A Founder’s Story: How DogVacay Revolutionized Pet Care
Join us on Friday, April 17th at 2 p.m. ET for a live chat with DogVacay Founder and CEO Aaron Hirschhorn.
Aaron Hirschhorn
Pet sitting marketplace DogVacay, founded in 2012, has swelled into an animal-loving community of over 20K and growing. For this live Q&A, Fast Company associate editor KC Ifeanyi will talk with DogVacay's CEO and founder, Aaron Hirschhorn, about how the company has scaled its business, managed liability sensitivities to gain and retain pet owners’ trust, and navigated various other startup challenges to revolutionize the modern pet care experience.
The event will begin on Friday, April 17th at 2 p.m. ET, but you can get your questions in now by using the "make a comment" box below!
Aaron Hirschhorn will also be joining Fast Company for FC/LA, our newest live event experience taking place in Los Angeles May 6-7. Head to www.fastcompany.com/fcla for more info and to purchase tickets.
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Hey everyone! I’m KC Ifeanyi with Fast Company and we’re live chatting today with Aaron Hirschhorn, CEO and founder of DogVacay, on how his company is revolutionizing the pet care industry. Aaron, thanks for joining us today.
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Hi everyone! Thanks for having me.
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Just to start things off, can you give us a break down of where DogVacay stands today: number of cities you’re operating in, number of hosts, etc.?
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Today DogVacay has over 20,000 Hosts in 3,000 cities across the entire US and Canada. Last October we hit 1 Million dog nights booked and are growing faster than ever. This year, we're very excited to use our recent funding round ($25M in November) to expand our services and grow our team.
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With such impressive growth there must be some growing pains: What’s been your biggest challenge so far with scaling your business?
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From day 1 the heart and soul of our business has been customer care. More than half our company works in care focusing on pet sitter quality and an incredible customer experience. But as we scale it becomes harder to maintain that level of individual attention...
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So our focus shifts on keeping that same level of care while trying to build systems and product improvements to make the overall experience even better.
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It's never without hiccups :)... But I believe we're doing the best job in the industry today.
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That's understandable. Can you expand a bit more on how you plan on maintaining high-quality customer care?
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Now we focus more than ever on KPIs around customer satisfaction at scale (contact reasons, contact rate, handle time, etc.) to reduce platform inefficiencies to also reduce the reasons that people need to reach out to us directly - let a superior product do the work!
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What do you think of the "Uber for dog walking" apps popping up? Are they competition or potential acquisitions?
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Great question. I think you're seeing an explosion of innovation in pet space generally... Which makes sense.
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The pet space is >$60B in the US and extraordinarily fragmented, especially around services.
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For example, if we were a "kennel chain" (which we're not) we'd be the second largest in the world and have still only a tiny sliver of the overall market.
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It's the same with dog walking--the market is not as big as sitting, but it's extraordinarily fragmented and ready for consolidation around a superior experience.
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Needless to say it's a very close adjacency to what we do...
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I'll answer it this way--the "hard" part of this business is NOT the technology... that's just table stakes.
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The hard part is managing the community, building trust, and complex operations and logistics behind the scene.
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Our company is better positioned than any other to accomplish this.
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I tried to be a Dog Vacay sitter and never got any realistic options to care for someone's pet, which disappointed me. What do you recommend for new users to improve their profiles and join the community?
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Thanks for sharing! We've received over 125,000 applications and have accepted only 20,000 due to our high quality standards... may I ask if you were approved as a host?
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yes. I am a longtime dog person and I currently have two dogs. The only offer I ever received was a last-minute thing to watch someone's pet over Christmas break
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Got it, sorry to hear that! We have a fairly complex search algorithm that takes many attributes into account in ranking hosts for potential customers in order to see...
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What you're referring to is a fairly common issue for marketplaces driven by consumer choice (i.e,. Airbnb where you choose the specific location, not Uber where the driver is automatically selected for you)
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There is a challenge for "newcomers" to compete with people who have already built strong reputations on the platform (many reviews, etc.).
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My recommendation is a few things: 1) Do EVERYTHING possible on the site--make the best profile ever and get all the badges and training, etc....
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2) Take advantage of marketing tools provided (business cards, the referral program) to start to generate your own business to get those first 1-2 customers... Once you have a review it's MUCH easier to get more.
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Finally, price can be a factor. I recommend pricing yourself lower in the beginning to attract more attention - you can always raise your price later.
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Feel free to call our Host support team at 855-DOG-VACAY and they'll actually be able to give you much more detail there.
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Sounds like you would be a great fit our community.
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Our main competitor is, believe it or not, friends and family!
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Most people still rely on a network of cousins, neighbors, parents, friends, etc. We find that most of our first-time customers are converts from friends and family...
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They prefer not to call in favors or put their dog with someone less qualified.
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After that our biggest competitor is the local kennel...by Aaron Hirschhorn edited by Cayleigh Parris