I'm one of the founders of Yapsie (sorta like pet Yelp) and think this is a neat project and it looks really well executed! We considered this problem as well, but decided to go in a slightly different direction. How do you plan to monetize and keep people on the site and using the product? Hope you guys do well!
Ask HN: Pet lovers review my startup
31–40 of 47 posts
Re: Ask HN: Pet lovers review my startup
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure if I agree 100% with that but I would definitely invest in higher quality pictures. Also include pictures of owners, preferably smiling, with their pets. If you have loyal users, maybe you can get some of them to submit pictures with their furry loved ones.
We are in the process of completely redesigning the site and it will look a lot different soon, so we haven't spent time trying to improve the current design. These pics will be going away. Beer and cans are bad for dogs, we don't encourage this. I did get some flack that it's a can of Yuengling and not PBR, the preferred beer of choice for hipsters in San Francisco.
If you ever need new pictures, offer my photos of the most adorable border collie on the planet :-)
Re: Ask HN: Pet lovers review my startup
#33My girlfriend and I are absolutely love dogs, but don't own one (yet). We love to dog-sit for friends and would even consider doing it for strangers. With that, I have two ideas that may improve overall engagement and successful matches:
1) Allow non-owners to create more robust profiles. I'd imagine if some of our friends saw that we really like dog-sitting, they'd consider asking us and/or reaching out to us if they were looking for a sitter. As it currently stands, all I can do is provide name, email and phone number.
2) Allow owners to post to friends of friends or perhaps consider making it the default if people seem open to it -- I would imagine that owners would be okay with others dog-sitting if they had a mutual friend who they trusted. Because people have an average of 200 friends, that means that potential sitters go from 200 to 40,000. Also, consider allowing the non-owners to reach out to friends of friends who need a sitter.
Great idea and nice MVP. I hope those ideas helped and I hope you all succeed!
Best, Luke -- LukeRB.com
Re: Ask HN: Pet lovers review my startup
#34Looks like a good idea although I'm not your market. I don't think your monetising it as far as I can see at the moment, do you have plans for this in the future?
Thanks for the note! No monetization right now - we wanted to make connections easy for people first, but we envision processing transactions. It can be weird passing money between friends, so we've thought about gifting, as well as credit card payments to remove the cash barrier for people. Eventually you'll be able to connect with friends of friends and professionals too, in which case we would handle the transacti…
I think choosing gifts at the end (if that's what you mean) is an excellent idea!
Re: Ask HN: Pet lovers review my startup
#35Brilliant! I've been a beta tester for a while, and my first "broadcast" request on Facebook got me several leads! People really DO want to help out, and putting out a general request is such an easy way to get people almost asking YOU if they can care for your pet! Go Spotwag. Can't wait to see where this'll go!
Re: Ask HN: Pet lovers review my startup
#36We have two cats for whom we currently hire a local professional caretaker when we go away. We used to ask friends, but we didn't want to keep asking them again and again. A couple of them like doing it, but we still felt like we shouldn't take them for granted.
Assuming we want to ask friends for help, my first reaction on seeing this was that it's useful, but on second thoughts, I'm not so sure.
You probably get this question a lot, but if you're just using Facebook, why can't I post the message myself on Facebook instead of going via you? Or as we used to do, just call or email them?
If the value you are adding is management of the arrangement info, then I'm not sure how useful that is. Facebook messaging or email is good enough for doing that and fits in with everyone's usual mode of communication.
I know this is an MVP and I'm sure you will add more useful features, but you really need to start with the most useful feature, otherwise it will be hard to get people onboard.
Helping people find good professional caretakers would probably be much more useful and will give you a direct way to make money via referrals.
If you are really seeing a lot of interest on the part of non-pet-owners to take care of pets, then this could indeed be an AirBNB-type opportunity - empowering non-professionals to become sellers on a new marketplace. Then, trust would be an issue and there may be other legal hurdles, but those are signals for opportunity.
Edit: One way to establish trust is to enlist people who live in my neighbourhood. The person we currently hire lives on our street, which has increased my trust for them a huge amount. When I can literally walk past their door every time I go out, I feel more comfortable hiring them. You could use online local forums to gauge interest and get people to sign up.
Re: Ask HN: Pet lovers review my startup
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good feedback. We've heard this before as well. I'm just stubborn and like looking at the photos. When we roll out the redesign, we'll add a silhouette and not make it required.
I do think you should have email reminders that nudge people who haven't yet added a photo to do so. Maybe once every 2 or 3 weeks or something.
Definitely, we're thinking about small nudges to help people through the process, both in completing the profile and in setting your first request or remembering us the next time you do need help.
Re: Ask HN: Pet lovers review my startup
#38Brilliant! I've been a beta tester for a while, and my first "broadcast" request on Facebook got me several leads! People really DO want to help out, and putting out a general request is such an easy way to get people almost asking YOU if they can care for your pet! Go Spotwag. Can't wait to see where this'll go!
Excited too! And thanks so much for helping us work out the bugs and start to improve the experience! ;)
Re: Ask HN: Pet lovers review my startup
#39I'm one of the founders of Yapsie (sorta like pet Yelp) and think this is a neat project and it looks really well executed! We considered this problem as well, but decided to go in a slightly different direction. How do you plan to monetize and keep people on the site and using the product? Hope you guys do well!
Nice! Thanks so much for the note! Would love to talk some time, maybe we could connect offline? Can reach me directly at chris (at) spotwag (dot) com.
Re: Ask HN: Pet lovers review my startup
#40My girlfriend and I are absolutely love dogs, but don't own one (yet). We love to dog-sit for friends and would even consider doing it for strangers. With that, I have two ideas that may improve overall engagement and successful matches: 1) Allow non-owners to create more robust profiles. I'd imagine if some of our friends saw that we really like dog-sitting, they'd consider asking us and/or reaching out to us if the…
It's like you've been reading our emails... Completely agree with both of your points here! We're already talking about ways to allow non-owners to create a more robust profile, and are thinking about how to grow each user's graph beyond direct friends, including some elements similar to LinkedIn (e.g. your direct friends giving an endorsement to their friends, so when you see a friend of friend come up as an option, you see 5 other direct friends have vouched for that person and their love/ ability to watch dogs).
Thanks so much for the input, and would love to hear more as you continue diving into the current release! =)