undefined | Better HN

0 pointsohazi7y ago0 comments

It does sound like a particularly "Silicon Valley" style of silly, but it doesn't seem outrageous.

There are around 80 million pet dogs in the United States. Let's say the success case for one of these companies is to capture 10% of that market -- 8 million dogs in need of walking every day or two or three. Let's say they can take in $5/month in revenue from 10-30 walks (it's probably more than this).

That's almost half a billion in revenue per year.

0 comments

mmt7y ago

> 10% of that market -- 8 million dogs in need of walking every day

Although 10% may, ultimately, be a good estimate, it's a bit misleading to equate all owned dogs to the whole "market".

At the very least, you'd want to exclude rural dogs, who, presumably, have plenty of outdoor access. Probably pro-rating this for some definitions of "suburban" would make sense, too.

I'm not sure how multi-dog households would work in terms of pricing for a dog-walking service, if an owner wanted them all walked at once, but it seems better to count dog-owning households rather than dogs.

Most importantly (and this could obviate the need for any of the other filtering), the real market is only those owners who can afford to pay $20-$30 for a walk. Of those 80 million dogs, how many are owned by people who can afford an extra $2k-$11k/yr on top of basic pet care expenses (<$1k/yr)?

anoncoward1117y ago

You need to figure that 50% of people won't ever sign up for a service like this because they're just content to do nothing, and you should figure that this company will find a way to spend a lot of the money theyre given

ohaziOP7y ago

I did.

> Let's say the success case for one of these companies is to capture 10% of that market

> That's almost half a billion in revenue[1] per year.

[1] Not profit

anoncoward1117y ago

Apologies, I misread :(

They're only starting in NY and Cali, which I estimated to be about 7 million dogs that needed walking. Additionally, Uber and Lyft combine to do $8 billion in revenue per year, operating at much larger scale with much larger demand and averagr sale price.

So I think $500M a year is optimistic. I would expect this type of startup to do more like $50M a year in revenue with a modest loss, and the users are then sold peripheral pet services.

ohaziOP7y ago

That's fair. I was thinking more along the lines of what an investor might consider a long-term / endgame success case for the company.

I would definitely expect them to be pulling in far below that for a long time.

astura7y ago

I believe they are everywhere, I've used rover and I'm not in NY or CA or even main city.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

mmt7y ago

> 10% of that market -- 8 million dogs in need of walking every day

Although 10% may, ultimately, be a good estimate, it's a bit misleading to equate all owned dogs to the whole "market".

At the very least, you'd want to exclude rural dogs, who, presumably, have plenty of outdoor access. Probably pro-rating this for some definitions of "suburban" would make sense, too.

anoncoward1117y ago

ohaziOP7y ago

I did.

> Let's say the success case for one of these companies is to capture 10% of that market

> That's almost half a billion in revenue[1] per year.

[1] Not profit

anoncoward1117y ago

Apologies, I misread :(

So I think $500M a year is optimistic. I would expect this type of startup to do more like $50M a year in revenue with a modest loss, and the users are then sold peripheral pet services.

ohaziOP7y ago

That's fair. I was thinking more along the lines of what an investor might consider a long-term / endgame success case for the company.

I would definitely expect them to be pulling in far below that for a long time.

astura7y ago

I believe they are everywhere, I've used rover and I'm not in NY or CA or even main city.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse