How AirBnB Became a Billion Dollar Company • Hacker News Board

Re: How AirBnB Became a Billion Dollar Company

#141

Post by skmurphy » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 5:24 AM UTC

alain94040 wrote: post #108

skmurphy wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free is not a sale. You have to charge something to claim them as a customer.

You know what I mean. Even in EDA, having a reference "user", as long as they are using the product, is a major achievement that will be leveraged [to death] with future [paying] customers.

I am not trying to be pedantic. In my experience there is an enormous difference between having a user and having a paying customer. They may be a user before they are a paying customer, but there is a very significant difference.

Re: How AirBnB Became a Billion Dollar Company

#142

Post by juniortp » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 5:31 AM UTC

Did they actually do it?

Re: How AirBnB Became a Billion Dollar Company

#143

Post by warp » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 5:32 AM UTC

fuzzmeister wrote: post #130

dreamdu5t wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't think so, please post your email here for us.

Multiple of my email addresses posted online unmasked multiple times, so I certainly get spam. My point is that filters are quite effective.

I still get spam in my inbox regularly. I'm using google postini to do the filtering, in my situation I wouldn't classify it as "quite effective".

Are there better alternatives I am not aware of?

Re: How AirBnB Became a Billion Dollar Company

#144

Post by jacoblyles » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 6:05 AM UTC

temphn wrote: post #48

AirBnB raided Craigslist for users. Those users made more money and had a far better user experience on AirBnB to boot. Not exactly your traditional Viagra/Nigeria type spam. When the end doesn't justify the means, sure, complain about the means. But this is not such a case.

We shouldn't forget that Craigslist is an evil monopoly

Re: How AirBnB Became a Billion Dollar Company

#145

Post by UtestMe » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 6:19 AM UTC

rkon wrote: post #140

These types of messages definitely appear to fit the CAN-SPAM Act, which covers " any electronic mail message the primary purpose of which is the commercial advertisement or promotion of a commercial product or service ". Airbnb may be spending that $100M sooner than they thought: " Each separate email in violation of the law is subject to penalties of up to $16,000, and more than one person may be held responsible f…

Nobody will ever be able to legally prove the gmail accounts were created for and by AirBnB. Actually, I don't think those accounts were created by AirBnB guys, but by a third party, for AirBnB use. Ad extremis, the AirBnB founders might as well plead they never knew what was the exact method this third party will use to generate traffic and users.

Re: How AirBnB Became a Billion Dollar Company

#146

Post by throwaway61802 » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 6:24 AM UTC

Nobody here knows how much of Airbnb's growth is driven by Craigslist, it's purely speculative. Until Airbnb confirms, you'll never know but you'd have to be naive to believe that you can build a company up to $1 billion by firing off a bunch of emails. Nobody here has even suggested the possibility that "Airbnb became a billion dollar company" by suggesting how many Craigslist rentals are posted each day, along with a standardized conversion rate.

I'm surprised to see how negative the comments are on this. This is like Yelp paying people to write reviews. Shady? Sure. Illegal? The only part of the CAN-SPAM Act Airbnb broke was (1) not including a physical mailing address, (2) not mentioning it was an ad, and (3) not including an unsubscrive link. Otherwise, CAN-SPAM is laughable at best. It's hardly enforced. Don't expect Craigslist to come at Airbnb with a lawsuit, it'd probably not hold up in court.

I see this instead as one of Airbnb's many tactics to try and reach out to users. If you look at this logically, they've been covered by the press a lot. The amount of growth they might (or might not) have reached doing this would hail in comparison to how much they obtained by press and simple product and customer development.

Re: How AirBnB Became a Billion Dollar Company

#147

Post by UtestMe » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 6:26 AM UTC

marcamillion wrote: post #41

Is this 'grey' ? In the sense that it can be interpreted as 'shady' ? Hell yes. But is it "wrong" ? I don't think so. I always thought that getting that first set of customers that will take you to product/market fit was going to be easy. What with the Twitterverse, Facebook and all and sundry. But let me tell you, from experience, it is DAMN HARD! I guess the true test of whether or not this is 'unethical' is whethe…

It is both "wrong" and WRONG: if you have to fake the real fans and the real efficiency of your startup, no matter how good your idea you think it is, it's just a bubble. Your startup sux, big time. As did and does Microsoft's (someone mentioned MS took quite the same savage approach when they launched).

Re: How AirBnB Became a Billion Dollar Company

#148

Post by throwaway61802 » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 6:40 AM UTC

baudehlo wrote: post #104

tomkarlo wrote: post #88

Everyone's focused on the ethics here, but if this is indeed what AirBnB was doing, isn't it a massive (and repeated) violation of Federal laws on unsolicited emails (for one thing, you're required to identify yourself properly) and likely other rules as well? What this article alleges isn't just questionable marketing practices, it's potentially deceptive / illegal marketing.

Yes. It's a violation of the CAN-SPAM act.

Do you drive 66 MPH in a 65 MPH zone? This is hardly breaking the law. This would have been perfectly legal in CAN-SPAM if they added three things: an unsubscribe link, a physical mailing address, and mentioned it was an ad. It probably would have been even more effective.

If you want to stop spam, don't rely on bureaucratic processes to resolve it through legislation. Build a spam filter, or do some simple pattern recognition so you know that the same message sent 100 times isn't a legitimate inquiry to a posting.

Re: How AirBnB Became a Billion Dollar Company

#149

Post by ecaradec » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 6:58 AM UTC

skmurphy wrote: post #141

alain94040 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what I mean. Even in EDA, having a reference "user", as long as they are using the product, is a major achievement that will be leveraged [to death] with future [paying] customers.

I am not trying to be pedantic. In my experience there is an enormous difference between having a user and having a paying customer. They may be a user before they are a paying customer, but there is a very significant difference.

But you don't have to tell that you first customer doesn't pay you ;).

Re: How AirBnB Became a Billion Dollar Company

#150

Post by peteforde » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 7:22 AM UTC

jacoblyles wrote: post #144

temphn wrote: post #48

AirBnB raided Craigslist for users. Those users made more money and had a far better user experience on AirBnB to boot. Not exactly your traditional Viagra/Nigeria type spam. When the end doesn't justify the means, sure, complain about the means. But this is not such a case.

We shouldn't forget that Craigslist is an evil monopoly

Bullshit. Citations please!