Searching across the country for health care providers for one of her beloved horses, Lacey Gotshall realized that her struggle to find trusted care professionals was something many equestrians experience.
Earlier this year, Gotshall founded The Horse Concierge to help people find reputable health care providers for all of their equestrian needs. Specifically, the startup provides an app that makes it easier for horse owners to browse different types of health care services, read reviews and find providers that work best for them and their horse.
On The Horse Concierge app, the three core features are a health care provider search, a horse profile manager and a marketplace through which people can actually buy and sell horses.
The provider search function works such that health care providers across specialties and from around the United States can list their services on The Horse Concierge for free. A horse owner can then enter their zip code, as well as a mileage range within which they’d like to find service, to search for providers and find the best possible match.
As for profiles, users of The Horse Concierge app can also create profiles for each of their horses, tracking information such as exercise activity, shoe size and vet visits. Health care providers are then able to view these profiles to gain a better understanding of any individual horse’s history before setting up treatment.
Finally, there’s the marketplace feature that offers buying and selling options through the app. Gotshall said this marketplace is a much more secure way to purchase horses as opposed to common social media scams selling animals. On The Horse Concierge, the need for profiles for horses being sold helps ensure that the animals in question are in fact real.
Universal solution to a universal problem
With The Horse Concierge, Gotshall is seeking to create a holistic, universal platform in a fragmented industry.
There are many existing services that address individual aspects of The Horse Concierge’s features, such as horse management or searching for health care providers. The Horse Concierge is the only app uniting these features on a single platform, Gotshall said.
Beyond the spread-out nature of services relating to horse ownership and transactions, the equestrian community is also very fragmented based on region and discipline, Gotshall said. The Horse Concierge helps people find care regardless of their location or discipline.
“We built what didn’t exist,” Gotshall said. “And we’ve taken a fragmented system that’s relied on social media, word of mouth, all of these different little areas.”
Gotshall said that her experience of having to look across the country for health care professionals in different specialized fields is universally shared among equestrians, and that she hopes The Horse Concierge can easily connect horse owners with trusted health care providers.
Monetizing horse owners and businesses
The Horse Concierge operates a two-sided business model, with both business-to-business monetization and software-as-a-service monetization.
While it is free for health care providers to list their services on The Horse Concierge, those same providers also have the option to pay for upgrades such as being featured higher up in search results or advertising in a select zip code.
The startup will also start charging subscription fees for users creating horse profiles—though Gotshall noted that a subscription to the holistic app will save users money as compared to paying multiple subscriptions to others services providing only individual portions of The Horse Concierge’s suite of features.
“That’s what sets us apart is we’re pulling all of it together under one umbrella so that you don’t have to pay multiple subscriptions, ultimately saving you money,” Gotshall said.
QUICK BITS
Startup: The Horse Concierge
Founder: Lacey Gotshall
Founded: 2025
Team size: 2
Location: Raeford, NC
Website: thehorseconcierge.com
Funding: Bootstrapped; pending pre-seed raise
About 7 million people in the United States are involved in the equestrian industry across disciplines. In North Carolina alone, businesses from health care providers to training companies contribute to a $2.5 billion annual market, Gotshall said.
The startup was recently named a recipient of one of NC IDEA’s $10,000 MICRO grants for the foundation’s fall cycle. Over the next year, Gotshall plans to continue seeking feedback on and refining aspects such as the user interface and app performance, as well as expanding marketing efforts.
By the end of 2026, The Horse Concierge hopes to capture 1% of the United States’ equestrian market, which would generate $8 million in annual revenue for the startup, Gotshall said.
