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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

#151

Post by 6t6t6t6 »

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…

> and get more people to review honestly

This. Something I hate is when people think that 5 stars have to be given "by default". For me, an uneventful stay in a clean place should mean 3 stars. If the place is specially nice or the owner was really kind, 4 stars. And 5 stars should only be for my _favourite_ places.

I stopped doing airbnb when, for several times, I booked 4.5 star places and they turned out to be honestly crappy.

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

#152

Post by rampage101 »

I helped my parents rent an AirBNB where the people owning the house were still living there but it said nothing about this in the ad. After the owner gave us the keys, a few hours later somebody opened the door, and I seriously thought it might be a robber or something. Turns out it was the son of the owner who was living there, and basically my parents were renting a single room inside of their house. It was very uncomfortable for everyone.

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

#153

Post by rickcnagy »

rpearl wrote: post #99
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!

Dropbox and AirBnB have already been private for almost 10 years! (Palantir - 13!, Uber - 8) I was at Dropbox for a while and left in no small part because of the frustrating lack of potential liquidity on my equity.

I don't know, something feels off about Palantir being around for 6227020800 (13!) years...

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

#154

Post by elastic_church »

hkmurakami wrote: post #145
elastic_church wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 f…

Prime example is Cargill. $100B in revenues, privately held. https://www.cargill.com/about/financial/credit-rating-inform...

If any of these tech companies decided to just go with 6 months of positive revenues, they could issue bonds in Europe representing waaay cheaper capital than VCs and not have to worry about it for the next two decades.

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

#155

Post by dorianm »

6t6t6t6 wrote: post #151
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…

> and get more people to review honestly This. Something I hate is when people think that 5 stars have to be given "by default". For me, an uneventful stay in a clean place should mean 3 stars. If the place is specially nice or the owner was really kind, 4 stars. And 5 stars should only be for my _favourite_ places. I stopped doing airbnb when, for several times, I booked 4.5 star places and they turned out to be hon…

People often rate 5 stars but the comments always describe the place in details.

Typically the cheapest places are also the ones where people don't have high expectations so they will rate 5 stars but leave a comment describing the quirks of the place

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

#156

Post by trustfundbaby »

rpearl wrote: post #99
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!

Dropbox and AirBnB have already been private for almost 10 years! (Palantir - 13!, Uber - 8) I was at Dropbox for a while and left in no small part because of the frustrating lack of potential liquidity on my equity.

wow ... did you give up all your vested options? or at least buy a bit of them?

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

#157

Post by sperling75 »

The hogging of VC funds by airbnb, uber, and many other not startups is super unhealthy for the startup ecosystem. The public markets will eventually punish these companies for valuations that lack transparency. Airbnb is on the way out with their current short term renting business in most large cities. It's illegal and the quality of service is suffering dramatically. Supply side quality is on the way down. Demand side quality is terrible too. To justify their valuation they are opening up the gates to terrible customers. I get it, they may go into other markets with all this money like the long term rental business or tours business or airline flights.. maybe hotels? Reality is they are not going to be great or better at any of these things than the current companies in those markets and certainly not by any significant degree to own the market.

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

#158

Post by infinite8s »

noer wrote: post #150
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.

This is probably a much better way to do it. One of the food delivery company does it this way (I think it's grubhub/seamless). Three questions before you're given an option to review: 1. Was the food on time? 2. Was the order correct? 3. Was the food good? Only then is the person given the option to review. The problem with star based rating systems is that they're INCREDIBLY subjective. I oftentimes read yelp revie…

Also a lot of times on Amazon the low reviews are reflective of an issue with that particular sale instead of the item itself (ie damaged while shipping, etc).

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

#159

Post by jliptzin »

I used to use airbnb quite often (as a traveler), but I have to say it's lost its appeal for me. First, it's really not much cheaper than a hotel in most cases (some cases more expensive). Second, it's a hassle when you're on vacation to have to arrange in advance a specific time to pick up the keys to the place. Then, what happens if you happen to lose the keys (happened to me once)? What happens if it's in the middle of the night in a foreign country? This could be a nightmare. On top of that, you're expected to leave the apartment like you never stayed there or face bad reviews (even with a $100+ cleaning fee)! Seriously, one time I got stuck with a terrible review because I left a dirty pan in the sink (had to rush to the airport, I figured the $100 cleaning fee would cover what minor things I had left behind, but guess not).

So now I've pretty much gone back to hotels. You can come any time of day or night, not have to worry at all about losing keys, and you can leave the place a raging mess if you have to (though I am usually a very clean person). Airbnb makes the whole travel experience far more stressful for me.

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

#160

Post by JimDabell »

chrisper wrote: post #134
alleycat wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a better tell would be displaying the ratio of people who actually reviewed vs the ones who didn't. When people don't like a place they'll usually not review it at all.

People actually review. Otherwise you won't be able to see what the other person wrote about you.

I know that's what they say in their reminder emails, but it's very misleading. Basically, people can't write a review after they have seen the review of themselves. The mechanism is designed to prevent retaliatory reviews.

So you get a window of a few weeks in which you can write a review. If you leave a review, then you get to see the review about yourself straight away. But if you don't review, then you have to wait until your own window has closed. After that, you're able to see the review about yourself regardless of whether you left a review yourself – because you are no longer able to leave a retaliatory review.

Airbnb aren't very clear about this at all, and that certainly pushes people to leave reviews, but it's a side effect that Airbnb play up, not the actual designed purpose of the review system.

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