
Dog-walking startup Wag raised $300M, then things got messy - danso
https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/27/tech/wag-dog-walking-softbank/index.html
======
loganfrederick
What I don't get about the Vision Fund is how so many of its investments lack
(pun intended) vision.

Other than the ARM, Nvidia, and a few billion in biotech (about $3 billion[1])
investments, so much of the fund has gone into pretty "obvious" traditional
startups.

If I had a $100 billion fund, I wouldn't be swinging for these singles and
doubles (which Uber and WeWork were by the time Softbank got involved,
although these companies can still provide value to customers).

Vision Fund should've been out-competing Google X to become the financial
backer of basically the next Bell Labs. Instead of 3% biotech and 20% Uber and
WeWork and Wag, I'd have flipped those two numbers.

The biggest loss from the Vision Fund is the opportunity cost of all the great
disease-eliminating, fundamental-science research that could've had much
greater upside than WeWork. And I never hear that opportunity cost discussed.

EDIT: I've added an additional comment with more supporting arguments for
taking bigger risks but more ambitious risks when managing large sums:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=21096651](https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=21096651)

[1]: [https://finance.yahoo.com/news/softbanks-vision-fund-
deployi...](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/softbanks-vision-fund-
deploying-100-billion-185127309.html)

~~~
thecleaner
A large part of this vision fund is basically Saudi oil money. These folks
realize that oil doesn't have that much future if you think in terms of
hundreds of years, so they are looking to diversify. Vision fund is not a tool
to be on the cutting edge, its just a means to not be left behind. Hence they
let VC market decide which horse is worth backing and then they swing their
dollars around to see what happens.

~~~
ajmurmann
That’s another thing I never got about Saudi’s investments. To me the obvious
strategy with all the money would have been to not invest in empty skyscrapers
or foreign investments, but pick two or three areas in which you massively
bolster research and investment in an area like solar energy. Investment would
be local and you try to attract all to talent in the field for both
fundamental research as well as to fund companies. Investing in the Vision
Fund might safe the cash, but does little for the economic future of UAE.

~~~
throw313123
The Saudis have also done that with KAUST; from what I heard they have turned
off all their weird laws in this region of SA (like a SEZ), and were hiring
aggressively a few years ago (from the US). I occasionally stumble on some
interesting projects from this University, but I for one would be very weary
of moving to a desert region where women were disallowed from driving until a
few years back, and need to be draped from head to toe in black.

To be fair, there is something more in the picture. UAE for instance is much
more cosmopolitan, but has failed to be a research hub, in contrast to rich
city states like Singapore. Iran, their neighbour, produces some very smart
people however - who then inevitably move out, considering the flavour regime
in that country.

~~~
smcl
Hate to be that guy but I see it so often on HN that I think it’s worth
correcting.

You’re _wary_ of moving to a desert special economic zone if you are unsure or
suspicious of it

You’re _weary_ of it if you have moved to many such zones already and you are
a bit sick of it

------
fantasticFerret
I applied to this company right at the beginning of there expansion. The
person that interviewed me said he had been sleeping on couches for the last
year or so, (around 2017) and working insane hours. They gave me a php coding
test to implement some kind of pub/sub. I finished it. Had no real way of
submitting it other than emailing it to the interviewer as a zip.

The moment the interviewer told me they worked with a php stack. I asked why
they'd chosen to go with php given that the product was so new they could've
chosen any newer tech. stack (JavaScript framework) and probably been better
off. The interviewer didn't really response to my question.

The entire conversation with said person, was them talking at me for about 30
minutes. They said the company was going to try to pivot to developing some
service surrounding their lock box service for the keys to get into people's
houses for the dog walking.

It seemed very "directionless" and gave me a very bad taste in my mouth. They
never got back to me or anything. Which was fine by me since I wasn't going to
pursue them any further.

~~~
wolco
A php stack is the right stack for 2017 or 2019 for a company like Wag. What
would a javascript framework offer them? Their core product is connecting
people and dogs. A php stack with laravel means they have a working website
with authentication on day 1. What would a javascript framework offer them?

Emailing tests or documents is very common during the interview process if the
company is a startup. Offer them a github link with the code if you want to
standout.

Why apply without knowing the stack?

~~~
xnyan
Maybe I'm dumb - Can anyone tell me why PHP vs JS for a "generic" web
application?

\In 2019 there are far far far more developers with real experience developing
in Javascript vs PHP. There are obviously a lot of other factors in
considering the base dev language, but unless you can make a strong case for
PHP vs JS, I'm picking JS every time because in the generic case they both
meet my needs but a lot more devs work with JS vs PHP. This is not a moral
argument, but rather a practical one. What is the practical argument for PHP?

~~~
TheKarateKid
PHP an older and more mature language. It also is synchronous so it runs
similar to C/Java/Python.

Programming full stack with JavaScript requires a different programming
mindset with its asynchronous nature.

~~~
wavefunction
JavaScript predates PHP by five years. 'Maturity' is a subjective quality in
my opinion and I also think PHP is a hot mess. JavaScript is synchronous
unless you specifically utilize its asynchronous parts. Asynchronous execution
is possible with PHP

~~~
hdfbdtbcdg
> think PHP is a hot mess.

Have you used PHP in the last 5 years?

~~~
tekkk
I'm not trying to pick a side here, and I'm sure modern PHP is fantastic with
Laravel and all that. But it seems to me that the PHP-advocates are failing to
understand that impressions matter a _lot_ to developers. I wouldn't touch PHP
with a ten-foot pole if I can. Not because modern PHP is terrible but that the
baggage of _terrible_ PHP is still strong in my memory, and I'm not willing
the re-evaluate PHP as my choice for backend because of that. Period. That
ship has sailed.

Sure TS with something like Express has its disadvantages but I'm ok with it.
It's the tool I use for a specific job and there's a lot more useful things to
learn than another language & framework just for its sake.

~~~
chrisan
You might be browsing the internet in an echo chamber. Javascript gets almost
as much flak as PHP for the same gobs of terrible Javascript in peoples
memories.

Both are old languages and both had years of low quality devs cranking out
terrible stuff.

------
lawrenceyan
You’ve got to applaud Masayoshi Son for his tenacity at the very least. Lived
through the Dot Com Crash, caused the next one 20 years later.

That’s a big achievement in my book. How many people can really say they’ve
been able to do something like that?

[Edit] I should probably add a caveat that Masayoshi Son isn’t the dumb one
here. No, he’s actually quite the genius, managing to convince Saudia Arabia
to basically give him $45 billion and then spinning that all the way into $100
billion with the Vision Fund. I’m genuinely giving praise to the man here. He
saw an opportunity and took advantage of it.

~~~
jore
I wonder if his investments could really trigger something like that. Are
there other investments of the Vision fund that are falling apart besides
WeWork and Wag?

~~~
Judgmentality
Uber (lost money on the IPO), Cruise (just delayed their launch, still have no
product or revenue), they bought Boston Dynamics (super awesome technology but
the business doesn't seem viable), Light (really awesome idea to change mobile
photography, but seems an obvious failure at this point), Zume (a pizza chain
buildings robots that's raised hundreds of millions of dollars...they do not
have any production robots), Nuro (another overhyped self-driving startup,
because Uber and Cruise weren't enough billions)...this is not an exhaustive
list. I have repeatedly said SoftBank is some of the dumbest money in the
Valley, and I stand by that proclamation.

[https://www.businessinsider.com/running-list-softbank-
invest...](https://www.businessinsider.com/running-list-softbank-
investments-2017-7#brightstar-acquired-for-22-billion-49)

Now that said, it is _expected_ that most investments in any VC portfolio will
fail! Something like a 70% failure rate, with 20% being moderately successful,
and 10% being very successful is considered very good for the VC industry. But
at the end of the day it's ROI - you make money or you lose money. I think
SoftBank is going to lose more money than all the other VC firms simply
because they started with more money to lose.

~~~
threeseed
Being pretty negative on those companies.

1) Uber strategically is looking pretty good. They are the market leader in
most countries and their Uber Eats business is turning out to be quite
lucrative.

2) Self driving cars is a long term project so of course Cruise isn't going to
have anything released just yet.

3) Boston Dynamics just launched their latest robot and has already seen
pretty good adoption amongst enterprise customers. There is a huge need just
in the resources industry for technologies to assist with compliance. Let
along going more mass-market like construction sites.

4) Light have pivoted to being an autonomous car sensor company. And as we
know there is significant potential demand in this space.

5) Nuro actually has more potential than most of the self driving car
companies around by aggressively focusing on a single use case i.e. consumer
goods delivery.

~~~
Judgmentality
You effectively summarized all my points towards "Uber is fine," "Boston
Dynamics is fine," and "self-driving cars are fine."

Uber is hemorrhaging money and are still competing against Lyft. What is their
path towards profitability other than raising prices and losing customers? How
do they become anything other than a glorified taxi company? Even if you
disagree with me, you can't deny that the stock is trending downwards right
now and is expected to continue to fall until after the lockup period for
employees is up - that's when I think we'll see a glimpse of what Uber is
really worth.

Boston Dynamics has been passed around constantly because nobody wants to keep
them once they realize they can't make money. Spot is a cool robot, but they
don't release a price. How many people want to spend the better part of $100k
(or a leasing option) on something with incredibly limited utility? The market
is tiny since the military keeps rejecting their machines.

If you believe in self-driving being the future, fine. Then that's a logical
bet. I adamantly believe self-driving is like nuclear fusion - it's decades
and tens of billions of dollars away from being commercially viable, _if
ever_.

> Being pretty negative on those companies.

That's because I know how easy it is to make demoware and how hard it is to
make a real product.

~~~
rauchp
> How do they become anything other than a glorified taxi company?

Just curious, what's wrong with that? A global taxi dispatching service that's
always available, always (debatably) efficiently routing drivers to passengers
sounds like a game-winning plan. Regular taxi dispatching services weren't
doing these things well, on top of _just sucking_ since they had no real
competition for so long.

~~~
Judgmentality
> Just curious, what's wrong with that?

It just means Uber is a failed investment for SoftBank.

------
rdiddly
Messy is right. It's as if _competently running a business people want to
continue patronizing_ keeps slipping everybody's minds. No bootstrapped
business thinks they can get away with this many gaffes in a row. Because on
the very first screw-up, you lose some amount of money, _and it 's your own
money,_ and it hurts, and you learn. In a startup funded like this, money is
just the stuff you throw at stuff, and there's always more where that came
from. Obviously the whole VC-funded hyper-growth thing doesn't guarantee
success, has a low success rate in fact, but I'm starting to wonder whether
those investments actively prevent success in some cases.

~~~
seem_2211
My theory is that a lot of people read Zero to One, decided that spending more
money than anyone else to build a monopoly is the best strategy (even if you
work in an area with low barriers to energy), managed to find a VC fund with
the same attitude (Softbank), and are now finding out that no amount of money
helps you if you're selling dollar bills for $.50 over a series of years.

~~~
kortilla
Hey man, movie pass was on the cusp of upending the movie industry!

------
maerF0x0
These on demand - fulfilled by gig contracting platforms can _only_ provide
value if there has been a big technological change that undermines expertise
in a job. Uber works because of google maps knowing a faster route than even
the 20 year veteran tax driver.

There hasn't been a revolutionary technology in dog walking, just people who
need cash but dont know pets.

There hasnt been a revolutionary technology in grocery shopping, just people
who need cash and dont care about the quality of your basket.

etc.

~~~
ashelmire
Uber works because of the rider-driver matching, not the routing. Everyone has
google maps.

~~~
maerF0x0
Gig workers can replace tax drivers because of google maps...

~~~
goldenkey
Which is funny in itself since Google Maps is "free." Quotes because a lot of
features are buggy when your location is turned off.

------
tempsy
I think Softbank's main problem is that they fund opportunity without
considering execution at all. It's very possible that a dog walking service
could be a multibillion opportunity (millennials/gen Z choosing to have pets
over kids in greater numbers and working FT), but was there really anything
special about this specific team that would lead anyone to believe they could
execute with a $300m injection? I don't think so.

~~~
slimsag
But.. they said they are all experts and care about animals! And the founders
are super-genius hackers from MIT!

~~~
puranjay
A business like this that doesn't really rely on technology would be far
better run if it was helmed by MBAs with operational experience.

This entire business is basically a gigantic spreadsheet where you move things
around to optimize profitability. Believing that this is a "tech" startup is
where you start to fail.

I see so many businesses fail to make this distinction.

Stripe is a tech company, as is Boston Dynamics. But Wag is a _tech leveraged_
business.

~~~
ghaff
It’s like pretty much every other one of these market making companies. At a
local level—it’s something that people can and do organize with telephones,
email, and maybe calendars and spreadsheets.

I’m not sure what the advantage of having the same service exist in a bunch of
cities is.

And you have the usual problem that most people prefer to use individuals they
are comfortable with and have maybe been recommended by friends. Especially
for something like dog walking.

Maybe there’s a market for selling dog walking business kits with software.
But that’s not $300m.

~~~
puranjay
I can understand the advantage of a global player in a category like
transportation. Being able to Uber anywhere takes a lot of the pain out of
traveling.

But things like babysitting or dogwalking don't offer any advantages if they
are globally available. You're going to need a dog walker in the same city,
the same house, the same neighborhood. Most people would rather just find one
walker they like and stick with them

~~~
ghaff
Even with Uber, the number of people who flit between cities around the world
in a regular basis is fairly small. I travel quite a bit, including globally,
and I don’t really use Uber much.

But there’s some advantage to being global or at least national in a way that
isn’t relevant for services you use almost entirely at home.

------
Edmond
>Mike Walsh, a general partner at Structure Capital, which was an early
investor in Wag, described the brothers to CNN Business as "so smart" that
it's "almost difficult to communicate" with them.

~~~
stagger87
Can also be read as smart with poor social skills.

~~~
mikestew
Can also be read as, “Mike Walsh is so poor at sniffing out bullshit, he calls
the bull ‘smart’. It’s not the bull’s fault Mr. Walsh can’t communicate him,
it’s because the bull’s so smart, Mike can’t understand him.”

------
jejunebug
I used to work at Wag a for a few months, leaving shortly after the new CEO
was brought on and they received the SoftBank investment. The fact that things
got worse since then is not surprising. Management was already pretty
disorganized, they were bad at managing funds (the salary discrepancies were
very real), and putting it mildly it was just an unpleasant place to be. There
was a staggering amount of turnover, especially with tech roles, in the short
time I was there - one minute someone would get called into a meeting and that
was the last I saw of them. I cant imagine the technical debt they've been
accruing from having a carousel of developers.

I know they wanted to position themselves as the one stop shop for dog
everything (not just walks but sitting/boarding, training, food delivery, etc)
which is what I think helped them raise the funds, but I think they've taken
too long to resolve the issues around their bread and butter of dog walking.
The fact that the Viners and Meltzer are all since left as well is pretty
telling.

~~~
xenospn
To be fair, I'm shocked that so many people trust strangers to walk their
dogs. That's insanity and no wonder they get so much hate press. Unsustainable
and we're just a few escaped/dead/stolen dogs away from them imploding
completely.

------
mbesto
Hot take - when it's all said and done (e.g. when the whole fund gets
returned) the vision fund is going to devalue more companies than it is going
to value them. If they're charging a management fee then they'll still make
money but their LPs aint gonna be happy in the long term.

------
velox_io
Reading the title has affirmed to me that we are living in a bubble (and it
doesn't look good). I just can't get it through my head how an investment of
that size will EVER pay off. A major reason people buy dogs is because they
want to get out and walk more. If they can't they outsource it to a teenager
you or your friends know, there's no need for a middleman in most cases. (If
it was baby-sitting I could understand more it as there is far less
flexibility.)

WeWork's valuations have also seemed strange to me, when they don't have any
assets of infrastructure to warrant such a high value. There's very little
stopping others renting office space, in fact a friend of mine has done just
that.

~~~
drstewart
People have been "sure" there's a bubble for a decade now. I mean take this HN
article, posted Apr 19, 2012:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3865744](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3865744)

How much are you investing on your suredness that there's a bubble? Because if
you did it in 2012, you'd be down about 70% right now.

~~~
solidasparagus
It's important to remember that unsustainable things can last longer than you
anticipate. I firmly believe the bubble will burst (a bit, there's too much
real value for a collapse), but I have no idea if it will be tomorrow or if it
will be a decade from now.

~~~
TAForObvReasons
saying is "The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain
solvent"

------
hogFeast
The big issue with the product is that after the first transaction, no-one has
any incentive to use your marketplace.

There is a company in my country doing this. They are probably not worth zero
tbf but they have a massive issue with people just cutting them out after the
first transaction.

And what is the problem with just building a brand? I employ a bunch of dog
walkers, I do checks on them, I build a trusted brand...the $300m is a
solution without a problem.

~~~
jetrink
I watch dogs through Rover and they do have mechanisms to lock you in. The
primary one is that your rank in the search results is strongly affected by
repeat transactions and the number of repeat customers is listed prominently
in your profile as an indication of your trustworthiness. Once I hit a certain
threshold, I had to raise my prices to 30% above the area average in order to
keep the number of requests down to a level that I was prepared to
accommodate. The second is that Rover actually does provide a service to its
sitters. They have great support that has helped me through a few crises
(including a dog dying in my home from a heart attack) and insurance coverage.

------
the_watcher
> Wag looked like tech's next Big Thing

Uhh, what? No, it didn't. Even the bull case never imagined it as anything
like a "next big thing."

~~~
jwilk
What's "bull case"?

~~~
adjkant
It's a stock term - bull vs bear:
[https://www.investopedia.com/insights/digging-deeper-bull-
an...](https://www.investopedia.com/insights/digging-deeper-bull-and-bear-
markets/)

------
Barrin92
i know there is this meme about all software companies just bundling and
unbundling things, but can we please stop putting tens of milllions into
startups that are literally just:

"App for Y that know allows you to work like before but without labour rights"

and invest money into stuff that actually deserves to be called an invention.
Idk cure cancer, flying cars, making infrastructure cheaper, something that
actually gets productivity up in the long term

~~~
tsm
That requires actual domain expertise outside of being able to hack together a
webapp, though. Learning what you need to know about the dog-walking industry
takes something on the order of weeks. Learning about medicine, finance, etc.
is actually difficult.

The startup I work for is in property insurance, and while the software we've
written is cool, the business hasn't gone belly-up yet since we have good
insurance analysts, actuaries, lawyers, salespeople, etcetera.

------
freedomben
Be aware: audio will start playing out of your speakers if they are on.

~~~
mynameishere
Welcome to the internet. Every single website has auto-playing video now.

Firefox has an option to turn it off. I think it's the only browser with that.

------
aledalgrande
The lesson I think is to be learned here, is that without passion, even money
cannot help.

If CEO and top executives really cared about a startup for dogs, they would
have come up with solutions for the most recurring problems (e.g. dogs getting
lost, or mistreated). How hard is to make a leash with GPS in it and track it
in an app? Or to give mandatory basic training to any new contractor?

Also the way they treated the customer service employees is disgusting.

------
jacquesm
Plan to get taken for a walk, end up getting taken for a ride. Figures.

------
reilly3000
I don't think that a good company can grow from a massive investment that
early. The VC fund wants the company to spend the money and grow value
quickly, not sit on it for years. That puts pressure on leadership to waste
time and money worrying about building out offices, hiring top talent,
contracting with big agencies, etc. None of that work has anything to do with
building a quality product, growing a functional culture, or paying attention
to what customers are saying. It suspends financial reality for both
leadership and rank/file; instead it encourages waste.

Does closing a $250K contract matter? In a scrappy startup, that contract is a
huge win. In an overfunded startup, its often considered a distraction.

------
jpollock
If you're Saudi Arabia with a silly amount of money in cash, are you looking
for 10-100x return out of this, or are you simply looking for a place to park
liquid funds that won't lose as much as leaving it in German government bonds.

~~~
hogFeast
No. Without overcomplicating things, Saudi are the dumbest money out there.
They have no idea at all. Even the ones that have worked at IBanks, have no
real understanding of basic finance (and likely only got the job so the bank
could try to bribe members of their family). To get an investment, you just
need to bribe the right people...that is how they invest (I used to know two
very junior royal family members, they were unquestionably two of the
stupidest people I have ever met...they failed school, ended up a prestigious
uni, paid people to do their work, and then ended up in banking...somehow).

I wouldn't try to analyse it. A smart Japanese guy took them for a ride, he
took a cut, and then handed it to some software developers in Silicon Valley
who saved some and then spent the rest. That is it. No value created. No
investments. Just redistribution away from stupid people.

Btw, this happened in the 1970s too. When the oil price spiked, the Saudis
didn't know what to do with their cash so they just deposited it in US banks.
The US banks didn't know what to do either so they started lending to South
America. They knew what to do: politicians either stole it or handed it out as
bribes to their supporters. The result was Citibank and a few other banks
going insolvent in the early 80s, and a massive debt crisis in LatAm from
1980-1993(ish).

...the Saudis also gave a bit to Britain, who had their own debt crisis (also
because of cash handouts to political supporters) and devalued a good chunk of
their money away.

They will lose money always.

~~~
JMTQp8lwXL
Why not just put it index funds? If you already have far more money than you
need, the average market rate of return should be acceptable. There's no need
to try and 10x or 100x without, well, losing all of it, since the type of
investments with that potential high of an upside are incredibly risky. Don't
bet the farm.

~~~
hogFeast
Too much money. Once you pass a certain amount of money, it is very hard to
diversify because you are such a large share of the market. I am not exactly
sure where this number lies nowadays but once you pass $10bn or so, you can't
own much outside the S&P500 without running into liquidity problems.

The only market with infinite liquidity is US Treasuries (that is where the
Chinese put their $3trn of foreign currency reserves). Mortgage-backed were
liquid until GFC, and liquidity in corporates is falling because dealers can't
carry inventory (afaik, not expert...MBS pre-GFC was ultra liquid for sure
though and seen as an alternative to USTs).

The Saudis own $150bn here (and growing because of Trump/MBS relationship
apparently) but I think the issue the Saudis have is that they have a fucking
huge budget deficit. There are tons of people on do-nothing, civil servant
jobs (mainly royal family members), they have to spend a ton on defence
(ostensibly against external threat but the royal family is terrified of an
uprising too), and they spend a ton on welfare to buy popularity.

They are definitely investing for a return.

------
nosleeptill
This is fucking insane. $300M for a dog walking company, a dog walking
company. A dog walking company. A fucking dog walking company.

~~~
dang
Ok, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News.

~~~
zaroth
Can we make a small exception for when the comment perfectly elucidates what
everyone is actually thinking while reading the article?

I’m sorry, all due respect, but.... _a dog walking company_.

~~~
dang
Well, let's apply the HN guidelines [1] and, more importantly their spirit, to
this case. That spirit is to be reflective rather than reflexive [2], which
means to interrupt the rapid reflex that springs up immediately ("what
everyone is actually thinking"), inhibit the temptation to react, and give the
slower, reflective part of the brain time to catch up.

When I do that, the first thing that comes to me is that the dog-owner market
is huge—so huge that $300M is likely a small number rather than a large one.
Moreover, the emotions that people have about their dogs are intense,
profound, and deeply personal. ("Dogs are the new kids", reads a coffee mug I
once saw in a kitchen in San Francisco.) So this market is not only broad,
it's deep; the potential customers are not only numerous but the chance for
repeat business is high. Probably there's a huge opportunity here, if you can
satisfy people's needs or at least give them a feeling of that. As for dog-
walking sounding trivial, if you've ever been (or known) a stressed-out,
overworked dog owner and how it feels to face your sad unwalked dog in the
evening when you have no energy left to do anything, this is actually not
trivial at all. It is not only a form of suffering, it's closely connected
with deeper forms of suffering—because so many of us invest our unfulfilled
relational capacity into our pets. People will spend a lot of money to relieve
a problem like that. In short: huge market, repeat business, premium pricing.

I know nothing about Wag, but this is more than enough to see how the GP
comment broke the HN guidelines by being a shallow dismissal. I totally get
why people want to post that kind of rant and share that perspective—I share
it too, it's fun and creates a sense of community in its own way. But we have
to remember what we're optimizing for on HN. There are tradeoffs in the kinds
of discussion we get to have. If we take the shallow route and go for the
sugar rush of piling on stupidity at a distance, we forego the quieter,
insightful kind of discussion. Compounded, this determines the kind of site
Hacker News is going to be.

Edit: I read the article, which seems to me unusually good and to deserve a
more thoughtful discussion than most comments have offered here so far. Among
other things, it makes clear that the issue is not "a fucking dog walking
company" being a bad business per se, because a competitor is actually doing
better.

1\.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

2\.
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20reflective%20reflex&sort=byDate&type=comment)

~~~
slovette
Do you have any reading (books, blogs, etc) on this concept of reactive vs
reflective thinking? I don't think I've ever seen it described this way and it
nails a verbal description to something I've desperately tried to describe to
myself and teach other people for years...

~~~
olalonde
"Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman.

------
Izmaki
There are so many spontaneous adds on this freaking page I can't even read the
article because the text jumps away to make room for god know what product
they want me to buy...

Man, what a trend this has grown to be.

------
qaq
How the hell are they loosing money they take a big cut from a service that
they invest 0 money into outside of marketing. If the app worked half decently
their cs expenses would be low.

~~~
Johnny555
I think it's because instead of their app being a way to earn recurring
revenue by being a go-between between dog walkers and dog owners, it's more of
a way for dog-walkers to build up their client list, who no longer need Wag
skimming off profit in the middle.

They claim that they'll charge walkers $1000 if they provide services to a Wag
client outside of the service, but I'd be surprised if that's legally
enforceable:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20854100](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20854100)

------
yumraj
I used to always look amusingly at their billboard on 101, as they seemed like
an Uber for dogs and the next Webvan.

Till I realized how much money they have raised... And I...

Was..

Speechless....

------
tempsy
Anyone have insight into Nuro? I was thinking of applying but now need to
second guess joining any SoftBank co.

~~~
whoknewvarint
I work at Nuro, what do you want to know?

------
swarnie_
I've sold out.

I don't care about the last 10% potential. This market is fucked

------
buboard
Is it possible for investment funds to become insolvent?

------
0xADADA
Best title ever.

------
zeruch
The new Pets.com?

------
switch007
How would have JavaScript made them better off?

~~~
RandallBrown
The point wasn't that javascript would be better, it was that the person
couldn't answer why they chose an older tech stack instead of one of the newer
ones.

~~~
parliament32
There are a lot of reasons why choosing a mature tech stack is a better idea
than the stack-du-jour. Better support, less bugs, and you know you won't be
rewriting to the next stack when this one gets abandoned in a year.

~~~
puranjay
It's an app that connects dog owners with dog walkers. People here are
treating it like it was a CERN project.

------
mruts
Too bad companies like Bird, Wag, and WeWork get so much access to secondary
market capital. Otherwise they would have had to IPO, and I could have shorted
these companies like the flee-ridden dogs they are. Hey, at least I got to
make big money on Lyft and Uber!

This VC backed communism is definately coming to an abrupt end. Once Son is
chased out of town, the fun times will be over.

