I'm aware that it's a big market. I think my scepticism or strong dislike (which I think caused my initial emotional reaction to the concept) of the very idea is based on:
First, it seems like another instance of very wealthy people in big tech cities living in a bubble. Sure, many people who live in these cities can afford high prices for dog walkers. But that doesn't scale to anywhere beyond these hubs of uber-rich. No-one in middle America, let alone anywhere else outside hyper-wealthy cities, is going to be spending $30/day (I'm talking this number from another comment, I don't know where they got it) to have their dog walked. Assuming that's every weekday, that's at least $600/month. That scales if you ("you" being the founders/investors, not actually you) believe solipsistically that being able to do so is somehow common or even desirable to most people. It's a very yuppie thing to get a dog just to pay someone else to walk it. Even only having a dog walker a fraction of that time would be a huge expense to most people. So it's a service for the already-pampered tech/finance class. Hence, my comparison to the dumpster fire that was Juicero.
Secondly, the investment of $600 million in companies that basically exist to leech off dogwalkers shows me how far some parts of the startup world have veered from "disruptive innovation" towards rent-seeking and middlemanning. Not that this is particularly surprising - I've not particularly enjoyed watching the industry become more cancerous over time. But I guess I still like to think of the industry as if the old idea that startups were going to make the world a better place were true.
Thirdly, even ignoring all that - there seem to be a lot of flaws with the business model. I mean, what's to stop someone just hiring the dogwalker direct after the first time? Why would I trust a complete stranger from a big-brand company to walk my dog, compared to speaking to someone independent? If there's a PR crisis (like, say someone's dog being lost or killed while being walked like in the linked article) that damaged reputation is going to affect every dogwalker under the company umbrella.
I guess overall it seems like $600 million going towards making the world a worse (or more realistically, simply not-better) place.
Now, to answer your actual comments:
> How big of a market do you think staying in a stranger's spare room is? Your answer a few years ago likely wouldn't have been more than $1 billion globally.
It isn't. AirBnB is basically just a independent-contractor villa rental chain now. What % of AirBnB places (or more importantly, AirBnB revenue) are actually people's spare rooms? It seems they've just centralised the market for renting an apartment or house for travel and provided a more visible alternative to staying in a hotel.
> The internet is not yet done transforming how we live and work. The world you live in 10 years from now will look very different. Economic priorities will look different. The way people behave will be different. And it will all happen faster than at any other point in history.
If paying other people to spend time with your dog is the internet revolution we've been working towards, count me out. I thought we were going to be making the world more efficient, scaling up towards closer integration so we could all make smarter decisions and lead better lives. There's some cool stuff going on in that space for sure, but all the money seems to be getting dumped into turning Silicon Valley into assisted living for rich young adults. And that's coming from a rich young adult (though I don't live in one of these cities).