Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Airbnb S-1

sec.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 471 posts

Re: Airbnb S-1

#131

Post by newguy1234 »

I look at IPOs quite differently than most. For me, I am looking at the fundamental business. For me the usual questions are:

Does the company have a legitimate business advantage that can establish market dominance?

How easy is it to replicate the business?

Consumer trends - Who is using the product - young people vs older?

Revenue: Quarter over quarter increase? or a logical explanation if the rev is not growing.

*Consumer comments: Do people like the company so much that they tell their friend about it?

Based on this, I think AirBnB is a winner all around. The company has developed a platform and a brand loyalty that has basically eliminated most competition in this space. In fact, their competitors are so small that most could not even name them.

From a technology standpoint, it is relatively easy to replicate but the branding and loyalty to AirBnB is unrivaled so this is what creates their moat. First-mover advantage is strong is this sector and it is clear AirBnb has gained the first-mover advantage by a wide margin.

Consumer trends - Young people love it. As these consumers get older, their income will increase and they will book more through AirBnB. The very young will most likely start off using AirBnB and never use hotels directly.

Revenue - Showing consistent growth prior to COVID-19. With COVID-19 apparently on the way to being vaccinated away the "COVID-19 slump" is not a concern for me. I could see vacation spending soaring once COVID-19 fears subsidies with consumers.

Consumer comments - People love AirBnB so much that they tell their friends about it. There are some issues with fraud but my guess is over time, AirBnB will figure out how to snuff these bad hosts out of their platform.

Re: Airbnb S-1

#132

Post by tonyhb »

treis wrote: post #57
vecter wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Airbnb own and operate HotelTonight, which is a foray into hotels. It can (and I think certainly will) get there.

Anecdotally, HotelTonight is my go-to for booking any hotel, any time.

Re: Airbnb S-1

#133

Post by afterwalk »

smitty1110 wrote: post #60
ztratar wrote: post #9

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.

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.

How can an unprofitable companies rack up $1.3b in taxes?

Re: Airbnb S-1

#134

Post by elpakal »

carlineng wrote: post #112

A few random observations I found interesting: - Looks like they are significantly leaner now as a result of COVID. Cost of revenue is at an all-time low in Q3 (17% of revenue on p164). There's a lot of focus the drastic cuts to Sales and Marketing, but it looks like there's a fair amount of increased discipline across the board. - It's interesting that Operations and support looks to be very similar in both the firs…

I'm curious why you think AB&B qualifies as a "tech" company

Re: Airbnb S-1

#135

Post by [deleted] »

edoceo wrote: post #123
carlineng wrote: post #112

A few random observations I found interesting: - Looks like they are significantly leaner now as a result of COVID. Cost of revenue is at an all-time low in Q3 (17% of revenue on p164). There's a lot of focus the drastic cuts to Sales and Marketing, but it looks like there's a fair amount of increased discipline across the board. - It's interesting that Operations and support looks to be very similar in both the firs…

Who's the other one? Microsoft?

[deleted]

Re: Airbnb S-1

#136

Post by elamje »

carlineng wrote: post #112

A few random observations I found interesting: - Looks like they are significantly leaner now as a result of COVID. Cost of revenue is at an all-time low in Q3 (17% of revenue on p164). There's a lot of focus the drastic cuts to Sales and Marketing, but it looks like there's a fair amount of increased discipline across the board. - It's interesting that Operations and support looks to be very similar in both the firs…

A fun anecdote about AirBnB in China: 2 years ago I travelled to Beijing and Shanghai and intended to stay in an AirBnB.

AirBnB had tons and tons of listings in both places, all of which had specific instructions to tell the neighbors you were “a friend” and not staying there with AirBnB.

At the time, and possibly still so, AirBnB was not operating legally in those particular places, and I presume most of the country, but it’s such a good booking platform people used it anyways.

Long story short, I doubt China is not going to copy AirBnB, unless they can find a nice revenue share model with AirBnB the platform.

P.s. There is ripe opportunity to make apps that interface China to westerners traveling there. There was literally no way to hook into the QR payment system, get a Didi, navigate, or get good translations just 2 years ago. Good luck to those of you building products to help non Chinese people in China. You’ll do well.

Re: Airbnb S-1

#137

Post by lotsofpulp »

tonyhb wrote: post #132
treis wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Airbnb own and operate HotelTonight, which is a foray into hotels. It can (and I think certainly will) get there. Anecdotally, HotelTonight is my go-to for booking any hotel, any time.

If it's Hilton/Hyatt/Marriott/IHG/Choice/Wyndham, you can go to the hotel brand's website, you will get the same room for cheaper if you are part of the free hotel rewards program. You're also more valuable to the hotel since you'll be paying netting the hotel more income than someone coming from HotelTonight (since the hotel doesn't have to pay HotelTonight commission), therefore more eligible for perks or upgrades.

Re: Airbnb S-1

#139

Post by newguy1234 »

kart23 wrote: post #104

I like airbnb. They need to get better at weeding out fake/scammy listings, that tend to plague many online marketplaces where things can be listed for free. Maybe some in-person verification system, or a fee that gets refunded if you have a certain number of guests. There are plenty of listings with huge/exclusive homes, yet no reviews and extremely cheap prices. I don't know what people get out of these listings, b…

Easiest solution is to force new hosts to provide a "surety bond" to basically be an honest host. Maybe make them pay 10-25k lump-sum in cash. After a certain amount of guests have visited the offering then the money can be returned. If the host is a scammer then the money can be used to reimburse the guests for their troubles.

The risk vs rewards under this system would discourage bad hosts from joining the platform. For new, honest hosts, it would be a minor inconvenience at best.

Re: Airbnb S-1

#140

Post by pochamago »

agentdrtran wrote: post #114
treis wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Who knew it's cheap to create hotels when you don't have to pay any of the fees/taxes hotels do?

I feel like what a lot of the gig economy experiment has shown is that we have created too high of a entrance floor for new businesses. A lot of the taxes and expensive regulations are certainly well intentioned, but making them mandatory prevents a lot of people with entrepreneurial drive but low resources from getting into the game. It also creates a higher cost for people who would be glad to get a cheaper option with some risk of discomfort. It's so hard to roll back regulations once they've been put in place, though, that the only way you can create these options is to build entirely new models that skirt the entire structure.
Post reply on HN