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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

#111

Post by warrenm »

golergka wrote: post #106
nradov wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of asking customers to give numeric star ratings, perhaps a better option would be a short list of Yes / No / Unsure questions. Were there clean sheets on the bed? Were there any cockroaches? Did the appliances work? Etc. Such questions are more objective and less prone to inflation.

They also require more time, and most people don't bother to leave reviews anyway.

But if you're going to review, a few extra seconds shouldn't matter

It's how the "official" reviews from Marriott/Hilton/etc all work

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

#112

Post by samstave »

jlgosse wrote: post #4
sloanesturz wrote: post #2

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'm not saying this is the case with this round in particular, but it's not unheard of for early employees to take money off the table in a round like this

Can you ELI5 exactly how any employee "takes money off the table" --- I have always been farked in my dealings... so how do I profit? What is the best strategy?

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

#113

Post by mfringel »

I'll admit, I'm pretty amazed that AirBnB has succeeded.

I never thought that injecting even more uncertainty into travel was a winning proposition, but they've clearly found a willing market.

Perhaps a better way to look at it is "There was an underserved market that had a higher tolerance for uncertainty, and AirBnB seized the opportunity."

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

#114

Post by usrusr »

lordnacho wrote: post #88
Tloewald wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole system of review curation that infests online markets is a problem waiting to be solved. Right now we basically have to parse reviews on the 4.4-5.0 scale because anything outside that is meaningless. It's amazing to go read a novel rated 3 stars (because it operates outside this loop) and find it transcendently good.

How about making you rank the places you've stayed at? You could do it by subset if there's a lot.

Or normalize the ranges between min/avg/max of the ratings given by each individual user to min/middle/max of the scale before merging the number into the total.

If you do it secretly like shadowbanning and introduce it softly by slowly blending between conventional score and normalized, it would drive a whole generation of SEO/social/share-economy experts delightfully mad. Think of all the free publicity!

Jokes aside, it might help to regard low ratings as what they are: a way to flag bad behavior, dead serious stuff. We should stop pretending that it is a game, then maybe solutions will be more likely to appear.

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

#115

Post by elastic_church »

aanm1988 wrote: post #87
elastic_church wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah weird how people hold up IPO as a holy grail. Its the worst thing to do if you are actually passionate about the company, if it is your labor of love. Its the best thing to do if you want to make a lot of money from your money machine and are largely apathetic about the outcome of the business itself. Easy enough to find the next MBA graduate to feign passion for you while they are just trying to sell the compan…

> Yeah weird how people hold up IPO as a holy grail Because employees actually gain out of it. That's also a benefit as it gives more people financial freedom and they can go off and do their own companies. Instead these people get locked in to AirBnB for years.

Companies always have the option of giving dividends to common stock shareholders, buying out shareholders, simply giving bonuses or any number of things if they didn't continue to reinvest all capital and pursue losses.

Private companies even issue bonds on public bond markets, these can be as large or larger than equivalent equity offerings on the stock markets.

Don't let the mechanisms pursued by a handful of VC firms in Silicon Valley distort your understanding of capital formation.

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

#116

Post by suresk »

ant6n wrote: post #101
suresk wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is anyone trying to solve this right now? It seems like a really interesting problem that would be really useful to solve. It isn't just online, and it isn't just a technology problem. I recently bought a car and the manufacturer sent me a survey about the process. The salesman made sure, numerous times, to let me know that I'd be getting said survey and that anything less than a 10 meant he failed and that there wou…

It's silly that they have a system that pressures you into lying.

In a lot of ways, yes. On the other hand, it seems like a hard problem to solve - how do you get honest feedback in situations like this, where you want to use it to both improve things overall and judge your employees/contractors? Maybe you can't.

I guess, at least a small step would be to make it so values less than the highest rating don't count against you so negatively - it should be ok to be a 3/5 or 7/10.

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

#117

Post by delive »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #85
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…

All of my bad AirBnB experiences were ones where there were no actual tenants. The ones where it was an actual non-professional bed and breakfast, as the name implies, were fantastic. I travel so much that consistency is important and that is what hotels offer. I see AirBnB as an inferior option for hotels, not a way to meet new friends. I think the idea that AirBnB is going to kill the hotel industry is way overblow…

Agreed. For business I always prefer hotels because I know what to expect and it always has the services I need. For vacation (especially with large groups) AirBnB is much better because I'm able to book more custom housing (entire houses, multiple rooms connected with a shared space, etc).

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

#118

Post by robryan »

ghaff wrote: post #78
antisthenes wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reviews are a problem, but not for novels. Perception of books and concepts covered within are entirely subjective. However, when it comes to service or product quality, you can be almost entirely objective in its value judgment.

>Reviews are a problem, but not for novels. Hmm. I'm willing to accept that the average reader is a more sophisticated and thoughtful consumer than for some other product categories. And there may be less overt tribalism and fanboyism in book reviews. But, in my experience, there's still a lot of people who will almost unthinkingly give 5 stars to a favorite author or genre. (And I know some of those people who are p…

Goodreads reviews are still pretty inflated. Anything around or under 3.5 or so probably has some big flaws.

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

#119

Post by ant6n »

suresk wrote: post #116
ant6n wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's silly that they have a system that pressures you into lying.

In a lot of ways, yes. On the other hand, it seems like a hard problem to solve - how do you get honest feedback in situations like this, where you want to use it to both improve things overall and judge your employees/contractors? Maybe you can't. I guess, at least a small step would be to make it so values less than the highest rating don't count against you so negatively - it should be ok to be a 3/5 or 7/10.

I wouldn't even believe the salesman that anything other than 10 will get them into trouble. I'd just refuse filling it out.

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

#120

Post by ucaetano »

stale2002 wrote: post #110
throw_away_777 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a pretty strange way of defining profitable where you are losing money.

Think of it this way. Imagine if airbnb took its 1 billion dollars and bought bars of gold, and put those bars of gold in a vault. Is airbnb losing money, because it now has 1 billion dollars less in cash, and 1 billion dollars more in gold bars? No, it is not.

Actually, IIRC (and correct me if I'm wrong) for accounting purposes, gold counts as "cash & cash equivalents", so if it bought $1B in gold bars, AirBnB's cash wouldn't change.
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