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Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in 2016

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Re: Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in 2016

#141

Post by wnissen »

fiatjaf wrote: post #83
Tloewald wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole system of review curation that infests online markets is a problem waiting to be solved. Right now we basically have to parse reviews on the 4.4-5.0 scale because anything outside that is meaningless. It's amazing to go read a novel rated 3 stars (because it operates outside this loop) and find it transcendently good.

Has anyone ever tried 1. normalize reviews to make a 4 star from someone who always gives 5 stars worth less than a 3 star from someone who always gives 2 stars; and 2. make reviews secret?

I've wondered this myself. Someone with a dozen 5-star reviews is essentially providing no information and should be removed from the equation.

Re: Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in 2016

#142

Post by wnissen »

exclusiv wrote: post #128
baus wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It goes both ways. I'm an Airbnb host and renter(1). Mostly I have had good experiences, but I have had more problems on the hosting side lately. I take pride in my property and lived there myself for years. But I've gotten guests who nit pick everything and then ask for a refund. I had one guest ask for a refund because there was snow in Tahoe, and they stayed for the full time anyway. Another guest wanted a refund…

Tahoe is a tough market. Prices should be way higher for what you get in my opinion. I'm not in Tahoe but I can sleep 16+ people at my place and I have more problems when I have the price lower. I had guests complain once that there were a few things in one of the bedroom closets (still tons of storage for their stuff), some things in a small pile in the garage and some food in the cupboards (usually have ketchup, ho…

Wait, can't you enforce the number of guests with Instant Book?

Re: Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in 2016

#143

Post by jonawesomegreen »

dragonwriter wrote: post #23
kilroy123 wrote: post #15

I'm not surprised to see Airbnb became profitable. They've expanded everywhere. I nomad around and always use Airbnb, I've booked places on several continents. However, I'm definitely feeling the effects of their growing pains. For example, many people have bought places to only rent on Airbnb full-time. Most of these people suck at being an hotelier. It's clear people get lazy and are just trying to make money. Thin…

> Unless, they fix this and get more people to review honestly. I think they're going to run into a lot of problems. I don't airBnB, but a friend who does was recently berated by a host after leaving a 4-star review; that host claimed (don't know how true this is) that many hosts will refuse to rent to you again if you leave anything but a 5-star review. That and other things I've seen and heard about airBnB reviews…

I had the same thing. Stayed at a really disgustingly dirty place. No toilet paper, no bed sheets, no curtains on the windows. Gave it a bad review and had the host rip me apart about it. "What the fuck did you expect? I would feed you grapes?".

Re: Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in 2016

#144

Post by hkmurakami »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #5
alehul wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If investors are enthusiastically in disagreement about the potential of a company (both the buy + sell sides), it's probably better for the company's valuation to stay private. It blocks out any negative opinions' effect that you'd have if public via investors shorting / betting against the company. This probably leads to an overly high valuation it wouldn't hold up to on the stock market, though, (i.e. Uber) so the…

Isn't that bad for employees with stock options though? The market could tell them how much those options are really worth.

Palantir will regularly buy its employees' equity fwiw.

Re: Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in 2016

#145

Post by hkmurakami »

elastic_church wrote: post #115
aanm1988 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah weird how people hold up IPO as a holy grail Because employees actually gain out of it. That's also a benefit as it gives more people financial freedom and they can go off and do their own companies. Instead these people get locked in to AirBnB for years.

Companies always have the option of giving dividends to common stock shareholders, buying out shareholders, simply giving bonuses or any number of things if they didn't continue to reinvest all capital and pursue losses. Private companies even issue bonds on public bond markets, these can be as large or larger than equivalent equity offerings on the stock markets. Don't let the mechanisms pursued by a handful of VC f…

Prime example is Cargill. $100B in revenues, privately held.

https://www.cargill.com/about/financial/credit-rating-inform...

Re: Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in 2016

#146

Post by baus »

Jamsii wrote: post #121
baus wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It goes both ways. I'm an Airbnb host and renter(1). Mostly I have had good experiences, but I have had more problems on the hosting side lately. I take pride in my property and lived there myself for years. But I've gotten guests who nit pick everything and then ask for a refund. I had one guest ask for a refund because there was snow in Tahoe, and they stayed for the full time anyway. Another guest wanted a refund…

Wifi network and password in the Airbnb listing description, is this a normal thing to do?

I had one renter complain that they couldn't get the wifi network and password (and again ask for a refund), so I just gave in and put it in the listing. Airbnb has a way to enter it securely, but most guests never figure it out. Airbnb should probably text the wifi network and password automatically when a property is booked

Update: I'm on phone with AirBNB support about this right now. Frankly their phone support is pretty poor, eventhough I'm a "super host." They can't seem to answer basic questions about how the wifi network and password is provided to guests

Re: Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in 2016

#147

Post by GuiA »

SerpentJoe wrote: post #89
suresk wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is anyone trying to solve this right now? It seems like a really interesting problem that would be really useful to solve. It isn't just online, and it isn't just a technology problem. I recently bought a car and the manufacturer sent me a survey about the process. The salesman made sure, numerous times, to let me know that I'd be getting said survey and that anything less than a 10 meant he failed and that there wou…

Many services have this issue, that perfection is the minimum requirement. I don't understand why, given this, we don't just go to a thumbs up / thumbs down rating system. We have one option that means "fine" and four (or nine) that mean "terrible, and a risk to your business". I know I personally gave plenty of three star reviews on Lyft before I learned better, meaning them as "no complaints". Who knows what happen…

This could be a cultural design thing. A lot of these apps (Airbnb, Lyft, etc) are from the US, where getting full marks in school is a frequent occurence if you study reasonably well.

In France for instance, it's very rare for a student to go above 15/20 or so at the college level (I graduated in the top 10% of my class with a 12/20 average; the top ranked student, whom I was friends with, had a 14/20 average).

But when I graded homework as a graduate student for an american university, the professor told me I was too harsh, and after adjusting my criteria to match what she wanted, I found myself giving many 100/100.

Re: Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in 2016

#148

Post by baus »

exclusiv wrote: post #128
baus wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It goes both ways. I'm an Airbnb host and renter(1). Mostly I have had good experiences, but I have had more problems on the hosting side lately. I take pride in my property and lived there myself for years. But I've gotten guests who nit pick everything and then ask for a refund. I had one guest ask for a refund because there was snow in Tahoe, and they stayed for the full time anyway. Another guest wanted a refund…

Tahoe is a tough market. Prices should be way higher for what you get in my opinion. I'm not in Tahoe but I can sleep 16+ people at my place and I have more problems when I have the price lower. I had guests complain once that there were a few things in one of the bedroom closets (still tons of storage for their stuff), some things in a small pile in the garage and some food in the cupboards (usually have ketchup, ho…

This is changing the subject slightly, but Tahoe, especially S. Tahoe, is a total bargain. There are few destinations which offer what Tahoe does for the price. I will never understand why other alpine destinations can demand higher prices. There is quite a bit of supply in Tahoe though.

I do think people have unrealistic expectations, but my house is pretty damn nice. My cleaners are amazing. I'm pretty happy to stay there myself.

Re: Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in 2016

#149

Post by morvita »

aquadrop wrote: post #42
dragonwriter wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unless, they fix this and get more people to review honestly. I think they're going to run into a lot of problems. I don't airBnB, but a friend who does was recently berated by a host after leaving a 4-star review; that host claimed (don't know how true this is) that many hosts will refuse to rent to you again if you leave anything but a 5-star review. That and other things I've seen and heard about airBnB reviews…

But AirBnB reviews don't work like that. Even though you leave star rating, nobody sees it (I don't know how it looks like on the host side though, as I only used it as a tenant). Only feedback traceable to you is text you write, but you can be honest with stars. And you see compound rating on the property page, which they only show when there's enough reviews (so again, if you left your review first, they can't see…

I have been an Airbnb host for a while and if you follow your reviews closely, you can tell when someone leaves you low star ratings. In the host dashboard, you only see aggregate stars, but it will break it down as x 5-stars, y-4 stars, etc for each category, so if you know that before your last guest left a review you had 20 5-stars and 3 4-stars and now you have 4 4-stars it's pretty easy to figure out where that came from.

Re: Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in 2016

#150

Post by noer »

nradov wrote: post #63
Tloewald wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole system of review curation that infests online markets is a problem waiting to be solved. Right now we basically have to parse reviews on the 4.4-5.0 scale because anything outside that is meaningless. It's amazing to go read a novel rated 3 stars (because it operates outside this loop) and find it transcendently good.

Instead of asking customers to give numeric star ratings, perhaps a better option would be a short list of Yes / No / Unsure questions. Were there clean sheets on the bed? Were there any cockroaches? Did the appliances work? Etc. Such questions are more objective and less prone to inflation.

This is probably a much better way to do it. One of the food delivery company does it this way (I think it's grubhub/seamless). Three questions before you're given an option to review: 1. Was the food on time? 2. Was the order correct? 3. Was the food good? Only then is the person given the option to review.

The problem with star based rating systems is that they're INCREDIBLY subjective. I oftentimes read yelp reviews that are 3 star reviews where the person raves about the restaurant and then complains about a minor issue. I have a similar issue with app store ratings where I've had a rash of people rate one of my apps 1 star with the review text reading "I just downloaded this, I'll raise my review to 5 stars if love this app".

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