Airbnb CFO Departs Amid Tensions, Leaving IPO Timeline Unclear | Hacker News Reader

Airbnb CFO Departs Amid Tensions, Leaving IPO Timeline Unclear

bloomberg.com

104 pointsdpiers60 comments

'Tosi, who turns 50 next week, was focused more on cutting costs and pursuing businesses that were revenue-generating instead of world-changing, they said.'

For now, Airbnb has the luxury to make these kinds of decisions, but they can't exist in the world of paper valuations forever. A lot of the 'world-changing' things they've been working on seem a lot more targeted at the luxury market than transforming the industry as a whole (luxury retreats, premium business products, experiences that cost $200+). Will be interesting to see how this plays out..

Yeah, I've never really had any luck getting stuff that is really cheaper than traditional options.

Ditto. IMHO their business model isn't hard to replicate, they didn't invent it, and their biggest asset is inertia-eyeballs. Although they are a YC darling, the fact is they scaled with loads of marketing dollar versus established competition (eg. in Europe) and what this shows us is huge financial backing and aggressive media engagement can create a sector-specific behemoth. For all intents and purposes in the current world it has already plateaued, though. There's a school of thought that they are probably one of the last paper-valuation giants to climb out of the centralized marketplace world.

In future, perhaps consumers won't use branded marketplace apps and will instead publish data independently, branded search engine apps will rank and return it and third party reputation services will assist with filtering. Why? Because nobody wants a damn middleman app demanding its own permissions/login/customer service loop for everything they do, and people are slowly ceding anonymity for promises of assurance as the resource-constrained, higher-density, more urban world moves toward the political right.

A cryptocurrency AirBNB clone could take a serious chunk out of their market, since so many hosts are flying close to or beyond the legal or strata relations radar and would prefer not to declare earnings.

I doubt that will take off purely due to the comfort of having someone to call if things go wrong. It may work in other industries where the cost of failure is lower (eg taxis/uber) but not for short term accommodation.

It's inevitable that a trust implementation outside of marketplace services eventually dominates. This removes most of their value add.

That’s not necessarily inevitable since a large part of what makes marketplace trust metrics hard to game is that it costs a lot of money to drive fake transactions through it, since the marketplace will be taking its cut each time.

There are clever solutions to this. Escrow works even in bitcoin. Then at a certain point you call the police. No reason to insert a hugely expensive third party in a 2 party transaction.

Edit: It's more than one hugely expensive third party if you consider each level of local government gets involved.

Looks like The Bee Token is already on it: https://www.beetoken.com/

Same, but there is the benefit that you can stay in places where there are no hotels. The city I just returned from in Belgium has no hotels in the historic district, but a few hostels and a number of whole-apartment airbnbs. I'm past the point in my life where I want to sleep in a room with 10 strangers who may steal my stuff, so airbnb it is.

The CFO's job is to balance the books, not do biz dev. That quote looks like backstabbing scapegoating.

Many cfo actually have the biz dev unit under them. Google and my current company both have the biz dev unit under the CFO. I also worked for CFO at a mobile telecom and he was actually a key executive in charge of the 3g expansion. The role is actually much more than accounting.

Certainly Corp Dev is under the CFO. Seems that this is a CFO who wanted bigger things (like Noto at Twitter) and AirBnB didn’t want it to be there. Someone who was CFO at Blackstone had to have big ambitions.

AirBnb has recently been made illegal in my state (New York State) for stays under 30 days. Of course a lot of people don't know or don't care about the law, but they're giving out fines left and right. This is likely true with other states as well.

Vancouver is moving toward bylaws that will completely ban Airbnb for non-owner occupied residences. This means that people will no longer be able to buy apartments completely for creating a business out of renting them out on Airbnb permanently like a hotel.

I recall a study that estimated 70% of Airbnb Vancouver revenue was coming from these sort of professional Airbnb businesses that will now be outlawed.

I think there's significant danger for Airbnb here in how major tourism cities with ultra low vacancy rates such as Vancouver are clamping down on the service.

It's been illegal to sublet for less than 30 days in Vancouver for more than a decade. Before AirBnB, there were people doing this manually over CraigsList. In most condo buildings, strata boards cracked down hard on short term rentals during the 2010 Olympics here, under that exact bylaw.

Illegal to rent an entire apartment. Renting out a room for less than 30 days is fine.

Can you "rent out" only a room with the rest of the rooms being unoccupied? You can say you are not renting out the entire apartment, it's just that the other rooms have not been occupied.

I should have been more precise in my language.

It’s legal to rent out a room for less than 30 days in NY if the owner/tenant is also occupying the place.

It got similarly banned in the French Quarter in New Orleans. Except there they aren’t having an issue cracking down on illegal sublets/short term rentals. It is showing in the real estate market too, there are a lot of properties newly on the market in the FQ.

AirBnb is illegal or short term rentals? I recently stayed in a short term apartment rental that I booked through booking.com. It was fully licensed, etc..., but was an apartment in a building of otherwise long term renters.

Define "fully licensed". Short term rentals are illegal in NY for "Class A" buildings - Class A meaning buildings that are meant for long term rentals: https://www.law.com/newyorklawjournal/almID/1202799183928/

So either your rental was illegal, or the building was not a Class A building.

With major cities that are in demand, long-term rentals on AirBnb can disturb housing equality and rent control programs. So we hear about long-term rentals being curtailed a lot.

The states don't need to address what's already being addressed by the major cities, unless it's a big problem outside of the major cities because the housing demand isn't as high. The long-term rental issues aren't as bad outside of the major cities. The short-term rental issues, however, are a bigger issue, because those living in a less urban area have more expectation of knowing their neighbors.

You say “can”, but I live in one of those cities and I assure you it’s not a possibility but a reality.

Oops. Unnecessarily using a qualifier is a mistake, albeit one made while trying to avoid making other mistakes. I stand corrected.

If it's fully licensed then I imagine it is fine - I'm not sure how flexible the law is around licensing short term rentals in otherwise long term buildings though.

It's short-term rentals in unlicensed properties that the state has specifically outlawed. IIRC it wasn't actually legal in the first place, they've just started enforcing it.

AriBnB lost a lot of hosts in San Francisco [1]. The registration requirement is good. Let's see what happens in 2018 as this requirement kicks in.

[1]: https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Airbnb-loses-th...

Not just the registration requirement, but if I understand, when you register they also notify the landlord/building/HoA/whatever, when applicable.

In a lot of cities, most condos have minimum rental length in the bylaws, and rental properties have restrictions on subleasing, so the majority of airbnbs break the rules of those contracts. The people in charge of enforcing the rules historically have trouble proving its happening (even if they know). This makes it a lot easier.

  The people in charge of enforcing the rules historically have trouble proving its happening (even if they know).

No trouble at all. Even if the address is not published (which it usually isn't) you can search for a property by map.

There were court cases here in which the landlord sued the tenant. The tenant claiming that he only rented out two or three times, which was belied by the reviews on the prperty, which proved without a doubt that he rented out at least 20 times.

The court awarded all illicit gains from the rentals to the landlord.

Also, be prepared to be kicked out of your appartment pretty swiftly if you rent it out without the explicit permission of the landlord.

Permission is hardly ever granted, because it usually severily (and rightfully) pisses off the other long term tenants in a house.

Airbnb needs to start greasing pockets like the hotel industry or its only going to get worse.

So far, the aggression of the hotel industry against Airbnb been (mostly) out the public eye.

We will see what direction this goes.

I am surprised with the comments again airbnb here. I have used nothing else but airbnb for last 3 years. They have amazing properties with prime locations for reasonable price. I normally dont care for hotel services i.e. gym,in-room food etc so its perfect. Usually the cost comes down to half than the hotels.

I think a key issue with them is they've caused a harmful reduction of available affordable rented accommodation in many areas. All those "amazing properties with prime locations for reasonable price" are now no longer available to local residents to rent.

It's a thing that's happened around my rural'ish village. There used to be a reasonable supply of rented properties but many have turned into AirBNB lets where, for half the year, they're practically unoccupied, and even during the holiday season (northern hemisphere summer) they're never fully occupied.

I know this is just how market forces work, but in some localities AirBNB are a somewhat destructive force.

They released this last week: https://press.atairbnb.com/brian-cheskys-open-letter-to-the-... ... The part that caught my attention was: "To begin measuring how well we are serving all stakeholders, in March, we’ll release Airbnb’s first Annual Stakeholder Report." ... You only come up with this crap when you don't want to go public. You know...because reporting to stakeholders is what public companies do.

After the absolutely horrible customer service experiences I've had with Airbnb, I hope they rot in IPO hell.

FWIW I've had the exact opposite experience. Called in late at night about a host in Barcelona blowing me off, and within a few minutes had a US-based support rep check the message log and immediately move me into another place along with an additional credit for the problem.

I had one terrible experience too. And never an amazing one.

Tried to use it this next 2 day trip to Berlin. Had low trust in the quality of the matches against my budget and bedcount, and found better deals from hotel aggregator websites I've used before with some confidence on what they tell me

TL;DR can't trust the model when it doesn't out perform alternates with better basis in search/price matching.

AirBnB is basically banned in Berlin.

Not anymore. The ban had been successfully challenged on numerous occasions now. Seems unenforceable

Obligatory shoutout: https://www.cryptocribs.com

When AirBnB finally does IPO, who will want to buy it? What more growth could possibly come out amidst the increasing regulation?

Every time I use AirBnb now it shows me "Experiences" before letting me actually see accommodation listings. I suspect this is a growth area they're eager to push, no matter how much it might annoy me and others who want to just find a place to stay.

Yeah I think they've saturated the actual home stay sector for now. It's very hard and limited to create demand for anything, especially a rather new lodging offering.

So they're pushing this experience stuff to try and differentiate and go for more growth as you mentioned along w restaurant bookings.

It's annoying to me as well as a host and a renter. If they aren't careful they could cede market share to other competitors that allow and welcome host and renters to easily connect outside their system and remain focused on lodging.

I don't understand their UX approach since it's easy enough to ask what the user is looking for and make it dynamic instead of blasting experiences everywhere. Or not be so pushy on experiences if I start a lodging search. Push it after.

Isn't there much more for them to explore outside hosting guests? Their recent redesign focusing on „accomodations“ + „activities“ seems to indicate this. Companies like GetYourGuide raised $200 Mio. [1] just for activities alone.

[1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/getyourguide

I think the market will continue to anchor their value on the number of listings and number of stays. AirBnB may be quickly growing revenue per user but that might not be enough to move the top line if listings is dropping. They seem to be losing left and right vs municipalities that don’t want them.

If you are optimistic about AirBnB as a business, outside of its ability to exploit legal loopholes:

The same kind of growth that any new, deep pocketed entrant in the hospitality industry might have - it would just have to come at the expense of incumbents.

In 30 years, an investor like that may hope that AirBnB might look more like Hilton Worldwide, then what it is today.

AirBnB is already worth more than Hilton. I think that's part of the point parent is trying to make.

Hilton owns ~800,000 suites across ~4,000 cities. This is great, but if travel were to drop by 20%, you'd now be paying for and maintaining empty rooms.

The AirBnB network has ~3,000,000 suites across 60,000 cities. Even if they were to comply with all local laws, they would still have margins, and room to grow, and would weather downturns better then traditional hotel chains ('Sharing economy' means that they aren't stuck paying mortgages on rooms they can't rent during a recession.) They can also expand into the traditional hotel chain business, by building or buying properties.

My understanding is that Hilton doesn't own any of the properties, they simply manage them under the Hilton name for their owners.[1]

The practice of franchising is popular within the hospitality industry among most major hotel chains, as the parent company does not have to pay for the maintenance and overhead costs of franchised properties.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilton_Worldwide#Franchising

> My understanding is that Hilton doesn't own any of the properties

Your own source says that 70% (by rooms) was franchised as of 2013, which suggests 30% is Hilton owned.

Hilton definitely doesn’t own a lot of those hotels or suites.

> 'Sharing economy' means that they aren't stuck paying mortgages on rooms they can't rent during a recession.

I'm not sure I understand, why is this not the case?

It's the hosts who are stuck paying mortgages on rooms they can't rent, not AirBNB. To AirBNB a recession just shows up as a decline in the number of transactions on the site.

I guess we will wait to find out. If all they do is execute and get to slow growth, cash flow is still worth a lot of money, just at a lower multiple than fast growing cash flow.

IMO, experiences, business travel and even hotel booking are all viable growth models going forward.

Isn't short-term investment an option here? Watch AirBnB stock price goes up in the first week of IPO, then cash out before AirBnB comes down? The hype and rise should make some happy. You don't have to believe in the business, you can just believe in the hype.

Who cares? They're in one of the most profitable niche in the planet. They don't need IPO.

Airbnb employers and Investors. Most funds have a 6 - 8 year timeline where they plan to cash out to certain extent, so there will be pressure from employees and investors alike.

To make it worse, the fund gets dissolved after a while. So now instead of one VC firm you have to deal with dozens of investors.

Yes, it looks like they are gradually working toward a narrative that allows them to keep pushing back the IPO as they continue along their "incredible journey".

> Who cares?

People who want to cash out.

> When AirBnB finally does IPO, who will want to buy it?

This is how the stock market works for IPOs of AirBnb's size:

1. Big financial institution client: "Get me higher return, maybe buy more of those cool tech stocks everyone is raving about. Can you buy the next FB?"

2. Big financial institution: "Sure thing, we got this AirBnB company coming up and it's supposed to be big, we're talking 50% YoY growth. On the other hand, we've got these 100-year-old blue chip companies growing at 4.5% every year that we can park your money. we also have prospectus on a new diet pill company that should show 10% increase YoY based on our analsysis. what say you?"

3. client: "give me that AirBnB one, I don't want to miss out on the action!"

4. institution: "you're the boss, talking with AirBnb's underwriter as we speak"

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