Doggone it! DogVacay, which helps pet owners find nice sitters, digs up $6 million in funding

November 13, 2012 By 1 Comment

DogVacay,  the US peer-to-peer marketplace for home dog boarding and pet services, today revealed that it had closed its Series-A financing with a $6 million investment from Benchmark Capital.

Bill Gurley, general partner at Benchmark, is joining the startup’s board of directors.

Since its March launch, DogVacay claims it has rapidly expanded to become the largest US company connecting pet owners with experienced sitters in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco as well as in selected spots in Canada.

The company vets the hosts in a rudimentary way and offers insurance covering the dog for up to $25,000 in case of an emergency.

Its main competitors are Spotwag (which more aggressively uses Facebook) and Rover, which landed $3.4 million in funding in April.

Bow wow

At DogVacay, sitters set their own rates, and the company takes a 15% commission. A night’s stay typically costs $25. The company says it has paid out $1 million to hosts so far, and claims 60% month-over-month revenue growth.

DogVacay’s cofounders, couple Karine Nissim Hirschhorn and Aaron Hirschhorn, plan to expand into mobile, and add services like dog walking, training and pet daycare.

NB: Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

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Sean O'Neill About Sean O'Neill

Sean O’Neill is a UK-based reporter for Tnooz.

Since university, he's been a full-time journalist for US consumer magazines and websites, and since 2007 he has covered B2C travel news full-time.

He lives in London and is travel tech columnist for BBC Travel. He used to work in New York City as the online senior editor for Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel.

In the past, O'Neill held editor, writer, and reporter positions at Kiplinger’s Personal Finance and Foreign Policy magazines in Washington, DC. Please visit his personal site and follow him on Twitter or Google+ .

Comments

  1. Ashwin Kamlani says:
    November 16, 2012 at 11:06 am

    This is great! I will totally use DogVacay. The only problem with the business model is that people will only use it once or twice. Unlike humans, dogs don’t need variety. If I use this site and find a sitter that I like, I’ll just keep using the same one instead of coming back to use DogVacay again. Fantastic idea though.

    Reply

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