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Comment by zabramow | Hacker News Reader

The amazing thing, to me at least, about that story (and these lessons) was that they heard no from warm intros.

heard no from warm intros.

My last round of warm intro (thanks sam) VC partner talks had 100% failure rate too. There's no pattern you can draw here. I had great talks with some two-partner firms. Other two-partner firms did the whole "yes, but only if you're more successful in another 18 months." I did get one absolute "not this time, but stay in touch" decline that was exceedingly professional. SV Angel was the nicest in that they further warm-intro'd me to another 3-5 people. The worst contact was a16z actually. Go figure?

Ok. But be honest, were you pitching something as good as AirBnB. We can be passionate about what we are building and try to raise capital without thinking our concept is as good as AirBnB. Given that, I would have suspected a warm intro would have done the job. My guess is that the founders (if you gave them truth serum) would say that they thought AirBnB was going to be huge all along.

I could be wrong on that.

Let's not be revisionist. The original Airbnb concept was actual air beds and hosts that would actually make breakfast. That was the business. That is what the VCs passed on because it's kinda crazy. VCs can't pre-detect when founders will be willing to sacrifice their original cute, but untenable, ideas and move to where demand actually sits.

This whole massive illegal sublet renting thing isn't what those VCs passed on. Those VCs passed on literal air mattresses on floors.

Sidenote: it looks like the mark is now officially "Airbnb", but their logo says "airbnb", even though it was originally AirBnB? No company with multiple capital letters is ever presented correctly.

> Let's not be revisionist. The original Airbnb concept was actual air beds and hosts that would actually make breakfast.

Really? I would have guessed that the "and breakfast" part just came from the common English term "Bed & Breakfast", which is to me synonymous with motel, hotel, hostel, inn, etc. I wouldn't expect breakfast to be a bigger feature at a bed & breakfast than at any similar business that went by a different word.

Are warm intros considered a slam-dunk?

Not at all. But these guys were pitching AirBnB and they are considered some of the most impressive executing founders on the planet. Law of averages would get them one "yes."

the most impressive executing founders on the planet.

Big note: after-the-fact. They aren't gods. You're seeing post hoc fanboy hero worship of single-unit success. Sure, celebrate accomplishments, but don't elevate people to being more-than-people.

There was a time from 2008-2011 or so when Airbnb was just another YC startup that got funny headlines now and then. Casual observers didn't know that they were growing very big and were going to be a big big business.

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