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

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

#71

Post by jetrink »

hogFeast wrote: post #23

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 bra…

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.

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

#72

Post by [deleted] »

loganfrederick wrote: post #16

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…

[deleted]

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

#73

Post by loganfrederick »

codesushi42 wrote: post #68
loganfrederick wrote: post #16

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…

Instead of 3% biotech and 20% Uber and WeWork and Wag, I'd have flipped those two numbers. LMAO! Yes, Uber, WeWork and Wag are terrible investments. But you clearly have no understanding of biotech or how time horizons work for investments. Biotech research is long, expensive, and risky. It is not on a 4 year time horizon like tech, nor can you go to market within 12-18 months.

I get that, but there are biotechs that can get funded on an order of magnitude of tens or hundreds of millions. If the Vision Fund with $100 billion can't make biotech investments work, who could? That's kind of my point; if Vision Fund at scale can't make risky investments work, who could? The only alternatives are the existing profit-machines like Google (Google X) or governments.

I am also not the only one with this thought; Professor Andrew Lo of MIT has a final chapter in his book "Adaptive Markets" about how he might structure a similar "big problem solving fund" akin to the Vision Fund but with arguably bolder ambitions.

https://www.amazon.com/Adaptive-Markets-Financial-Evolution-...

https://publicpolicy.wharton.upenn.edu/live/news/2784-can-fi...

And before someone argues that "they're likelier to lose a lot of money trying riskier investments", they just seemingly lost a lot of money on the "easier" investments. So if you're going to lose money, I'd rather it be on trying to solve hard problems than paying Adam Neumann.

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

#74

Post by mruts »

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.

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

#75

Post by PetahNZ »

RandallBrown wrote: post #67
switch007 wrote: post #28

How would have JavaScript made them better off?

The point wasn't that javascript would be better, it was that the person couldn't answer why they chose an older tech stack instead of one of the newer ones.

How is php old? Is c++, c#, Java etc considered old and should not be chosen too?

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

#77

Post by codesushi42 »

loganfrederick wrote: post #73
codesushi42 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of 3% biotech and 20% Uber and WeWork and Wag, I'd have flipped those two numbers. LMAO! Yes, Uber, WeWork and Wag are terrible investments. But you clearly have no understanding of biotech or how time horizons work for investments. Biotech research is long, expensive, and risky. It is not on a 4 year time horizon like tech, nor can you go to market within 12-18 months.

I get that, but there are biotechs that can get funded on an order of magnitude of tens or hundreds of millions. If the Vision Fund with $100 billion can't make biotech investments work, who could? That's kind of my point; if Vision Fund at scale can't make risky investments work, who could? The only alternatives are the existing profit-machines like Google (Google X) or governments. I am also not the only one with t…

You are missing the point. Do you know anything about this industry? Biotech is not anything like your "traditional" tech companies, they operate in a completely different dynamic. It is not risky in the same way. It can take many years to realize that your proof of concept is a failure, and there's no "pivoting" like in the tech bro world.

Are you prepared to realize that after 10 years and many millions of dollars later you will be unable to even try to sell whatever you were researching?

You are at the mercy of the FDA. You can expedite this a bit by going the medical devices route instead of developing therapeutics or pharmaceuticals for instance, but it will still take you years to go from R&D to market. If you ever get there.

This is why phony genomics software platforms are all the rage today.

but there are biotechs that can get funded on an order of magnitude of tens or hundreds of millions. If Vision Fund at scale can't make risky investments work, who could?

Again, you are completely ignorant of this space. Biotech is not the same problem. You can't just throw more money at it and expect to see results like you can in a growth market defined by first-mover advantage and outspending your competition. Biotech is insanely risky, as is any other scientific endeavor. It is science and experimental. It is not a chat app, real estate scam, or overpriced juicer. The comparison makes no sense.

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

#79

Post by RandallBrown »

PetahNZ wrote: post #75
RandallBrown wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point wasn't that javascript would be better, it was that the person couldn't answer why they chose an older tech stack instead of one of the newer ones.

How is php old? Is c++, c#, Java etc considered old and should not be chosen too?

The point isn't that those choices are older and therefore worse, it's that there are now more choices. They should be able to say why they went with PHP over something else that was available at the time they started.

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

#80

Post by xwdv »

outworlder wrote: post #43
switch007 wrote: post #28

How would have JavaScript made them better off?

Don't eat the bait. This will devolve into yet another pointless discussion.

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.
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