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Airbnb finalizes deal to buy social payments startups Tilt
- pbreit 10y agoNot super surprising. Tilt scaled up its burn way before nailing a big market.
- EGreg 10y agoWhat exactly are Tilt's plans ultimately?
- stale2002 10y agoTo power all informal, friendly, crowdfunding I guess?
- 100k 10y ago> Many of Tilt’s San Francisco employees including CEO James Beshara were asked to stay on board, but most of the remote team was not. Bummer for the remote employees. :(
- kentf 10y agoI am one of those remote employees :) Luckily we had a stellar remote team, and most of our growth was coming from our international markets. Anyone would be lucky to have one of them if they are still available.
- krashidov 10y agoI think this could be powerful in the hands of Airbnb. This takes a lot of risk away from someone who wants to take the initiative and rent out a 20 person villa with their friends only to see half of them flake out, and now that person would be stuck with the bill. I wonder if they will integrate it directly with AirBNB or keep it as a standalone.
- puranjay 10y agoHere's what would be great: 1. Person A takes the initiative and books an Airbnb 2. Airbnb gives him a link to a landing page. 3. On this page, his friends can 'opt-in' to the vacation. When they opt-in, the cost gets split. Say, if the rent/night is $200 and 3 people opt-in, the cost would be $50 each (including person A). 4. Each person who opts in gets charged for his share. 5. Airbnb can also promote other services on this custom landing page such as guided tours. Person A doesn't have to worry about getting the 'yes' from his friends; if you've opted in, you're coming.
- cpcat 10y agoWhy hasn't AirBnB, CouchSurfing, or similar companies started disrupting the global shipping business yet by using their users as shippers. They don't even provide an API for building such apps. It's a huge opportunity i think.
- myroon5 10y agoNot one of these companies mentioned, but a company called Roadie is trying this idea.
- cpcat 10y agoRoadie still has to build the network, and it doesn't seem to be cross-continent. I'm talking about international shipping. It makes more sense for those companies because they already have a huge network.
- patio11 10y agoWhat type of package is small enough to fit in someone's luggage, light enough to not cost extra baggage allowance, tolerates non-delivery well enough to lose 10% of shipments to flaking non-professional couriers, and is not well-served by UPS, FedEx, or airmail, and cannot be transported at rock-bottom costs with mild latency via a shipping container? I have an answer to this question: illegal drugs. I don't have a second answer to this question. This makes me think that you'd have difficulty finding 1,000 of legal packages to run through a proof of concept, to say nothing of scaling to the millions you need to have a viable logistics business.
- cpcat 10y agoHow about legal drugs, Pharmaceutical products, etc. I do not know a single person who doesn't ship items with friends. It's not a new idea i'm proposing, but a way for non friends to make money, and for it to be more often. When Uber first came out i thought it won't work because of all the kidnappings and robberies that would happen. I wonder if you have the same skepticism about travellers becoming carriers. Edit: not disagreeing, it's a totally valid reason.
- dhruvrrp 10y agoFrom tilt's homepage, it seems like they are a mash up of venmo, gofundme and craigslist(?). Is there a particular direction they are headed for or are they just throwing stuff at the wall and waiting for something to stick? Some comments point out that it would make group payments for Airbnb bookings a lot easier which seems fine. But is that problem worth spending $12 mil in cash + tens of millions in employee retention packages?
- pyromine 10y agoLast I heard of Tilt it was mostly a bunch of people using it to fund large scale parties. Enough people committed, and then boom yup we have the money we'll do it.
- freddyc 10y agoI think they started their life as a crowdfunding platform but then pivoted to focus on payments. I remember seeing their logo on the ESPN fantasy football site a year or so ago, so I assume they struck a partnership deal for leagues to collect their dues. As someone else has suggested above, the appeal to AirBnB is probably acquiring the tech to make it easier for large groups to split costs.
- jwent88 10y agoI was one of those remote employees that got laid off. I’m kicking off the job search (non-engineering), let me know if anyone knows of anything interesting in Austin or remote -- specifically in account management, customer/partner success etc!
- lukasm 10y agoThis may help you https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job
- amasad 10y agoI remember learning about them from a tweet from pg about them saying they're growing 41% month over month. https://twitter.com/paulg/status/712020590840778752 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/712020590840778752 I wonder what happened.
- HammadB 10y agothis might be purely anecdotal, but seeing that the quote is about college campuses: a lot of people I know in college downloaded the app and never used it
- nikanj 10y agoThis is what you get when you have a "show us you installed our app and we'll give you a T-shirt/coffee/whatnot" tent
- mildbow 10y agoThis is one of the benefits of being a founder with YC/well-connected VCs. Even if you burn though millions without figuring out a market, you will land on your feet (if you are on the executive team). Your employees? Not so much. My words may sound negative, but my point is: most people who are working at startups should seriously consider starting one instead.
- brogrammernot 10y ago*should start one or join a late stage startup who is still offering equity N=1, but a friend has done this twice as a product manager with joining late stage startups, getting a decent amount of equity/stock and then the company has IPO'd. I agree with your point though, the risk/reward for most early employees who are not part of the founding team is not worth it. You'll work just as hard as the founders with a fraction of a fraction of the payout compared to the founders
- thecopy 10y agoWe have a system like this in Sweden, it is called Swish and works wonderful. The way you recieve money is my connecting your mobile phone number to the app and connect it to one of your back accounts in your banks web interface. Then to send money to me you enter my phone number and "swish" the money and you will have it on your bank account within seconds.
- vertex-four 10y agoThe UK has this as well, it's called Paym here. Mind, bank transactions through Faster Payments are also almost always instant, so it's just a convenience feature, nothing majorly new. In the US, inter-bank transfers are not instant at all, so these middleman services provide direct benefits.