We’re excited to share that we’re in talks to bring new investors into the business. More investment means more opportunities for us to grow our community making it an ever-improving place for pet parents, sitters, and pets alike.
This update will also be going out via our regular member newsletter, The Trusted Times. As always, we’ll be on hand to help answer any questions you might have and we’ll do our best to answer those here on the forum.
What will this mean for members?
While members won’t see a direct impact on how they use our platform, further investment will help us to grow our membership globally and continue to provide an ever-improving pet-sitting community, creating even more opportunities for you - our members.
When will the investment be confirmed?
While we don’t have a definitive date for you just yet, we hope to wrap up our discussions soon - we’ll be sure to share any more updates as they are confirmed, both on here and via The Trusted Times.
As we navigate these exciting discussions, we want to keep you in the loop. So, while there’s nothing definitive to share right now, we’ll be sure to share more news once we have it.
I love how news is always “exciting” yet rarely is and brings more problems.
Before growing the membership the problems that we’ve been discussing for ages need to be addressed
@Jenny I would hope this WILL have an impact on members. Surely this amount of cash will enable a beefing up of the IT team and the customer support department. Members have been making no end of suggestions to improve the platform for all. Many promised changes have been in ‘process’ for years . Hopefully with this investment we finally get our wishes granted.
Playing devil’s advocate here @Jenny - if the investment has no bearing on members then don’t tell us. We want real news about changes and improvements that will impact us directly. You mention in your brief however, that it WILL benefit members. So if so, then come with concrete news not empty promises or vague announcements. Members are so fed up with these. Not your fault but please pass this back to HQ. As @Timshazz says, more money should mean a better user experience for us, the paying customer. And not, then why bother? (Other than profit) #yawn
I feel strongly that member experience must be improved before, during, and after investment.
I’ve been a member since 2016 and joined the community forum only a fews ago - but I’m disheartened by how many members are having truly ghastly experiences.
HOs are not being monitored closely enough, they are expecting unpaid labour.
Sitters are behaving badly without understanding the nature of a homestay.
The entire platform is geared towards HOs getting unpaid pet sitting.
It seems to be a bit of a shambles.
As someone working in leadership myself, this sort of member experience poses a huge threat to the future of the platform.
Hi @Jenny, of course it’s going to have an impact on members. We only have to see the unpopular changes that have been inflicted on us since Rockpool invested in THS. I’m sure the company and management of THS is excited because of the money it will generate but its actual members might not share this excitement. A huge overhaul and update of IT systems is required as, at present, the number of glitches/bugs etc is an embarrassment for a company this size who wants to dominate the pet sitting market.
Just to clarify, I was talking about the impact of this update, rather than any longer-term changes, at this stage. I’m not here to speculate, and this update is really just an FYI about something that we thought our members might be interested in, as it’s going to be mentioned on other channels as well.
@Cuttlefish it’s no problem to pass that back to the team, but as above my comment related to the impact of this specific update rather than the investment itself, which I’m not here to speculate on. We’ll be happy to share more information as and when we have it!
@STH I hear what you’re saying, but it’s worth remembering that the experiences shared on the Forum are a small snapshot of the overall member experience.
People tend to come here asking for help and support with challenging experiences, rather than to share experiences that went as expected. Of course, we’d love to see people sharing their wins, but the Forum is here to help give peer-to-peer support to those who need it, and the Forum team is always happy to pass along feedback and learnings to the wider team.
The purpose of the THS platform is to provide an introduction between potential sitters and pet owners, to facilitate an agreement that pet owners and sitters both benefit from i.e. pet owners have someone reliable to sit for them, and pet sitters can have a free place to stay while caring for a beloved pet.
You’re more than welcome to look for existing topics on the points you’ve mentioned @STH, or feel free to start a new one if you can’t see any.
Bidders including Mayfair are said to have been attracted to Trusted Housesitters’ subscription funding model and international growth prospects.
Similar to the last round of private equity investment I suspect. That one drove the US expansion. This will either continue that or push worldwide. Hopefully the drive for the subscription funds doesn’t distort peoples expectations which we have seen recently where owners just want servants and sitters just want free airbnb. The right expansion can open up more good opportunities for us all. The wrong expansion …
Please excuse me if I’m wrong, but I see from the article that this is a Sky News Exclusive and that @Jenny’s post was put out 2 minutes after the Sky news article was.
Timing is amazing!
It was on other forums even before it made it here. Timing is everything but I’m going to go with…thx to @Jenny for putting it on here so quickly and saving others the effort (and worry not knowing if they’d be in trouble for doing so.)
I hear what you’re saying @Jenny and I appreciate the challenge of community management when the community is so passionate.
There are 13,889 members in the forum, so you can assume this is representative of the THS 180K member experience.
(Market research is typically based on a margin of error of 2% with 95% confidence and accounting for the 20% that will respond. With a user base of 180K+ (per the homepage) that would indicate a sample of 11,850 to represent the entire membership base.)
If my experience is average: I’ve had 6 awful sits, 13 extraordinary sits since 2016; I’d bet most members have had an equally mixed experience, hopefully the good outweighing the bad.
I didn’t know there was a forum until a few weeks ago, so I’m sure many members haven’t realised it exists yet.
This is my first community — I clicked out of curiosity — so perhaps like me others don’t wish to join the community platform.
I’m curious to know whether the community is about product development and optimisation? And how the consistent concerns and threads are reported to leadership?
I hear you @Cuttlefish — all news is interesting because we can then infer how it will impact our membership experience, even when it’s not articulated clearly.
Growth is good for sitters - more opportunity!
Growth is great in general provide the issues they have now are addressed; then, from a business perspective, scaling is easier for THS too.
You’re more than welcome to share any thoughts in any relevant discussion posts, or if there’s not a post for what you’d like to discuss, feel free to start a new one!
@STH The forum is a place for THS sitters and owners to come and chat to other members, read and discuss updates, and receive peer-to-peer support where it’s needed. We collect and pass feedback over to the Product team, and you can read more about that here in Carla’s post.
Following on from our initial post last week, we’re happy to say that we’ve now wrapped up our discussions and can confirm that we will be bringing new investors, Mayfair Equity, into our business. With lots of experience in supporting businesses like ours, they are well-positioned to help us continue to grow our global community, making it an even better place for members and their pets.
While members won’t see any direct changes to the way that TrustedHousesitters works as we grow, it will mean that we can keep even more pets safe and happy at home and create more opportunities for our members to enjoy unique and authentic travel experiences. Our CEO, Mathew Prior, has taken to the blog today to share an update on this exciting new milestone: Mathews Blog post
The Forum team don’t have access to any more information at the moment, but if we hear anything, we’ll be happy to share it with you here. Any questions would be best placed with Membership Services.
We’ve re-opened the thread so that our members can discuss this most recent update, but we’d ask that you please keep the Community Guidelines in mind when doing so.
New investors means they will want more profit for their investment which means more advertising which means more membership which means more potential investment.
I do realise that businesses have to grow but THS is moving away from their traditional roots and causing more angst for both sitters and pet parents. Maybe sit down and listen to what your members want and need instead of bringing more and more people into the mix. Sort the problems your fix’s have made before trying to fix something else.
Most of our sits are still from THS but (I didn’t think I’d ever say this) we are using two or three other sites now. I am being very picky nowadays, reading reviews, looking at pictures carefully, asking a lot more questions. Yes, the quality of sitter may have fallen but so has the ethos of the pet parents. Any mention of work being done, granny dropping in for a few days or looking after the neighbours dogs on a Thursday I walk away. To me, this is a mutual agreement and I will not be treated as unpaid labour. Thank goodness I have been a sitter for over five years and have repeated sits I get invited back to. It must be a nightmare starting from scratch.
