Fetch

@chug2k Hey Charles and thanks for your submission. Tell me how do you plan to satisfy both sides of this marketplace? More specifically where are these dog walkers coming from?

Hey Sean! Thanks for the question. One great thing about starting with an on-demand marketplace is that we can focus on growing our customer base first. As we get more customers who are excited by the convenience and great service from Fetch, we can scale up on our walker base. We’ve met a lot of great dog walkers already who are excited about the idea, both at local dog parks and on Craigslist. (There were 59 SF Bay Area Dog Walker postings on Craigslist yesterday alone.) We also plan on talking to the most highly rated dog boarders on DogVacay and Rover, which are peer-to-peer dog boarding marketplaces.

@chug2k Just to confirm, you're starting SF only at the moment?

@Percival For now, yup. We have a few people in the Peninsula/South Bay/East Bay who are interested, and we'll get to them soon.

@scrivs Yeah, @chug2k and I have been going back and forth on this one. We found out shortly after we decided on the name. Nothing has quite communicated our vision as “Fetch” so we kept it in the meantime. We'd love to hear any suggestions! Also, what do you and your wife think about the idea, other than the fact that we need to change our name?

@kungfoox I'm not one to speak on businesses and executions, you guys might knock this one out of the park, but I will talk about some of the challenges. People with dogs usually don't randomly need a dog walker. They either know their schedules and can walk the dog themselves, they have a person that does it for them already, or will have a friend quickly drop by to walk their dog. Worst case they will be cruel and let their dog wait a couple extra hours until they can get home. And as others have mentioned dogs are not things that people take lightly. It's hard enough letting a stranger just come by and pet your dog on the sidewalk, so it's going to be a huge ask to get a complete stranger to swing by your place to walk your dog. I know my dogs wouldn't take kindly to some unknown person trying to put a leash on them and take them out, but maybe mine are the exception. This is probably why every dog service that I've interacted with has a meet & greet session so both the service provider and the dog can build a level of comfort with each other. Best of luck with your application.

@scrivs Really great points. Let me hone in one one specific point quickly - we hate that worst case of the dog being home alone, which is why started the service. There's just no alternative to the cruel situation you described, which really sucks! Well, until now. Dogs definitely come in all shapes and sizes. We've been fortunate with the ones we've come across so far, but definitely understand your concerns. We have been asking owners to do a meet & greet the first time we walk their dogs, just so the dogs get to know us and that we're friends with the owner.

@scrivs I think you make a lot of valid points, and I wanted to add to @chug2k comment. We surveyed a range of dog parents throughout the city to really see if the problem that I had as a dog owner applied to others as well. To your point, many of the owners who used dog walkers had a very regular schedule, but we found some owners who had more fluid schedules were actually intimidated by dog walking services. There were a lot of questions that they were unprepared for in terms of scheduling but having walkers on-demand enabled them to either ease into a schedule or free it up.

@scrivs I would also be concerned the name is too broad and/or difficult to search.

@borker if it wasn’t tough, it wouldn’t be as fun to solve. =) We actually first started out with dog sitting, but found there was a much higher barrier to entry when it came to trust. I can only imagine how tough it must be for UrbanSitter and Care! (UrbanSitter does seem to be doing pretty well, by the way). After looking at our data and sending out more surveys, we thought dog walking would be a much better way to ease into the market. We walk dogs around the neighborhoods that their owners are already familiar with. We’re looking for additional ways to build trust. One really interesting insight we got from dog owners is that when their regularly-scheduled sitter is out of town, they tend to go with people who are friends with their sitter over sitters their own friends use! So we hope to make our dog walkers all feel like they’re part of the same community. Another key trust-builder is familiarity with the neighborhood - our data shows people trust walkers who walk dogs near them. So we’re hoping to make that part of the “trust” system as well!

@Percival We’ve had pretty good response from Craigslist, so we’re definitely going to keep that up. We’ve also had really positive feedback from tech professionals, so we’re working hard on getting the word out at companies! Not just our friends, either - we’ve been meeting them mostly at the local dog parks. It’s nice that we know where lots of potential customers hang out. We’re also working on partnering up with local dog businesses such as daycares and grooming salons, and getting them to refer us when someone calls about getting a dog walker right away. We have a cute little business card that has a picture of Rolo, Chris’ bulldog, sitting in a little red wagon.

@Percival Aside from the standard mentorship that 500 provides, we’re actually excited about being part of a group of excited, enthusiastic founders. Both @kungfoox and myself were solo founders for a while, and it definitely gets tough to keep the energy level high. Working together is way better, and we think being together with other startup founders would make it even better. We want to keep the energy up!

@chug2k Yea, working alone sucks.

@chug2k Sounds good and yes we are fans of 2 founder teams. The journey is long and tough, you need a partner to get through it.

@KristoferTM We plan on getting there eventually, kind of like how Uber/Lyft eventually got to UberPool and Lyft Line. But for now, we totally agree - in our early customer feedback, other dogs were definitely a concern, especially for people with smaller dogs. So we're doing one household at a time only right now. By the way, our models show the business should be very sustainable with one dog at a time. That's where the tech comes in, to make sure the whole process is efficient and effective. We'd love to ask you for some help later as we scale! What kind of on-demand service did you help out with?

@chug2k Thats good to know (and sounds like a much better offering to a potential customer). Very cool. My brother and I @ Lamplighter designed and developed Plowz & Mowz which began as just Plowz here on PH.

@KristoferTM Where was this when I was in high school? I actually grew up in Salt Lake City UT, so I had to deal with both snow and grass. Lots and lots of both.

@chug2k Haha seriously. I'm a Syracuse, NY native. Sounds like we both know our snow ;)

@SHERM8N Yeah, Swifto raised 2.5m! While there's some overlap, we're actually taking a completely different approach. I have some some experience with marketplaces from building fitbookr.com, a marketplace for personal fitness trainers. Two of the biggest challenges I hit there were disintermediation (people going around your site) and scheduling. Scheduling with service providers can be tough. They don't always like using online tools and keeping their calendars up to date. But when you get them do that, it quickly becomes cheaper AND easier to just pay/talk with the person directly. This is really bad: your product is now a tax on both user experience AND cost. This is much less of an issue with on-demand services - trying to call twenty different dog walkers to see if one's available is no bueno. Which brings me to the second point - we've heard similar feedback about last minute bookings from our DogVacay friends! Their poor customers are already stressed out about their change in plans, but now are dealing with the uncertainty of asking around for their pet. Our larger goal at Fetch is to provide peace of mind whenever, wherever you are, because you know you always have someone to take care of your pet. Some people are lucky enough to have family or friends that they can rely on to take care of their dogs in a pinch. We want to extend that peace of mind to everyone. =)