Subject: Airbnb (2011) • Hacker News Board

Re: Subject: Airbnb (2011)

#81

Post by jermaustin1 » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 3:56 PM UTC

briandear wrote: post #67

jermaustin1 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What annoys me about tourists in Edinburgh, is that everyone wants to pile into Old Town, even though it is so small. No one contemplates Leith or Newington. Neither of those places are beyond a short walk (1-2 miles) to city center, also there are more options for food and drink (especially on Leith Walk).

2 miles isn’t a “short walk” in many parts of the year in Scotland.

In most of Scotland, I would agree, but in Edinburgh where the typical low in the dead of winter above freezing, the < 2 miles from Leith to Old Town isn't that bad.

Re: Subject: Airbnb (2011)

#82

Post by rusk » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 4:05 PM UTC

presscast wrote: post #73

rusk wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the UK I never saw a taxi app that wasn't an utter heap of garbage. Hold on now. Hailo was amazing. Pity they broke themselves trying to take on the big apple.

Really? On par with Uber? Because that's the goalpost that's been set, here. Hailo was often fully booked when I tried using it, and I had several previous-day reservations evaporate into thin air. It wasn't (as) reliable. London taxis have always been slightly better than the FR/ES/BG/IT taxis I've taken, but not that much better. And the apps have either gone bust, not worked, or both.

Yeah Hailo worked flawlessly for me here in Dublin. Right up until they started to flail commercially.

Re: Subject: Airbnb (2011)

#83

Post by maxxxxx » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 4:07 PM UTC

krn wrote: post #21

dustingetz wrote: post #19

This is bullshit. I fund my startup by consulting 1-2 months per year at 40k/month. Zero people think it is impressive. But $25k of Obama cereal makes a better story.

2008 Democratic National Convention was 10 years ago. At the time, startups, as we know them today, were a rarity. Funding yourself to start one, even more so. Hacker News itself was only 1 year-old.

" At the time, startups, as we know them today, were a rarity. Funding yourself to start one, even more so. "

Come on! Never heard of the dotcom bubble? It was all about startups.

And people have been self funding businesses throughout history.

Airbnb did what a lot of other people had been doing since eternity. Nothing new.

Re: Subject: Airbnb (2011)

#84

Post by gaius » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 4:14 PM UTC

TheTrotters wrote: post #71

jermaustin1 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if your desire is to live there perpetually for years You mean like 99% of people? When you work in the city, grew up in the city, have met almost everyone you know in the city, to then be forced out of the city because people want to rent their apartments out for 3-10 days at a time instead of 1-3 years means that people who need the stability of a permanent address now have to either shell out much more cash than…

But the solution is simple: build more apartments. There's no reason there shouldn't be enough housing for way, way more people other than that it's the policy of local government and the preference of many voters.

build more apartments. There's no reason there shouldn't be enough housing for way, way more people other than that it's the policy of local government and the preference of many voters.

Where, exactly? Central Park?

Re: Subject: Airbnb (2011)

#85

Post by dionidium » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 4:16 PM UTC

vasilipupkin wrote: post #65

collyw wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure that actually makes things any clearer to me. Is it actually illegal, or is it just "not allowed"? (Is the free beach public?) What would make it "a crime" as opposed to just being "illegal"?

Illegal means against the law or against the rules. A crime is a function of how severe your illegal action is. Put it another way, people think if something is illegal, punishment for that must be a felony or something. But often times, it’s just an infraction so punishment is at most a fine or a minor action like getting kicked off the free beach

> Put it another way, people think if something is illegal, punishment for that must be a felony or something

I can't imagine that anybody thinks that. We're all familiar with parking tickets, for example.

Re: Subject: Airbnb (2011)

#86

Post by Reedx » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 4:17 PM UTC

dsl wrote: post #2

Airbnb, like Uber, took advantage of regulatory inefficiencies instead of market inefficiencies. The model is do something (in the minds of regulators) illegal, quickly enough that you can become large enough to get a seat at the table when the regulations are reworked. The counter example to these companies are the ones that quickly raised capital to dump scooters on public streets before they could be shut down by…

> Airbnb, like Uber, took advantage of regulatory inefficiencies instead of market inefficiencies.

How quickly we forget... There were huge inefficiencies and Uber was an order of magnitude better than what we had.

Getting a taxi was difficult and unreliable. Ask anyone who used to use them in SF. Uber was like magic in comparison.

Re: Subject: Airbnb (2011)

#87

Post by jpeg_hero » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 4:22 PM UTC

IndrekR wrote: post #7

It is interesting to see how PG is selling this to Fred. This is exactly the kind of people you want to work with in a startup. People who believe in you and are not afraid to show it.

Yeah, I don’t know much about PG’s communication style, but in intra-VC communication, this is 100 max over the top support, hair-on-fire. Good for PG, and his words were prescient in ‘09, prescient in ‘11 and still prescient in ‘18. Not many times my you can say that.

Ps funny on the eBay name drop. The original marketplace model, and still doing well, but dot think vc’s reference it as often anymore.

Re: Subject: Airbnb (2011)

#88

Post by Reedx » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 4:26 PM UTC

throwawaymath wrote: post #23

dsl wrote: post #2

Airbnb, like Uber, took advantage of regulatory inefficiencies instead of market inefficiencies. The model is do something (in the minds of regulators) illegal, quickly enough that you can become large enough to get a seat at the table when the regulations are reworked. The counter example to these companies are the ones that quickly raised capital to dump scooters on public streets before they could be shut down by…

Great observation. > The counter example to these companies are the ones that quickly raised capital to dump scooters on public streets before they could be shut down by cities. I live in NYC, and I’m frequently in Westchester (the county immediately north of NYC, for those not familiar with New York). There’s been a large influx of Lime bikes in the past several months. My opinion on Lime - the bike/scooter company…

> but I think the straw that broke the camel’s back was when someone parked a Lime bike directly in the spot I usually place my garbage

Granted that's a problem and hopefully they're working to discourage bad behavior. But traffic and pollution are bigger problems that bikes and scooters help with. Does the fact that they're sometimes misplaced mean it's a net negative?

Re: Subject: Airbnb (2011)

#89

Post by jwin742 » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 4:27 PM UTC

jMyles wrote: post #54

ddoran wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Semantics. I respectfully disagree. Being alive, and living at a place are two completely different things. By your definition, I've lived in 12 countries this year. I haven't.

It's not semantics. It's a simple question: if someone doesn't have a current lease in a particular place, where do they live? Particularly for the purposes of enjoying the privileges that everyone in this thread is claiming they deserve by dint of living in NYC (ie, artificially controlled rent prices such that the rest of us can't utilize the economic opportunities in the city).

Where do you pay your tax to then? That's a reasonable enough definition of where you live.

Re: Subject: Airbnb (2011)

#90

Post by jermaustin1 » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 4:34 PM UTC

TheTrotters wrote: post #71

jermaustin1 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if your desire is to live there perpetually for years You mean like 99% of people? When you work in the city, grew up in the city, have met almost everyone you know in the city, to then be forced out of the city because people want to rent their apartments out for 3-10 days at a time instead of 1-3 years means that people who need the stability of a permanent address now have to either shell out much more cash than…

But the solution is simple: build more apartments. There's no reason there shouldn't be enough housing for way, way more people other than that it's the policy of local government and the preference of many voters.

This is a solution in places like queens, brooklyn and statan island, but manhattan is quite nearly fully developed, and without displacing people to build new high-rises (which kind of exacerbates the issue), there isn't much that can be done.