Rover Rolls Out On-Demand Walking in Denver
October 4, 2017
Last week Rover launched on-demand dog walking in Denver. Theyâre enhancing their existing marketplace experience by adding an assignment option, similar to Uber and Lyft, and bringing it to Colorado. Itâs another exciting move by the company, and their Denver announcement caused me to me reflect on my five years as an investor and board member at Rover.
Three thoughts came to mind.
Rover executes. I canât believe that Rover has rolled out an entirely new way to purchase dog walking in three cities, with their fourth on the way, and weâre not yet three months on the other side of the DogVacay integration. That integration â a result of Rover acquiring DogVacay, both started and ended in Q2, and surpassed the best-case-scenario metrics that the team presented to the board. While we talk about the power of âjust executingâ in the startup world, Rover is a case study of execution in action.
Rover is completely obsessed with its customers. Only an absolute determination to get the customer experience right would drive this team to build two separate versions of a new product, given the complexity of their overall business. But Rover shares this common trait of product-obsession with other great teams that Iâve known as an investor and board member, and itâs inspiring to watch. This is yet another instance of a team that knows what itâs doing, listens carefully to its customers, and, like my dog Cooper, jumps all over things to make sure that it gets its experience right.
Rover is an old-school example of how great companies drive customer loyalty. Their monthly new customer LTVs have increased steadily every year as a result of customer loyalty for six years in a row, without a single counter-example. While some increases can be accomplished through branding or marketing initiatives, Rover has done it the old-fashioned way, which is through careful and thoughtful sequencing of product launches and improvements to the marketplace.
If you live in Denver, give Roverâs on-demand dog walking experience a try and let me know what you think. Iâll pass it on to the team at Rover, as I know they will be very interested in your feedback.
Also published on Medium.