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How AirBnB Became a Billion Dollar Company

davegooden.com

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Re: How AirBnB Became a Billion Dollar Company

#181

Post by freshfunk »

huuleon wrote: post #173
thomasgerbe wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I assume AirBnB have received many cease and desist letters from craigslist. Craigslist is just waiting for AirBnB to get bigger so they can get big chunk of money.

I doubt it. I worked at a company that aggregated job listings from Craigslist. We actually didn't do anything insidious; in fact, we served up their jobs with attribution and if the job was clicked, it would take the user to the Craigslist site. So basically we were feeding them extra traffic.

They sent a cease and desist relatively early on (not waiting until we got bigger).

It's likely that they didn't know and have either just sent them a cease and desist or AirBnb has chosen to ignore it.

Re: How AirBnB Became a Billion Dollar Company

#183

Post by kwis »

mover wrote: post #178
kwis wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've sold products. I didn't spam. I talked with customers before the product was even finished to make sure we were solving a real problem, to make sure they understood our marketing message, and to make sure we really understood the space. This led naturally to a situation where I had paying beta customers, and even more customers who signed up and started paying as soon as we launched.

There's a fundamental difference between building a product that doesn't depend on others for its functioning, and a marketplace, where the core function is access to other users. It is about impossible to get a marketplace going from a standing start. I've commented on it before elsewhere: picking off Craigslist users was always critical for Airbnb to get going. There are dozens of startups trying to build companies…

There are two-sided networks that have launched without spam, or deceit.

The standard approach would be to pick a city like NYC, and pound the pavement selling the site to every high-influence group you can possibly identify, do that to get a decent inventory built up and then launch with that inventory and start proving the model.

Then, pound the pavement in other high-influence cities, work to get inches in the media, do biz-dev deals with travel/vacation sites, get yourself interviewed on local radio and tv, find every possible way to insert AirBNB into the news stories of the day And frankly, with the real estate crash, there were a lot of possible ways to insert themselves into the news.

Or they could just spam craigslist.

That said, my big question continues to be 'did they disclose this behavior to their investors'.

Re: How AirBnB Became a Billion Dollar Company

#186

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

pbreit wrote: post #39
helium wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it's blackhat. They're sending unsolicited, automated spam to people who explicitly stated that they didn't want emails regarding commercial interests. There is a big difference between advertising and spam.

"explicitly stated" = "did not change the default"

You still have to respect opt out, even if it's the default.

Re: How AirBnB Became a Billion Dollar Company

#187

Post by UtestMe »

mattmanser wrote: post #158
UtestMe wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nobody? Get the IP addresses that access those accounts from GMail. You're going to find them all coming from one IP or a small number of American IP addresses. Ask the ISPs who they are. Job done, culprit found. You think they'll be using anonymous proxies or something? I doubt it.

I think google won't let you bind an email to an ip

Re: How AirBnB Became a Billion Dollar Company

#188

Post by fuzzmeister »

warp wrote: post #143
fuzzmeister wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I use the default GMail filters - perhaps I'm just lucky and receive easily filtered spam. I get hundreds of spam messages per day, and none break through on the average day.

Re: How AirBnB Became a Billion Dollar Company

#189

Post by marcamillion »

marcamillion wrote: post #42
pgroves wrote: post #35

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.

It's interesting...seems this comment is pretty controversial. Went up a few points, then went back to 1, then went up again, then went down again.

Can anyone explain why this is so controversial ? If you downvoted it, mind explaining why ?

Re: How AirBnB Became a Billion Dollar Company

#190

Post by amirmc »

btilly wrote: post #175
amirmc wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody's paid $1B for AirBnB. The investors paid a price for a % of AirBnB that equates to a valuation of $1B. In other words, they've placed a bet that AirBnB will be worth more than $1B.

This is no different than how we calculate the market cap for any company. And nobody's paid nearly $325B for Apple. But someone just bought a bit under 1 billionth of the company for about $350, so that's what the market cap works out to be.

I do understand what you're saying. However, the fact that AAPL shares are more liquid than AirBnB shares makes a difference to the way I think about valuations. APPL could be up or down tomorrow based on the example you just described but the same won't be true of AirBnB. If they IPO'd tomorrow, would they get a valuation of $1B? I don't know.

I'm not disagreeing with the definition. I'm trying to point out that even though the maths might be the same, I see a difference between startup valuations (based on funding rounds) and market caps (shares * share-price) of listed companies.

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