Ask HN: Pet lovers review my startup

I would totally use this, and I think it's an excellent product name. The most painful thing for me and my dog has been finding reputable dog boarding, doggy daycare, vets, etc.

I just moved across the country, so there's not many people I know locally who would help out — so I think it would be a really good idea to partner with companies and individuals offering services like walking, sitting, boarding, etc. Yelp sucks. It would probably be the only realistic revenue stream too.

In terms of social connections, I'm not clear as to how the entire process would work on first glance.

Awesome job for an MVP.

Thanks so much for the note, Tony!

We built this first version to make it easier for pet owners to go directly to their existing friends/ connections for help (boarding, for instance) when they are away. Like you said, pet owners find it difficult to locate trustworthy sources for this sort of thing, and many we talked with would prefer to go direct to friends, family, etc., but asking for help in those cases sucks. Non-pet-owners we talked with said they really want to help/ hangout with cool pets, but they simply don't get asked. We want to fix that issue first, so we make those connections easier to make by having coordination in one place, and helping to remove the "awkward" in asking for help. We want asking for help from friends to be as easy or easier than picking up the phone to call a kennel.

I mentioned in another comment here, but we're definitely thinking about ways we can 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 for help, you see 5 other direct friends have vouched for that person and their love/ ability to watch dogs). We envision something similar for professionals as well.

We're really excited about the possibilities here! Don't hesitate to drop a note with any other feedback or comments as you dive in.

My 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

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! =)

It would be great if your homepage and fb app page included more detail on the UI. A think a walk through of a typical scenario including screenshots would be awesome.

And a genuine question here but I don't understand what this problem solves if it's connecting me to people I would already ask (and for which the barriers to ask are pretty low). If they are a facebook friend wouldn't it make sense for me to just post asking for help from my friends? All that said I have a large breed dog that I would love to have help with (more in the long term boarding dept. though).

Thanks so much for the note! We are working on a redesign to the homepage/ site that will do better both in highlighting the site benefits/ features before you decide to login, and then in onboarding new users. We've also crafted some scenario stories for the How it Works page that we'll add soon.

On your question - the problem is a bit different for different people, but basically we found through talking to pet owners that while they prefer asking friends/ family for help, they don't usually. Asking for help is awkward, intimidating, and coordination with said friends/ family is often difficult. On the other hand, we found the non-pet-owners actually want to help more - they want to be asked for help, so we try to make that whole affair less 'awkward,' and simplify the coordination bit. We believe asking for help should be as easy as picking up the phone to call a kennel.

We want you to be covered for all situations, but for now, we started with your direct friends because you already trust them, and if we can make going to them as easy as going to a professional, we feel it's a win-win for all.

We 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.

Thanks for the feedback. A few things:

"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." This is exactly the first problem we aimed to solve. Spotwag is a way for your friends to opt-in to help and removes that awkwardness for you feeling like you're taking them for granted. If they're not up for helping, they can simply ignore your request. I mentioned in another comment you'll often be surprised by friends that do want to help toom friends that you wouldn't expect.

You're right about MVP. We have a lot of ideas for making Spotwag more awesome. We want to make it easier to schedule help on Spotwag than it is to call/email/text a bunch of people.

One of our short term priorities is to bring professionals on board and 2nd degree connections. After speaking of hundreds of pet owners, we feel strongly that finding someone you trust is key and a straight airbnb model wasn't going to work.

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!

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.

Looks good and is a useful app I could see myself using. I created an account and attempted to add a pet (dog). I ran into my first hiccup when the form asked if my dog was small/medium/large, I assume my lab is a large breed, but adding weights as a guide text could have helped me come to a quicker decision.

Second roadblock came when I clicked the save button. I was given an error at the top of the page, but the page didn't scroll up so I didn't know the submission failed. Also the error message was generic and didn't give me an reason why there was an error. I assumed I didn't fill in a required field but opted to close the tab and write this comment instead of guessing.

Awesome and thanks! Right now only name and photo are required. Good feedback on the form though. I'll add it to my list.

I think this is a great idea. I subscribe to r/dogs on reddit and you cannot imagine the amount of people who ask "should I get a dog?". The answer is generally "yes," but I advise them to make friends so they'll have a list of people to call on if they get stuck at work, etc. You're so right, there ARE a lot of people who can't have pets but would love to care for a dog for a weekend or take one out during the week for a quick walk. Many people enjoy dogs so much that they wouldn't mind doing this for free.

Thanks for the feedback! Yeah, we were shocked ourselves when we started hearing how many non dog owners want to watch their friends dogs. One of the next features I want to build is letting people ASK to take your dog/pet. I have friends that have just asked to take mine to the park for the day.

Thanks for the note, you're absolutely right! I actually used Spotwag last week and ended up connecting with a friend that recently lost their dog of 20-years. They aren't ready for a new dog just yet, but having my dog (Jackson) around for a few days certainly helped them, and got them one step closer to bringing another dog into their family.

I know another woman that actually volunteers at the Humane Society once per month for 8-hours just to be around dogs, because she would love to have one of her own, but cannot given her work schedule as a consultant.

I think you should remove that photo of a puppy playing with a can. You might get some pet owners angry at that as it could potentially hurt the animal. Chew instincts + metal = bad things.

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 :-)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/trothwell/tags/samantha/

Very cute pics! We definitely want to feature more user's pets on the homepage. =)

Link: http://spotwag.com

We're currently working on redesigning the entire site with real designers, but would love feedback on the idea, functionality etc.

This is why you should ask your friends for help with your dog: http://vimeo.com/37123607 (podman in irc, thanks for the link)

Love it! My fiancé signed up this morning and spread the word on FB. I've been thinking about this for awhile now, but in a marketplace form.

Have you decided how to monotize it? One thought I've had would be the Airbnb model, but given that it's way more niche than finding a place to stay for vacation, I think this would have to be tested with an audience who is in dire need of this. Maybe find a way to target the "babysitter" audience?

Looking forward to seeing how this progresses nonetheless! Best of luck.

I'd absolutely use this product.

As much as I'm sure it improves the listings, I'd recommend not making the photo required. First of all, other non-required info (such as pet type) seems more important, and second of all it requires digging through my photos. I'd be likely to add a photo when I'm looking for someone to catsit, but it was a deterrent for me to add the cat in the first place.

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.

Thanks so much for the feedback, that is a great point. We wanted to make the signup easy, covering just the basics, but you're right that digging for photos is not always the easiest task. We've adjusted this a little in the redesign we're working on, but I think we could always do more to simplify.

Second the photo thing. I was on a machine where I didn't have access to any of my dog photos (work) and I got stuck in the process because I couldn't upload a photo.

Great idea, keeping your pet with someone you trust is essential. Requiring a picture of the pet is good, great visuals always entice people. You could use 'featured pets' (using pics from users) in your home page, people love to promote how 'unique' their pet is. Let me know if you want some hi-res pictures of cats for your site.

Totally agree! We're working on a redesign now that will feature some user pets in the mix on a rotating basis. =)

Brilliant! 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! ;)

Hey there!

I was at a little sandwich shop called Ike's Place in San Francisco today and saw your business card!!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bitsprout/6819992324/

Looks 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 transaction between the pet owner and their choice caregiver.

I always find it awkward to ask for money when I petsit, and my friends who petsit for me often feel the same way.

I do like to give something back, and usually end up buying a bottle of wine or a gift card in return. There could be some interesting opportunities for selling gifts (pet-related or not) in addition to processing cash payments.

Haha, yes! We've actually seen some trades for beer, wine or even dinner. So definitely some fun opportunities to integrate gifts. We've also talked to BarkBox about the potential for something pet related in the future, and are looking at some similar pet and non-pet-related gifts. :)

I think choosing gifts at the end (if that's what you mean) is an excellent idea!

I think it's great. Obviously it'll iterate as you work with more users, but it's already quite clean, and and serves a real but until now hidden need.

Absolutely correct, room for iteration, and lots of opportunity yet to be unearthed. :)

I don't have much to add and am not a pet owner, but just want to say that I think it's a great idea and that the design is nice and clean. Great job.

Thanks!!

Thanks so much, appreciate the words of encouragement! Though you're not a pet owner, I'd encourage checking it out further if you want to checkout or hang with a pet at any point - I have a few friends that started pimping themselves on Facebook, asking all pet owner friends to signup so they could watch their pets. One is already angling to spend time with a few puppies. :)

Brilliant! I'm currently petless, but have hoped for a service like this in the past with my Shetland Collies!

Nice! Thanks so much for the note - definitely encourage you to hit up your pet owning friends, as it is awkward/ difficult for them to ask for help, but I'm sure they'd love to know you're willing and able if that's the case. Signup and pimp yourself to friends. ;)