Wag Hires New CEO from Fraud-plagued Company

"The new CEO of dog walking company Wag ran a firm that paid over $100 million in fines for lying to, and cheating, its customers."

The headline at Boing Boing was a good one: Investors throw $300 Million at dog-walking startup that hired ex-CEO of fraudulent anti-fraud company Lifelock

Before being hired to serve as CEO of Wag, a dogwalking startup that just received a $300,000,000 investment from Softbank, Hilary Schneider presided over Lifelock, a company whose fraudulent anti-fraud products cost it over $100,000,000 in fines, before Schneider convinced Symantec to buy it for an absurd $2.6 billion.

Wag is a "gig economy" dog-walking service that matches desperate, marginally employed people with pet owners.

Right. 

The new CEO of Wag ran a company that paid over $100 million in fines for lying to, and cheating, its customers. 

Wag is also the company that left addresses and lockbox codes publicly exposed online at their web site without any password protection.

Wag says it has fixed that problem (just as Lifelock assured the FTC is had fixed similar security problems) but the core business model for Wag is still a little problematic at both ends of the leash.

To begin with, customers who use Wag are not getting a locally-owned dog walking company, nor are they guaranteed the same dog walker, nor is there any guarantee that they or their dog will have ever met the walker that actually enters their house.

Instead, as Boing Boing notes, Wag "matches desperate, marginally employed people with pet owners."

This is not to say that Wag and competitors like Rover do not screen dog walkers; they do. They have online screening tests, telephone screening tests, and in-person training and orientation. And perhaps their screening process is better than yours. That said, this is not a one-and-done kind of thing:  sign up for Wag or Rover, and your house keys are going in an outside lock box whose security is questionable.

From your dog's point of view, it has no idea who is coming through the door or why -- a situation likely to result in more stress for the dog, but also a predictable number of bites due to very bad dog-human encounters.  Remember, some dogs really are guard dogs.

Another issue is that not all of the money going to Wag is actually going to the dog walker. Wag is skimming off a portion of the fees you are paying for their Uber-like phone app, the advertising they are running, and the franchise model they have created.

That's all fine and expected, but what that means is that a significant portion of what you think you are paying your dog walker is actually going out of state -- a sum large enough to drive that $300 million Wag capitalization.