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This pg quote has an r/LateStageCapitalism vibe to me: "They just arrived back from NYC, and when I asked them what was the most significant thing they'd observed, it was how many of their users actually needed to do these rentals to pay their rents."
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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.
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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?
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That's rewriting history, including a lot of hard work by a lot of people. YC disrupted the model, it didn't start it. PG repeatedly describes YC as a startup in changing how this works, so mistaking their growth with the industry misses what's happening. The dotcom era had incubators through models like "I have access to capital but no one good idea; let me start a bunch and pick which to go". VCs regularly host EIR…
There are no questions about the history. What I am claiming, is that startups became much more widespread in the years since 2005, after the YC model was introduced.
https://www.inc.com/magazine/201505/leigh-buchanan/the-vanis...
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.
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Could you explain the difference to me, as I am clearly in the minority in thinking that the two are synonymous.
Illegal can be things that hasn't yet regulated or made legal. Autonomous driving car, advanced ai even travelling to mars are things that yet not exists, thus are illegal at time they exists. Recent examples are GDPR, where before it isn't regulated to track user information without consent, now being prohibited with clear penalty. Next they should regulate personal assistance like alexa and siri
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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.
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At least in Europe there were apps to call a taxi and sites to book vacation homes before either Uber or AirBnB came over. But sure ruthlessly minimising personnel responsibilities and costs can be another "value".
>At least in Europe there were apps to call a taxi Where? In France the taxis never accepted debit cards (= tax evasion), and generally provided piss-poor service. They've stepped their game up massively since Uber arrived. In the UK I never saw a taxi app that wasn't an utter heap of garbage. Sweeping generalizations about EU countries are almost always wrong or meaningless.
Something I often notice when people complain about AirBNB being a problem in their city- Their city has 'peaked' like a star Quarterback in High school. In my city which is experiencing growth, I find my AirBnB guests are often business travelers who are infulencers in their respected communities. There are some exceptions like college kids on summer vacation trying to hook up away from their parents house- but most…
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…
FWIW, had you made the same comment a year ago, I'd have only seen Uber, not Airbnb, matching precisely the model you describe. The lore was (and perhaps still is) that Airbnb has a platform substantially different & far better than Uber (e.g. http://archive.is/kE5hq). MSM painted Uber as this ultra-aggressive startup in terms of both company culture and taking on regulators; meanwhile Airbnb was just this wholesome startup simply trying to help student's travel on a shoestring budget and helping people pay rent by letting someone sleep on their couch.
Anyway, that was my interpretation back then; but clearly I'm no Paul Graham. It's clear from his blog post that Paul never saw it this way. To him, Airbnb was always destined to be a platform that disrupted the hotel market. Of course if you're going to 'disrupt' the hotel market in any medium-to-large city, that means thousands of residential homes will need to be converted into short-term vacation rentals.
It was either a carefully planned timing, or merely circumstance, but Airbnb has scaled at exactly the right pace to (like you mention) "become large enough to get a seat at the table when the regulations are reworked". And unlike Uber they have powerful/wealthy friends who piggyback on the Airbnb platform. It seems like almost overnight Airbnb went from an airbed in some student's loft to Corporation-Owned-Whole-Home-No-Host-punch-in-a-pin-code-to-open-the-front-door-fully-automated "STRs".
Living in San Diego I couldn't hate it more. After city council passed a regulation to limit Airbnb's to primary residences (which I believe most SD residence were happy about), Airbnb & HomeAway, and other parties formed a coalition, and hired a bunch of people to gather signatures to skirt our city council's ruling and put this action on a ballet as a referendum (http://archive.is/Yf6GP). In theory I'm not opposed to voter referendum; but here is a case where Airbnb is clearly undermining the ability of our elected official's to govern our city. The voted regulations will now be put on hold until 2020; and there will be nothing but carpet-bombing adverts for the next two years brainwashing san diegans. There's no hope.