The science is free, forever.
The atlas, the breed pages, the gene pages, the study pages, the methodology, the corrections. No paywall on knowledge. Anyone can access. The data that built this came from the public; the layer we built on top stays with the public.
Your dog's data is yours.
Never sold. Never licensed. Owner-controlled. When a researcher needs dogs like yours for a study, we send you the opportunity. You decide. You contact them. You get compensated. We never hand over your dog's data. This is written into our terms and it survives this company.
Food scoring is independent.
The food scoring engine accepts no money from any pet food manufacturer, distributor, or retailer. No affiliate commission influences a score. No brand gets advance notice of their rating. The methodology is published. The score is the score.
We inform. Vets diagnose.
Every health-related page on this site tells you to consult your veterinarian. We provide the genetic context. Your vet provides the clinical judgment. We will never blur the line between those roles.
No ads. No sponsorships. No commissions. On the science layer. Ever.
The atlas, the breed pages, the gene pages, the study pages, the methodology. None of these will ever carry ads, sponsored content, or affiliate commissions. The revenue model is sequencing kits, optional memberships, an open API, and research-recruitment services. Owners and institutions pay for what they choose to pay for. Nobody pays to learn about their dog.
The Pax Pledge
When Sniff is profitable, ten percent of net profit each year goes to the dogs the market does not reward.
Shelter and rescue organizations. Working-dog programs. The dogs that fall through the cracks of every system built around purebred and well-resourced dogs. The dogs nobody else profits from.
Ten percent is the floor. We can go higher. We can never go lower. The exact number, the recipients, and the proof of payment are disclosed publicly every year on this page. This commitment survives any sale, merger, or acquisition of this company.
Today, Sniff is pre-revenue. The Pax Pledge activates the year we are profitable. Until then, the commitment lives here as a public promise that anyone can hold us to.
The science is free. The data is yours. The dogs without owners get a percentage of the rest.
That is the Pax Pledge.
Corrections are public
When we are wrong, we say so. The corrections page lists what was wrong, when we found it, what we changed, why, and who flagged it if they want to be credited. We do not delete corrections. They accumulate. The length of the corrections page is not a sign of failure. It is a sign that we are looking.
Anyone can challenge a score, a breed-page claim, a gene-page interpretation, or a cited number. The process is the same for everyone. The response window is the same. Every change Sniff makes in response gets logged with a date.
If a brand or its agency contacts us asking to review a score, feature a product, or remove a flag, we say no in writing and add the request to a public file.
Founder integrity
The founder, Matt Gehring, does not own equity in any pet food company, does not consult for any brand we cover, and is not employed by any manufacturer, distributor, retailer, or trade group. If any of that changes, the change gets posted here with a date before any related content publishes.
Sniff is owner-funded by the founder right now. Operating costs come out of personal savings and non-Sniff income. The platform infrastructure runs on credits granted by Cloudflare, AWS, Google, Nebius, NVIDIA Inception, and Weights & Biases under their startup programs.
The platform will need to pay for itself. When that happens, the model will be independent of advertising and independent of conflicted commerce. The four revenue streams: sequencing kits for owners who want their dog's whole genome, optional memberships for deeper personal insights, an open API for researchers and developers, and research-recruitment services paid by academic institutions. Each gets evaluated against the same test: does this introduce a conflict we cannot disclose our way out of? If yes, it does not happen.
Questions
If you spot a conflict of interest we have not disclosed, an affiliate link we missed, or a brand relationship we should have surfaced, email [email protected]. We answer.
The science is free. The data is yours. The pledge holds.