Somebody who works more hours than they want to, for example somebody who has to work 2 jobs on certain days. An additional solution to the problem is to move the company to a city that has a significantly lower cost of living.

6 days a week. My kid is using these services sometimes. you work literally 6, 12 hour shifts in a week while you're trying to build your career. In exchange for that you might get a middle class wage 10 or 15 years down the line.

At some point your dog needs to get taken out and if there's nobody around to do it your options are to come home to a pile of poop or pay somebody to do it.

In the old days you would have a neighborhood kid do it but our birth rate is something like 1.6 and a lot of those kids are doing cram schools now.

So you take some of the money you got from those six 12-hour shifts and you pay somebody to take your dog out to poop.

It's not a good system, it's a symptom of late stage capitalism. It's the same reason doordash is so popular. At the end of a ludicrously long shift you're too exhausted to do anything but order in and the only one that delivers anymore is pizza unless you pay for doordash.

Again late stage capitalism.

> Oh holy shit. Who the fuck thought this was a good idea? Venture capitalists have to be some of the stupidest people in the history of humanity. But I guess they only have to score once. Jesus Christ.

Masayoshi Son, the CEO of Softbank, thought it was a great idea and invested about $300 million in it 7 years ago. At some point he sold his shares back and left, but I'm sure they were sold at a big loss. Most of Son's VC investments have been terrible and a lot are stunning in that exactly as you post, it makes you wonder why anybody would invest in that kind of company. A very small number of his investments were massively successful, probably just by random luck. A few are OK enough. Most are

> Oh holy shit. Who the fuck thought this was a good idea?

"From the people that brought you DrKoop.com, comes a new service for your dog..."

My understanding is venture capitalists expect about 1 in 20 of their investments to be successful. The rest, I guess, are tax write-offs. And they may be stupid, but they have to be stupid rich just to get into the game.

> Oh holy shit. Who the fuck thought this was a good idea?

It legitimately was a good idea. Objectively so, it was a perfectly profitable business. A lot of idiots keep pets as a status symbol, or do so without any thought as to the effort which goes into maintaining a healthy pet relationship. Paid dog walkers, pet sitters, and other animal services are a thing, as are friendly neighbours (I walked our neighbour's dog yesterday). It's an industry that predates an online booking system and will continue to exist beyond it.

What changed was COVID forced people to be

Golden!

Seriously. They should have called it Bitch.

But it's so hard to trust your retiree living next door or the high schooler down the street (both of which could use some extra cash). I'd much rather go onto the internet and hire a complete stranger. This way I never have to engage in any sort of meaningful relationships. It's an introverts world these days.

> Just another bullshit business to pocket half the profits and underpay the actual worker

Exactly this is the problem. Walk the dog for the neighbors once through Wag, then make your own (cheaper) deal (where the walker keeps more of the payment and the dog owner pays less) with the dog owner without Wag for all future walks.

How did Wag honestly think they would stay in business?

The insurance part would be the value-added layer. My girlfriend started a dog-caring business for an extra allowance. When you look closely at the subject there are a few complicated scenarios that you need to consider and most of them include the dog biting you or someone else. And you also have medical emergencies that the dog-walker may have to deal with, including having to put the dog down and getting sued by the owner for doing so. Having a rulebook to go by and insurance coverage for all these crazy

I watch dogs (primarily overnight--most for 3-7 days but some 1 day and some >7d) via Rover. I make around $1500/month (pre-1099) and after their ~20% cut (of which most people give back to me in tips).

I WFH so the largely passive income is nice. I wouldn't have found as many people w/o a platform to do the heavy lifting for me in finding new dogs.

I am not advocating that we need to have these sorts of things in the market, but it does make for nice extra cash. YMMV.

You could say that about literally any system that brings together any parties. Why do you need Uber? Just phone for a ride. Why do you need Doordash? Just call a restaurant. Websites are dime a dozen, why bother with Amazon, sell your own product. etc. etc.

Much of our modern commerce is created based on the convenience of instantly connecting a need to a service provider. That's all these guys did, and they are one of many such companies operating in many industries in the same way.

They replace Google and

> And their slogan remains, "We Also Walk Dogs". Would that work in the real world?

Yes, it did work in the real world. Except the slogan is "We Also Sell Books".

> Would that work in the real world? [snip] Maybe there already are such organizations.

It does work in the real world, and there are such organisations both as stand-alones and as divisions of premium airlines/hotels/etc. The industry term is "concierge service" - sort of an outsourced personal assistant to HNWs, and is not dissimilar to that which RAH describes.

> I have no idea.

FTFY

That's essentially what services like Mechanical Turk and Task Rabbit provide for upper middle class people. People who are legitimately wealthy have dedicated fixers and consiglieres they employ full time or keep on retainer.

Yes, I remember them well. They had an office next to RIPLEY, the alien-walking service. I believe RIPLEY even provided Teflon walking-suits and "head-cones" for the creatures.

Will we ever get a walking service for snowflake wokers that includes rose-colored glasses, wife-beater Ts and genuine Palestinian manufactured sandals ?