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Comment by michalu | Hacker News Reader

As Airbnb is getting banned across cities in Europe and locals are beginning to hate on it + staled growth it's about the time to hand the equity over to public investors and cash out.

I'm not very bullish on Airbnb, I used to practically live in Airbnb for over 3 years, but for the last 2 years I haven't even logged in and been only using booking.com.

I remember years back in London an Airbnb host that wasn't even the owner of the apartment but a tenant herself told me while moving in "tell everyone you're a friend, it's not allowed in this building but everyone's doing it"

Now landlords and building owners are catching up and most new developments are forbidding this contractually, while others do what they can to prevent their neighbours from letting to strangers.

I'm probably missing something, but I think the company is going down and they're pulling an exit scam.

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>tell everyone you're a friend, it's not allowed in this building but everyone's doing it" .

I had the same bullshit happen to me a month ago in Hawaii.

More specifically the owner waited for the period where I can cancel to be over before demanding that (among other rules which were reasonable).

When I did not answer his message (I was considering my options, I have no intention to lie for a stranger), he contacted airbnb support who contacted me.

I explained that asking me to lie for him was ridiculous and I that I was ok with a full cancellation. The airbnb support then pressured me to keep the reservation.

The vacation was awesome but this place was pretty meh.

The same kind of issues happened later in Los Angeles.

That's just anecdotal, but I feel that the quality of the experience on Airbnb has really worsened for me in the past 1 or 2 years.

Too many people that (poorly) operate multiple airbnbs at the same time.

As far as I am concerned, hotels are back as my plan A. The prices are comparable with Airbnb in most cases and the experience is WAY less of a headache (no need to search for the keys for 2 hours because the owner tries to hide that there is an airbnb there ...).

> I'm probably missing something, but I think the company is going down and they're pulling an exit scam.

AirBnB is doing fine. They've posted healthy profits for the past few years, which is more than can be said of nearly every other tech/startup company that has announced an IPO recently (Uber, Lyft, Pelaton, WeWork, Cloudflare, Slack, Postmates, and Pinterest are all unprofitable).

Right. They are doing so well that many analysts expect them to do a direct listing which means they won't even be selling any shares in the public listing.

They raised billions and now they make more money every quarter so there is no reason to raise more money unless there are specific larger acquisitions or expansions that can't be self-funded.

They did post a healthy profit or rather shared earnings before tax with the media. But if there is no further growth potential such profits make the company worth way less than the most recent valuation even by NASDAQ standards which has inflated P/E.

Even if that profit was after tax and amortization, etc. (which it wasn't) it's a tiny fraction of what booking.com makes while Airbnb is still charging higher fees.

Revenue is a better thermometer than profits here, especially since most startups leading up to an IPO manipulate their profits into looking great.

It seems the regulatory product lifecycle is that AirBnB enters a new market, and then some time later that market starts to regulate and restrict it. How many new markets does AirBnB have left to exploit regulation?

> most startups leading up to an IPO manipulate their profits into looking great.

They're clearly not - or if so, they're doing a pretty bad job at it, because most big-name tech startups that have announced IPOs have posted a track record of losses, not profits.

That’s not actually true. A certain real estate leasing firm could give away the first year on a three year commitment to book the revenue at a very high COGS, allowing for unsustainable revenue growth. The internet 1.0 had many great examples of this.

True, but I didn't mean to say revenue was completely immune to the same manipulation - Microsoft was notorious for deferring windows revenue to show QoQ growth stability in the 90's, like you're eluding to. Still, there are fewer levers to manipulate revenue than profits, and I'd have more faith in that for AirBnB than profits.

Well, I think in We's case, they are pulling revenue which should be deferred forward, but like the Dotcom companies, you can also grow revenue by selling $2 for $1, which shows up when your losses are growing more/close to your revenue growth.

As you mentioned, net income can easily be massaged, adjusted EBITDA, etc. Cash flow is harder to fake. Airbnb should have decent to good unit economics though.

> most startups leading up to an IPO manipulate their profits into looking great.

What? This isn't true at all.

The successful travel portals typically all do well because there is so much value in filling demand so the room doesn’t go empty for the night.

> I'm probably missing something, but I think the company is going down and they're pulling an exit scam.

Your concerns about the future of the company are reasonable, but to call a profitable company going public an “exit scam” is ridiculous.

I don't think it's ridiculous statement considering their profits are rather fragile as that's before regulation and the size of the last years earnings equals about half the current valuation by NASDAQ's median P/E.

It is proper to call it an exit scam. Blue Apron has lost 90% of its value since IPOing 2 years ago.

Day one investors transfered virtually all of their value to company insiders.

From Blue Apron's SEC filing:

> We have experienced net losses in each year since our inception. In the years ended December 31, 2014, 2015 and 2016, we incurred net losses of $(30.8) million, $(47.0) million and $(54.9) million, respectively.

Blue Apron and AirBnB are not comparable.

“profits are rather fragile” != “exit scam”. I think you just don’t know what this term means. An exit scam is where an established business keeps taking orders, but stops delivering product and pockets the difference. It’s also sometimes used (especially in cryptocurrency) when someone takes all the held funds and runs off. Do you really believe Airbnb’s IPO meets either of these criteria? They’re going to keep delivering services, and I really doubt the founders are going to empty the bank accounts and run off.

Well, let's say I use the term "loosely" ... I believe they're going to go bust in the coming years with coming regulation and shrinking market and there is no more growth of principal for the shareholders, in fact it's overvalued. To successfully dump it on retail, you need a "story" and a good marketing and presenting the stock as something that it's not in this case, and I think people involved are aware of it.

> "tell everyone you're a friend, it's not allowed in this building but everyone's doing it"

Maybe because I'm getting older, but going through something like that would ruin my vacation.

Wouldnt ruin mine, because if everyone is just a decent human being to each other then there's no problems.

I've lived in countless apartments where the residents were the loud ones, not the vacationers.

Same. Older I get, the less sketchy crap I'm willing to put up with.

Can relate. I used to use AirBNB exclusively. I hated hotels with a passion. Maybe I just got older. Maybe Booking.com got a lot better. Maybe AirBNB got worse. I'm not sure what it is, but now AirBNB is always my last resort.

Same. Agoda, Booking, Kayak and hotels are my place now. It isn't the same anymore. What airbnb was in 2013-2014 was magical.

Now, with 300+ reviews, it's, sad, and maybe I was part of the change because I rented places and lived 50/50 in different parts of the world and it was possible w/ airbnb and I only tried to be cost negative.

> It isn't the same anymore. What airbnb was in 2013-2014 was magical.

I'm a host (a single "entire" house) and started in 2015, which in Australia was early-ish.

As host it's getting hard and thankless. Supply is driving prices down (about $40 a night less than a year ago) and vacancy is higher too. Guests are more than likely new or only have 1 or 2 reviews, and are not the early adopters looking for something different, they are people looking for cheap and easy accommodation (where easy means no responsibilities).

The review process is painful and hosts live constantly in fear of guests that leave glowing reviews, 5 stars for each category but 4 stars overall -- overall is the only rating that counts. Remember that hosts need an average of 4.7 to remain on the platform, so a couple of 4-star reviews can be devastating.

The other thing is that Airbnb keeps dictating terms for hosts. Children and infants are free!

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