Thursday, September 14, 2006

The bubble is back

In a move that cannot help but bring up memories of, Dogster just got $1M in funding.


zai said...

Hi Greg,

I have a dog myself, and much as I think of myself as a person with unbounded rationality, I excuse myself of that trait when making a purchase for my dog.
Another observation I can make is that there is no central repository for recommendations and comments on pet products which is what I usually go by in buying things. Dogster can definitely fill that niche for dog owners and I suspect that tasteful ad placement on dogster will have a much higher ROI than other human-oriented sites because of some emotional salience. Watching your dog's pals 'writing' back is not quite different from snorting oxytocin ;)
This is perhaps why I believe it to be a relatively sane investment and not quite yet. Or perhaps, I'm too enamored by Dogster to be objective!

D.VDA said...

I think bubbles are where markets are not.

I'm just wondering if you can imagine this market ;) :


rafer said...

Hi Greg,
I don't know if we can escape the boom-then-bubble cycle over the next few years, but Dogster is not part of the problem. It's an example of the solution. They've been profitable since July 2004, all while growing nicely. They know exactly who their users are and they serve those users beautifully.

Abhishek Goyal said...

Hi Greg,

I hope you have read this one before you posted this
If they are running a profitable business, then funding doesnot really show any hype or bubble ..

Kevin said...

Woah..... I couldn't disagree more.

This is totally opposite from the bubble and

First. They're profitable and have been around for a few years now. They're also growing.

They also took the money from angels and not some large VC firm.

They mostly did everything right....

Greg Linden said...

Thanks, everyone. I see a lot of people disagree with me on this one.

It is a good point that Dogster is profitable and took a relatively small amount of investment. Those are different than

The similarity I see is that some articles claim Dogster can address a significant chuck of the $36B pet market. I think that is optimistic and invites a comparison with