41–50 of 146 posts
Interesting that completely missing from this conversation is: -- Their website design -- Their code (Rails? Jquery?) -- Their hosting / scalability / "cloud" strategy -- Source control methods, dev environment, tools -- APIs, "ecosystem", social media, "viral rate" etc. -- And more... Basically, all the things that most of us here spend most of our time discussing. Instead: 1) Idea / Team 2) Execute 3) Talk to peopl…
Fascinating conversation. Thanks for giving insight into how these deals work... >ABNB reminds me of Etsy in that it facilitates real commerce in a marketplace model directly between two people. Interestingly enough, I still tend to side with Fred's assessment of AirBnB's future. All my experiences with it as a user have been too unreliable to expect that it can scale to truly massive usability. Selling your old guit…
Fascinating conversation. Thanks for giving insight into how these deals work... >ABNB reminds me of Etsy in that it facilitates real commerce in a marketplace model directly between two people. Interestingly enough, I still tend to side with Fred's assessment of AirBnB's future. All my experiences with it as a user have been too unreliable to expect that it can scale to truly massive usability. Selling your old guit…
writing on the wall: https://skitch.com/webwright/rieyj/airbnb-search
Note the # of entire home/apt entries. My guess is that these (with B&Bs, inns, and eventually hotels) will dominate the listings.
ABNB has a challenge with positioning moving forward-- a LOT of people think they are all about renting a room in a stranger's house, sharing a common area, etc. But their growth speaks for itself.
Fascinating conversation. Thanks for giving insight into how these deals work... >ABNB reminds me of Etsy in that it facilitates real commerce in a marketplace model directly between two people. Interestingly enough, I still tend to side with Fred's assessment of AirBnB's future. All my experiences with it as a user have been too unreliable to expect that it can scale to truly massive usability. Selling your old guit…
Interesting that completely missing from this conversation is: -- Their website design -- Their code (Rails? Jquery?) -- Their hosting / scalability / "cloud" strategy -- Source control methods, dev environment, tools -- APIs, "ecosystem", social media, "viral rate" etc. -- And more... Basically, all the things that most of us here spend most of our time discussing. Instead: 1) Idea / Team 2) Execute 3) Talk to peopl…
Sure the operational factors are important (and that's why they get discussed here), but they're secondary to size of the market and the nature of the solution when it comes to how big the investment opportunity is.
Arriving in a new city without internet it was great to have HH and be able to find 10 hostels and know they are going to be open. I guess McDonalds wifi etc. means Airbnb could have been a competitor, but the ease of finding accommodation reliably, of a reliable standard, and at more affordable prices meant we used HH far more than Airbnb.
Having said that, the times we could manage to find a room that was genuinely free, and appeared to be genuine people with a spare room, were some of the highlights of our travels. The people and the rooms were both fantastic, and it's this "home away from home" and social aspect I think Airbnb should be pushing. I think at the same time they should be working hard to remove the listings that I could best describe as dodgy guys trying to run a hotel out of an apartment building without adhering to local hotelier laws as we found these far too prevalent in some cities.
Have you ever given a similar vote of confidence to founders who didn't live up to your expectations?