Wag calls itself the "#1 dog walking and dog sitting app for busy dog owners".
And backing this claim up is their recent $300 million funding round.
According to a New York Times article on the funding round, a key reason Wag can raise this much money is the value of their data. Key quote from the article:
"Data on the real-world comings and goings of internet users — and, evidently, their dogs — is a highly sought-after commodity among technology companies."
We don't need to be convinced of the value of data. We've been writing about it's growing value since 2007.
But we have to admit we're having a hard time of seeing the value of data showing where dogs are walking. Especially dogs who are being walked by a professional dog walker and not their owner.
But as regular readers know, we're also big followers of pet trends. And one of things we've learned from following pet trends is betting against the pet market has not been a good idea.
We've also learned there's demand for pet products and services that we felt were very, very unlikely to be successful (expensive dog parties being one of many examples).
So our bottom line is while we're skeptical about this $300 million investment, we also think it could easily work.
Somewhat related, Franchise Direct released their 2017 Pet Franchise Industry Report last December.
It's full of interesting pet industry data including the chart below, which shows how the $70 billion pet industry revenue (2017) breaks down.
It's a huge market, so maybe Wag's $300 million raise isn't big enough.
from Small Business Labs http://ift.tt/2E2dLuj
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT
No comments:
Post a Comment