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There is an entire blog dedicated to the topic of tech at Airbnb: http://nerds.airbnb.com/ http://nerds.airbnb.com/. Perhaps you will still feel the same after
by dispatcher68 10y ago
There is an entire blog dedicated to the topic of tech at Airbnb: http://nerds.airbnb.com/ http://nerds.airbnb.com/. Perhaps you will still feel the same after reading this?
Peter Thiel's Zero To One described four pillars that were necessary for a monopoly. It appears Airbnb has most if not all of these.
1. Network effects - this is usually more important than proprietary tech. They have this - global network effect. This is not a "retail company" any more than Amazon's 3rd party marketplace or Alibaba's is.
2. Tech - read blog and decide for yourself. It's easy to imagine at sub-scale also being able to build Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. Most of the challenges come at scale (and are protected by #1 above).
3. Brand - the commenters seem to agree they have this.
4. Economies of scale - they have this.
- spaceflunky 10y agoI agree with 1 and 3. 2 and especially 4 don't resonate. Would love to know how you describe 'economies of scale' at Airbnb
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- ethanbond 10y agoWhy does everyone think that a competitor must be able to operate at the scale of Uber/Airbnb the day it's released? How many taxi commissions thought "oh no one can dethrone us, no one has 10,000 cars!"
- dispatcher68 10y agoUber does not have meaningful network effects. Airbnb does. A competitor would need to be more than marginally better to compete subscale, as Airbnb was vs craigslist or original vrbo.
- thesimpsons1022 10y agoBecause I travel to paris one week and new york the other and seattle the other. If the listings aren't at all those places I discard the app and never use it again.