Former employees of dog-walking startup Wag, which raised $300M from SoftBank and replaced CEO in Jan. 2018, describe slowed growth, multiple layoffs, and more
(CNN)At the start of 2018, Wag looked like tech's next Big Thing. — In January, the founders of the dog-walking startup announced … Tweets: @seldo , @carnage4life , @_cingraham , @tomgara , @sfiegerman , @kyurieff , @isaachimmelman , @heatherkelly , @kerrymflynn , @sg , @saraashleyo , and @saraashleyo Tweets: Laurie Voss / @seldo : Softbank throws dramatically huge amount of money at a growing startup which then turns out to be a tire fire: no, it's not Uber or WeWork, it's Wag: https://www.cnn.com/... Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life : Softbank really excelled at finding traditional businesses who made an app then overspending on them to convince the world they were tech companies. $300M investment in a dog walking startup is like something out of the dotcom crash. https://www.cnn.com/... Christopher Ingraham / @_cingraham : If you're looking for a single datapoint that explains the modern economy, “$600 million dog-walking app” is a pretty good place to start https://www.cnn.com/... https://twitter.com/... Tom Gara / @tomgara : “shuttered its customer service hub in the Hollywood Hills” is the most Softbank-backed startup sentence I've ever read https://www.cnn.com/... Seth Fiegerman / @sfiegerman : Dog-walking startup Wag raised $300 million to upend the pet industry. But instead of runaway growth, it just ended up with runaway dogs. https://www.cnn.com/... Kaya Yurieff / @kyurieff : Amazing reporting from @saraashleyo who spent months digging into dog walking startup Wag 🐶 https://twitter.com/... Isaac Himmelman / @isaachimmelman : Great in depth reporting by @saraashleyo ! Also, against the backdrop of the stalled WeWork IPO, an important look into what kind of ventures all this SoftBank money is going towards. https://www.cnn.com/... Heather Kelly / @heatherkelly : The dead dogs aren't even Wag's biggest problem, according to this great piece on the on-demand dog walking company by @saraashleyo https://www.cnn.com/... Kerry Flynn / @kerrymflynn : Come for cute illustrations of pups, stay for @saraashleyo's excellent reporting inside dog walking startup Wag https://www.cnn.com/... Sean Garrett / @sg : Fascinating deep dive on when the ‘need’ for growth and internal misalignment collides. https://www.cnn.com/... Sara Ashley O'Brien / @saraashleyo : Wag's CEO held a series of several-hour meetings throughout April, May and June with a small group of trusted employees to investigate the declining volume of walks, a former employee told me, but there weren't any clear paths forward. Sara Ashley O'Brien / @saraashleyo : New: Inside dog-walking startup Wag after a $300M investment from SoftBank + a new CEO. I talked to 17 former employees about what's happening inside: slowed growth, layoffs, management changes, a shuttered customer service hub: https://www.cnn.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Wag's arc was already showing strain before this reporting. A year before the $300M round, the company was losing dogs and fighting with customers, which sources said was spooking potential investors. SoftBank stepped in anyway, closing a $300M deal for roughly 45% of the company in January 2018 alongside cofounder Josh Viner stepping aside as CEO.
This piece — built on former employees describing slowed growth, declining walk volume, and repeated layoffs — lands just weeks before the broader reckoning: within weeks, reporting tied Wag to a wider group of struggling Vision Fund bets like Fair, with WeWork's botched IPO looming over the whole portfolio.
First-order effects
- Wag's own operations contracted: multiple layoffs, a shuttered Hollywood Hills customer-service hub, and management holding multi-hour meetings to investigate why walk volume kept falling despite the war chest.
Second-order effects
- The struggles fed directly into scrutiny of SoftBank's model — a month later, Wag and Fair were being cited together as proof that Vision Fund mega-rounds into consumer services were not producing healthy companies, pressuring how future deals were priced and vetted.
Third-order effects
- The trajectory held: by mid-2025 Wag had filed for bankruptcy at a fraction of its peak valuation, confirming that a $300M check plus a CEO swap could not fix unit economics in an on-demand labor business — and cementing the case that SoftBank's size-of-bet approach needed structural rethink.
The trend: SoftBank's Vision Fund strategy of injecting nine-figure rounds into thin-margin on-demand services produced a string of deteriorating portfolio companies, with Wag as one of the earliest and clearest examples.