Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. They make and sell technology to customers.
Then under your definition, Otis elevators and GE and Boeing and are also tech companies.
Yes, they are.
Airbnb S-1
291–300 of 471 posts
Re: Airbnb S-1
#292Isn't booking.com competitor to AirBnB
Re: Airbnb S-1
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
This seems incredibly dangerous as visitors on a tourist visa are required to register themselves with the local police within 24 hours of arriving at their destination. Trying to stay under the radar seems like it courts risk of deportation, as I've known _lots_ of folks who got a visit from police at their place of stay who were not aware of this. Virtually all of them settled things fine but it was more headache t…
> ”your hotel registers you online so that you don't have to deal with this” If a hotel can do it, surely there’s no reason why Airbnb can’t figure it out?
It wouldn't be a problem if they were operating legally (e.g. if the place you were staying in had the appropriate license to operate a hotel).
Re: Airbnb S-1
#294> Mr. Stephenson’s offer letter provides for an initial base salary of $600,000, an initial target bonus of 75% of his base salary, and a one-time hiring bonus in the aggregate amount of $2,400,000 While I've received signing bonuses in the past, I was not aware that you could get a signing bonus that was 4x of your base salary.
This could easily be to compensate for unvested Amazon stock that he maybe leaving behind.
Re: Airbnb S-1
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a marketplace business, all internet marketplaces are tech companies because they simply aggregate buyers and sellers while owning none of the assets/inventory/risk being transacted on the platform. Airbnb is just a website with a ToS. There is zero marginal cost to Airbnb for servicing a new listing. Do you also question whether Ebay is a "tech" company?
> zero marginal cost to Airbnb for servicing a new listing. Don't underestimate the cost of customer support (on both ends), dispute resolution, ...
All tech companies have support costs. This does not make them non-tech companies.
Salesforce isn't suddenly an old school manufacturing business just because they have a customer success team.
Re: Airbnb S-1
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I never understood why Airbnb (and even Uber for that matter) were seen as prestigious tech places to work at.
Expedia, hotels.com. booking.com and most airlines are handling more requests than Airbnb in more challenging environments.
Re: Airbnb S-1
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
All companies are "tech-dependent companies." This is an intellectual dead end. Traditionally, the business world has qualified tech companies as those which primarily function via zero marginal cost distribution provided by software and the internet. If Airbnb and Ebay aren't tech companies, then neither are Google and Facebook. All four are marketplaces (Google and Facebook are advertising marketplaces at their cor…
I don’t think that definition is right. Nobody will argue that Apple isn’t a tech company, and the iPhone isn’t zero-marginal-cost.
This isn't a black or white thing. It's a spectrum. On one end you have pure play tech like Stripe or Facebook (100% zero marginal cost). On the other end you have industrial firms who produce mostly undifferentiated commodities with thin margins like tires (super high marginal cost).
Apple is clearly a tech company since they conduct tons of activities that are zero marginal cost (iOS, MacOS, App Stores, AppleTV, Apple Music, Apple News, Logic Pro, iCloud storage, etc. etc.)
However if you remove the software part of their business, then they'd be a commodity phone company, and valued by Wall Street in the same way TV manufacturers are (ie. like Samsung, with a PE ratio roughly half that of Apple).
The higher value and differentiation is mostly derived from the software (an OLED screen with a processor attached isn't high margin otherwise--see Samsung's margins). Hence why "software is eating the world."
Re: Airbnb S-1
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
They don't need the cash necessarily but the early employee options were expiring so they needed to go public
im not familiar with this, i havent read much about early employee stock options, what does this mean?
The stock options were written to expire after ten years and the ten year expiration date was coming up. Airbnb wanted to IPO to ensure these early employees got properly rewarded for their huge contributions. I’m not sure exactly why they couldn’t just grant replacement options but I believe this would cause issues with the cost basis / additional tax and they probably can’t issue equivalent options to some of those people who no longer work for them due to IRS regulations
Re: Airbnb S-1
#299Because Chrome is just as aggressive with it's nag prompts, it would be a bit weird for Microsoft to just lay down and take it in this case though.
I think for the average user Chrome/Edge are pretty much interchangeable now. For advanced users it's pretty annoying but it's less than a second to switch off.
Re: Airbnb S-1
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm curious why you think AB&B qualifies as a "tech" company
It's a marketplace business, all internet marketplaces are tech companies because they simply aggregate buyers and sellers while owning none of the assets/inventory/risk being transacted on the platform. Airbnb is just a website with a ToS. There is zero marginal cost to Airbnb for servicing a new listing. Do you also question whether Ebay is a "tech" company?
this is an amusing question actually.
is cme group a tech company? it is literally marketplace technology. eurex and xetra, nasdaq, nyse, bats, lse all those guys as well.
if you want to go a bit further, jpm, morgan stanley, goldman, barclays and so on are also tech companies, since they're one layer over all these marketplace tech companies, but with their own internal marketplace technology on top of it.
anyway, it's all very silly and meaningless categorization.