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I highly doubt this will be happening to the likes of Uber or AirBNB anytime soon, for one Travis Kalanik is one of the brightest guys on the planet and relentl

I highly doubt this will be happening to the likes of Uber or AirBNB anytime soon, for one Travis Kalanik is one of the brightest guys on the planet and relentless in his efforts, much like Jobs in his prime. AirBNB will face more challenges but the amount of monetary funds it collects in transactions and fee's it is collecting will keep it at the top for a long long time. Anytime a company puts money back into the hands of the people, you have a good product. Etsy lost its shit because they decided to start letting every one and their mother sell on its site, and it ruined their core business model, which was selling vintage artisan goods.

ken47 11y ago
"Travis Kalanik is one of the brightest guys on the planet" That is a strong statement. Care to justify?
- puredemo 11y ago
  He resold cereal dammit, he's practically a miracle worker. /s
jsprogrammer 11y ago
AirBNB (and Uber) don't own or control any of the property that they are collecting transactions and fees on. They rely on extraction of value from independent contractors; if a viable alternative exists, those contractors can dump them in seconds (or however long it takes to download the alternative app/website).
- danieltillett 11y ago
  Yes the disruptors are at risk of being disrupted.
- alexhu11 11y ago
  The barriers to entry for any competitors are highly behavioral. Consumers are used to using (and implicitly trusting) AirBnB and Uber. Any new entrants would have to replicate that. This is part of the reason why Jet.com will never beat Amazon.
  - jsprogrammer 11y ago
    Jet.com won't beat Amazon because they are selling a subset of Amazon's products for higher prices with a worse interface.
    - alexhu11 11y ago
      You just pointed out another barrier to entry for Uber and AirBnB. New entrants will probably have less selection and higher cost. This is fatal in a fundamentally commodity business. There will be no competitor to AirBnB or Uber for the foreseeable future.
      - tracker1 11y ago
        Lyft seems to be doing okay, and don't underestimate targeted markets for upstart competition... If you can get most of the BnBs in say Sedona, Prescott and Payson Arizona to use your upstart service, you can grow from there, one targeted market at a time... local presence can be a significant advantage.
        alexhu11 11y ago
        The textbook response would be a price war. Raise prices in uncompetitive cities and lower prices in at risk cities. This is one of the tools Standard Oil used to create its monopoly.
  - tracker1 11y ago
    I remember when Yahoo was a manual index, AltaVista was the best internet search, and Hotmail wasn't a MicroSoft owned company... when most email addresses were truly painful (anyone remember doing internet email via fidonet? compuserve?). Google has now been king for a while, but if someone came out that did things clearly better, people aren't tethered.. even Facebook has its' upstart competition (that they keep buying off). People are less tied to their services than you think.. yeah, plenty of people are still using yahoo mail, and others aol for email even... but few are dialing in and fewer still could remember their icq login if they tried.

ken47 11y ago

"Travis Kalanik is one of the brightest guys on the planet" That is a strong statement. Care to justify?

puredemo 11y ago
He resold cereal dammit, he's practically a miracle worker. /s

jsprogrammer 11y ago

AirBNB (and Uber) don't own or control any of the property that they are collecting transactions and fees on. They rely on extraction of value from independent contractors; if a viable alternative exists, those contractors can dump them in seconds (or however long it takes to download the alternative app/website).

danieltillett 11y ago
Yes the disruptors are at risk of being disrupted.
alexhu11 11y ago
The barriers to entry for any competitors are highly behavioral. Consumers are used to using (and implicitly trusting) AirBnB and Uber. Any new entrants would have to replicate that. This is part of the reason why Jet.com will never beat Amazon.
- jsprogrammer 11y ago
  Jet.com won't beat Amazon because they are selling a subset of Amazon's products for higher prices with a worse interface.
  - alexhu11 11y ago
    You just pointed out another barrier to entry for Uber and AirBnB. New entrants will probably have less selection and higher cost. This is fatal in a fundamentally commodity business. There will be no competitor to AirBnB or Uber for the foreseeable future.
    - tracker1 11y ago
      Lyft seems to be doing okay, and don't underestimate targeted markets for upstart competition... If you can get most of the BnBs in say Sedona, Prescott and Payson Arizona to use your upstart service, you can grow from there, one targeted market at a time... local presence can be a significant advantage.
      - alexhu11 11y ago
        The textbook response would be a price war. Raise prices in uncompetitive cities and lower prices in at risk cities. This is one of the tools Standard Oil used to create its monopoly.
- tracker1 11y ago
  I remember when Yahoo was a manual index, AltaVista was the best internet search, and Hotmail wasn't a MicroSoft owned company... when most email addresses were truly painful (anyone remember doing internet email via fidonet? compuserve?). Google has now been king for a while, but if someone came out that did things clearly better, people aren't tethered.. even Facebook has its' upstart competition (that they keep buying off). People are less tied to their services than you think.. yeah, plenty of people are still using yahoo mail, and others aol for email even... but few are dialing in and fewer still could remember their icq login if they tried.