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Airbnb Raises $555M in Funding

bloomberg.com

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Re: Airbnb Raises $555M in Funding

#61

Post by santaclaus »

dominotw wrote: post #23
_RPM wrote: post #3

Hey Airbnb founders/employees. Fuck you. Working for you isn't rocket science, so fuck you and all your elitist attitudes not even considering me for employment because I didn't go to Harvard|Stanford|Insert Top 10 school here.

Oh man. I thought I was the only one, my first interaction with the interviewer was him bemoaning the fact that my degree was not from an IVY league university, right to my face. I had the most humiliating experience of my life interviewing with AirBnb couple of years ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5300104

It is interesting to see SV firms starting to act like old money finance companies back east...

Re: Airbnb Raises $555M in Funding

#62

Post by notyourwork »

pbreit wrote: post #50
ameyamk wrote: post #10

Why airbnb needs so much cash? They are not exactly subsidizing either side of the market?

Better to raise when you can rather than when you need to.

I suspect the question was asking why they would need more money? At some point you have to stop raising money, start making a profit and stop diluting shares by taking on more investment money.

Re: Airbnb Raises $555M in Funding

#63

Post by ojbyrne »

beambot wrote: post #48
rezashirazian wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self driving RVs. It's the future of the hospitality industry.

Not just the future of hospitality... it's the future alternative to home ownership. Think about it: You could literally wake up, do your morning routine, and then step out of the RV and into your workplace. You come back that night... and the next morning you step out into Yosemite Valley for some hiking. You just rent RV berths -- everything from campgrounds (Yosemite) to high-rises (in major cities).

Perhaps self driving might change this, but currently it's illegal to ride in the "home" part of an RV while moving. Seat belts and all that.

Re: Airbnb Raises $555M in Funding

#64

Post by spaceflunky »

jdoliner wrote: post #26
palakchokshi wrote: post #2

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong in assuming this but it seems a company like AirBnb would only raise private capital instead of going IPO because it's financials suck. I mean if you were doing really well and had profits that you were pumping back into the company you would want to IPO to raise money for lower dilution right? A private round might cause much more dilution than an IPO. Maybe I'm missing somethi…

The standard operating practice for Silicon Valley startups now is to put of IPOing as long as possible. Facebook actually got several exceptions from the SEC so that they didn't have to go public. Going public entails a ton of hassle, for example if Airbnb went public and had one of their programmers accidentally introduced a bug that misreported the number of users they had they could be liable for fraud. There's v…

"Our financial don't suck, it's just that going public is really really hard and we don't want to comply with the law that's going to show that our financials suck. Wait... scratch that last line."

Re: Airbnb Raises $555M in Funding

#65

Post by sdesol »

fitzwatermellow wrote: post #40
rezashirazian wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self driving RVs. It's the future of the hospitality industry.

> Self-driving RVs That is actually not a terrible idea!

This is actually an insanely good idea, since it allows you to maximize your awake time, for enjoyment. When you are sleeping, the RV can take you to your holiday destination. Since we sleep about 8 hours a day, you can use that to gauge how far you can travel.

The only issue would be road infrastructures. Road maintenance would become a serious issue, due to the extra strain of having potentially 10s of millions of RVs on the road.

Re: Airbnb Raises $555M in Funding

#66

Post by jmathai »

buckbova wrote: post #47
eric_h wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I can tell from comment history, the GP is quite young and still in school. While I learned a long time ago that a degree (and even a master's degree, can't speak to fresh PhDs as I've not had the opportunity to work with any) from a prestigious university is not worth the paper it's printed on as far as judging someone's ability to actually ship good code, it seems that lots of SV firms hiring people right…

I've been out of college for over 10 years and I wanted the job because it was full stack at a profitable company who treated their employees well. Unfortunately my cs degree was from a state school and I've only worked enterprisey jobs with the current misfortune of an architect title. I still have other paths to financial success like consulting or management (hell no).

Titles don't matter. Make one up that suits the job you're applying for.

Re: Airbnb Raises $555M in Funding

#67

Post by huac »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #53
beambot wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just the future of hospitality... it's the future alternative to home ownership. Think about it: You could literally wake up, do your morning routine, and then step out of the RV and into your workplace. You come back that night... and the next morning you step out into Yosemite Valley for some hiking. You just rent RV berths -- everything from campgrounds (Yosemite) to high-rises (in major cities).

> You come back that night... ... to a different RV. There's no reason for RV ownership; a self-driving RV can fulfill the sleeping / transportation roles for at least two people/families on different working schedules.

> There's no reason for RV ownership

Beyond storing your clothes, trinkets, computer gear, etc? Maybe we'll all end up renting permanent storage lockers instead, then.

Re: Airbnb Raises $555M in Funding

#68

Post by srslyawesome »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #53
beambot wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just the future of hospitality... it's the future alternative to home ownership. Think about it: You could literally wake up, do your morning routine, and then step out of the RV and into your workplace. You come back that night... and the next morning you step out into Yosemite Valley for some hiking. You just rent RV berths -- everything from campgrounds (Yosemite) to high-rises (in major cities).

> You come back that night... ... to a different RV. There's no reason for RV ownership; a self-driving RV can fulfill the sleeping / transportation roles for at least two people/families on different working schedules.

As someone who lives in an Airstream and works from home, I would have to disagree. In the context of this idea of 'the future of home ownership', the RV becomes the 'place for my stuff' in the George Carlin sense. Having my house (RV) drive itself to the next beautiful state park or national forest I want to camp in while I work or sleep or watch a movie would be amazing.

Re: Airbnb Raises $555M in Funding

#69

Post by SilasX »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #30
hkmurakami wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personnel costs and marketing costs as they expand to new markets. Further experimentation with vertical integration (Airbnb owning room servicing teams, or Airbnb owning actual apartments/hotels).

> Airbnb owning actual apartments/hotels Wouldn't that just make them literally a hotel chain, with no disrupting difference to any any other? I'm fairly sure I can book a room online at the Hilton.

Concur with imjared -- Uber likewise went "full circle" and started adopting more "cab company functions" once they reached the appropriate scale: "Oh, hey, we might as well make money leasing the cars too!" "Oh hey, there's money to be made in payday advances!" [1]

With that said, (per imjared) Airbnb may have some comparative advantage in the ease with which they bring this spare capacity online via a nice interface; it could become a useful platform for allowing hotels to dump extra rooms for sale, in a way that's more pleasant for users to find.

[1] Lyft lets you get paid earlier for 50 cents IIRC.

Re: Airbnb Raises $555M in Funding

#70

Post by sanderjd »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #30
hkmurakami wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personnel costs and marketing costs as they expand to new markets. Further experimentation with vertical integration (Airbnb owning room servicing teams, or Airbnb owning actual apartments/hotels).

> Airbnb owning actual apartments/hotels Wouldn't that just make them literally a hotel chain, with no disrupting difference to any any other? I'm fairly sure I can book a room online at the Hilton.

AirBnB already owns the touch-point with customers who are looking for non-traditional places to stay. Some portion of those customers would also be open to normal hotels, and AirBnB could serve them by doing something as simple as adding another check-box in the "home type" interface. Once word got out that you can do both things in one place, there would be little reason to go through any other service and they would take an ever-larger share of all bookings. Of course, this is won't happen, because hotel operators, seeing this danger, will refuse to integrate with them. But that huge market opportunity is still there, they "just" have to build their own hotel capacity to realize it.
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