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Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

nytimes.com

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Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#101

Post by karmakaze »

grailed wrote: post #8

I hear a lot of talk surrounding their "moat" and many skeptics are questioning whether or not they will be able to maintain their competitive advantage. However, it feels like Airbnb has solved a truly hard problem: how to make people trust your service. People are using this app to go stay in random people's homes. How often do you hear people talk about being murdered in uber? I still hear it. How often do you hea…

I've had the displeasure of going through AirBnb dispute resolution process more than once, which was resolved in my favour once and not the other. Neither time did I think they did a good job of hearing the sides of the case and deciding on solid principles or written foundations. It's pretty much a matter of who sees it and makes a subjective call. It's also shocking that the first several tiers of customer support is seemingly run by volunteers (or otherwise ill-equipped people).

The success of the trust and brand issue is largely due to the number of well meaning hosts far outnumbering the bad and AirBnb keeping the bad stories not get viral too often.

The 'keep your rating high' has been around since eBay and could easily be copied. I wouldn't have a problem using a service that competed with AirBnb. What they have is a volume lead. People look there because that's where the listings are. Hosts list there because that's where people look.

Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#102

Post by rcpt »

jpalmer wrote: post #31

Market cap now exceeds top 5 US hotel chains combined. How much can it grow from here?

I have no idea. 8 years ago I liked Airbnb but now with the stupidly high cleaning fees despite having some boomer host tell me that I'm "disrespectful" for not leaving the place spotless I've switched back to hotels.

Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#103

Post by tempsy »

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #62
tempsy wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you don’t raise double the money because you set the price 2x unless that was your plan. you would sell half the shares if you had a fixed goal eg $3B. you decide on how much you need and then decide the number of shares you sell at what price. it isn’t like they would’ve raised twice the money if they upped the share price.

> you don’t raise double the money because you set the price 2x unless that was your plan. you would sell half the shares You keep throwing out assumptions without anything backing them. They at a price and amount for sale. Absent an auction set price it's almost certain that price is inefficiently set. And you're arguing that it was efficiently set when we have tens of billions of proof it wasn't efficiently set via…

I said nothing about efficiency. All I am arguing is that Airbnb didn’t screw themselves. No money was taken from them. They raised the money they wanted to raise at a price they thought would be tolerable by the public markets.

Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#104

Post by whimsicalism »

an_opabinia wrote: post #99
whimsicalism wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this is not some great engineering feat with Airbnb and has much more to do with classism and the type of person who typically owns that beautiful vacation home you want to stay in.

> has much more to do with classism You're right but I think that's an unfair way to put the fact that two rich people can get a remedy from each other without the law, but a rich person only gets remedies from poor people through the law. The better comparison is Airbnb versus CouchSurfing or TrustedHouseSitters. All three use unused space in your home in exchange for something of psychological and monetary value, i…

> When I break something in an Airbnb, I pay every time. When they fuck up the parking and I get towed, the Airbnb paid. So we both keep using the service.

This seems very orthogonal to concerns about being murdered.

> Michael Sandel talked big talk about Airbnb monetized something that used to be generously gifted, but he omitted the special math of how rich people exchanging stuff with each other results in that thing being utilized 10,000% more, simply because it is sustainable in the sense of people retaining and not hitting the home button, and he never really talked about, ironically, the lack of justice when people break or steal your shit and there is simply no remedy.

I'm sorry, I honestly don't really understand. I'm assuming you're discussing Sandel's recent work on what he sees as the moral limits around markets.

You're saying that markets provide a recourse for property damage, which makes them more just? That, again, seems unrelated - no reason you can't have recourse for property damage even if you are letting someone stay in your house free of charge.

I also just think the narrative you're spinning is sort of misleading. Rich people overwhelmingly do have remedies for wrongs and have the capacity to pursue legal action.

Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#106

Post by virgil_disgr4ce »

ionwake wrote: post #98

As a great fan of airbnb having stayed 10 times in Denmark in different ones, I was suddenly burned by a fake review from a first time host ( she got into trouble with her housing association I think ). She destroyed my feedbacks "image" with made up statements in her statement. After several appeals airbnb did not help at all. I got so burned that I still don't quite understand whether I was unlucky or failed to rea…

My gf has had two shitty experiences with AirBnB's "community leaders" in response to two completely unjustified reviews of her place. Anybody can just suddenly decide that they had a terrible time and that it's the fault of the property, and AirBnB seems predisposed to take the visitors word for it. If they keep that up they're not going to have any renters.

Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#107

Post by Ekaros »

bob33212 wrote: post #80
jeffbee wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are struggling. They IPO not due to the health of their business, but because so many dupes are putting their dumb money on the table these days.

I assume most investors are smarter than that and are hoping AirBnB will build a monopoly similar to how google did with search and Wikipedia did with online encyclopedias. A 5% monopoly tax on most rentals/hotels does give you a huge profit eventually.

I really wonder if these monopolies will happen.

Is there any paid service with actual monopoly yet? Amazon has market share, but also competitive prices. To me all of these big markets like taxi, food delivery and online booking seem rather low barrier of entry. And that the customers will be price aware. That can't be really compared with free services like Google, Wikipedia or Youtube...

Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#108

Post by raldi »

tempsy wrote: post #18
boringg wrote: post #4

Talk about setting the wrong price for their stock. Looks like airbnb just handed over boatloads of money to wall street.

that isn’t how an IPO works. just because your stock pops doesn’t mean you handed over money to “wall street” if you’ve raised the money you sought at the set IPO price. the investors who bought the IPO allocation got an immediate 100% return but that is not at the expense of the company.

If you're having a garage sale and I buy a baseball card for the $1 you wanted, and then turn around and sell it for $500, would you feel any regret?

Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#109

Post by ghaff »

ionwake wrote: post #98

As a great fan of airbnb having stayed 10 times in Denmark in different ones, I was suddenly burned by a fake review from a first time host ( she got into trouble with her housing association I think ). She destroyed my feedbacks "image" with made up statements in her statement. After several appeals airbnb did not help at all. I got so burned that I still don't quite understand whether I was unlucky or failed to rea…

Dispute resolution at most marketplace and social media companies is pretty hit or miss in my experience. In general, you're not going to get a big time slice from whatever low-paid customer service rep you get assigned to. Maybe they'll make the right call and maybe they won't but any investigation is going to be pretty cursory.

That's not to say stuff never gets fixed. A few months ago I had a random blog on posting to Twitter. No idea why and they did clear it after a few days. So things got fixed but it was very opaque.

ADDED: And, to be fair, a lot of disputes can be a combination of he said/she said and different expectations. "My cheap Manhattan hotel room is tiny!" You don't say.

Re: Airbnb’s Stunning IPO

#110

Post by giarc »

itronitron wrote: post #30
grailed wrote: post #8

I hear a lot of talk surrounding their "moat" and many skeptics are questioning whether or not they will be able to maintain their competitive advantage. However, it feels like Airbnb has solved a truly hard problem: how to make people trust your service. People are using this app to go stay in random people's homes. How often do you hear people talk about being murdered in uber? I still hear it. How often do you hea…

I've had better experiences with VRBO than AirBnB

I find many properties are posted on both sites, then it comes down to fees, for which I feel Airbnb's are much higher.
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