24 ms·

Dog-walking startup Wag raised $300M, then things got messy

200 points by danso 7y ago

fantasticFerret 7y ago
I applied to this company right at the beginning of there expansion. The person that interviewed me said he had been sleeping on couches for the last year or so, (around 2017) and working insane hours. They gave me a php coding test to implement some kind of pub/sub. I finished it. Had no real way of submitting it other than emailing it to the interviewer as a zip. The moment the interviewer told me they worked with a php stack. I asked why they'd chosen to go with php given that the product was so new they could've chosen any newer tech. stack (JavaScript framework) and probably been better off. The interviewer didn't really response to my question. The entire conversation with said person, was them talking at me for about 30 minutes. They said the company was going to try to pivot to developing some service surrounding their lock box service for the keys to get into people's houses for the dog walking. It seemed very "directionless" and gave me a very bad taste in my mouth. They never got back to me or anything. Which was fine by me since I wasn't going to pursue them any further.
- sschueller 7y ago
  Are they at least using a php framework like symfony or is it all spagetti?
  - fantasticFerret 7y ago
    The interviewer never told me. I never asked.
  - 100-xyz 7y ago
    I interviewed with them. Their tech stack is Laravel. The whole interview seemed flaky. Now glad I got rejected.
  - tzs 7y ago
    Not using a PHP framework for PHP does not imply that it must be all spaghetti. There are programmers who can write clear, structured, maintainable code in straight PHP.
- hoorayimhelping 7y ago
  I had a similar experience in 2018. In fact, I think my application with them is still active, cause I also never heard back from them after my in person interview. They had me come in at noon, said they'd serve me lunch, then directed me to a galley kitchen where there were some leftovers from something that was served the day before. I kind of zoned out after that, cause I was hungry and also annoyed, but I remember being condescended to, everyone being late, and everyone seeming like they were in a huge hurry. Never heard a rejection or offer from them. My ex has our dog, I told her to stop using Wag as soon as possible. I'm not trusting a company that disorganized with my dog.
- wolco 7y ago
  A php stack is the right stack for 2017 or 2019 for a company like Wag. What would a javascript framework offer them? Their core product is connecting people and dogs. A php stack with laravel means they have a working website with authentication on day 1. What would a javascript framework offer them? Emailing tests or documents is very common during the interview process if the company is a startup. Offer them a github link with the code if you want to standout. Why apply without knowing the stack?
  - danpalmer 7y ago
    > Offer them a github link with the code if you want to standout. Make sure it's a private GitHub repo, or you ask first. Many companies prefer their coding tests to not be published online. It happens, it's unavoidable, but companies can often get by with the same test for a while if people don't post them on GitHub too much.
  - xnyan 7y ago
    Maybe I'm dumb - Can anyone tell me why PHP vs JS for a "generic" web application? \In 2019 there are far far far more developers with real experience developing in Javascript vs PHP. There are obviously a lot of other factors in considering the base dev language, but unless you can make a strong case for PHP vs JS, I'm picking JS every time because in the generic case they both meet my needs but a lot more devs work with JS vs PHP. This is not a moral argument, but rather a practical one. What is the practical argument for PHP?
    - cma 7y ago
      A PHP stack can maybe help you get acquired by Facebook, like a COBOL stack could ease an acquisition by an old insurance company.
    - kortilla 7y ago
      There are far fewer devs with server-side JavaScript experience. When it comes to server-side for small startups, the syntax is irrelevant compared to the maturity of the ecosystem. Look how much of the web is still Wordpress.
- sedachv 7y ago
  > Had no real way of submitting it other than emailing it to the interviewer as a zip. Being good at email (ex: not relying on GMail, knowing basic things about line length, top-posting, signature, having your own domain(s), using an actual email client instead of webmail crap, Sieve filters and mailing list management, actually knowing how mailing-list based development works and being able to use (git) patch/diff, bonus points for offline syncing, 2x bonus for using a text client (3x bonus for xmh), 10x bonus for running your own server(s)) is a way better indicator of technical competency than the ability to sign up for a GitHub account and click a few buttons. HTML email is a huge red flag for programmers.
  - swatcoder 7y ago
    On the contrary, I wouldn’t _usually_ expect a lot of value from someone who did all that. My first intuitions would be that they’re likely reluctant to make practical compromises, slow to accept norms, and that they’re prone to chasing rabbits. They might have a role on a large team or for a very specific project, but there’s be some wariness for sure.
    - Can_Not 7y ago
      This is going to be a person who spends all day solving every problem my business doesn't have.
  - dillonmckay 7y ago
    They are not applying for a job at sendgrid, or as an email implementation strategist.
jpollock 7y ago
If you're Saudi Arabia with a silly amount of money in cash, are you looking for 10-100x return out of this, or are you simply looking for a place to park liquid funds that won't lose as much as leaving it in German government bonds.
- jahlove 7y ago
  mega yachts aren't cheap
- hogFeast 7y ago
  No. Without overcomplicating things, Saudi are the dumbest money out there. They have no idea at all. Even the ones that have worked at IBanks, have no real understanding of basic finance (and likely only got the job so the bank could try to bribe members of their family). To get an investment, you just need to bribe the right people...that is how they invest (I used to know two very junior royal family members, they were unquestionably two of the stupidest people I have ever met...they failed school, ended up a prestigious uni, paid people to do their work, and then ended up in banking...somehow). I wouldn't try to analyse it. A smart Japanese guy took them for a ride, he took a cut, and then handed it to some software developers in Silicon Valley who saved some and then spent the rest. That is it. No value created. No investments. Just redistribution away from stupid people. Btw, this happened in the 1970s too. When the oil price spiked, the Saudis didn't know what to do with their cash so they just deposited it in US banks. The US banks didn't know what to do either so they started lending to South America. They knew what to do: politicians either stole it or handed it out as bribes to their supporters. The result was Citibank and a few other banks going insolvent in the early 80s, and a massive debt crisis in LatAm from 1980-1993(ish). ...the Saudis also gave a bit to Britain, who had their own debt crisis (also because of cash handouts to political supporters) and devalued a good chunk of their money away. They will lose money always.
  - guynamedloren 7y ago
    This is fascinating. As somebody who knows nothing at all about this.. are there any detailed books on the subject?
  - 7y ago
jacquesm 7y ago
Plan to get taken for a walk, end up getting taken for a ride. Figures.
nosleeptill 7y ago
This is fucking insane. $300M for a dog walking company, a dog walking company. A dog walking company. A fucking dog walking company.
- dang 7y ago
  Ok, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News.
  - zaroth 7y ago
    Can we make a small exception for when the comment perfectly elucidates what everyone is actually thinking while reading the article? I’m sorry, all due respect, but.... a dog walking company.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - dang 7y ago
      Well, let's apply the HN guidelines [1] and, more importantly their spirit, to this case. That spirit is to be reflective rather than reflexive [2], which means to interrupt the rapid reflex that springs up immediately ("what everyone is actually thinking"), inhibit the temptation to react, and give the slower, reflective part of the brain time to catch up. When I do that, the first thing that comes to me is that the dog-owner market is huge—so huge that $300M is likely a small number rather than a large one. Moreover, the emotions that people have about their dogs are intense, profound, and deeply personal. ("Dogs are the new kids", reads a coffee mug I once saw in a kitchen in San Francisco.) So this market is not only broad, it's deep; the potential customers are not only numerous but the chance for repeat business is high. Probably there's a huge opportunity here, if you can satisfy people's needs or at least give them a feeling of that. As for dog-walking sounding trivial, if you've ever been (or known) a stressed-out, overworked dog owner and how it feels to face your sad unwalked dog in the evening when you have no energy left to do anything, this is actually not trivial at all. It is not only a form of suffering, it's closely connected with deeper forms of suffering—because so many of us invest our unfulfilled relational capacity into our pets. People will spend a lot of money to relieve a problem like that. In short: huge market, repeat business, premium pricing. I know nothing about Wag, but this is more than enough to see how the GP comment broke the HN guidelines by being a shallow dismissal. I totally get why people want to post that kind of rant and share that perspective—I share it too, it's fun and creates a sense of community in its own way. But we have to remember what we're optimizing for on HN. There are tradeoffs in the kinds of discussion we get to have. If we take the shallow route and go for the sugar rush of piling on stupidity at a distance, we forego the quieter, insightful kind of discussion. Compounded, this determines the kind of site Hacker News is going to be. Edit: I read the article, which seems to me unusually good and to deserve a more thoughtful discussion than most comments have offered here so far. Among other things, it makes clear that the issue is not "a fucking dog walking company" being a bad business per se, because a competitor is actually doing better. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html 2. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20reflective%20reflex&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
mbesto 7y ago
Hot take - when it's all said and done (e.g. when the whole fund gets returned) the vision fund is going to devalue more companies than it is going to value them. If they're charging a management fee then they'll still make money but their LPs aint gonna be happy in the long term.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
freedomben 7y ago
Be aware: audio will start playing out of your speakers if they are on.
- mynameishere 7y ago
  Welcome to the internet. Every single website has auto-playing video now. Firefox has an option to turn it off. I think it's the only browser with that.
lawrenceyan 7y ago
You’ve got to applaud Masayoshi Son for his tenacity at the very least. Lived through the Dot Com Crash, caused the next one 20 years later. That’s a big achievement in my book. How many people can really say they’ve been able to do something like that? [Edit] I should probably add a caveat that Masayoshi Son isn’t the dumb one here. No, he’s actually quite the genius, managing to convince Saudia Arabia to basically give him $45 billion and then spinning that all the way into $100 billion with the Vision Fund. I’m genuinely giving praise to the man here. He saw an opportunity and took advantage of it.
- quaquaqua1 7y ago
  Serial market crasher, see you in 2040 for when I finally end up on the correct side of the market and can turn my stock into cash and my cash in yachts.
- baxtr 7y ago
  Agree. He for sure had a exciting life so far...
- jore 7y ago
  I wonder if his investments could really trigger something like that. Are there other investments of the Vision fund that are falling apart besides WeWork and Wag?
  - Judgmentality 7y ago
    Uber (lost money on the IPO), Cruise (just delayed their launch, still have no product or revenue), they bought Boston Dynamics (super awesome technology but the business doesn't seem viable), Light (really awesome idea to change mobile photography, but seems an obvious failure at this point), Zume (a pizza chain buildings robots that's raised hundreds of millions of dollars...they do not have any production robots), Nuro (another overhyped self-driving startup, because Uber and Cruise weren't enough billions)...this is not an exhaustive list. I have repeatedly said SoftBank is some of the dumbest money in the Valley, and I stand by that proclamation. https://www.businessinsider.com/running-list-softbank-investments-2017-7#brightstar-acquired-for-22-billion-49 https://www.businessinsider.com/running-list-softbank-invest... Now that said, it is expected that most investments in any VC portfolio will fail! Something like a 70% failure rate, with 20% being moderately successful, and 10% being very successful is considered very good for the VC industry. But at the end of the day it's ROI - you make money or you lose money. I think SoftBank is going to lose more money than all the other VC firms simply because they started with more money to lose.
loganfrederick 7y ago
What I don't get about the Vision Fund is how so many of its investments lack (pun intended) vision. Other than the ARM, Nvidia, and a few billion in biotech (about $3 billion[1]) investments, so much of the fund has gone into pretty "obvious" traditional startups. If I had a $100 billion fund, I wouldn't be swinging for these singles and doubles (which Uber and WeWork were by the time Softbank got involved, although these companies can still provide value to customers). Vision Fund should've been out-competing Google X to become the financial backer of basically the next Bell Labs. Instead of 3% biotech and 20% Uber and WeWork and Wag, I'd have flipped those two numbers. The biggest loss from the Vision Fund is the opportunity cost of all the great disease-eliminating, fundamental-science research that could've had much greater upside than WeWork. And I never hear that opportunity cost discussed. EDIT: I've added an additional comment with more supporting arguments for taking bigger risks but more ambitious risks when managing large sums: https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=21096651 https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=21096651 [1]: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/softbanks-vision-fund-deploying-100-billion-185127309.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/softbanks-vision-fund-deployi...
- manigandham 7y ago
  It's just a nice name. It's a generic fund to invest mostly oil money and designed to focus on tech for the higher returns. The problem is that the fund is massive and there's a limit to how much capital you can efficiently deploy at once, especially with such a disconnected leadership team. The size was originally used as a brute-force growth tactic and competition clearer, but now it's clear that it's just leading to unviable business models and vastly inflated valuations while hurting more promising companies that have to compete in this bubble environment.
- pdq 7y ago
  The problem when you have so much money to invest is that your customers need to actually invest it. It's much harder to invest $1-$5M at a time when you can just go back to the WeWork pool and drop $2B. It's like painting a wall mural using fine tipped brushes, rather than wide paint rollers or a paint gun. You get the job done so much faster, but your quality will suffer tremendously.
buboard 7y ago
Is it possible for investment funds to become insolvent?
hogFeast 7y ago
The big issue with the product is that after the first transaction, no-one has any incentive to use your marketplace. There is a company in my country doing this. They are probably not worth zero tbf but they have a massive issue with people just cutting them out after the first transaction. And what is the problem with just building a brand? I employ a bunch of dog walkers, I do checks on them, I build a trusted brand...the $300m is a solution without a problem.
- bobloblaw45 7y ago
  People have told me their Uber/Lyft drivers offer to be their personal driver for the trip when they pick them up from airports. Not sure how common this is. Back in the day I used to drive a shuttle and once in awhile I'd get pressured into taking a passenger that wasn't related to the business I was employed by. It's pretty harmless but still a big no-no since you're technically breaking some laws since there are certain loops you have to jump through to take on fares like that (got screamed at by towncar drivers when I arrived at the airport. I'm sure they were thrilled when Uber became a thing). Anyways the passengers paid 40 bucks for a 20 minute drive. That was the going rate they were used to paying back in 2008. There's a LOT of incentive to cut out the middle man.
- jetrink 7y ago
  I watch dogs through Rover and they do have mechanisms to lock you in. The primary one is that your rank in the search results is strongly affected by repeat transactions and the number of repeat customers is listed prominently in your profile as an indication of your trustworthiness. Once I hit a certain threshold, I had to raise my prices to 30% above the area average in order to keep the number of requests down to a level that I was prepared to accommodate. The second is that Rover actually does provide a service to its sitters. They have great support that has helped me through a few crises (including a dog dying in my home from a heart attack) and insurance coverage.
switch007 7y ago
How would have JavaScript made them better off?
- outworlder 7y ago
  Don't eat the bait. This will devolve into yet another pointless discussion.
  - xwdv 7y ago
    Too late. Javascript would have made it far easier to hire talent, and develop a much better user experience without multiple page refreshes. In some cases it would even be easier to develop a cross platform mobile application if you use Javascript as well.
    - wolco 7y ago
      Ability to find php developers is usually a reason to choose php. It's actually harder to find good js developers. Javascript frameworks work nicely with php acting as an api. An even better approach is a hybrid that allows you to use a framework like Vue/React or a libruary like jQuery but also allows you to use php to power your pages. This gives you the ability to have an spa per section. A common approach is to use an api to deliver data to your mobile app. If you've built it in php that can be reused.
      - xnyan 7y ago
        Hey! New dev honestly trying to learn why PHP matters at all in 2019. Is PHP something I should stop learning JS for? In all my (very limited) experience, PHP does not solve any problem JavaScript can't, and JS is also far more in demand.
        vageli 7y ago
        > Hey! New dev honestly trying to learn why PHP matters at all in 2019. Is PHP something I should stop learning JS for? In all my (very limited) experience, PHP does not solve any problem JavaScript can't, and JS is also far more in demand. If the only motivation for learning a language is applicability to the job field, javascript probably will open more doors at this point, depending on your location. PHP is really great for getting MVPs out the door in my experience, but a productive engineer in any language would likely have the same experience in the language of their choosing. I am by no means a PHP developer though.
maerF0x0 7y ago
These on demand - fulfilled by gig contracting platforms can _only_ provide value if there has been a big technological change that undermines expertise in a job. Uber works because of google maps knowing a faster route than even the 20 year veteran tax driver. There hasn't been a revolutionary technology in dog walking, just people who need cash but dont know pets. There hasnt been a revolutionary technology in grocery shopping, just people who need cash and dont care about the quality of your basket. etc.
- UncleEntity 7y ago
  > Uber works because of google maps knowing a faster route than even the 20 year veteran tax driver. Who also use google maps to do their route planning...
- techslave 7y ago
  uber has their own mapping. and no, it or google maps is decidedly not better than local knowledge.
  - maerF0x0 7y ago
    > is decidedly not better than local knowledge. any proof? I will say it falls down w/ construction zones and road changes.
    - Nursie 7y ago
      In my town it doesn't seem to be aware of the roads that taxis can use but which are closed to 'normal' traffic.
    - Spooky23 7y ago
      All of the mapping programs are good at longer flows, they all suck in cities with lights and arbitrary delays. I just did a drive from Tampa, FL to Albany, NY. Waze and Google calculated the drive time within 10 minutes. My commute is about 12 minutes. Both Google and Waze will dump you on routes that will double or triple that.
    - 7y ago
Edmond 7y ago
>Mike Walsh, a general partner at Structure Capital, which was an early investor in Wag, described the brothers to CNN Business as "so smart" that it's "almost difficult to communicate" with them.
- stagger87 7y ago
  Can also be read as smart with poor social skills.
  - techslave 7y ago
    i don’t think that’s an “also”. it is the intended reading.
  - mikestew 7y ago
    Can also be read as, “Mike Walsh is so poor at sniffing out bullshit, he calls the bull ‘smart’. It’s not the bull’s fault Mr. Walsh can’t communicate him, it’s because the bull’s so smart, Mike can’t understand him.”
velox_io 7y ago
Reading the title has affirmed to me that we are living in a bubble (and it doesn't look good). I just can't get it through my head how an investment of that size will EVER pay off. A major reason people buy dogs is because they want to get out and walk more. If they can't they outsource it to a teenager you or your friends know, there's no need for a middleman in most cases. (If it was baby-sitting I could understand more it as there is far less flexibility.) WeWork's valuations have also seemed strange to me, when they don't have any assets of infrastructure to warrant such a high value. There's very little stopping others renting office space, in fact a friend of mine has done just that.
- gowld 7y ago
  In our modern isolated and busy times, many of us don't have neighbors to call on for dogsitting. Dogsitting business is in demand.
- drstewart 7y ago
  People have been "sure" there's a bubble for a decade now. I mean take this HN article, posted Apr 19, 2012: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3865744 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3865744 How much are you investing on your suredness that there's a bubble? Because if you did it in 2012, you'd be down about 70% right now.
  - draw_down 7y ago
    Either it's different this time or it's coming eventually. Those are your choices.
  - solidasparagus 7y ago
    It's important to remember that unsustainable things can last longer than you anticipate. I firmly believe the bubble will burst (a bit, there's too much real value for a collapse), but I have no idea if it will be tomorrow or if it will be a decade from now.
    - TAForObvReasons 7y ago
tempsy 7y ago
I think Softbank's main problem is that they fund opportunity without considering execution at all. It's very possible that a dog walking service could be a multibillion opportunity (millennials/gen Z choosing to have pets over kids in greater numbers and working FT), but was there really anything special about this specific team that would lead anyone to believe they could execute with a $300m injection? I don't think so.
- slimsag 7y ago
  But.. they said they are all experts and care about animals! And the founders are super-genius hackers from MIT!
  - wolco 7y ago
    Don't blame the founders the expertised ex-yahoo put the nail into any growth by killing the marketing budget.
  - throwawaytoday5 7y ago
    My current org is composed of mostly MS and PHDs (I'd honestly say 60% have graduate degrees), the only thing it convinced me of is that if you're working in my company and went to MIT (or any other good school) something is wrong with you or you're a foreigner who took whatever job was willing to sponsor your green card.
  - puranjay 7y ago
    A business like this that doesn't really rely on technology would be far better run if it was helmed by MBAs with operational experience. This entire business is basically a gigantic spreadsheet where you move things around to optimize profitability. Believing that this is a "tech" startup is where you start to fail. I see so many businesses fail to make this distinction. Stripe is a tech company, as is Boston Dynamics. But Wag is a tech leveraged business.
    - ghaff 7y ago
      It’s like pretty much every other one of these market making companies. At a local level—it’s something that people can and do organize with telephones, email, and maybe calendars and spreadsheets. I’m not sure what the advantage of having the same service exist in a bunch of cities is. And you have the usual problem that most people prefer to use individuals they are comfortable with and have maybe been recommended by friends. Especially for something like dog walking. Maybe there’s a market for selling dog walking business kits with software. But that’s not $300m.
yumraj 7y ago
I used to always look amusingly at their billboard on 101, as they seemed like an Uber for dogs and the next Webvan. Till I realized how much money they have raised... And I... Was.. Speechless....
Izmaki 7y ago
There are so many spontaneous adds on this freaking page I can't even read the article because the text jumps away to make room for god know what product they want me to buy... Man, what a trend this has grown to be.
mruts 7y ago
Too bad companies like Bird, Wag, and WeWork get so much access to secondary market capital. Otherwise they would have had to IPO, and I could have shorted these companies like the flee-ridden dogs they are. Hey, at least I got to make big money on Lyft and Uber! This VC backed communism is definately coming to an abrupt end. Once Son is chased out of town, the fun times will be over.
tempsy 7y ago
Anyone have insight into Nuro? I was thinking of applying but now need to second guess joining any SoftBank co.
- whoknewvarint 7y ago
  I work at Nuro, what do you want to know?
qaq 7y ago
How the hell are they loosing money they take a big cut from a service that they invest 0 money into outside of marketing. If the app worked half decently their cs expenses would be low.
- Johnny555 7y ago
  I think it's because instead of their app being a way to earn recurring revenue by being a go-between between dog walkers and dog owners, it's more of a way for dog-walkers to build up their client list, who no longer need Wag skimming off profit in the middle. They claim that they'll charge walkers $1000 if they provide services to a Wag client outside of the service, but I'd be surprised if that's legally enforceable: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20854100 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20854100
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
zeruch 7y ago
The new Pets.com?
Barrin92 7y ago
i know there is this meme about all software companies just bundling and unbundling things, but can we please stop putting tens of milllions into startups that are literally just: "App for Y that know allows you to work like before but without labour rights" and invest money into stuff that actually deserves to be called an invention. Idk cure cancer, flying cars, making infrastructure cheaper, something that actually gets productivity up in the long term
- tsm 7y ago
  That requires actual domain expertise outside of being able to hack together a webapp, though. Learning what you need to know about the dog-walking industry takes something on the order of weeks. Learning about medicine, finance, etc. is actually difficult. The startup I work for is in property insurance, and while the software we've written is cool, the business hasn't gone belly-up yet since we have good insurance analysts, actuaries, lawyers, salespeople, etcetera.
jejunebug 7y ago
I used to work at Wag a for a few months, leaving shortly after the new CEO was brought on and they received the SoftBank investment. The fact that things got worse since then is not surprising. Management was already pretty disorganized, they were bad at managing funds (the salary discrepancies were very real), and putting it mildly it was just an unpleasant place to be. There was a staggering amount of turnover, especially with tech roles, in the short time I was there - one minute someone would get called into a meeting and that was the last I saw of them. I cant imagine the technical debt they've been accruing from having a carousel of developers. I know they wanted to position themselves as the one stop shop for dog everything (not just walks but sitting/boarding, training, food delivery, etc) which is what I think helped them raise the funds, but I think they've taken too long to resolve the issues around their bread and butter of dog walking. The fact that the Viners and Meltzer are all since left as well is pretty telling.
- xenospn 7y ago
  To be fair, I'm shocked that so many people trust strangers to walk their dogs. That's insanity and no wonder they get so much hate press. Unsustainable and we're just a few escaped/dead/stolen dogs away from them imploding completely.
0xADADA 7y ago
Best title ever.
aledalgrande 7y ago
The lesson I think is to be learned here, is that without passion, even money cannot help. If CEO and top executives really cared about a startup for dogs, they would have come up with solutions for the most recurring problems (e.g. dogs getting lost, or mistreated). How hard is to make a leash with GPS in it and track it in an app? Or to give mandatory basic training to any new contractor? Also the way they treated the customer service employees is disgusting.
rdiddly 7y ago
Messy is right. It's as if competently running a business people want to continue patronizing keeps slipping everybody's minds. No bootstrapped business thinks they can get away with this many gaffes in a row. Because on the very first screw-up, you lose some amount of money, and it's your own money, and it hurts, and you learn. In a startup funded like this, money is just the stuff you throw at stuff, and there's always more where that came from. Obviously the whole VC-funded hyper-growth thing doesn't guarantee success, has a low success rate in fact, but I'm starting to wonder whether those investments actively prevent success in some cases.
- vageli 7y ago
  > Messy is right. It's as if competently running a business people want to continue patronizing keeps slipping everybody's minds. No bootstrapped business thinks they can get away with this many gaffes in a row. Because on the very first screw-up, you lose some amount of money, and it's your own money, and it hurts, and you learn. In a startup funded like this, money is just the stuff you throw at stuff, and there's always more where that came from. Obviously the whole VC-funded hyper-growth thing doesn't guarantee success, has a low success rate in fact, but I'm starting to wonder whether those investments actively prevent success in some cases. Is this how it is, boots on the ground wise though? I've worked for VC funded startups and we never treated budgets as something to be scoffed at and were very cost conscious.
- im_down_w_otp 7y ago
  It actively impedes success in every environment that I've seen it in, and the only difference is that some companies have such a compelling product that they're able to be successful in spite of the problems brought about by "hyper-growth". Somewhere core to the problem is that providing good direction is hard. Hiring good people is hard. Making sure good people are working together in the right direction is hard. "Hyper-growth" basically trivializes all those things so that you're hiring as fast as you can, which keeps you from meaningfully on-boarding people, and leaves a bunch of people without good direction. The knock-on effects of that dynamic can be disastrous. Low morale due to shapes of listlessness. Late stage integration issues due to folks working for long periods in sporadic threads that need to be woven together. Political infighting as too many people with not really enough meaningful work to do start getting creative for their own ends at the expense of others or the organization. I have been around and in a lot of "hyper-growth" startups, and not one of them that I interacted with operated remotely close to a well-oiled functioning organization.
swarnie_ 7y ago
I've sold out. I don't care about the last 10% potential. This market is fucked
the_watcher 7y ago
> Wag looked like tech's next Big Thing Uhh, what? No, it didn't. Even the bull case never imagined it as anything like a "next big thing."
- cglotr 7y ago
  It tells you a lot about the current state of innovation when a solution to dog-walking is being touted as the "Next Big Thing."
- jwilk 7y ago
  What's "bull case"?
  - adjkant 7y ago
    It's a stock term - bull vs bear: https://www.investopedia.com/insights/digging-deeper-bull-and-bear-markets/ https://www.investopedia.com/insights/digging-deeper-bull-an...
reilly3000 7y ago
I don't think that a good company can grow from a massive investment that early. The VC fund wants the company to spend the money and grow value quickly, not sit on it for years. That puts pressure on leadership to waste time and money worrying about building out offices, hiring top talent, contracting with big agencies, etc. None of that work has anything to do with building a quality product, growing a functional culture, or paying attention to what customers are saying. It suspends financial reality for both leadership and rank/file; instead it encourages waste. Does closing a $250K contract matter? In a scrappy startup, that contract is a huge win. In an overfunded startup, its often considered a distraction.

200 points by danso 7y ago

I applied to this company right at the beginning of there expansion. The person that interviewed me said he had been sleeping on couches for the last year or so, (around 2017) and working insane hours. They gave me a php coding test to implement some kind of pub/sub. I finished it. Had no real way of submitting it other than emailing it to the interviewer as a zip. The moment the interviewer told me they worked with a php stack. I asked why they'd chosen to go with php given that the product was so new they could've chosen any newer tech. stack (JavaScript framework) and probably been better off. The interviewer didn't really response to my question. The entire conversation with said person, was them talking at me for about 30 minutes. They said the company was going to try to pivot to developing some service surrounding their lock box service for the keys to get into people's houses for the dog walking. It seemed very "directionless" and gave me a very bad taste in my mouth. They never got back to me or anything. Which was fine by me since I wasn't going to pursue them any further.

sschueller 7y ago
Are they at least using a php framework like symfony or is it all spagetti?
- fantasticFerret 7y ago
  The interviewer never told me. I never asked.
- 100-xyz 7y ago
  I interviewed with them. Their tech stack is Laravel. The whole interview seemed flaky. Now glad I got rejected.
- tzs 7y ago
  Not using a PHP framework for PHP does not imply that it must be all spaghetti. There are programmers who can write clear, structured, maintainable code in straight PHP.
hoorayimhelping 7y ago
I had a similar experience in 2018. In fact, I think my application with them is still active, cause I also never heard back from them after my in person interview. They had me come in at noon, said they'd serve me lunch, then directed me to a galley kitchen where there were some leftovers from something that was served the day before. I kind of zoned out after that, cause I was hungry and also annoyed, but I remember being condescended to, everyone being late, and everyone seeming like they were in a huge hurry. Never heard a rejection or offer from them. My ex has our dog, I told her to stop using Wag as soon as possible. I'm not trusting a company that disorganized with my dog.
wolco 7y ago
A php stack is the right stack for 2017 or 2019 for a company like Wag. What would a javascript framework offer them? Their core product is connecting people and dogs. A php stack with laravel means they have a working website with authentication on day 1. What would a javascript framework offer them? Emailing tests or documents is very common during the interview process if the company is a startup. Offer them a github link with the code if you want to standout. Why apply without knowing the stack?
- danpalmer 7y ago
  > Offer them a github link with the code if you want to standout. Make sure it's a private GitHub repo, or you ask first. Many companies prefer their coding tests to not be published online. It happens, it's unavoidable, but companies can often get by with the same test for a while if people don't post them on GitHub too much.
- xnyan 7y ago
  Maybe I'm dumb - Can anyone tell me why PHP vs JS for a "generic" web application? \In 2019 there are far far far more developers with real experience developing in Javascript vs PHP. There are obviously a lot of other factors in considering the base dev language, but unless you can make a strong case for PHP vs JS, I'm picking JS every time because in the generic case they both meet my needs but a lot more devs work with JS vs PHP. This is not a moral argument, but rather a practical one. What is the practical argument for PHP?
  - cma 7y ago
    A PHP stack can maybe help you get acquired by Facebook, like a COBOL stack could ease an acquisition by an old insurance company.
  - kortilla 7y ago
    There are far fewer devs with server-side JavaScript experience. When it comes to server-side for small startups, the syntax is irrelevant compared to the maturity of the ecosystem. Look how much of the web is still Wordpress.
sedachv 7y ago
> Had no real way of submitting it other than emailing it to the interviewer as a zip. Being good at email (ex: not relying on GMail, knowing basic things about line length, top-posting, signature, having your own domain(s), using an actual email client instead of webmail crap, Sieve filters and mailing list management, actually knowing how mailing-list based development works and being able to use (git) patch/diff, bonus points for offline syncing, 2x bonus for using a text client (3x bonus for xmh), 10x bonus for running your own server(s)) is a way better indicator of technical competency than the ability to sign up for a GitHub account and click a few buttons. HTML email is a huge red flag for programmers.
- swatcoder 7y ago
  On the contrary, I wouldn’t _usually_ expect a lot of value from someone who did all that. My first intuitions would be that they’re likely reluctant to make practical compromises, slow to accept norms, and that they’re prone to chasing rabbits. They might have a role on a large team or for a very specific project, but there’s be some wariness for sure.
  - Can_Not 7y ago
    This is going to be a person who spends all day solving every problem my business doesn't have.
- dillonmckay 7y ago
  They are not applying for a job at sendgrid, or as an email implementation strategist.

jpollock 7y ago

If you're Saudi Arabia with a silly amount of money in cash, are you looking for 10-100x return out of this, or are you simply looking for a place to park liquid funds that won't lose as much as leaving it in German government bonds.

jahlove 7y ago
mega yachts aren't cheap
hogFeast 7y ago
No. Without overcomplicating things, Saudi are the dumbest money out there. They have no idea at all. Even the ones that have worked at IBanks, have no real understanding of basic finance (and likely only got the job so the bank could try to bribe members of their family). To get an investment, you just need to bribe the right people...that is how they invest (I used to know two very junior royal family members, they were unquestionably two of the stupidest people I have ever met...they failed school, ended up a prestigious uni, paid people to do their work, and then ended up in banking...somehow). I wouldn't try to analyse it. A smart Japanese guy took them for a ride, he took a cut, and then handed it to some software developers in Silicon Valley who saved some and then spent the rest. That is it. No value created. No investments. Just redistribution away from stupid people. Btw, this happened in the 1970s too. When the oil price spiked, the Saudis didn't know what to do with their cash so they just deposited it in US banks. The US banks didn't know what to do either so they started lending to South America. They knew what to do: politicians either stole it or handed it out as bribes to their supporters. The result was Citibank and a few other banks going insolvent in the early 80s, and a massive debt crisis in LatAm from 1980-1993(ish). ...the Saudis also gave a bit to Britain, who had their own debt crisis (also because of cash handouts to political supporters) and devalued a good chunk of their money away. They will lose money always.
- guynamedloren 7y ago
  This is fascinating. As somebody who knows nothing at all about this.. are there any detailed books on the subject?
- 7y ago

jacquesm 7y ago

Plan to get taken for a walk, end up getting taken for a ride. Figures.

nosleeptill 7y ago

This is fucking insane. $300M for a dog walking company, a dog walking company. A dog walking company. A fucking dog walking company.

dang 7y ago
Ok, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News.
- zaroth 7y ago
  Can we make a small exception for when the comment perfectly elucidates what everyone is actually thinking while reading the article? I’m sorry, all due respect, but.... a dog walking company.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - dang 7y ago
    Well, let's apply the HN guidelines [1] and, more importantly their spirit, to this case. That spirit is to be reflective rather than reflexive [2], which means to interrupt the rapid reflex that springs up immediately ("what everyone is actually thinking"), inhibit the temptation to react, and give the slower, reflective part of the brain time to catch up. When I do that, the first thing that comes to me is that the dog-owner market is huge—so huge that $300M is likely a small number rather than a large one. Moreover, the emotions that people have about their dogs are intense, profound, and deeply personal. ("Dogs are the new kids", reads a coffee mug I once saw in a kitchen in San Francisco.) So this market is not only broad, it's deep; the potential customers are not only numerous but the chance for repeat business is high. Probably there's a huge opportunity here, if you can satisfy people's needs or at least give them a feeling of that. As for dog-walking sounding trivial, if you've ever been (or known) a stressed-out, overworked dog owner and how it feels to face your sad unwalked dog in the evening when you have no energy left to do anything, this is actually not trivial at all. It is not only a form of suffering, it's closely connected with deeper forms of suffering—because so many of us invest our unfulfilled relational capacity into our pets. People will spend a lot of money to relieve a problem like that. In short: huge market, repeat business, premium pricing. I know nothing about Wag, but this is more than enough to see how the GP comment broke the HN guidelines by being a shallow dismissal. I totally get why people want to post that kind of rant and share that perspective—I share it too, it's fun and creates a sense of community in its own way. But we have to remember what we're optimizing for on HN. There are tradeoffs in the kinds of discussion we get to have. If we take the shallow route and go for the sugar rush of piling on stupidity at a distance, we forego the quieter, insightful kind of discussion. Compounded, this determines the kind of site Hacker News is going to be. Edit: I read the article, which seems to me unusually good and to deserve a more thoughtful discussion than most comments have offered here so far. Among other things, it makes clear that the issue is not "a fucking dog walking company" being a bad business per se, because a competitor is actually doing better. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html 2. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20reflective%20reflex&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

mbesto 7y ago

Hot take - when it's all said and done (e.g. when the whole fund gets returned) the vision fund is going to devalue more companies than it is going to value them. If they're charging a management fee then they'll still make money but their LPs aint gonna be happy in the long term.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

freedomben 7y ago

Be aware: audio will start playing out of your speakers if they are on.

mynameishere 7y ago
Welcome to the internet. Every single website has auto-playing video now. Firefox has an option to turn it off. I think it's the only browser with that.

lawrenceyan 7y ago

You’ve got to applaud Masayoshi Son for his tenacity at the very least. Lived through the Dot Com Crash, caused the next one 20 years later. That’s a big achievement in my book. How many people can really say they’ve been able to do something like that? [Edit] I should probably add a caveat that Masayoshi Son isn’t the dumb one here. No, he’s actually quite the genius, managing to convince Saudia Arabia to basically give him $45 billion and then spinning that all the way into $100 billion with the Vision Fund. I’m genuinely giving praise to the man here. He saw an opportunity and took advantage of it.

quaquaqua1 7y ago
Serial market crasher, see you in 2040 for when I finally end up on the correct side of the market and can turn my stock into cash and my cash in yachts.
baxtr 7y ago
Agree. He for sure had a exciting life so far...
jore 7y ago
I wonder if his investments could really trigger something like that. Are there other investments of the Vision fund that are falling apart besides WeWork and Wag?
- Judgmentality 7y ago
  Uber (lost money on the IPO), Cruise (just delayed their launch, still have no product or revenue), they bought Boston Dynamics (super awesome technology but the business doesn't seem viable), Light (really awesome idea to change mobile photography, but seems an obvious failure at this point), Zume (a pizza chain buildings robots that's raised hundreds of millions of dollars...they do not have any production robots), Nuro (another overhyped self-driving startup, because Uber and Cruise weren't enough billions)...this is not an exhaustive list. I have repeatedly said SoftBank is some of the dumbest money in the Valley, and I stand by that proclamation. https://www.businessinsider.com/running-list-softbank-investments-2017-7#brightstar-acquired-for-22-billion-49 https://www.businessinsider.com/running-list-softbank-invest... Now that said, it is expected that most investments in any VC portfolio will fail! Something like a 70% failure rate, with 20% being moderately successful, and 10% being very successful is considered very good for the VC industry. But at the end of the day it's ROI - you make money or you lose money. I think SoftBank is going to lose more money than all the other VC firms simply because they started with more money to lose.

loganfrederick 7y ago

What I don't get about the Vision Fund is how so many of its investments lack (pun intended) vision. Other than the ARM, Nvidia, and a few billion in biotech (about $3 billion[1]) investments, so much of the fund has gone into pretty "obvious" traditional startups. If I had a $100 billion fund, I wouldn't be swinging for these singles and doubles (which Uber and WeWork were by the time Softbank got involved, although these companies can still provide value to customers). Vision Fund should've been out-competing Google X to become the financial backer of basically the next Bell Labs. Instead of 3% biotech and 20% Uber and WeWork and Wag, I'd have flipped those two numbers. The biggest loss from the Vision Fund is the opportunity cost of all the great disease-eliminating, fundamental-science research that could've had much greater upside than WeWork. And I never hear that opportunity cost discussed. EDIT: I've added an additional comment with more supporting arguments for taking bigger risks but more ambitious risks when managing large sums: https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=21096651 https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=21096651 [1]: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/softbanks-vision-fund-deploying-100-billion-185127309.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/softbanks-vision-fund-deployi...

manigandham 7y ago
It's just a nice name. It's a generic fund to invest mostly oil money and designed to focus on tech for the higher returns. The problem is that the fund is massive and there's a limit to how much capital you can efficiently deploy at once, especially with such a disconnected leadership team. The size was originally used as a brute-force growth tactic and competition clearer, but now it's clear that it's just leading to unviable business models and vastly inflated valuations while hurting more promising companies that have to compete in this bubble environment.
pdq 7y ago
The problem when you have so much money to invest is that your customers need to actually invest it. It's much harder to invest $1-$5M at a time when you can just go back to the WeWork pool and drop $2B. It's like painting a wall mural using fine tipped brushes, rather than wide paint rollers or a paint gun. You get the job done so much faster, but your quality will suffer tremendously.

buboard 7y ago

Is it possible for investment funds to become insolvent?

hogFeast 7y ago

The big issue with the product is that after the first transaction, no-one has any incentive to use your marketplace. There is a company in my country doing this. They are probably not worth zero tbf but they have a massive issue with people just cutting them out after the first transaction. And what is the problem with just building a brand? I employ a bunch of dog walkers, I do checks on them, I build a trusted brand...the $300m is a solution without a problem.

bobloblaw45 7y ago
People have told me their Uber/Lyft drivers offer to be their personal driver for the trip when they pick them up from airports. Not sure how common this is. Back in the day I used to drive a shuttle and once in awhile I'd get pressured into taking a passenger that wasn't related to the business I was employed by. It's pretty harmless but still a big no-no since you're technically breaking some laws since there are certain loops you have to jump through to take on fares like that (got screamed at by towncar drivers when I arrived at the airport. I'm sure they were thrilled when Uber became a thing). Anyways the passengers paid 40 bucks for a 20 minute drive. That was the going rate they were used to paying back in 2008. There's a LOT of incentive to cut out the middle man.
jetrink 7y ago
I watch dogs through Rover and they do have mechanisms to lock you in. The primary one is that your rank in the search results is strongly affected by repeat transactions and the number of repeat customers is listed prominently in your profile as an indication of your trustworthiness. Once I hit a certain threshold, I had to raise my prices to 30% above the area average in order to keep the number of requests down to a level that I was prepared to accommodate. The second is that Rover actually does provide a service to its sitters. They have great support that has helped me through a few crises (including a dog dying in my home from a heart attack) and insurance coverage.

switch007 7y ago

How would have JavaScript made them better off?

outworlder 7y ago
Don't eat the bait. This will devolve into yet another pointless discussion.
- xwdv 7y ago
  Too late. Javascript would have made it far easier to hire talent, and develop a much better user experience without multiple page refreshes. In some cases it would even be easier to develop a cross platform mobile application if you use Javascript as well.
  - wolco 7y ago
    Ability to find php developers is usually a reason to choose php. It's actually harder to find good js developers. Javascript frameworks work nicely with php acting as an api. An even better approach is a hybrid that allows you to use a framework like Vue/React or a libruary like jQuery but also allows you to use php to power your pages. This gives you the ability to have an spa per section. A common approach is to use an api to deliver data to your mobile app. If you've built it in php that can be reused.
    - xnyan 7y ago
      Hey! New dev honestly trying to learn why PHP matters at all in 2019. Is PHP something I should stop learning JS for? In all my (very limited) experience, PHP does not solve any problem JavaScript can't, and JS is also far more in demand.
      - vageli 7y ago
        > Hey! New dev honestly trying to learn why PHP matters at all in 2019. Is PHP something I should stop learning JS for? In all my (very limited) experience, PHP does not solve any problem JavaScript can't, and JS is also far more in demand. If the only motivation for learning a language is applicability to the job field, javascript probably will open more doors at this point, depending on your location. PHP is really great for getting MVPs out the door in my experience, but a productive engineer in any language would likely have the same experience in the language of their choosing. I am by no means a PHP developer though.

maerF0x0 7y ago

These on demand - fulfilled by gig contracting platforms can _only_ provide value if there has been a big technological change that undermines expertise in a job. Uber works because of google maps knowing a faster route than even the 20 year veteran tax driver. There hasn't been a revolutionary technology in dog walking, just people who need cash but dont know pets. There hasnt been a revolutionary technology in grocery shopping, just people who need cash and dont care about the quality of your basket. etc.

UncleEntity 7y ago
> Uber works because of google maps knowing a faster route than even the 20 year veteran tax driver. Who also use google maps to do their route planning...
techslave 7y ago
uber has their own mapping. and no, it or google maps is decidedly not better than local knowledge.
- maerF0x0 7y ago
  > is decidedly not better than local knowledge. any proof? I will say it falls down w/ construction zones and road changes.
  - Nursie 7y ago
    In my town it doesn't seem to be aware of the roads that taxis can use but which are closed to 'normal' traffic.
  - Spooky23 7y ago
    All of the mapping programs are good at longer flows, they all suck in cities with lights and arbitrary delays. I just did a drive from Tampa, FL to Albany, NY. Waze and Google calculated the drive time within 10 minutes. My commute is about 12 minutes. Both Google and Waze will dump you on routes that will double or triple that.
  - 7y ago

Edmond 7y ago

>Mike Walsh, a general partner at Structure Capital, which was an early investor in Wag, described the brothers to CNN Business as "so smart" that it's "almost difficult to communicate" with them.

stagger87 7y ago
Can also be read as smart with poor social skills.
- techslave 7y ago
  i don’t think that’s an “also”. it is the intended reading.
- mikestew 7y ago
  Can also be read as, “Mike Walsh is so poor at sniffing out bullshit, he calls the bull ‘smart’. It’s not the bull’s fault Mr. Walsh can’t communicate him, it’s because the bull’s so smart, Mike can’t understand him.”

velox_io 7y ago

Reading the title has affirmed to me that we are living in a bubble (and it doesn't look good). I just can't get it through my head how an investment of that size will EVER pay off. A major reason people buy dogs is because they want to get out and walk more. If they can't they outsource it to a teenager you or your friends know, there's no need for a middleman in most cases. (If it was baby-sitting I could understand more it as there is far less flexibility.) WeWork's valuations have also seemed strange to me, when they don't have any assets of infrastructure to warrant such a high value. There's very little stopping others renting office space, in fact a friend of mine has done just that.

gowld 7y ago
In our modern isolated and busy times, many of us don't have neighbors to call on for dogsitting. Dogsitting business is in demand.
drstewart 7y ago
People have been "sure" there's a bubble for a decade now. I mean take this HN article, posted Apr 19, 2012: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3865744 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3865744 How much are you investing on your suredness that there's a bubble? Because if you did it in 2012, you'd be down about 70% right now.
- draw_down 7y ago
  Either it's different this time or it's coming eventually. Those are your choices.
- solidasparagus 7y ago
  It's important to remember that unsustainable things can last longer than you anticipate. I firmly believe the bubble will burst (a bit, there's too much real value for a collapse), but I have no idea if it will be tomorrow or if it will be a decade from now.
  - TAForObvReasons 7y ago

tempsy 7y ago

I think Softbank's main problem is that they fund opportunity without considering execution at all. It's very possible that a dog walking service could be a multibillion opportunity (millennials/gen Z choosing to have pets over kids in greater numbers and working FT), but was there really anything special about this specific team that would lead anyone to believe they could execute with a $300m injection? I don't think so.

slimsag 7y ago
But.. they said they are all experts and care about animals! And the founders are super-genius hackers from MIT!
- wolco 7y ago
  Don't blame the founders the expertised ex-yahoo put the nail into any growth by killing the marketing budget.
- throwawaytoday5 7y ago
  My current org is composed of mostly MS and PHDs (I'd honestly say 60% have graduate degrees), the only thing it convinced me of is that if you're working in my company and went to MIT (or any other good school) something is wrong with you or you're a foreigner who took whatever job was willing to sponsor your green card.
- puranjay 7y ago
  A business like this that doesn't really rely on technology would be far better run if it was helmed by MBAs with operational experience. This entire business is basically a gigantic spreadsheet where you move things around to optimize profitability. Believing that this is a "tech" startup is where you start to fail. I see so many businesses fail to make this distinction. Stripe is a tech company, as is Boston Dynamics. But Wag is a tech leveraged business.
  - ghaff 7y ago
    It’s like pretty much every other one of these market making companies. At a local level—it’s something that people can and do organize with telephones, email, and maybe calendars and spreadsheets. I’m not sure what the advantage of having the same service exist in a bunch of cities is. And you have the usual problem that most people prefer to use individuals they are comfortable with and have maybe been recommended by friends. Especially for something like dog walking. Maybe there’s a market for selling dog walking business kits with software. But that’s not $300m.

yumraj 7y ago

I used to always look amusingly at their billboard on 101, as they seemed like an Uber for dogs and the next Webvan. Till I realized how much money they have raised... And I... Was.. Speechless....

Izmaki 7y ago

There are so many spontaneous adds on this freaking page I can't even read the article because the text jumps away to make room for god know what product they want me to buy... Man, what a trend this has grown to be.

mruts 7y ago

Too bad companies like Bird, Wag, and WeWork get so much access to secondary market capital. Otherwise they would have had to IPO, and I could have shorted these companies like the flee-ridden dogs they are. Hey, at least I got to make big money on Lyft and Uber! This VC backed communism is definately coming to an abrupt end. Once Son is chased out of town, the fun times will be over.

tempsy 7y ago

Anyone have insight into Nuro? I was thinking of applying but now need to second guess joining any SoftBank co.

whoknewvarint 7y ago
I work at Nuro, what do you want to know?

qaq 7y ago

How the hell are they loosing money they take a big cut from a service that they invest 0 money into outside of marketing. If the app worked half decently their cs expenses would be low.

Johnny555 7y ago
I think it's because instead of their app being a way to earn recurring revenue by being a go-between between dog walkers and dog owners, it's more of a way for dog-walkers to build up their client list, who no longer need Wag skimming off profit in the middle. They claim that they'll charge walkers $1000 if they provide services to a Wag client outside of the service, but I'd be surprised if that's legally enforceable: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20854100 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20854100

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

zeruch 7y ago

The new Pets.com?

Barrin92 7y ago

i know there is this meme about all software companies just bundling and unbundling things, but can we please stop putting tens of milllions into startups that are literally just: "App for Y that know allows you to work like before but without labour rights" and invest money into stuff that actually deserves to be called an invention. Idk cure cancer, flying cars, making infrastructure cheaper, something that actually gets productivity up in the long term

tsm 7y ago
That requires actual domain expertise outside of being able to hack together a webapp, though. Learning what you need to know about the dog-walking industry takes something on the order of weeks. Learning about medicine, finance, etc. is actually difficult. The startup I work for is in property insurance, and while the software we've written is cool, the business hasn't gone belly-up yet since we have good insurance analysts, actuaries, lawyers, salespeople, etcetera.

jejunebug 7y ago

I used to work at Wag a for a few months, leaving shortly after the new CEO was brought on and they received the SoftBank investment. The fact that things got worse since then is not surprising. Management was already pretty disorganized, they were bad at managing funds (the salary discrepancies were very real), and putting it mildly it was just an unpleasant place to be. There was a staggering amount of turnover, especially with tech roles, in the short time I was there - one minute someone would get called into a meeting and that was the last I saw of them. I cant imagine the technical debt they've been accruing from having a carousel of developers. I know they wanted to position themselves as the one stop shop for dog everything (not just walks but sitting/boarding, training, food delivery, etc) which is what I think helped them raise the funds, but I think they've taken too long to resolve the issues around their bread and butter of dog walking. The fact that the Viners and Meltzer are all since left as well is pretty telling.

xenospn 7y ago
To be fair, I'm shocked that so many people trust strangers to walk their dogs. That's insanity and no wonder they get so much hate press. Unsustainable and we're just a few escaped/dead/stolen dogs away from them imploding completely.

0xADADA 7y ago

Best title ever.

aledalgrande 7y ago

The lesson I think is to be learned here, is that without passion, even money cannot help. If CEO and top executives really cared about a startup for dogs, they would have come up with solutions for the most recurring problems (e.g. dogs getting lost, or mistreated). How hard is to make a leash with GPS in it and track it in an app? Or to give mandatory basic training to any new contractor? Also the way they treated the customer service employees is disgusting.

rdiddly 7y ago

Messy is right. It's as if competently running a business people want to continue patronizing keeps slipping everybody's minds. No bootstrapped business thinks they can get away with this many gaffes in a row. Because on the very first screw-up, you lose some amount of money, and it's your own money, and it hurts, and you learn. In a startup funded like this, money is just the stuff you throw at stuff, and there's always more where that came from. Obviously the whole VC-funded hyper-growth thing doesn't guarantee success, has a low success rate in fact, but I'm starting to wonder whether those investments actively prevent success in some cases.

vageli 7y ago
> Messy is right. It's as if competently running a business people want to continue patronizing keeps slipping everybody's minds. No bootstrapped business thinks they can get away with this many gaffes in a row. Because on the very first screw-up, you lose some amount of money, and it's your own money, and it hurts, and you learn. In a startup funded like this, money is just the stuff you throw at stuff, and there's always more where that came from. Obviously the whole VC-funded hyper-growth thing doesn't guarantee success, has a low success rate in fact, but I'm starting to wonder whether those investments actively prevent success in some cases. Is this how it is, boots on the ground wise though? I've worked for VC funded startups and we never treated budgets as something to be scoffed at and were very cost conscious.
im_down_w_otp 7y ago
It actively impedes success in every environment that I've seen it in, and the only difference is that some companies have such a compelling product that they're able to be successful in spite of the problems brought about by "hyper-growth". Somewhere core to the problem is that providing good direction is hard. Hiring good people is hard. Making sure good people are working together in the right direction is hard. "Hyper-growth" basically trivializes all those things so that you're hiring as fast as you can, which keeps you from meaningfully on-boarding people, and leaves a bunch of people without good direction. The knock-on effects of that dynamic can be disastrous. Low morale due to shapes of listlessness. Late stage integration issues due to folks working for long periods in sporadic threads that need to be woven together. Political infighting as too many people with not really enough meaningful work to do start getting creative for their own ends at the expense of others or the organization. I have been around and in a lot of "hyper-growth" startups, and not one of them that I interacted with operated remotely close to a well-oiled functioning organization.

swarnie_ 7y ago

I've sold out. I don't care about the last 10% potential. This market is fucked

the_watcher 7y ago

> Wag looked like tech's next Big Thing Uhh, what? No, it didn't. Even the bull case never imagined it as anything like a "next big thing."

cglotr 7y ago
It tells you a lot about the current state of innovation when a solution to dog-walking is being touted as the "Next Big Thing."
jwilk 7y ago
What's "bull case"?
- adjkant 7y ago
  It's a stock term - bull vs bear: https://www.investopedia.com/insights/digging-deeper-bull-and-bear-markets/ https://www.investopedia.com/insights/digging-deeper-bull-an...

reilly3000 7y ago

I don't think that a good company can grow from a massive investment that early. The VC fund wants the company to spend the money and grow value quickly, not sit on it for years. That puts pressure on leadership to waste time and money worrying about building out offices, hiring top talent, contracting with big agencies, etc. None of that work has anything to do with building a quality product, growing a functional culture, or paying attention to what customers are saying. It suspends financial reality for both leadership and rank/file; instead it encourages waste. Does closing a $250K contract matter? In a scrappy startup, that contract is a huge win. In an overfunded startup, its often considered a distraction.