5 ms·

I'm just imagining one of the wag investors asking "What's to stop your walker who lives nearby the dog's owner, just doing the walk independently with the pers

by goldcd 7y ago

I'm just imagining one of the wag investors asking "What's to stop your walker who lives nearby the dog's owner, just doing the walk independently with the person they've built trust with?" And the answer is "you have a shitty business model and this should have killed it years ago"

colmvp 7y ago
I don't know. Both Wag and Rover have fund-raised $300M from investors. I would think they'd have responded to that line of questioning at least once.
- ganeshkrishnan 7y ago
  It's from SoftBank. It's raining funds from them atm
- bryanrasmussen 7y ago
  the answer would have to be that doing so would benefit the walker short term but over the long term would lead to them losing business because Wag would track the lost business and as such disqualify the walker from any more Wag business, thus walkers would not cheat on wag because wag would catch them doing it - probably by using something that they would call "machine learning" and "suspicious behavior tracking" that will also be "patent-able, someday"
  - goldcd 7y ago
    There's limited demand on both sides of this though. To take the Uber model - you are going to take n trips, in m cities, for y duration. Uber and their users want unlimited drivers, riders, cities piled into their app. Wag is completely different. Your dog is in your home. It needs walking say once a day. I'd have thought the user would want the same reliable person doing it each day - and the walker would ideally want to build a stable of local dogs that need walking each day. Once both sides are happy and stable, you don't need the app.
- Spooky23 7y ago
  They probably waved it off. Since their solution is to sue their customers and affiliates in increments of $1,000, sounds like a pretty dumb business model.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  > I would think they'd have responded to that line of questioning at least once. Errm. You'd be surprised. Let's just leave it at that.
goldcd 7y ago
More seriously, the 'matching industry' has two flavours currently that can make money. There's the geographically diverse Uber model (I want the single nearest transport wherever I am) and the Tinder model (I want all the orifices near me). For a dog-walking app (or many others, such as say house-cleaning) - you want an introduction to people locally, repetitively. Once you're happy with what you got through the app, you don't want the app. Maybe what "Wags" should focus on is the broader scope of "I want a local tradesman to do something repetitively". Provide introductions, take a nominal fee, allow end-user to change if they're unhappy (and take a very low fee for all the happy people)
- tvjunky 7y ago
  I see this "match making" idea come up a lot. Why do you consider Wags in the same way as Tinder? If a dog walker (let's call him Bob) was doing well and wanted to scale his business. Bob hires 10 dog walkers by sharing his customer pool and adding more customers. Is it "match making" when Bob sends one of his employees to a new job?

by goldcd 7y ago

colmvp 7y ago

I don't know. Both Wag and Rover have fund-raised $300M from investors. I would think they'd have responded to that line of questioning at least once.

ganeshkrishnan 7y ago
It's from SoftBank. It's raining funds from them atm
bryanrasmussen 7y ago
the answer would have to be that doing so would benefit the walker short term but over the long term would lead to them losing business because Wag would track the lost business and as such disqualify the walker from any more Wag business, thus walkers would not cheat on wag because wag would catch them doing it - probably by using something that they would call "machine learning" and "suspicious behavior tracking" that will also be "patent-able, someday"
- goldcd 7y ago
  There's limited demand on both sides of this though. To take the Uber model - you are going to take n trips, in m cities, for y duration. Uber and their users want unlimited drivers, riders, cities piled into their app. Wag is completely different. Your dog is in your home. It needs walking say once a day. I'd have thought the user would want the same reliable person doing it each day - and the walker would ideally want to build a stable of local dogs that need walking each day. Once both sides are happy and stable, you don't need the app.
Spooky23 7y ago
They probably waved it off. Since their solution is to sue their customers and affiliates in increments of $1,000, sounds like a pretty dumb business model.
jacquesm 7y ago
> I would think they'd have responded to that line of questioning at least once. Errm. You'd be surprised. Let's just leave it at that.

goldcd 7y ago

More seriously, the 'matching industry' has two flavours currently that can make money. There's the geographically diverse Uber model (I want the single nearest transport wherever I am) and the Tinder model (I want all the orifices near me). For a dog-walking app (or many others, such as say house-cleaning) - you want an introduction to people locally, repetitively. Once you're happy with what you got through the app, you don't want the app. Maybe what "Wags" should focus on is the broader scope of "I want a local tradesman to do something repetitively". Provide introductions, take a nominal fee, allow end-user to change if they're unhappy (and take a very low fee for all the happy people)

tvjunky 7y ago
I see this "match making" idea come up a lot. Why do you consider Wags in the same way as Tinder? If a dog walker (let's call him Bob) was doing well and wanted to scale his business. Bob hires 10 dog walkers by sharing his customer pool and adding more customers. Is it "match making" when Bob sends one of his employees to a new job?