When an AI agent needs to log into your CRM, pull records from your database, and send an email on your behalf, whose identity is it using? And what happens when no one knows the answer? Alex Stamos, chief product officer at Corridor, and Nancy Wang, CTO at 1Password joined the VB AI Impact Salon Series to dig into the new identity framework challenges that come along with the benefits of agentic AI.

“At a high level, it’s not just who this agent belongs to or which organization this agent belongs to, but what is the authority under which this agent is acting, which then translates into authorization and access,” Wang said.

How 1Password ended up at the center of the agent identity problem

Wang traced 1Password’s path into this territory through its own product history. The company started as a consumer password manager, and its enterprise footprint grew organically as employees brought tools they already trusted into their workplaces.

“Once those people got used to the interface, and really enjoyed the security and privacy standards that we provide as guarantees for our customers, then they brought it into the enterprise,” she said. The same dynamic is now happening with AI, she added. “Agents also have secrets, or passwords, just like humans do.”

Internally, 1Password is navigating the same tension it helps customers manage: how to let engineers move fast without creating a security mess. Wang said the company actively tracks the ratio of incidents to AI-generated code as engineers use tools like Claude Code and Cursor. “That’s a metric we track intently to make sure we’re generating quality code.”

How developers are incurring major security risks

Stamos said one of the most common behaviors Corridor observes is developers pasting credentials directly into prompts, which is a huge security risk. Corridor flags it and sends the developer back toward proper secrets management.

“The standard thing is you just go grab an API key or take your username and password and you just paste it into the prompt,” he said. “We find this all the time because we’re hooked in and grabbing the prompt.”

Wang described 1Password’s approach as working on the output side, scanning code as it is written and vaulting any plain text credentials before they persist. The tendency toward the cut-and-paste method of system access is a direct influence on 1Password’s design choices, which is to avoid security tooling that creates friction.

“If it’s too hard to use, to bootstrap, to get onboarded, it’s not going to be secure because frankly people will just bypass it and not use it,” she said.

Why you cannot treat a coding agent like a traditional security scanner

Another challenge in building feedback between security agents and coding models is false positives, which very friendly and agreeable large language models are prone toward. Unfortunately, these false positives from security scanners can derail an entire code session.

“If you tell it this is a flaw, it’ll be like, yes sir, it’s a total flaw!” Stamos said. But, he added, “You cannot screw up and have a false positive, because if you tell it that and you’re wrong, you will completely ruin its ability to write correct code.”

That tradeoff between precision and recall is structurally different from what traditional static analysis tools are designed to optimize for, and it has required significant engineering to get right at the latency required, on the order of a few hundred milliseconds per scan.

Authentication is easy, but authorization is where things get hard

“An agent typically has a lot more access than any other software in your environment,” noted Spiros Xanthos, founder and CEO at Resolve AI, in an earlier session at the event. “So, it is understandable why security teams are very concerned about that. Because if that attack vector gets utilized, then it can both result in a data breach, but even worse, maybe you have something in there that can take action on behalf of an attacker.”

So how do you give autonomous agents scoped, auditable, time-limited identities? Wang pointed to SPIFFE and SPIRE, workload identity standards developed for containerized environments, as candidates being tested in agentic contexts. But she acknowledged the fit is rough.

“We’re kind of force-fitting a square peg into a round hole,” she said.

But authentication is only half of it. Once an agent has a credential, what is it actually allowed to do? Here’s where the principle of least privilege should be applied to tasks rather than roles.

“You wouldn’t want to give a human a key card to an entire building that has access to every room in the building,” she explained. “You also don’t want to give an agent the keys to the kingdom, an API key to do whatever it needs to do forever. It needs to be time-bound and also bound to the task you want that agent to do.”

In enterprise environments, it won’t be enough to grant scoped access, organizations will need to know which agent acted, under what authority, and what credentials were used.

Stamos pointed to OIDC extensions as the current frontrunner in standards conversations, while dismissing the crop of proprietary solutions.

“There are 50 startups that believe their proprietary patented solution will be the winner,” he said. “None of those will win, by the way, so I would not recommend.”

At a billion users, edge cases are not edge cases anymore

On the consumer side, Stamos predicted the identity problem will consolidate around a small number of trusted providers, most likely the platforms that already anchor consumer authentication. Drawing on his time as CISO at Facebook, where the team handled roughly 700,000 account takeovers per day, he reframed what scale does to the concept of an edge case.

“When you’re the CISO of a company that has a billion users, corner case is something that means real human harm,” he explained. “And so identity, for normal people, for agents, going forward is going to be a humongous problem.”

Ultimately, the challenges CTOs face on the agent side stem from incomplete standards for agent identity, improvised tooling, and enterprises deploying agents faster than the frameworks meant to govern them can be written. The path forward requires building identity infrastructure from scratch around what agents actually are, not retrofitting what was built for the humans who created them.

If you’re ready to move your PC gaming experience to the next level, look no further than GIGABYTE’s X870E AORUS ELITE X3D. 

Already known for their forward-thinking tech, GIGABYTE has outdone themselves with this one. Boasting state-of-the-art graphics capabilities, AI-enhanced X3D Turbo Mode 2.0, Zenith Memory Performance, and a comprehensive thermal design, X870E AORUS ELITE X3D offers everything you need to up your game.

Top-tier graphics performance for a competitive edge

The X870E AORUS ELITE X3D motherboard packs all the power of the AMD Radeon RX 9070 for top-of-the-line gaming graphics performance. If you’re an esports player, you’ll get the super-fast refresh rates you need to keep up with the competition. Or, if you’re into games with massive open-world maps, the X870E AORUS ELITE X3D will keep you exploring as far as the eye can see and beyond. 

Switching between gaming and performance modes

GIGABYTE’s X870E AORUS ELITE X3D features X3D Turbo Mode 2.0, which offers an overall enhanced experience over the previous generation. Whether you’re gaming, multitasking, or a little of both, X3D Turbo Mode 2.0 delivers with a built-in AI model that automatically optimizes parameters in real time. You can switch easily between two modes, Extreme Gaming Mode & Max Performance Mode, to make sure you’re getting peak performance suited to your task.

Advanced DDR5 memory and AI-enhanced overclocking

Using a combination of advanced technologies, X870E AORUS ELITE X3D offers Zenith Memory Performance, an advanced AI-enhanced overclocking technology for DDR5 memory. To start, the PCB features advanced shielding to ensure clean and clear memory signals. The next innovation is daisy-chain routing, designed to remove signal bottlenecks. Finally, the PCB itself uses 8-layer server-grade materials to ensure DDR5 data is transmitted at blazing speeds.

Stay frosty with smart cooling and thermal guards

All this power demands cooling tech that’s up to the task of keeping your system running cool and efficiently. GIGABYTE’s X870E AORUS ELITE X3D has what it takes, with a full-metal thermal design and durable heat sinks. Add to this M.2 EZ-Flex, GIGABYTE’s exclusive patented design, plus their quiet and efficient Smart Fan 6 technology, and you can be sure your machine will run smoothly for hours on end. 

With its top-of-the-line graphics capabilities, Turbo mode 2.0, Zenith Memory Performance, and compressive thermal design — not to mention its durable materials and ultra-connectivity — GIGABYTE’s X870E AORUS ELITE X3D should be at the heart of any true gamer’s rig.

There is a moment, usually around the third eerily accurate ad for something you only mentioned in an email, when you start to wonder what exactly your inbox knows about you. The answer, it turns out, is everything. And the companies running the most popular free email services in the world are not keeping that information to themselves.

This article contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

The real cost of free email

When Gmail launched in 2004, offering a gigabyte of free storage felt almost absurd. Two decades later, the bargain looks rather different. Google processes roughly 1.8 billion Gmail accounts worldwide, and the service remains free because users are not the customer. Advertisers are.

Every message that lands in a free inbox is parsed, categorised, and fed into a profile that determines which ads follow you across the web. The content of your emails, the receipts, the travel confirmations, the medical appointment reminders, all of it contributes to an advertising profile that you never agreed to build and cannot fully delete. This is not a conspiracy theory. It is the documented business model of the largest email providers on the planet.

For years, most people accepted this trade-off because the alternatives were either expensive, clunky, or both. That is no longer the case.

What private email actually looks like in 2026

The private email market has matured considerably. Services now exist that offer the speed, polish, and reliability of Gmail without the data harvesting. The model is simple: you pay a modest subscription, and in return, your provider has no reason to touch your data because the subscription is the product, not your attention.

Fastmail is one of the more interesting players in this space, and it is worth understanding why. Founded in 1999 in Melbourne, Australia, the company has been running independently for over 25 years. It predates Gmail by half a decade. While most of the tech industry spent the 2010s chasing advertising revenue, Fastmail quietly built a subscription email service focused on something almost quaint: making email work exceptionally well.

The result is a platform that feels noticeably faster than what most people are used to. Full-text search returns results across your entire inbox in milliseconds, not seconds. Keyboard shortcuts cover virtually every action. Server-side filtering rules let you automate sorting and labelling without leaving a client running. These sound like small things until you spend a week with them and realise your previous inbox felt like wading through treacle.

The features that actually matter

It is easy to list features. It is harder to explain why they matter. Here is what stands out after extended use.

Custom domains on every plan. If you own a domain, you can use it with Fastmail immediately. This means your email address is yours permanently, not tied to a provider. If you ever decide to leave, your address comes with you. For freelancers, small businesses, and anyone who treats their email address as professional infrastructure, this is quietly one of the most important features an email service can offer.

Over 600 masked email aliases. Every time you sign up for a new service, you can generate a unique address that forwards to your real inbox. If that address gets sold to spammers or leaked in a data breach, you simply delete it. Fastmail integrates this directly with 1Password, so generating a new alias takes roughly two seconds.

Open standards throughout. Fastmail supports IMAP, SMTP, CalDAV, and CardDAV natively. This means it works with any email client you already use: Apple Mail, Thunderbird, Outlook, or anything else that speaks standard protocols. You are not locked into a proprietary app to access your own email. This level of interoperability is surprisingly rare among private email providers, several of which require bridge applications or restrict you to their own clients entirely.

Calendars and contacts included. Shared calendars, contact management, and file storage are built into every plan. For families and small teams, this replaces the need for a separate productivity suite. The Duo plan covers two users with shared calendars for $8 per month on annual billing, and the Family plan extends to six users at $11 per month.

The privacy question, honestly

Fastmail is transparent about what it does and does not offer. It uses TLS encryption in transit and AES encryption at rest, which is industry standard. It does not offer end-to-end encryption, and the company has been straightforward about why: the usability trade-offs (slower search, limited client support, key management complexity) do not serve most users well.

If your threat model includes protection against server-side access by a state actor, Fastmail is not the right choice. For that, you want a zero-knowledge encrypted provider like ProtonMail. But if your primary concern is getting your inbox out of the advertising ecosystem while keeping a fast, flexible, standards-compliant email experience, Fastmail delivers exactly that. The company does not sell data, does not display ads, does not build user profiles, and publishes regular transparency reports.

This distinction matters because privacy is not binary. Moving from a provider that actively monetises your email content to one that simply does not touch it is a significant upgrade for the vast majority of users, even without end-to-end encryption.

What it costs

Fastmail’s pricing is straightforward. The Individual plan costs $6 per month or $5 on annual billing, and includes 50GB of storage, custom domains, over 600 aliases, calendars, contacts, and full third-party client support. The Duo and Family plans share storage across two or six users respectively, making them some of the most cost-effective private email options for households.

Business plans start at $4 per user per month for Basic (6GB per user), $6 for Standard (60GB), and $10 for Professional (150GB with email retention archiving). Teams can mix and match tiers within a single account, so you are not paying for enterprise-grade archiving on every seat.

There is a 30-day free trial with no credit card required. Full access to every feature, no artificial limitations.

The bigger picture

The argument for private email is not really about email at all. It is about a slow, accumulating shift in how people think about the services they use every day. For two decades, “free” has been the default, and the cost has been invisible. But the cost is there: in the ads that follow you, in the data brokers who know your purchase history, in the quiet erosion of the idea that a conversation can be genuinely private.

Paying $5 per month for an inbox that belongs to you is not a radical act. But it is a meaningful one. And the tools available in 2026 make it easier than it has ever been. Fastmail’s free trial is a reasonable place to start, if only to see what email feels like when nobody is watching.

from the celebrate-with-some-lemon-pound-cake dept

As we wrote just yesterday, the defamation trial brought by seven Adams County, Ohio deputies against rapper Afroman was going about as well for the officers as their original botched raid on his home. Today we can report the inevitable conclusion: the jury sided entirely with Afroman, clearing him of all liability after just hours of deliberation.

To recap briefly: deputies raided Afroman’s home in 2022 with guns drawn, found essentially nothing, filed no charges, broke his door (and his gate!), and got caught on his security cameras doing embarrassing things — including one deputy who appeared to cautiously eye a delicious-looking lemon pound cake. Afroman turned the footage into multiple viral music videos. The deputies, upset about being mocked, sued him for $3.9 million claiming defamation and emotional distress. The jury took just a few hours to say: nah.

The best part might be the closing argument from the officers’ attorney, who told the jury:

“Mr. Foreman doesn’t get to wrap himself in the American flag and say you can’t touch me, I can say what I want, no matter how untrue it is, no matter how much pain it causes people, because I have freedom of speech. He can’t do that.”

Afroman’s lawyer quickly responded that he can, in fact, do exactly that. That’s how the First Amendment works. Especially when talking about public officials. And then the jury agreed. This is especially delicious given that Afroman literally wrapped himself in the American flag for the entire trial, showing up each day in that wonderful suit.

Afroman’s own testimony summed up the whole case more concisely than any lawyer could:

“All of this is their fault, and they have the audacity to sue me.”

And through all of this, Afroman never stopped making music mocking these officers — right up to the trial. Here he is calling out Deputy Randy Walters:

And here he is set to the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, reminding everyone that the proof of everything he’s saying is right there on the internet for anyone to see:

So the deputies sued because they were embarrassed by viral music videos, and, in doing so, created a three-day trial that generated a whole new wave of viral content about them, drew national media attention, and ended with a jury telling them they had no case. The Streisand Effect remains undefeated.

As Afroman’s lawyer told the jury in closing, citing NWA’s “Fuck Tha Police” and Richard Pryor’s comedy:

“I’m sorry they feel the way they do, but there’s a certain amount that you have to take as a public official, it’s part of the duties of the job. What chilling effect does that have on the world we live in? You don’t like what a public official does and you make a joke, and you’re dragged into court?”

There’s a serious point underneath all the absurdity. Public officials who raid your home for no good reason, find nothing, and break your stuff don’t get to then use the courts to punish you for talking about it. That’s the whole ballgame on the First Amendment, and the jury understood it perfectly.

Afroman summed it up outside the courtroom saying:

I didn’t win. America won. America still has freedom of speech. It’s still for the people, by the people!

Well said. And I hope the Adams County Sheriff’s Department is looking forward to Afroman’s next release.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, adams county, adams county sheriff’s department, afroman, defamation, free speech

The Switch 2 ports keep on coming. This time it’s Kena: Bridge of Spirits, the award-winning 2021 title from Ember Lab. Previously announced for spring 2026, the visually striking title now has an official release date of March 26.

Kena: Bridge of Spirits won Best Independent Game and Best Debut Indie Game at The Game Awards 2021. It’s already available for PS5 / PS4, PC (Steam and Epic) and Xbox Series X/S and One.

You play as Kena, a young spirit guide on a quest to a sacred mountain shrine. Gameplay has a Zelda-like flair. (That could make it a solid next play after Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.) Like in Link’s adventures, you’ll find plenty of exploration, puzzles and fast-paced combat. That encompasses whacking bad guys with Kena’s staff, firing arrows and flinging bombs.

Kena: Bridge of Spirits launches for Switch 2 on March 26 in North America, Europe and Asia. Meanwhile, folks in Thailand can get it a day earlier, on March 25. Details about Taiwan will be announced “soon.” You can preorder the game today in North America and Europe and get a taste of its Pixar-esque art style in the trailer below.

Spotify has quietly added a feature that many desktop listeners have been requesting for years. The company’s new Exclusive Mode allows Spotify Premium subscribers using the Windows desktop app to bypass the computer’s normal audio processing and deliver bit perfect playback directly to an external DAC or audio device.

The idea is straightforward. Modern operating systems often resample audio, mix system alerts with music, or apply their own volume processing before the signal ever reaches your DAC. Spotify’s Exclusive Mode takes control of that pipeline and locks the desktop app directly to the output device so the audio stream is passed through without alteration. In practical terms, that means the data sent to your DAC should match the original digital file that Spotify is delivering.

The timing is notable. After years of teasing higher fidelity streaming tiers, Spotify finally launched its long promised Lossless audio option in 2025, putting the service closer to competitors like Apple Music, Amazon Music, and TIDAL that already offer CD quality streaming. Exclusive Mode does not increase the bitrate of Spotify’s stream, but it removes one more layer of processing that could potentially alter the signal on the way out of your computer.

For listeners using a desktop setup with an external DAC, powered speakers, or a headphone amplifier, the feature gives Spotify something it has historically lacked compared with more audiophile focused platforms: a way to deliver the stream without the operating system getting in the middle of it.

What is Bit Perfect Audio?

Bit perfect audio refers to digital playback where the data leaving a music player is identical to the original digital file, with no changes introduced by the operating system, software mixer, or audio driver.

When music is played on a typical computer, the audio often passes through a system level mixer before reaching the output device. During that process the operating system may:

• Resample the audio to match the system’s selected sample rate
• Mix in other system sounds like notifications or alerts
• Apply volume scaling or DSP processing

Each of those steps technically alters the original digital data stream. Bit perfect playback avoids that entirely.

In an exclusive playback mode, the music application takes direct control of the audio output device. The operating system mixer is bypassed, system sounds are blocked, and the audio stream is sent to the DAC at its native sample rate and bit depth.

For audiophiles using external DACs and dedicated headphone or speaker systems, this ensures the converter receives exactly the same digital information contained in the music file or stream. The DAC then performs the only conversion that matters: turning that digital signal into analog sound.

In short, bit perfect playback does not magically improve a recording. What it does is ensure that nothing in the computer changes the signal before it reaches your DAC.

How to Enable Spotify Exclusive Mode

Getting started with Spotify’s Exclusive Mode takes only a few seconds inside the desktop app. Open Spotify, go to Settings, and scroll down to the Playback section. Under Audio Output, select your preferred device from the dropdown menu. Once your DAC, interface, or audio device is selected, toggle Exclusive Mode to On.

When enabled, Spotify takes direct control of that audio device and bypasses the operating system’s standard audio mixer. The result is a direct signal path from the Spotify desktop app to your DAC, avoiding the resampling, mixing, and volume adjustments that can occur when the operating system manages audio output.

There is one important trade off. With Exclusive Mode active, Spotify has sole control of the selected output device. System alerts, browser audio, video calls, and other applications will not be heard through that device while music is playing. If you need to hear other audio sources, those applications will have to use a different output device.

At launch, Exclusive Mode is available only on the Spotify desktop app for Windows. The feature does not currently apply to mobile playback, and Spotify has indicated that macOS support is expected in a future update.

The Bottom Line

Spotify’s Exclusive Mode is a useful technical upgrade for desktop listeners, but it doesn’t change the limits of Spotify’s audio quality.

The feature simply bypasses the computer’s audio mixer so the Spotify desktop app can send the stream directly to your DAC without resampling or system sounds interfering. That’s good news for listeners using external DACs, headphone amps, or powered speakers on a computer.

What it does not do is increase resolution. Spotify Lossless remains CD quality at 16 bit 44.1 kHz, and the service still does not offer 24-bit/96 kHz or 24-bit/192 kHz streams like Apple Music, TIDAL, or Qobuz.

So while Exclusive Mode ensures the signal leaving Spotify is cleaner, it does not suddenly make Spotify higher resolution than competing services. It simply ensures you hear the stream exactly as Spotify delivers it.

For more information: community.spotify.com

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Poopee’s indoor grass patches are even drawing franchise enquiries from across Southeast Asia

What do you do when your dog refuses to use a pee pad, your schedule won’t allow constant trips downstairs, and your carpet is slowly turning into a wreck day after day?

For 32-year-old Royce Tan, the answer was simple: start a company called Poopee—and bring a patch of real grass straight into the living room as an indoor potty solution.

It all started with his own struggles at home.

Royce’s dogs were grass-trained, but as they aged, daily trips downstairs became increasingly difficult. Plastic pee pads simply didn’t make sense to them, leaving Royce with the familiar frustration of accidents on the carpet.

That’s when the idea clicked: if dogs instinctively understand grass, why not bring it indoors? “The behaviour problem would solve itself naturally,” he said.

After researching existing options, Royce realised there wasn’t a well-designed real grass solution available locally. And that gap in the market became the starting point for the Eco-Turf, Poopee’s signature product.

Entrepreneurship isn’t new to him

Royce is no stranger to entrepreneurship.

Before Poopee, he founded The Fragment Room in 2017, Singapore’s first rage room, where people could smash objects to relieve stress. “It was exciting, chaotic, and honestly a lot of fun,” he recalled.

Yet after a few years, the novelty began to fade, and Royce realised he wasn’t “waking up excited” about the business anymore. It no longer felt like something that “reflected who he was or what he wanted to build.”

Eventually, Royce exited the venture sometime in 2019 and took on a full-time job, which he stayed in for about three years.

While it provided financial stability and a fresh perspective on work, he quickly realised that simply clocking in and out every day wasn’t the life he wanted. He needed to build something again—and that drive ultimately led to Poopee.

In 2023, Royce self-funded the launch of Poopee, bringing his indoor grass solution to the market.

He did not disclose the exact investment; however, he described it as modest, adding that it required “careful spending and a lot of experimentation.”

Keeping the grass alive

According to Royce, most of the initial capital went into “sourcing grass, developing packaging, logistics testing, and building the website.”

The early stages also involved a lot of trial and error.

Working with real grass meant dealing with a living product. He had to consider drainage, airflow, and how to keep it alive and healthy throughout packaging, transport, and delivery.

Unlike most products, grass cannot sit in a warehouse for long periods. “It has to be inspected, packed, and delivered within a short timeframe,” said Royce, adding that it took considerable effort to balance freshness, reliability, and cost.

Even after delivery, external factors in customers’ homes—such as sunlight and airflow—can affect the grass. To address this, Royce stays in close contact with customers via WhatsApp, troubleshooting issues and finding solutions directly with them.

“With product businesses, the real learning only begins once customers start using the product,” he said. It’s a very hands-on process, and even today, the team is still refining the product.

Poopee’s Eco-Turf has become a necessity for several dog owners

It seems Poopee’s Eco-Turf has been well-received by dog owners, Royce shared, although he didn’t disclose exact take-up rates.

While most sales happen online, Poopee also hosts pop-ups at fairs and events to reach new customers and give people a chance to experience the product in person.

Some owners have even told him, “You can’t ever close down because we would be lost without you,” highlighting just how much Eco-Turf has become a part of their daily routine.

Part of the product’s appeal is how simple it is to use: the grass naturally absorbs urine, so customers don’t have to worry about accidents. Solid waste still needs to be cleaned up, though, and watering the turf every one to two days keeps it healthy.

Owners will know it’s time to replace the patch when dogs start peeing at the edges—a sign it’s saturated with their scent, and they’re looking for a fresh spot.

Typically, each patch lasts between one and four weeks, depending on how frequently it’s used.

That’s why Poopee offers a subscription model, with deliveries weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly. Subscriptions make it easier for owners to maintain a fresh patch and allow Royce to plan production.

Because grass cannot be grown instantly, our nursery needs advance notice of how much to grow. Subscription demand helps us forecast how much grass will be needed ahead of time.

Royce Tan, founder of Poopee

Beyond positive reviews from customers, what has surprised Royce even more is that Poopee’s Eco-Turf has been recommended by several veterinarians—particularly for older dogs or pets recovering from surgery who struggle with mobility. They can benefit greatly from the Eco-Turf’s easy-to-access, indoor setup.

That said, Royce occasionally meets owners who say their dogs “hate grass.” In many cases, it simply means the dog was never exposed to it early on. “Dogs adapt to the environments we create for them, so part of what we do is gently reintroduce that natural behaviour,” he explained.

He recommends a few simple strategies for these cases: place the Eco-Turf in the spot where the dog usually relieves itself and gradually move it to the desired location, or use a small amount of pee residue under the turf to attract them with a familiar scent. Positive reinforcement—treats or praise when the dog uses the Eco-Turf—also helps encourage the behaviour.

Beyond just grass patches

Running The Fragment Room taught Royce the value of building a brand people actually connect with.

Even though Poopee solves a functional problem, I never wanted it to feel like a boring utility product. I wanted it to feel like a lifestyle brand for dog owners.

Royce Tan, founder of Poopee

That’s why the team puts thought into shaping Poopee’s brand personality, and expanding into merchandise is part of that.

Beyond Eco-Turf and its complementary products—such as deodorising sprays—Poopee now offers items like dog carriers, graphic tees, stickers, and even cooling neck wraps for dogs.

All of the merchandise is designed in-house, with some pieces developed through collaborations. For instance, the brand has worked with local streetwear label Koterie on several of its designs.

Making everyday life with dogs more “natural, comfortable & well designed”

For now, Royce still handles most aspects of the business himself, supported by a small group of part-timers and freelancers who assist with packing, logistics, and marketing when needed.

The team recently moved from a small warehouse setup into a proper office space—a shift that has improved both working conditions and operations, allowing for more organised packing and better quality control.

While operations remain lean, Royce sees clear demand for products like the Eco-Turf.

“Singapore has a large number of high-rise homes, and many pet owners have busy schedules,” he shared. “Solutions that make pet care easier while still respecting a dog’s natural behaviour are becoming increasingly important.”

As the brand grows, Royce plans to expand beyond just the Eco-turf and build a whole ecosystem of products for pet owners. “The idea is to create a cohesive world around the brand for people who love animals.”

Interest in Poopee is also spreading beyond Singapore. According to Royce, the brand has received franchise enquiries from markets like Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines, with discussions still ongoing as the team explores potential regional expansion.

Ultimately, Royce hopes to make everyday life with dogs more natural, comfortable, and well-designed.

If Poopee can become something that dog owners trust and rely on, something that genuinely improves the quality of life for both pets and their owners, then we’ve done what we set out to do.

Royce Tan, founder of Poopee

• Find out more about Poopee here.
• Read other articles we’ve written on Singaporean businesses here. 

Featured Image Credit: @supersalami_, @poopee via Instagram