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Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in 2016

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Re: Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in 2016

#41

Post by Retric »

alehul wrote: post #20
CPLX wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we have a phrase for that already, those things are called "tech companies"

Then we'd have to group in rather standard, traditional Samsung-like companies though, which seem to be just as different work experiences from FB or Google as FB or Google is different from newer, smaller startups.

Samsung is not a Tech company, it's a multi-national conglomerate.

It comprises numerous affiliated businesses,[1] most of them united under the Samsung brand, and is the largest South Korean chaebol (business conglomerate) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung

Microsoft/Google are multinational companies but their core business has remained. Samsung on the other hand did food processing, textiles, insurance, securities and retail and only got into the electronics industry after close to 30 years.

Re: Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in 2016

#42

Post by aquadrop »

dragonwriter wrote: post #23
kilroy123 wrote: post #15

I'm not surprised to see Airbnb became profitable. They've expanded everywhere. I nomad around and always use Airbnb, I've booked places on several continents. However, I'm definitely feeling the effects of their growing pains. For example, many people have bought places to only rent on Airbnb full-time. Most of these people suck at being an hotelier. It's clear people get lazy and are just trying to make money. Thin…

> Unless, they fix this and get more people to review honestly. I think they're going to run into a lot of problems. I don't airBnB, but a friend who does was recently berated by a host after leaving a 4-star review; that host claimed (don't know how true this is) that many hosts will refuse to rent to you again if you leave anything but a 5-star review. That and other things I've seen and heard about airBnB reviews…

But AirBnB reviews don't work like that. Even though you leave star rating, nobody sees it (I don't know how it looks like on the host side though, as I only used it as a tenant). Only feedback traceable to you is text you write, but you can be honest with stars. And you see compound rating on the property page, which they only show when there's enough reviews (so again, if you left your review first, they can't see what it was either). I think the system is pretty good.

Re: Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in 2016

#43

Post by oculusthrift »

dragonwriter wrote: post #23
kilroy123 wrote: post #15

I'm not surprised to see Airbnb became profitable. They've expanded everywhere. I nomad around and always use Airbnb, I've booked places on several continents. However, I'm definitely feeling the effects of their growing pains. For example, many people have bought places to only rent on Airbnb full-time. Most of these people suck at being an hotelier. It's clear people get lazy and are just trying to make money. Thin…

> Unless, they fix this and get more people to review honestly. I think they're going to run into a lot of problems. I don't airBnB, but a friend who does was recently berated by a host after leaving a 4-star review; that host claimed (don't know how true this is) that many hosts will refuse to rent to you again if you leave anything but a 5-star review. That and other things I've seen and heard about airBnB reviews…

this is why Uber punishes drivers who go under a 4 star average. 5 should be the default.

Re: Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in 2016

#44

Post by mdc2161 »

kilroy123 wrote: post #15

I'm not surprised to see Airbnb became profitable. They've expanded everywhere. I nomad around and always use Airbnb, I've booked places on several continents. However, I'm definitely feeling the effects of their growing pains. For example, many people have bought places to only rent on Airbnb full-time. Most of these people suck at being an hotelier. It's clear people get lazy and are just trying to make money. Thin…

Dealt with similar issues as both a host and a guest.

The biggest problem to me is poor expectation setting. There are hosts that run BnB quality services, ones that run a mock-hotel like you described, and ones that just rent out a spare room in their apartment.

As a guest, it'd be great to know what I'm walking into. As a host, having guests that understand they are staying in my home and NOT a hotel would be great.

My guess is, dividing up the listings into service tiers would lead to legal issues (like you saw last year in NYC), but it would surely help with the guest-host relationship.

Re: Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in 2016

#46

Post by zeroer »

dragonwriter wrote: post #23
kilroy123 wrote: post #15

I'm not surprised to see Airbnb became profitable. They've expanded everywhere. I nomad around and always use Airbnb, I've booked places on several continents. However, I'm definitely feeling the effects of their growing pains. For example, many people have bought places to only rent on Airbnb full-time. Most of these people suck at being an hotelier. It's clear people get lazy and are just trying to make money. Thin…

> Unless, they fix this and get more people to review honestly. I think they're going to run into a lot of problems. I don't airBnB, but a friend who does was recently berated by a host after leaving a 4-star review; that host claimed (don't know how true this is) that many hosts will refuse to rent to you again if you leave anything but a 5-star review. That and other things I've seen and heard about airBnB reviews…

AirBnB reviews are massively inflated. A 4.5 average means you should carefully read between the lines of what the previous guests wrote. A 4 average means you should probably reconsider staying. Hades itself would probably rank around 3.5.

Re: Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in 2016

#47

Post by eeeeeeeeeeeee »

kilroy123 wrote: post #15

I'm not surprised to see Airbnb became profitable. They've expanded everywhere. I nomad around and always use Airbnb, I've booked places on several continents. However, I'm definitely feeling the effects of their growing pains. For example, many people have bought places to only rent on Airbnb full-time. Most of these people suck at being an hotelier. It's clear people get lazy and are just trying to make money. Thin…

Yep, my only bad Airbnb experience was someone who was doing this. They were renting out their place in Eastern Europe and living in London. There was loud construction on the entire building, for my entire trip. Had that person lived there, I'm guessing they would have known about that before allowing someone to book it.

Once people make careers out of this, it really ruins the spirit of the service and then it's not much more than someone getting around paying hotel taxes.

Re: Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in 2016

#48

Post by Judgmentality »

aquadrop wrote: post #42
dragonwriter wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unless, they fix this and get more people to review honestly. I think they're going to run into a lot of problems. I don't airBnB, but a friend who does was recently berated by a host after leaving a 4-star review; that host claimed (don't know how true this is) that many hosts will refuse to rent to you again if you leave anything but a 5-star review. That and other things I've seen and heard about airBnB reviews…

But AirBnB reviews don't work like that. Even though you leave star rating, nobody sees it (I don't know how it looks like on the host side though, as I only used it as a tenant). Only feedback traceable to you is text you write, but you can be honest with stars. And you see compound rating on the property page, which they only show when there's enough reviews (so again, if you left your review first, they can't see…

The review system for AirBnB has gotten more complicated over the years.

https://qz.com/410264/you-should-never-trust-an-airbnb-revie...

Re: Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in 2016

#49

Post by ng12 »

kilroy123 wrote: post #15

I'm not surprised to see Airbnb became profitable. They've expanded everywhere. I nomad around and always use Airbnb, I've booked places on several continents. However, I'm definitely feeling the effects of their growing pains. For example, many people have bought places to only rent on Airbnb full-time. Most of these people suck at being an hotelier. It's clear people get lazy and are just trying to make money. Thin…

I booked a few AirBnB's in Southeast Asia and it's usually a sketchy experience. A lot of the locally owned hotels contract out to sketchy dealers in Australia or China who handle the bookings for them. I think it's technically against the TOS but that doesn't hold much weight around there.

Re: Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in 2016

#50

Post by benatkin »

beefman wrote: post #31

We haven't had a recession in 8 years, and the postwar average time between recessions is 6 years.[1] The stock market's overall PE ratio is well above average.[2] With Box and Snap, the market demonstrated it is starving for tech IPOs -- even if a company is losing money and entirely based on a millennial fad. So why in the name of sweet baby Jesus would investors, founders, or anyone else delay an IPO at this point…

I think the founders AirBnb and Uber are afraid to transition to being legit companies. The lack of IPO is just a part of it.
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