Rover

Rover Group, Inc., formally incorporated as A Place for Rover, Inc. and previously known as Rover.com, operates an online marketplace where pet owners buy pet care services from independent providers. Services listed on the platform include pet sitting, dog boarding, doggy day care, dog walking, drop-in visits, house sitting and dog training, with booking flows that let owners filter by service type, dates, location and dog size. The company is headquartered in Seattle, Washington and serves the United States and Western Europe.

Rover functions as a two-sided marketplace: pet owners on one side and pet care providers, who are independent contractors rather than employees, on the other. The platform matches owners with providers based on factors such as location, availability, pet type and care requirements, supported by provider profiles, reviews, background checks and insurance coverage on bookings made through the platform. Additional product features have included GPS tracking for walks, in-app messaging and in-platform payments. Originally focused on dogs, Rover expanded into cat care, formally adding cat services in 2019.

Subsidiaries and acquired brands include DogVacay, Dog Buddy, Cat in a Flat, GoodPup and Gudog. The company was listed on Nasdaq under the ticker ROVR from 2021 to 2024 and has been owned by Blackstone since February 2024.

Founding story

The concept originated with Greg Gottesman, then a managing director at Madrona Venture Group, after his yellow Labrador returned from a traditional kennel stay sick and with a cough, leading him to conclude there was an opportunity for a better pet care option. Gottesman pitched the idea of an online matchmaking service connecting pet owners with local pet sitters at a Startup Weekend event in Seattle in June 2011, where it won first place. He recruited Philip Kimmey, then a computer science student at Washington University in St. Louis who had impressed him at the event, to build the initial platform over the summer at Madrona's offices. Aaron Easterly, a Harvard economics graduate who had worked at Microsoft and was an entrepreneur-in-residence at Madrona, joined later that summer as co-founder and CEO. The Rover.com site launched in December 2011, initially connecting owners and pet carers around Seattle, Washington and Portland, Oregon.

Business model

Rover acts as a broker between pet owners and pet care providers, taking a commission on transactions booked through the platform; press reporting has described that commission as approximately 20% of each booking. Providers on the platform are independent contractors. The company also offers trust-and-safety infrastructure — background screening, reviews and insurance coverage on platform bookings — as part of the marketplace proposition.

Commission on bookings transacted through the marketplace, reported at roughly 20% of booking value; on approximately $150 million of combined Rover and DogVacay bookings in 2016 the companies were reported to retain about 20% in commission fees.

Traction

About 10,000 registered hosts and sitters in more than 40 states by July 2012; roughly 25,000 sitters across all 50 states by March 2015; 181 employees at the end of 2016 and approximately 555 employees in 2025. Combined Rover and DogVacay bookings were reported at about $150 million in 2016. Prior to the SPAC merger the company had raised a total of $281 million and was last valued at $970 million.

Latest developments

Blackstone completed its approximately $2.3 billion all-cash acquisition of Rover in February 2024 at $11.00 per share, delisting the shares from Nasdaq. In 2024 Rover acquired London-based cat-sitting marketplace Cat in a Flat, and in June 2025 the company announced its CEO was stepping down after 14 years with a successor named, alongside a further international expansion through the purchase of a dog-sitting platform.