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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The most successful hosts combine that genuine love of pets with a strong business mentality towards customer service (e.g. responding to inquiries quickly, sending lots of photo and video updates, etc.)
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The large majority of our best hosts were not doing paid pet-care before they found DogVacay.
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When I had looked into using DogVacay (as a sitter) I was actually also looking for a place to stay in a new city. Do you offer the ability for people to stay in the pet's home, rather than boarding at their own home? Seems like it would be better for the pet.
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Yes! We offer sitting in the client's home as well as the host's home - there is a search filter for this on the website and the mobile app.
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All of our sitters are insured (up to $2m) and bonded for home visits.
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Got another question from "Toni.Severs" on DogVacay's quality standards..
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What quality standards did you put in place to ensure the consistency of experience?
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Without sharing all of our special sauce... We've developed a fairly complex onboarding and quality maintenance process that relies on predictive analytics associated with the completion of an online application, phone interviews, reference checks, online training, community mentor reviews, behavioral characteristics once approved, and quantitative and qualitative feedback from customers.
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We also ask the dogs to write a review, but have yet to nail that technology :)
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Since Dogvacay deals with a part of someone's family and the sensitivities that go with that liability, what lessons were there to be gleaned from similar childcare services like Care.com, for example?
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Great question. We're what I call a "3-constituent marketplace" which is very different from most (like Uber, airbnb) which are only 2-constituent.
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Those are 1) host, 2) human customer, 3) dog.
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This makes for a more complex interaction and management.
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Childcare is also 3-constituent, although I wouldn't characterize Care.com as a marketplace. They've been successful with more of a listing / membership model and letting the customers do the work to find quality.
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There's nothing wrong with that approach--it has worked well for them and other sites (like dating sites), but it's the not the right model (I believe) for pet care.
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We are proud to think of ourselves as the service provider of record and stand behind every experience with the full resources of our entire company.
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What's the funniest story you can share about a dog vacay? Who's the naughtiest dog?
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I would say the funniest have been "vacays" with animals other than dogs and cats.
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We had a host who watched someone else's hedgehog and got the absolute most hilarious photos.
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Perhaps tied for 1st was a chicken-vacay we did.
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People have pet chickens, they're actually quite lovely.
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That chicken vacay is kind of amazing--just saying. Got another great question coming in...
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Do you see opportunities with live mobile video apps like Periscope for sitters to update pet owners about how the dog vacay is going? Is anyone doing that that you know of?
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Yes! There are absolutely opportunities to get more interactions between traveling pet parents and their dog.
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I don't think Periscope is the best solution per se, but think of dropcams, facetime variations and more.
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I have a product in my office which is a video conference tied to an electronic treat dispenser so I can talk to my dog and give him a treat remotely.
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Many hosts are doing this on the site already, and you can expect us to operationalize some going forward.
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I'm also particularly excited about wearable activity trackers for dogs (like fitbit) which can convey a lot of that information as well--there's great innovation happening in the space... for example check out whistle.com.
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thanks for the advice. How do you balance the needs of the market to make sure there's enough participation on both sides?
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That's the age-old question of marketplaces and one that you are fine-tuning forever.
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Even the biggest ones (think eBay, Amazon) have massive teams dedicated to addressing these problems, which flow from analytics to operations to marketing to loyalty and so forth.
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There is no simple answer here, unfortunately.
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But if you have it, let me know!
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Does your service include people traveling w/their dogs outside their community? Or just within their community or both?
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Yes - we have a lot of people who use the service while on a trip or on vacation, for example if you're going to Disneyland and need to leave your dog for a day, or if the hotel you're staying at doesn't take dogs but you want them to be part of the activities.
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can I still pretend like the dog's mine for reddit /r/aww karma purposes
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Market opportunity is massive. Global pet industry is north of $200B, and that grows substantially with increases in pet ownership and increase spending on pets as they are more and more considered a member of the family.
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The market can't already be saturated with this service though, surely?
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Not at all. We are very much a puppy in that regard. Our overall market share is tiny despite being the leader in the space.
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Very greenfield opportunity both in the US and globally.
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Going off the last question, what do you think DogVacay's competitive edge is?
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Our competitive edge is simple - a focus on quality over anything else. Sometimes that means in the near-term you may not even grow as quickly (if you were spending tens of millions on paid marketing for example), but over the long run it means a massive business because people trust you.
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Once you earn trust (and work to keep it) there are many other possibilities that open up...
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That's our edge. It's a core part of everything we do.
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I'm curious about checks done on the dog owners who are using the service: Do they have to prove their dogs' shots are up to date?
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Great question. We definitely recommend that hosts and guests exchange any necessary information for the care and well-being of the dog.
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Also, what about the health of the dog? What if its health is diminished, is there a clause that says DocVacay isn't liable if something happens to the dog in these cases?
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No we don't have that clause. Our insurance is built to cover situations where a dog might get ill or injured during the course of care.
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We’ve had some great questions come in about DogVacay’s growing presence in the pet care industry. Aaron, can you tell us what are your short- and long-term goals?
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Short term is to continue to grow our position as the market leader in dog sitting.
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Without revealing all the details of our longer term strategy, I will say that I'm very excited about pet wellness more generally, and how technology and love-of-dogs can come together to address many challenges in the overall industry, and how we care for our pets.
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That’s a wrap for our live chat with DogVacay founder and CEO Aaron Hirschhorn. Thanks for all the great questions, everyone. And thanks for joining us, Aaron!
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Thanks for having me! There were some great questions here, really enjoyed it.
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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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Also... stay tuned for a big product announcement next week!
