91–100 of 253 posts
Have their early employees been able to cash out yet or are they basically trapped into either losing their hard earned options from work done years ago or staying still more years at the company?
oh...it's not a very appealing prospect you say? well, hmmm, errr, awkward.
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 an interesting problem, and yes, needs to be accommodated some how. I used to manage a SW product and service offering that had customers around the planet. We sent out quarterly report cards in order to ensure we were meeting customers needs. It was As and Bs exclusively except for one country that was Ds and Fs for the same level of quality and service.
Some type of calibration or break down is needed.
They should stop calling companies like Airbnb "startups". They are big companies now and should be treated as such.
Working for a company like Google, FB or even Airbnb or a questionable 'startup' is still much different than working for any other type of company. It's even markedly different than working for tech companies that would never be referred to as startups, such as Samsung, AMD or even HP. These large companies (FB, Google, etc) may no longer be bootstrapped and employees may no longer have versatile roles, but they sti…
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…
> cultural differences in how people rate This is an interesting problem, and yes, needs to be accommodated some how. I used to manage a SW product and service offering that had customers around the planet. We sent out quarterly report cards in order to ensure we were meeting customers needs. It was As and Bs exclusively except for one country that was Ds and Fs for the same level of quality and service. Some type of…
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…
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…
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.
When it's just landlords short-term renting a furnished apartment on the side, the experience tends to be subpar. The worst experience I had was in Chicago, when it was clearly a condo owner breaking the terms of the HOA for their building--they told us to say that we were 'just visiting' the occupants of the apartment, not to unlock the door if an actual resident was nearby, etc. The general feeling of "sneaking around" was unpleasant.
It's a mixed bag--the original idea of home sharing is a great experience, but clearly not the most profitable aspect of their business. I wonder if they could figure out ways to support that better...
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…
Not an answer to your question but semi-relatedly Scott Sumner had a post this week where he predicts that recessions will be significantly rarer in the future. http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=32350 It's interesting to think about.
A shame that they didn't raise this money through an IPO. I'm afraid of how long unicorns are staying private: it's a big bummer for their employees and early investors. It'll be a tough sell for early employees of the next batch of unicorns if Uber, Airbnb, Palantir, Dropbox, etc. stay private for 10-15 years or more!
I was at Dropbox for a while and left in no small part because of the frustrating lack of potential liquidity on my equity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can be profitable but still be burning cash in a few different ways. Profitable looks only at profit, not at cash flow, so it only means that "booked revenue in a year > booked costs in a year". Keep in mind that capital expenses are not costs, but are cash expenses. Also, some revenue in a given year might not be a cash transaction, because even if you booked it in that year, it might take much longer for you to…
That is a pretty strange way of defining profitable where you are losing money.
Then you need to publish your results for this year. How do you do it?
P&L statement:
Revenue: $100
Costs: $50
Profit: $50
Cash flow statement:
Cash from sales: $0
Cash paid to suppliers: $50
Net cash flow: -$50
So you had a negative cash flow, but was profitable.