Rover, a Seattle-based startup that provides an ‘Airbnb’ for dog sitting, has raised $7 million in Series B funding led by Foundry Group with existing investor Madrona Venture Group participating. This brings the company’s total funding to over $10 million.
Rover’s marketplace matches dog owners with pet sitters. You can search for potential dog sitters in your area and for your time requirements, and the site will match you with verified and reviewed sitters. Rover also provides insurance coverage and seven-days-a-week, 24-hour access to licensed veterinarians and customer emergency service support.
As we reported last year, the idea for the startup came from a Madrona managing director, Greg Gottesman, during a Seattle Startup Weekend after he had a terrible experience with a commercial kennel. Gottesman later found current CEO Aaron Easterly, a former general manager of network strategy and monetization at Microsoft, to run the company.
The site, which faces competition from DogVacay, has over 100,000 dog lovers enrolled, access to sitters in over 4,300 cities and approximately 1,000 sitter options in each of the most popular 20 U.S. markets. The startup says that over 94% of reviewed stays have received a five-star rating.
Rover.com also announced today that it is rolling out an exclusive, personalized video service from online video creation startup Animoto. So when a sitter submits photos of the dog they are watching to the owner, Rover will create a RoverReel, which is a free, high-quality custom video update to share with the dog owner.
While there are other competitors in the space, pet boarding is a $10 billion market, so there’s plenty of space for a few players.