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An Airbnb for Dogs Gets $3.4 Million in Funding

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Re: An Airbnb for Dogs Gets $3.4 Million in Funding

#41

Post by JVIDEL »

Yes I have a dog, I know getting where to leave my pet during trips can be a pain, BUT I also know how DANGEROUS it can be to leave it with ANYONE.

This is not a room that can get trashed, and my dog can't tell if the guy or girl is an ass and just leave. My neighbor once left his dog with a woman he thought he could trust, and when he came back from vacation his dog was starved to death and covered in hundreds of ticks.

It had to be put down...

Airbnb horrors stories are too many to risk your dog becoming a cautionary tale in some blog.

Re: An Airbnb for Dogs Gets $3.4 Million in Funding

#42

Post by [deleted] »

justincormack wrote: post #20

Despite all the people saying this is not a bubble, it is. Small businesses like this would not have got money a while back. This is not a technology business, it has no first mover advantage, it does not require large amounts of capital to make stuff, maybe it will take off as a product category, but without a bubble it would not get $3 million, or indeed want that amount, being the sort of business you would grow o…

[deleted]

Re: An Airbnb for Dogs Gets $3.4 Million in Funding

#43

Post by ig1 »

justincormack wrote: post #20

Despite all the people saying this is not a bubble, it is. Small businesses like this would not have got money a while back. This is not a technology business, it has no first mover advantage, it does not require large amounts of capital to make stuff, maybe it will take off as a product category, but without a bubble it would not get $3 million, or indeed want that amount, being the sort of business you would grow o…

Marketplace businesses tend to be natural monopolies, so there is in fact a strong first mover advantage. Once you become the dominant marketplace in a category it becomes very hard for someone else to displace you (look at craigslist, ebay, etc.)

I'm guessing a significant chunk of that 3m will go towards marketing.

Re: An Airbnb for Dogs Gets $3.4 Million in Funding

#44

Post by mechanical_fish »

biot wrote: post #3

Next up: Baby.com. When you go on vacation and don't want to take your infant child, just check out a few profiles, pick one, and drop your baby off at the stranger's house. All members are community vetted to ensure quality care. Was your experience less than satisfactory? Simply "thumbs down" the user's profile and write a review to let other members know.

Do you come from a society where people don't use day care?

This sounds like a potentially great idea for a Facebook app, actually: Install the app, and it searches your social network for local friends-of-friends who have advertised baby-sitting services and have been hired at least once by one of your friends. Then the app helps you to direct-message the sitter, as well as some of the sitter's customers that it knows about.

Surely something like this already exists…?

Re: An Airbnb for Dogs Gets $3.4 Million in Funding

#45

Post by slantyyz »

djb_hackernews wrote: post #34
slantyyz wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dog boarding is indeed expensive, but I can't imagine using such a service for my dogs. It's one thing to get an apartment trashed with a service like AirBnB - that stuff is usually replaceable, but the last thing I need is for one of my dogs to get sick/injured/lost/worse from some stranger I found on a dog sitting site. My wife and I are crazy dog owners who treat our dogs like family, but I think we'd rather overp…

This is like the argument of "I'd never meet people from the internet in real life". Guess what? Those are real people. The people you trust with your pets are the same people on rover.com.

The people I'd trust with my pets probably represent a tiny subset of the people on rover.com. And I am not interested in a trial and error process that risks my dogs' well being to find out who is as good as they represent themselves to be.

It's not like your dogs can talk and rat out the bad people on rover.com, which makes it very hard to trust the reviews. Think about the review criteria. It's based on a subjective "well, my dog seems ok" assessment from an absentee dog owner who has no proof their dog was treated well or exercised while they were away.

Re: An Airbnb for Dogs Gets $3.4 Million in Funding

#46

Post by justinsb »

briggsly wrote: post #25
justinsb wrote: post #9

This is brilliant; both sides of the market exist and are eager to find the other one. Rover's biggest problem could be that people will happily watch dogs for free / even pay to do so. This is an unusual problem for a market maker (are there any other examples?)

Que? I would love to find some sweet old lady to watch my dogs for free rather than pay $25-50/night to board my dog in a box not much bigger than my CPU. I would pay a nice commission to the site to connect me with such a benevolent, non-crazy old lady such as this (if it does in fact exist).

So I presume you've signed up?

I believe there are lots of people that love dogs but can't have one full time (travel a lot etc); or who would happily take in another dog for a few days to keep their dog company. I imagine the price will rapidly approach zero therefore.

It's a great idea, but it'll be a very interesting marketplace to watch!

Re: An Airbnb for Dogs Gets $3.4 Million in Funding

#47

Post by georgemcbay »

rprasad wrote: post #39

I can totally see them getting their a$$e$ sued off for skirting kennel licensing laws. There's a reason that kennels are expensive: they have to take steps to make sure their pet hotels are safe for pets, and more importantly, that they have taken appropriate measures to prevent the transmission of diseases. Describing this as AirBnB for dogs is very accurate, as it has many of the same problems. It's only a matter…

"It's only a matter of time before someone's dog dies and the first thing the mainstream public hears about this site is a horror story."

Unfortunately this is the first thing I thought when reading about this.

The story of the Airbnb-using lady whose apartment was trashed by a bunch of meth-cooks is likely to look absolutely quaint when compared to the first Rover.com horror story.

Re: An Airbnb for Dogs Gets $3.4 Million in Funding

#48

Post by buu700 »

briggsly wrote: post #25
justinsb wrote: post #9

This is brilliant; both sides of the market exist and are eager to find the other one. Rover's biggest problem could be that people will happily watch dogs for free / even pay to do so. This is an unusual problem for a market maker (are there any other examples?)

Que? I would love to find some sweet old lady to watch my dogs for free rather than pay $25-50/night to board my dog in a box not much bigger than my CPU. I would pay a nice commission to the site to connect me with such a benevolent, non-crazy old lady such as this (if it does in fact exist).

a box not much bigger than my CPU

Somehow, I don't think any dog would survive in such a box...

Re: An Airbnb for Dogs Gets $3.4 Million in Funding

#49

Post by gamble »

tptacek wrote: post #4

To preempt an impending flood of "bubble!" babble: It may surprise you how sensible this business idea is. As someone who has had to alter vacation plans due to (reluctant) dog ownership: dog boarding is very expensive, and commercial dog boarding facilities are not great, requiring careful reviewing and inspection before selecting; even then, your preferred venues are likely to book up exactly when you want to be ou…

Strikes me as a great idea.

I board my dog with the doggie daycare that she goes to every day, but before they started offering that service I hated boarding her. There just aren't any boarding services in town that I trust, and our dog has a terrible time in those kennels where the dogs are cooped up in concrete-and-mesh-fencing pens 23 hours a day. The last time we tried, she chewed herself badly enough that she had to go the vet. After that I had to resort to driving five hours (each way) to drop her off with my parents before going on trips.

I'd have leapt on a service like rover.com if it had existed at the time.

Re: An Airbnb for Dogs Gets $3.4 Million in Funding

#50

Post by antihero »

JVIDEL wrote: post #41

Yes I have a dog, I know getting where to leave my pet during trips can be a pain, BUT I also know how DANGEROUS it can be to leave it with ANYONE. This is not a room that can get trashed, and my dog can't tell if the guy or girl is an ass and just leave. My neighbor once left his dog with a woman he thought he could trust, and when he came back from vacation his dog was starved to death and covered in hundreds of ti…

Exactly. Dogs are something that you should have a much deeper connection to than an apartment, there's no way I'd let mine stay with some random person.
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