"We used to ask friends, but we didn't want to keep asking them again and again. A couple of them like doing it, but we still felt like we shouldn't take them for granted."
This is exactly the first problem we aimed to solve. Spotwag is a way for your friends to opt-in to help and removes that awkwardness for you feeling like you're taking them for granted. If they're not up for helping, they can simply ignore your request. I mentioned in another comment you'll often be surprised by friends that do want to help toom friends that you wouldn't expect.
You're right about MVP. We have a lot of ideas for making Spotwag more awesome. We want to make it easier to schedule help on Spotwag than it is to call/email/text a bunch of people.
One of our short term priorities is to bring professionals on board and 2nd degree connections. After speaking of hundreds of pet owners, we feel strongly that finding someone you trust is key and a straight airbnb model wasn't going to work.
We are in the process of completely redesigning the site and it will look a lot different soon, so we haven't spent time trying to improve the current design. These pics will be going away. Beer and cans are bad for dogs, we don't encourage this.
I did get some flack that it's a can of Yuengling and not PBR, the preferred beer of choice for hipsters in San Francisco.
Thanks so much for the note! We are working on a redesign to the homepage/ site that will do better both in highlighting the site benefits/ features before you decide to login, and then in onboarding new users. We've also crafted some scenario stories for the How it Works page that we'll add soon.
On your question - the problem is a bit different for different people, but basically we found through talking to pet owners that while they prefer asking friends/ family for help, they don't usually. Asking for help is awkward, intimidating, and coordination with said friends/ family is often difficult. On the other hand, we found the non-pet-owners actually want to help more - they want to be asked for help, so we try to make that whole affair less 'awkward,' and simplify the coordination bit. We believe asking for help should be as easy as picking up the phone to call a kennel.
We want you to be covered for all situations, but for now, we started with your direct friends because you already trust them, and if we can make going to them as easy as going to a professional, we feel it's a win-win for all.
Good feedback. We've heard this before as well. I'm just stubborn and like looking at the photos. When we roll out the redesign, we'll add a silhouette and not make it required.
Thanks for the feedback! Yeah, we were shocked ourselves when we started hearing how many non dog owners want to watch their friends dogs. One of the next features I want to build is letting people ASK to take your dog/pet. I have friends that have just asked to take mine to the park for the day.