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I call "baloney" on the "stupid idea" tenet. Somehow folklore has us believing that AirBnB, for example, sounded crazy at the time but does anyone really believe that? Staying in homes has been around as long as homes and vacation rentals was a mature market.

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It didn't sound crazy at the time. It sounded crazy at the time to investors - old, rich white guys (I'm generalizing, of course). These guys didn't need to or want to stay in an AirBnB, or at least didn't before it had already become commonplace.

Younger folks though, traveling on a budget, interested in meeting other people while away from home - it's a no brainer. We all stay on friends couches, in guest rooms, share cars.

Put another way, couchsurfing and ride sharing have been around forever. What wasn't obvious is whether there was enough money in intermediating these as commercial transactions to make a business that would be interesting to VCs. (And, arguably, the current valuations of these businesses is higher than the market will ultimately support.)

Is that even true? I'm familiar with the recent story about everyone supposedly passing on AirBnB. But the real reason is that it was an odd way to try to raise that amount of money. When raising a few 100,000s pre-product you go to a much smaller circle, not cold-ish intros to "pros".

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