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Airbnb S-1

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Re: Airbnb S-1

#12

Post by wholien »

huh

> Most of our guests discover Airbnb organically, with approximately 91% of all traffic to Airbnb coming through direct or unpaid channels during the nine months ended September 30, 2020.

Anyone know what % of traffic to Bookings and Expedia (and others) are paid vs unpaid? 91% unpaid seems really high, and I wonder if it's because Airbnb is so differentiated / people want to "Airbnb" a place (vs. "stay somewhere")

edit:

> Our hosts had 7.4 million available listings of homes and experiences as of September 30, 2020, of which 5.6 million were active listings. We consider a listing of a home or an experience to be an “active listing” if it is viewable on Airbnb and has been previously booked at least once on Airbnb

IMO it's super sneaky to blend homes and experiences together

Re: Airbnb S-1

#14

Post by justapassenger »

ShakataGaNai wrote: post #5

No idea what the process for getting this information released is... but it feels unlikely to be a coincidence that on the day a 2nd extremely effective vaccine is announced to the world... Airbnb files their public S1. A lot of that document talks about COVID-19 and how it's effected their business (no surprise there) but also several mentions of vaccines. Mostly in the following phrase (repeated 3 times in the docu…

1. It’s been well known for a long time that vaccine results will start showing up this month.

2. Every single company in the world had to list COVID as a potential source of adverse effect to their business. It turned around whole economy and further impact is still unknown. And by every I literally mean every. Even companies like Zoom, that are super hot as a result of COVID - for them getting control of COVID will mean potentially big slides down.

Re: Airbnb S-1

#15

Post by sjg007 »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #7
szemy2 wrote: post #3

I wonder if this is the right timing?

They need the cash? If they survive through covid they are back to winner takes all.

It's kind of amazing that AirBnB requires that much money to operate but I guess I need to read the s1.

Re: Airbnb S-1

#16

Post by mrgordon »

ShakataGaNai wrote: post #5

No idea what the process for getting this information released is... but it feels unlikely to be a coincidence that on the day a 2nd extremely effective vaccine is announced to the world... Airbnb files their public S1. A lot of that document talks about COVID-19 and how it's effected their business (no surprise there) but also several mentions of vaccines. Mostly in the following phrase (repeated 3 times in the docu…

Total conjecture and even if its true, who cares?

Re: Airbnb S-1

#17

Post by nmjohn »

Does anyone know what happened with the stock options for early airbnb employees which were expiring this month (Nov 2020)? Did they find some legal way to extend the options, or did employees end up having to find the money to exercise them or else lose out on them?

For context: http://archive.is/xdv1u (NYT Article)

Re: Airbnb S-1

#18

Post by vecter »

epa wrote: post #2

http://www.paulgraham.com/airbnb.html

pg is surprisingly prescient in his predictions about the potential size of the opportunity. This might just be survivorship bias though, but still, one takeaway I got from the email exchanges is that pg really evaluated founders on both the idea/market opportunity and the qualities of the founders themselves:

  I'd recommend having the debate after meeting them instead of before. We had big doubts about this idea, but they vanished on meeting the guys.
To be fair, pg probably has more signal on the founders as individuals and VCs may not get as much signal based on a pitch meeting, but you could also argue that one of YC's edge was their focus on identifying stronger founders moreso than great ideas, whereas VCs, given their general strategy of investing more in large priced post-seed rounds care more about traction and market opportunity and less on the "intangible" traits of the founders.

It's interesting that pg also believed in the eventuality of AirBnB competing with and taking a lot of market share away from hotels. Fred and the "older" guys at their firm didn't believe this.

Re: Airbnb S-1

#19

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

wholien wrote: post #12

huh > Most of our guests discover Airbnb organically, with approximately 91% of all traffic to Airbnb coming through direct or unpaid channels during the nine months ended September 30, 2020. Anyone know what % of traffic to Bookings and Expedia (and others) are paid vs unpaid? 91% unpaid seems really high, and I wonder if it's because Airbnb is so differentiated / people want to "Airbnb" a place (vs. "stay somewhere…

Bookings and Expedia are way, way, way lower than that. Expedia has been complaining a lot in recent years how Google has been taking away a lot of their search traffic with in-results-page hotel listings.

At one point in the past I heard Booking was the largest spender, worldwide, on Adwords.

Re: Airbnb S-1

#20

Post by mrgordon »

nmjohn wrote: post #17

Does anyone know what happened with the stock options for early airbnb employees which were expiring this month (Nov 2020)? Did they find some legal way to extend the options, or did employees end up having to find the money to exercise them or else lose out on them? For context: http://archive.is/xdv1u (NYT Article)

I don't think they expired quite yet but they let some very early employees sell as part of the IPO which may address those people
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