81–90 of 471 posts
They lost $600 mil in _2019_? And $700 mil so far this year? Woah.
Keeping losses flat while going through the pandemic is a feat in itself tbh.
I know there were layoffs so I'm sure they were in full cost-cutting mode by the time the pandemic hit full swing
>> the board of directors reduced Mr. Chesky’s base salary from $110,000 to $1, set his target bonus at $0, and granted him a long-term, multi-year equity award comprised of 12,000,000 RSUs (the “Multi-Year Award”). Its quite surprising that CEO of Airbnb should make just $110k/ annum in base salary before the company goes public. I would expect it to be around $500k.
Any airbnb=er here wants to invest in a travel company? lol you never know..
It also looks like Q3 tends to be their best quarter by far. Is that because of summer vacations?
I wonder about their long term business model. Sure they have opened up the industry, but I'd think its quite easy to copy them. Sure there are a bunch of people that will keep AirBnB their favorite but when I'm looking at places I'll religiously check every site I can. There will be nothing unique about them.
Down $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.
I heard a podcast discuss the possibility of AirBnB offering shares or options to superhosts (like me) ahead of the IPO–essentially as a "thank you" to the people who helped build the marketplace. Anyone have thoughts on if that is possible or plausible?
Not plausible. Just wishful thinking. How would that even work if superhosts are not accredited investors?
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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…
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The experiences that people report often indicate systemic issues within the platform/product, especially when they are as pervasive as some on the AirBnB platform are.* I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss them. * I've had two shit hosts that left me up a creek scrambling to find housing, as has my S/O. As a consumer, I am way less likely to use the platform now because my experience has shown me that AirBnB either doe…
I... disagree? Hard numbers showing high rates of these interactions would be a systemic thread. The loudest voices on the Internet, not so much.
That said, I think you'd be foolish as a potential investor to not consider that AirBnB appears to have some unresolved platform issues that could create opportunity for a competing product to make inroads. And while the voices we hear may well be the loudest ones, they can still be influential in driving change, positive or negative.