Airbnb Has Arrived: Raising Mega-Round at a $1 Billion+ Valuation

http://www.paulgraham.com/airbnb.html

The difference is execution. Any skilled designer (and I'm not a designer but I can respect design) would've looked at airbnb.com in the past couple of months and realized: this is different. The way Facebook was different. All those key design decisions add up and you get enough of an edge over everything else that you redefine the whole sector by making the sector suddenly interesting.

Anyway, I'm biased. I stayed at an Airbnb place over this weekend and it worked great. It's bigger than EBay though, for my money. It's next generation lodging that is OOM more efficient and the flood gates are probably going to start overflooding (economy seems just right with enough consumer spending to support some trips, but enough of a groupon-appreciating eye, for more and more people, to avoid hotels where possible, etc.).

I sent in my resume to airbnb after deciding to try the site (while booking a place for the night before Bay to Breakers). I didn't actually stay at a place (until this past weekend) -- but I knew that whoever created that site was way ahead of everyone. I found the answer to one of their programming challenges on the interwebs and e-mailed about it (so haven't heard back -- I expect they are pretty swarmed with interest now too). And honestly, I'm at the point where I'm not that into working for a successful startup (would just confuse things for my side projects, etc.). But I am a very happy customer. And Brian Chesky is a new kind of entrepreneurial genius (his Startup School presentation still reverberates). Cheers.

Anecdotally there's a significant problem in the UK with some rural regions becoming significantly hotels for the wealthy. People like them so buy properties as second homes, maybe to live in a 5-10 days a month at maximum and sometimes far less.

The work available locally can't support the prices such customers are willing and able to pay, so the community becomes significantly weighted towards the old (who bought before the prices rose) and the absentee second home owner. This starts reducing the demand for local services (shops, schools, public transport) through a lower active population which makes the community less and less viable for full time living and....

'True markets' may optimise for supply and demand but they don't always for maximum societal good.

The overall point is that business is still conducted by people. Even in today's e-commerce era, people still want to be treated like a human beings by human beings - and us Americans are bloody expensive human beings.