Subject: Airbnb (2011)
paulgraham.com
paulgraham.com
The rest of the time, it's something like this:
A: I've always found that business is about increasing revenue and decreasing costs
B: I've also always thought that way
A: Great! I'm glad we're on the same pagePs funny on the eBay name drop. The original marketplace model, and still doing well, but dot think vc’s reference it as often anymore.
> But I am not sure they can take on the hotel market
Not an inaccurate assessment.
> Not an inaccurate assessment.
Not sure. I have stayed in AirBnBs on vacation in other countries and I have stayed in them many times on business, first during a conference when all the rooms were booked ( -- our admin suggested it!) and then after that was so great (we had a whole house for a half dozen team members) we almost always use it. Most people prefer it, though some prefer to have their own place rather than share, even though everyone has their own bedroom. We give everyone a choice and most people choose an airbnb over a hotel.
I assume "take on" doesn't mean "replace" but "become a significant player". It doesn't work in Manhattan nor, somewhat surprisingly does it in Omaha, but in most major conurbs its fine.
I've rented a fake room (lied about size, noise, etc. and had three honest-looking reviews) and I was talking to a rep in the US, in english. Meanwhile the host was talking to a service rep in the country i was in, in french.
In the end, the US rep promised me a credit and help. But then the France rep flagged my account. Now i could not book anything until i reactivated a credit card. Even the US rep now couldn't help me until I did that. It was a Saturday. I needed until Tuesday to validate any credit card via their statement methods. Twelve international calls later, and there was nothing they could do. at all. And I was a several-year long customer with 5star reviews all around.
Ended up on the street, with three bags, hunting last minute hotels and paying counter price. Never used airbnb ever again. The savings is not worth the risk.
I have experienced one issue where the host cancelled hours before arriving while we were already en route, but Airbnb upgraded us to a much better place as everything comparable was sold out (New Year's Eve in NYC).
It's definitely not a big thing in business travel yet, but at least part of that is because business travel is a slow market to change (partly because of expense integrations, private rate deals, duty of care, etc.) That said, Airbnb is actively trying to build out their business travel group and in theory are signing up customers. It wasn't clear to me how much of that was marketing vapor.
My general feeling is that they'll eventually be able to capture a small chunk of that market, although not as high a percentage as they will in leisure. Mostly because I don't think they can get the amount of reliable inventory that a large portion of business travelers will want. I've done more than my share of working from AirBnb/guest house/hotel, but if I actually have critical business travel, I'm taking the 1000 room Hilton over any AirBnb.
2005: mobileride.com in Boston, phone-based ridesharing with voluntary cash exchange, shut down in 2006 with regulatory warnings
2006: zipcar hires some of mobileride team and enters rideshare business with shared zipcar rentals among BU students
2007: zimride starts with pre-arranged rideshare at Cornell, works with campus transportation directly to keep it legal.
2007: google rides opens as a platform for several tiers of ride hailing services, dominates the market and then shuts down in 2010
2010: Uber starts in NYC as high-end livery, not sure if they got the license or not, but tweaks business model to have many on-demand part-time drivers instead of full-time, but pays much better portion of fare.
2012: Sidecar in San Francisco allows anybody to accept rides and mobile payments but calls them gratuities instead of fare. Regulators show their will to inaction. Uber responds with massive push into taxi services, completely flouts regulation, and Zimride births Lyft to do the same. CALPERS is rescued from bankruptcy by investment in AirBnB and Uber.
https://web.archive.org/web/20000620091420/http://www.craigs...
I would like to know more.
Here are the pre-2010 VC investments: https://www.calpers.ca.gov/page/investments/asset-classes/pr...
And then in 2012, they moved into managed VC/PE through Blackrock, so it's a lot harder to trace, but... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tech-uber-idUSKBN0EH21I20...
CALPERS didn't 'start' Uber/AirBnB, but they did make huge bets on them at right about the time when regulation was threatening their existence, and then magically they became legal.
Not to mention all of Elon Musk's companies. He may not have needed the money, but easy passage through regulatory barriers definitely secured success.
> The three "old guys" didn't get it
I think that's the main reason why they passed on Airbnb. The VCs themselves were too far away from the initial target market, and could neither relate with the "airbed and breakfast" user base, nor see how it could scale.
It's quite cool how the transcript goes to say "There's no reason this couldn't be as big as Ebay. And this team is the right one to do it."
Turns out that literally was the case! Good call Paul!
It seems there was already a marketplace for short term vacation rentals....
Not sure how VRBO's mobile presence compared to Airbnb when Airbnb started gaining traction but that could be a factor?
The only thing technical were that the sites usually had a calendar, but it was impossible to tell when and if it had actually been updated, so you had to be in contact with a dozen property owners to find a place with availability.
These services showed the potential but were little more than a collection of classified ads.
Whatever you think they are missing, there is actually already a site for that.
From what I can tell, AirBnB has a brand and a web application. Technically, I can't imagine the latter is more complicated than the average e-commerce site delivered at scale. I am having trouble understanding how big data can create an advantage (maybe to help owners price their rentals?). If a competitor pops up, there's no reason owners can't list on multiple sites without facing any penalties.
AirBnB is not a company I'd invest in for the long term, while I would invest in Uber/Lyft. So, what am I missing?
On the other hand, Uber's network effect and synergies are mostly localized to cities. If I move to a new city and there is a competitor with lower prices, chances are I'll install their app eventually, even if it takes me a few weeks.
In San Francisco for example, AirBnB collects and remits the local hotel tax on behalf of hosts, making that a non-issue for hosts. But when I used AirBnB in Italy I had to meet the host and they needed to charge me the tax, print a receipt, and had me sign something...all which I imagine was because at the time or in that locale AirBnB had not set up that convenience for hosts yet. And in SF, they only do this if AirBnB is the sole platform you use--if you use multiple then you'd have to collect/remit taxes yourself I believe. Probably not an issue for someone who rents out multiple units and treats AirBnB as their main job, but for the little guy that just wants to make a few extra bucks from an extra couch, room, etc. here and there AirBnB navigating the tax stuff is huge.
The counter example to these companies are the ones that quickly raised capital to dump scooters on public streets before they could be shut down by cities. None of the players were able to grow large enough to have a say in the reforming of the laws that regulate them (SF learned its lesson from Uber and moved quickly, limiting their participation to asking for proposals).
This is framed to present a VC as "missing out" in the financial sense. Ultimately a VC is liable to its capital partners in far more ways. If Airbnb had all of its assets seized by the federal government as an illegal enterprise (just as an example), we would be applauding their foresight and brilliance in avoiding this otherwise lucrative opportunity.
I find corprate overrule of law for 'benefit' of the consumer facinating, but dont have a dog in the fight. But I can't help feeling its like shooting the moon in a card game. It only works when unexpected, and already on a roll.
In my hometown I'm just calling taxis off the street or via plain old phone.
Where?
In France the taxis never accepted debit cards (= tax evasion), and generally provided piss-poor service. They've stepped their game up massively since Uber arrived.
In the UK I never saw a taxi app that wasn't an utter heap of garbage.
Sweeping generalizations about EU countries are almost always wrong or meaningless.
Hold on now. Hailo was amazing. Pity they broke themselves trying to take on the big apple.
Hailo was often fully booked when I tried using it, and I had several previous-day reservations evaporate into thin air. It wasn't (as) reliable.
London taxis have always been slightly better than the FR/ES/BG/IT taxis I've taken, but not that much better. And the apps have either gone bust, not worked, or both.
Taxi apps before Uber were either non-existent (still are for most places) or unusable.
Can you please edit personal provocations like that out of your posts to HN? They add no information and are often wrong. The comment would be fine with just the second sentence.
Edit: actually, for anyone wondering, the law is that a >50 employee's company should document it's own recommendation about how not to harass your colleagues during out-of-work hours. When fully applied, the worst case scenario would be that, as an employee, you can officially (ie. under a legal base, not legal right, but IANAL) ask your employer to have workaholic colleagues to step down on their out-of-hours emails. Nothing more, nothing less, very very far from "in France it's illegal to send a work email outside of the working hours".
In this case, swimming on the free beach is probably an infraction, much like failing to use your turn signal. The worst penalty you’ll face in the usual case is a fine. But if you swim on the free beach, get yourself in trouble, and a rescue party has to come save you, the fact that it’s a “crime” now gives the state the ability to recover their costs from you afterwards.
What would make it "a crime" as opposed to just being "illegal"?
Put it another way, people think if something is illegal, punishment for that must be a felony or something. But often times, it’s just an infraction so punishment is at most a fine or a minor action like getting kicked off the free beach
I can't imagine that anybody thinks that. We're all familiar with parking tickets, for example.
Recent examples are GDPR, where before it isn't regulated to track user information without consent, now being prohibited with clear penalty. Next they should regulate personal assistance like alexa and siri
> The counter example to these companies are the ones that quickly raised capital to dump scooters on public streets before they could be shut down by cities.
I live in NYC, and I’m frequently in Westchester (the county immediately north of NYC, for those not familiar with New York). There’s been a large influx of Lime bikes in the past several months. My opinion on Lime - the bike/scooter company - has quickly evolved from idle curiosity, to weak dislike, to outright disdain. That evolution started happening when I saw Lime bikes being parked in arbitrary places that blocked pedestrian foot traffic, but I think the straw that broke the camel’s back was when someone parked a Lime bike directly in the spot I usually place my garbage.
Sometimes the hustle of skirting regulation seems to be a net positive. Company culture notwithstanding, I’m happy overall that Uber exists as a concept. I don’t have a savvy opinion about their future, but I enjoy Uber rides significantly more than yellow cabs. Likewise I’ve stayed in Airbnbs before and enjoyed the experience, though I wouldn’t say it’s changed my day to day life as much.
But other times it seems like companies are being actively negligent in their awareness of the legislations they’re flippantly ignoring and the consequences of doing so. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for a system being disrupted which depends on the artificial scarcity of taxi medallions. On the other hand I find it very frustrating when my sidewalk or park is “disrupted” by a random bright green bike that yells at you if you try to move it without paying.
I wish there were a way to easily categorize the behavior of companies - between those whose cavalier approach to disruption mostly impacts existing incumbents, and those whose approach is actually a pain to end users. Sometimes the laws are legitimately outdated or very inefficient, and disregarding them vastly improves the user experience. But other times - like with Lime - it feels as though companies are pointing to those examples so they can get away with a “product” that automatically opts you into a “new normal” just because a subset of people use it.
Not sure if they're winding up in other towns nearby (inevitable, I guess), but in this case the city was totally on board with them showing up!
Is this spot on your property?
That being said I'm not really concerned about being ticketed because it happens so rarely. I'm more concerned about neighborhood appearance and being able to place my garbage in a consistent spot. For context, this is in an area which is more suburban than urban. Having a regular bike chained to a sign outside my door would be equally out of place.
The concept that a bike parked on your street would be bad for your neighborhood is an opinion you should rethink - bikes are great!
We don't throw our trash bags out in the street but put them in larger containers. Can't park a bike on those.
Lime's disruption did not change the artificial scarcity of public space that isn't dedicated to cars.
Public space in the NY metro area is largely devoted to car driving and car parking. An Uber car can tap into this vast resource, but a Lime bike cannot. Things that are not cars are forced to compete for the scarce non-car space. This includes pedestrians, Lime bikes, and garbage bins. Note that Uber is only significantly controversial in places like Manhattan, where car-dedicated space is most scarce.
I think this is part of why these two types of companies have (mostly) fallen on opposite sides of public opinion.
Granted that's a problem and hopefully they're working to discourage bad behavior. But traffic and pollution are bigger problems that bikes and scooters help with. Does the fact that they're sometimes misplaced mean it's a net negative?
It also makes sense to do this in areas where no one is watching. For example Monkey Parking got shut down almost immediately during the same time SF was probably at it's height of negotiating what it was going to do with Airbnb rentals in SF. https://www.wired.com/2014/06/app-that-lets-users-sell-publi...
Also, Airbnb, like many other companies who tout "growth hacking", illegally (in the eyes of the craigslist ToS) used a technique to basically leverage Craigslist audience to grow their own.
Mind you, this technique is also being encouraged by a partner at one of the most prominent VC firms in the valley. https://andrewchen.co/how-to-be-a-growth-hacker-an-airbnbcra...
Point is - it's very easy to blindly select what you feel is "right" vs "wrong" or "bad" vs "good"[0][1] when your money is on the line.
How quickly we forget... There were huge inefficiencies and Uber was an order of magnitude better than what we had.
Getting a taxi was difficult and unreliable. Ask anyone who used to use them in SF. Uber was like magic in comparison.
FWIW, had you made the same comment a year ago, I'd have only seen Uber, not Airbnb, matching precisely the model you describe. The lore was (and perhaps still is) that Airbnb has a platform substantially different & far better than Uber (e.g. http://archive.is/kE5hq). MSM painted Uber as this ultra-aggressive startup in terms of both company culture and taking on regulators; meanwhile Airbnb was just this wholesome startup simply trying to help student's travel on a shoestring budget and helping people pay rent by letting someone sleep on their couch.
Anyway, that was my interpretation back then; but clearly I'm no Paul Graham. It's clear from his blog post that Paul never saw it this way. To him, Airbnb was always destined to be a platform that disrupted the hotel market. Of course if you're going to 'disrupt' the hotel market in any medium-to-large city, that means thousands of residential homes will need to be converted into short-term vacation rentals.
It was either a carefully planned timing, or merely circumstance, but Airbnb has scaled at exactly the right pace to (like you mention) "become large enough to get a seat at the table when the regulations are reworked". And unlike Uber they have powerful/wealthy friends who piggyback on the Airbnb platform. It seems like almost overnight Airbnb went from an airbed in some student's loft to Corporation-Owned-Whole-Home-No-Host-punch-in-a-pin-code-to-open-the-front-door-fully-automated "STRs".
Living in San Diego I couldn't hate it more. After city council passed a regulation to limit Airbnb's to primary residences (which I believe most SD residence were happy about), Airbnb & HomeAway, and other parties formed a coalition, and hired a bunch of people to gather signatures to skirt our city council's ruling and put this action on a ballet as a referendum (http://archive.is/Yf6GP). In theory I'm not opposed to voter referendum; but here is a case where Airbnb is clearly undermining the ability of our elected official's to govern our city. The voted regulations will now be put on hold until 2020; and there will be nothing but carpet-bombing adverts for the next two years brainwashing san diegans. There's no hope.
It didn't make that much sense apart from protecting holders of medallions for it to be illegal to pay someone for a car ride, but I would actually like there to be laws protecting guests and innkeepers, and preventing the apartment across the hall from turning into a hotel.
In my city which is experiencing growth, I find my AirBnB guests are often business travelers who are infulencers in their respected communities. There are some exceptions like college kids on summer vacation trying to hook up away from their parents house- but mostly business people.
I see complaints from Europeans about Tourism, but that should be a reflection on the achievements of their ancestors rather than the achievements of the current and recent generations.
Manhattan: https://urbanomnibus.net/2014/10/the-rise-and-fall-of-manhat...
Paris: https://www.parisinsidersguide.com/population-of-paris.html
London: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/01/07...
City of London: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/Populati...
Tokyo is probably approaching peak: https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fjapanpropert...
Tokyo Core: http://www.newgeography.com/files/cox-tokyo-1.png
1) Tourist tax on all hotel rooms, including AirBnB. Initially a fairly small amount. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jun/27/edinburgh-le...
2) For whole-unit owner-not-present lets, require planning permission for change of use. You wouldn't be allowed to run a woodworking business in your apartment that inflicted noise on your neighbours, so the same should apply to turning it into a hotel.
3) Keep upgrading the transport infrastructure. The newly rebuilt Border railway is a victim of its own instant success - someone should start the process of widening it to two tracks immediately so it'll be ready in 20 years. And so on.
(Before someone says "build houses", there is a lot of family home construction going on in the outskirts. It's the historic centre that's under consideration, and "demolish the existing 4-6 story historic dwellings and replace them with much taller residential buildings" is an absolute non-starter)
No one contemplates Leith or Newington. Neither of those places are beyond a short walk (1-2 miles) to city center, also there are more options for food and drink (especially on Leith Walk).
The festival makes this worse; the city as a whole becomes overbooked.
But the gentrification wave is heading into Leith. You can practically watch it progressing down Leith walk. I suppose the giveaway will be when someone builds a luxury hotel in the old dockyards.
For my part, having lived much of my adult life in New Paltz, AirBnb has greatly increased the availability of NYC housing for me, as I typically only live in NYC for 3-10 days at a time.
I can understand that, if your desire is to live there perpetually for years, you might have a different perception.
Perhaps living in a single place in perpetuity (especially near the center of a major metro/cosmopolitan hub) is just not as sustainable in an environment where smallish organizations like AirBnb (or the decentralized versions to come) can easily subvert statutory attempts to force a particular market outcome.
Also, in NYC in particular, the role of "rent control" is worth taking into account.
Christ. Hotdesking for houses. This is already the reality for a lot of precariously-housed or non-street-homeless people. It's especially bad for children and will cost them grades at school when moving frequently.
In a civilised society, you don't get to pick and choose which laws you think are worth following, and just ignore the rest. Don't like a given law? Then engage in the political process to seek changes to it.
I live in downtown Toronto and here are some of the issues i face due to Airbnb:
i) Some of the residents make living a hell. They come to party, don't respect the neighbours, are loud till late, trash the place and some have even gone to break the buttons in elevator.
ii) With Airbnb, new owners and renters are priced out of market. People with more money but new units as secondary investment and just Airbnb it instead of renting it, thus creating artificial shortage of available units to full-time renters.
One of the fascinating things about NYC is it's vast array of local businesses. Guess who do these local businesses need? Full time employees who go to work every day and not for 3-11 days.
Another short-term resident would be there in his place on the days he's not in NYC. Year round there will almost always be someone staying in his unit.
And short term renters tend to spend more per day than long-term residents, so they probably contribute significantly more to the city's tax base.
Per day costs, sure. But if you add recurring payments, don't think they are outspending it. Also, you are ignoring the entire point to begin with. A City should look after it's long term residents first and foremost. Unless you want it to eventually become a ghost city.
>>A City should look after it's long term residents first and foremost.
I don't see why it should. A city should look after those within its boundaries, whether they're there for a day or a year. It shouldn't set up walls and promote long term residence over visits.
So a citizen of a country and a visitor of the country should get equal rights and opportunities as well?
Opportunities? Yeah, although that's not the case now, I'm ready for a world where people have the same opportunities regardless of the text on their passport.
You mean like 99% of people? When you work in the city, grew up in the city, have met almost everyone you know in the city, to then be forced out of the city because people want to rent their apartments out for 3-10 days at a time instead of 1-3 years means that people who need the stability of a permanent address now have to either shell out much more cash than a land lord can get (illegally) on airbnb, or move out of the city and abandon the thing they have known their entire lives.
I'm not saying I have a good solution to it, other than the typical protectionist idea of tax the things that are destroying us, but at least that way there is money in the treasury to try and save a portion of the people affected by it.
You are saying that 99% of people live in the same residence for years?
I'd love to see a source on this.
Between transient people, houseless people, digital nomads, business travelers, jetsetters, RVers, and all sorts of other people who don't live in one place all year, I have no doubt that the various modes of nomadism, taken together, account for far, far higher than 1%.
Heck, in NYC alone, I'll wager that less than 70% of today's population has lived in the same domicile for the past 2 years. There's no way it's 99%.
> When you work in the city, grew up in the city, have met almost everyone you know in the city
I made clear in my post that people in those circumstances might have a different experience. But is this the only audience NYC is designed to serve? People who grew up in the city? What about those of us in the Hudson Valley? Do we not deserve any of the economic benefits of the city (for which we pay in many ways, not least of which our watershed) just because we were born 50-150 miles away?
I think it's about time that real opportunities to live in the city for a few weeks out of the year become available to other NYers and not just the super rich.
I didn't grow up in NYC, but I consider it my city too. I know the best open mics, the places where I can order authentic Mexican or Puerto Rican food en español, the incubators and co-working spaces, the subway system, etc.
Just because you grew up there doesn't give you exclusive ownership of the culture of NYC.
The amount of NYC-born privilege being waved around in this thread is astounding.
I have paid, in many ways, for NYC my whole life. It's my city too, even though I wasn't born there. I identify with its culture. I know its geography and social norms. I play its open mics to enthusiastic audiences of a size that I simply can't reach upstate.
Why do you think that people who are born in NYC are entitled to these things to the exclusion of the rest of us?
>Why do you think that people who are born in NYC are entitled to these things to the exclusion of the rest of us?
Did I say that? Just because I noted it was gentrification doesn't mean you can treat me like a straw-man punching bag.
Rent Stab/Control exists for a reason, had those generations of people not been there, NYC wouldn't be what it is today. But when the entire neighborhood becomes too expensive because of landlords preferring to run hotels, and the only apartment stock that is affordable is the failing NYCHA properties, then I would consider this a gentrification.
Why have 10 million lucky individuals get year round access to it, rather than giving 1 billion people 3-4 days each to visit it?
Maybe one day the typical life will consist of visiting a different theme-park-like city every few days, and people will identify with their planet rather than a few hundred square miles that's designated as their city of residence.
Where, exactly? Central Park?
That's not living somewhere. That's visiting.
If that's not living, then where do I live? I don't have a long-term lease or anything similar. Do I not deserve the same quality of life and opportunities as people who happened to have been born in the East Village?
It's a simple question
No, no more than I deserve a passport from every country I have ever traveled to.
Most US states consider you a resident if you stay more than 90 days. That's when you'd be expected to change your driver's license, car registration, etc.
You seem to be conflating the ideas of birthright and residency. I don't think anybody is arguing you shouldn't be allowed to become an NYC resident if you want to; what they're saying is that visiting doesn't make you a resident.
I'd wager that anybody who suddenly had an illegal hotel running out of her neighboring appartment will very strongly disagree with that statement.
Unless you personally made that experience, in a house where parties live for 30 years+, you are not aware what a massive impact this can have on your quality of life.
Since I've been there I stopped using AirBnb, period.
I think that the availability of short-term housing in NYC in particular is a net benefit for society, even if it adds an uncomfortable dose of reality for many people who had the extreme privilege of growing up there.
I don't understand the strawman - what argument did I mischaracterize in an attempt to make it appear weaker for the purposes of responding to it?
You're ignoring the fact that millions of people already live for only a few weeks out of the year there by posing that people shouldn't be doing that in this day and age. It doesn't matter what your opinion of those people are, the fact is that it is the current condition.
Being born in NYC doesn't mean the city belongs to you. I'm a New Yorker too.
The dotcom era had incubators through models like "I have access to capital but no one good idea; let me start a bunch and pick which to go". VCs regularly host EIRs (entrepreneur-in-residence). More dominant, many universities, corporates, and in gov, SBIR. Not sure how the numbers of SBIR compare to YC, but given SBIR is based on a % of each US dept's budget... ;-)
The "startup accelerator" changed the model: more $ to more varied entrepreneurs, structured program with educational eco-system, made VC capital more attractive, etc.
https://www.inc.com/magazine/201505/leigh-buchanan/the-vanis...
Come on! Never heard of the dotcom bubble? It was all about startups.
And people have been self funding businesses throughout history.
Airbnb did what a lot of other people had been doing since eternity. Nothing new.