Assuming COVID ends up as less of a threat towards the end of next year, this might be good timing in favor of employees. Travel (and market sentiment around travel companies) might pick up right around the time when their lock-in period expires.
Airbnb S-1
51–60 of 471 posts
Re: Airbnb S-1
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's kind of amazing that AirBnB requires that much money to operate but I guess I need to read the s1.
I have yet to read the S-1, but I'm assuming it's the same issue as Uber. Inflated overhead due to higher baseline operating costs. Uber/Airbnb don't need near the amount of product/engineering they actually have.
Uber I can still believe due to their complex app (real-time tracking of drivers and riders, matching algorithms, route mapping, pooling, fare calculation, surges). Not to mention other divisions like food delivery, autonomous driving, freight etc.
AirBnb is...a database of static listings and a search engine on top. Their top technology problems were all solved by Expedia like 20 years ago.
Re: Airbnb S-1
#532bn in debt on negative 250mm of adj. ebitda? Wow
Re: Airbnb S-1
#54Anyone know when the IPO listing date is?
Roadshows must start 15 days after the listing. After that the company will start with their roadshow with institutional investors to gauge interest (~20 more days).
Once demand and supply of the shares is established, they can announce a public price for the share on the date before the IPO.
My initial guess is that we can expect pricing of the IPO on the week of 12/14
Re: Airbnb S-1
#55Excited to learn more about the specifics. Really hoping people don't flood this thread with their anecdotal bad Airbnb experiences ("I paid below market rate this one time 6 years ago and got a crappy host, therefore this company is going to fail!"), which seems to happen every-time someone mentions their name.
Got punched in the face outside of an Airbnb once and left immediately. Host charged me for damages including blood on the towel because I got punched. Airbnb sided with the host.
Re: Airbnb S-1
#56I switched from hosting with Airbnb over to a property management company when I'm out of town. Airbnb continues to refuse to take security seriously and won't fulfill their host guarantee in the event that a guest causes thousands of dollars in damages. They should be an easy company to beat for long term rentals since they're so poorly run in many ways. I don't think they have any serious competition for very short term housing rentals ( not talking about hotels).
Re: Airbnb S-1
#57http://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…
It's interesting that they both missed the real killer edge here. Fred said it was Etsy, Paul said it would move up into hotels. Neither are really what happened.
Turns out in most places it's profitable to arbitrage long term property cost and AirBnB income. So you have a bunch of small time operators buying or leasing property and putting them on AirBnB. AFAICT that seems to be the bulk of AirBnB business. Not Etsy (person to person) nor Hotels. But a new kind of "hotel" that consists of one person running a handful to a couple dozen apartments.
Re: Airbnb S-1
#58I switched from hosting with Airbnb over to a property management company when I'm out of town. Airbnb continues to refuse to take security seriously and won't fulfill their host guarantee in the event that a guest causes thousands of dollars in damages. They should be an easy company to beat for long term rentals since they're so poorly run in many ways. I don't think they have any serious competition for very short…
Are they even interested in the long term rental space?
Re: Airbnb S-1
#59Has anyone done a comprehensive review of the Airbnb regulatory environment? I know there's a bunch of places where some of it has settled but also many where hosts might still be operating contrary to regulations. Would be interested in knowing how that breaks out around the world.
Re: Airbnb S-1
#60Down $600m in 2019 and another $600m in 2020? With $2b in debt? Ouch. I'm reading this right, correct? I see the cash positions below are a bit different, but that's likely from... the loans? 2018 looked so hopeful. They only lose $20m total! 2019 should have been a profitable year, IMO, but they went with the aggressive strategy.
It's more like $3 billion, there's a notice that the IRS is telling them they owe $1.3 billion in back taxes, plus interest and penalties.