71–80 of 197 posts
Good read, although, I wouldn't necessarily consider advertising your services to people already listing vacation rentals as "blackhat". Blackhat insinuates that someone is being gamed, in this case, both the home owners and AirBnB are benefiting (maybe craigslist is losing out?).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am not being facetious by this question, but did you make a product that you are selling ? If so, how did you get your first set of customers ? Please share. If you have not made a product that you need to sell yet, I think you will find when you do it, it's MUCH, MUCH more difficult than you ever thought it would be. Also, selling a service - i.e. web development/design is very different than selling a product.
I have not released the product I am building. I have been supporting myself doing contract work. My bad experience came when I was the first employee (not founder) at a VC backed startup. I was originally a developer but was promoted to be the technical liason in sales. My job was to sell the incomplete product. We went back and forth between government and enterprise sales while I was there. The company is still ar…
i think people would have a much different view if this wasn't airbnb and was a less reputable company. The things described in the post definitely constitute as spam and violate CAN-SPAM...but these types of tactics do work (if they didn't we wouldn't have spammers) and there wasn't anything malicious about it.
I started my own company to get away from the do-anything-for-a-sale attitude of corporate america. I do not admire or respect AirBnb for this behavior. I don't care that it worked. I don't care if it was legal or not, it was dishonest. I know it's common, but it takes a fundamental lack of respect to lie directly to another human being. I'll just continue to toil in obscurity; self-respect intact.
I am not being facetious by this question, but did you make a product that you are selling ? If so, how did you get your first set of customers ? Please share. If you have not made a product that you need to sell yet, I think you will find when you do it, it's MUCH, MUCH more difficult than you ever thought it would be. Also, selling a service - i.e. web development/design is very different than selling a product.
Is anybody else slightly disturbed by all of the 'attaboy!' comments here on a post exposing unscrupulous and probably illegal business tactics? Think the response here would be the same if it was MicroSoft or the RIAA caught in something like this and not a YC alum? Anyway, great investigation and great analysis here, I think.
On a personal level this is very frustrating, because we like everyone we know to behave in a honest and straightforward fashion. But from a business standpoint there is a huge tradition of using some amount of misdirection to push new products to people. Parallels can be made with the animal kingdom and the use of camouflage, bright colors, and social interactions. Sometimes your business is in a position to strut your stuff, because you're the lion in the room. Other times you have to sneak around or be deceptive. Sometimes, fragile, trust-breaking tactics work - at least for a time.
In the end, the real condemnation for this behavior has to come from yourself, not from others. The market sees what is in front of it at the moment; it rarely knows the truth.
I love this. Being scrappy is one of the best qualities among entrepreneurs. The attitude of "do anything" to succeed usually results in success not to mention it is one of the characteristics that PG looks for in founders.
[deleted]
This was illegal in the "this was illegal" sense.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree the 'attaboy' comments are way out of place, but there is also an over the top reaction the other way with the criticism being heaped onto the AirBNB guys in my opinion. It was technically wrong of them to leverage craigslist by circumventing the community's own "no commercial email" request, and they should get dinged for it. But in the grand scheme of things, when you are a tiny start up struggling to survi…
Can we all agree that a $1Bn valuation stops you being "a tiny start up struggling to survive"?
AirBNB didn't become 'ramen profitable' until April 2009.
http://www.quora.com/How-much-money-did-Airbnb-raise-What-is...
can we please get a response from one of the AirBnB founders?
So I'm sad.
This is the same thing spammers do to steal money from people, and it's the same thing that dating sites do to pretend to have women interested in meeting dudes. Either way, it's fraudulent. I don't hate that they did this, but I hate that they tried to pretend they were anonymous women that happened to really like AirBnB. Why be so shady about it and instead why not just be honest? "Hey, we noticed your rental and t…
I assume they couldn't be honest because it would've violated Craiglist's Terms of Use, namely: You agree not to post, email, or otherwise make available Content: k) that constitutes or contains "affiliate marketing," "link referral code," "junk mail," "spam," "chain letters," "pyramid schemes," or unsolicited commercial advertisement; l) that constitutes or contains any form of advertising or solicitation if: posted…
While it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what's happening here, it takes a bit more than connecting the dots to make a legal case stick.
[EDIT] Just to be clear I'm certainly not a fan of this. It strikes me as unethical and a little low on the "sleazy marketer" scale. I don't however beleive that this is illegal unless you can somehow prove that JillSmith03@gmail.com is professionally connected to AirBnB, and that this was done under corporate directive.