10 ms·

Open Letter to the Airbnb Community About Building a 21st Century Company

66 points by duck 9y ago

vm 9y ago
This also announces that Ken Chenault, former CEO of American Express, joined their board. What's really interesting is that he also joined the board of Facebook last week [1]. He must be a damn good exec who was recruited left and right during his 37 years at Amex and, now that he's retired, he's going to mentor the top execs at the top companies [2]. Exciting development for both Airbnb and Facebook. [1] https://www.recode.net/2018/1/18/16905386/facebook-ken-chenault-new-board-directors-mark-zuckerberg https://www.recode.net/2018/1/18/16905386/facebook-ken-chena... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/18/business/american-express-chenault-squeri.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/18/business/american-express...
- panarky 9y ago
  Part of designing a 21st-century company is designing a Board of Directors that can help us implement our 21st-century vision ... This is the dinosaur who will transform Airbnb into an "infinite" 21st-century company?? Here's the ridiculous story of how Ken Chenault's old-school ways cost Amex their Costco relationship and chopped their customer base by 10%. https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-how-amex-lost-costco/ https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-how-amex-lost-costco... The Costco guys were tickled by how meticulously Amex choreographed Chenault's movements. Ken Chenault would have an advance team come to our office before he visited. They planned everything — where he would enter the building, the route to the boardroom, where he’d sit at the table. Soon after the breakup with Costco, JetBlue ditched Amex for Barclays and MasterCard. Fidelity may also be thinking about canceling its affinity card.
stcredzero 9y ago
One thing that AirBNB seems to get right, is knowing who its customers are. They have two major categories of customer: Hosts and Guests. (Those have subdivisions as well, which may be quite significant.) Curiously, one of those is effectively the "product" peddled to the other. This model can be generalized across many kinds of gig economy websites. How is it that AirBNB can be so much better at this than other websites with similar models? Is it because the services on offer are that much more complex?
- timewarrior 9y ago
  There are a few reasons why AirBnb is succeeding and many other gig economies are struggling. 1. AirBnb is a global market place. It’s much more difficult to build a global market place and its much easier to defend your moat once you are a global marketplace. Travelers from all over the world want to visit all over the world. There is a chicken and egg problem when you start. This benefit applies to Uber to much lesser degree because they are a city level market place. Most riders ride in their home city majority of their time. 2. Repeat business between travelers and hosts are much lesser compared to other gig economies. While people might get tempted to cut a direct deal with their cleaner or dog walker after a few good experiences, it’s much less likely to happen with AirBnb. Same benefits applies to Uber.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    Re: 1. Also, at least the legitimate parts of AirBnB's business (i.e. not the condo sublets that break lease agreements or homeowner's association rules), are a pretty well-established business. Low-touch B&Bs, including without the breakfasts, is a thing. So are vacation home rentals. There wasn't a very good company to do all this through in anything like a consolidated way before. There were some vacation rental companies but none were very good. My parents rented out their vacation home in Mexico for many years and would absolutely have used AirBnB had it existed at the time.
marenkay 9y ago
Interesting how serving their customers is not part of the defining characteristics. o_O
- pgodzin 9y ago
  > This means that we must have the best interest of three stakeholders in mind: Airbnb the company (employees and shareholders), Airbnb the community (guests and hosts) and the world outside of Airbnb.
imartin2k 9y ago
There are good things in there, and then there is this: “Where every city is a village, every block a community, and every kitchen table a conversation. ” Didn’t he get the memo that many people explicitly want to be in cities for the very reason that they are disturbed by the social dynamics of villages (everyone knows everyone and is involved in everyone’s business)? I love Airbnb but I would hate if every city becomes a village. Also, this talk about building an infinite company. I’d argue that in the current public debate about tech’s power, this actually can sound a bit threatening.
- pgodzin 9y ago
  At the same time, many people in cities are disillusioned with the dynamics of cities (everyone is in a rush to get somewhere and there is little close-knit community). Maybe the implication is that everyone should have the option for either if they want it.
- TallGuyShort 9y ago
  Not sure what memo you're referring to - I generally hear people who like big cities reference the ability to walk to a lot of things you can do.
  - matte_black 9y ago
    This has been my impression as well. If this advantage were removed there’d be little appeal to living in a city.
  - clw8 9y ago
    That's why I moved to Chicago, and staying at Airbnbs while looking for an apartment was fantastic. It was hostel style so while most people were tourists, I also met friends who were in the same position as me.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    The "ability to walk to a lot of things you can do" implies your agency. You have lot of options, but you're not automatically attached to anything; you can choose what to get involved in. Whereas in villages, "everyone knows everyone and is involved in everyone’s business"; you're attached to everything whether you like it or not, with all the social consequences coming from attachment.
draw_down 9y ago
CEOs, man. Jeez.
jbob2000 9y ago
Lots of platitudes in there, but not much substance. How about you tell me how Airbnb is contributing to vacancies in crowded real estate markets? Or what you are doing about cities introducing regulations that will make Airbnb essentially the same as a hotel? Why are condos starting to ban Airbnb rentals? It kind of feels like Airbnb knows they are on shaky ground and this memo is step 1 of reinventing themselves to prevent their collapse.
- bdamm 9y ago
  Why should AirBNB take on ownership of the problem of vacancies in crowded real estate markets? AirBNB is, if anything, helping this problem in many cases by allowing people to compensate for the expense of living in a crowded real estate market by renting out rooms. Also, AirBNB isn't the only game in town any more and they need to compete with the likes of Vacasa among others. The regulation question is a real issue for AirBNB and I agree that they ought to be telling their shareholders and their hosts what their plan is.
  - vkou 9y ago
    > Why should AirBNB take on ownership of the problem of vacancies in crowded real estate markets? Because their business actively contributes to these shortages, and the associated human suffering... While evading hospitality taxes. > AirBNB is, if anything, helping this problem in many cases by allowing people to compensate for the expense of living in a crowded real estate market by renting out rooms That's a minority use case. More commonly, landlords take rentals off the market, to let out on AirBnB.
    - Consultant32452 9y ago
      >Because their business actively contributes to these shortages NIMBY regulators are the ONLY significant contributor to long term shortages in affordable housing. In other words, the local voters are the ones responsible for their own pain.
      - 9y ago
Invictus0 9y ago
This letter sucks. Why would any host or guest take a minute out of their day to read this corporate bullshit? Believe it or not, Brian, I don't care about your journey or your company or your management philosophy, I just want a cheap room.
- djsumdog 9y ago
  I'd like a cheap room that doesn't cut into people being able to get affordable apartments. They need to address the issues around people leaving flats empty after people leave and turning them into permanent AirBNBs instead of renting out room to people who actually live there. If you really want to build community and meet people, you should try Couch Surfers. It's part of the real sharing economy, not the bullshit sharing economy.
  - Consultant32452 9y ago
    >They need to address the issues If by "they" you mean NIMBY regulators who won't allow more housing to be built, then we agree. This is not AirBnB's fault or responsibility.
    - wankerrific 9y ago
      Didn't Airbnb just have something like 5000 units yanked off their site where the owners couldn't prove they were legit "sharing"? Seems like it's their issue now.
      - Consultant32452 9y ago
        As of July 2016 Bloomberg estimated that AirBnB had 2.3 million listings[1]. At just 0.2% of their entire listing base, culling 5k bad ones from time to time seems pretty reasonable. But more to the point, this was the original comment I'm responding to: >They need to address the issues around people leaving flats empty after people leave and turning them into permanent AirBNBs instead of renting out room to people who actually live there. If the NIMBYs weren't allowed to have a strangle-hold on supply, then it wouldn't be a problem for the wider market if some property owners turn their units into AirBnBs. [1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-11/airbnb-faces-growing-pains-as-it-passes-100-million-users https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-11/airbnb-fa...
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
hora 9y ago
"This means that we must have the best interest of three stakeholders in mind: Airbnb the company (employees and shareholders), Airbnb the community (guests and hosts) and the world outside of Airbnb." Pick one.
monkeyfacebag 9y ago
> I was thinking about the next ten years of Airbnb when I received a phone call I’ll never forget. A close advisor told me that now was the time to “institutionalize your intentions so that even as you grow, you can minimize what conflicts with your vision.” "I'll never forget that time my advisor told me to institutionalize my intentions to minimize conflicts," he said, wiping a single tear from his eye.
- dictum 9y ago
  He must be a relative of my late friend, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7387402 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7387402
mitko 9y ago
This seems really inspired by finite/infinite game talk by Simon Sinek: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bFs6ZiynSU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bFs6ZiynSU
- kitotik 9y ago
  Absolutely. As he mentions in the letter, they are friends. I’m sure he’s knee deep in most of Sineks’ philosophy on orginzations and products.
dawhizkid 9y ago
I feel like I'm supposed to be somewhat embarrassed to admit, as someone working in tech, that I prefer hotels to Airbnb. Unless hotels are completely booked, overly expensive, or it's a location with few hotels to begin with, I highly value the consistency and reliability of being able to check-in at anytime, knowing there's a baseline of security that a hotel offers, having access to basic amenities like a gym, having access to generally English-speaking staff if it's international, and having flexible cancellation policies depending on the rate. With Airbnb, you really have no idea what you're going to get until you get there. The platform skews heavily in favor of hosts, and most listings I see have stricter cancellation policies than your average hotel and zero recourse if the host decides they want to cancel on you last minute.
- baby 9y ago
  > I prefer hotels to Airbnb I really don't get this kind of opinion, just because it is so binary. Hotels are great when you need to quickly check-in and check-out, although the experience vary grandly and they can get pretty bad and pretty expensive. On the other hand if I want to feel "at home", if I want something cheaper, if I want a kitchen and if I want something well located. Airbnb is always the answer. There's something really impersonal about staying in a hotel that you don't get with an Airbnb (although some airbnbs are pretty bad as well). I remember almost all the airbnbs I've stayed at. I usually forget about how a hotel room looks a few days after checking out. Try to think about this, you'll be surprised ;)
  - ghaff 9y ago
    I'm the same way as the parent. Especially traveling on business, I want something straightforward and reliable even if my flight is delayed. Especially outside of cities on vacation, I may well stay in "official" B&Bs (which are increasingly listed on Airbnb although I almost always book direct) assuming it's not somewhere like a national park where I likely don't have that option.
    - Consultant32452 9y ago
      I can't imagine a scenario in which I'd prefer an AirBnB for business travel. But here's a scenario that AirBnB was a perfect fit. My daughter is a cheerleader and we sometimes have traveling competitions. There are some families on her team which we're friends with. Rather than everyone getting a hotel room we rented an entire house on AirBnB. Each family got their own room, the kids got to enjoy being together, and we had a default location to just waste time watching TV or whatever all together between competition events. We ended up cooking out at our AirBnB location. It was really great for this more casual travel experience.
noobermin 9y ago
I don't get it, it's far too abstract to me. A company's goal is to fulfill its vision? It really doesn't help unless they identify what that vision is. And identifying who the stakeholders are is of course an important step but it doesn't illuminate anything unless we know what they intend.
Delta0 9y ago
I don't think that Airbnb is really giving back to the community: they might IPO this year or the next and most of the value created will go to VCs, founders and employees, while guests and hosts still pay up to 20% fees. That's why I've built CryptoCribs (https://www.cryptocribs.com https://www.cryptocribs.com) to enable repeat users to share their homes without paying a middleman
- Tuxer 9y ago
  Why does everything crypto related feel the need to create a whitepaper following scientific conventions, even when there is nothing scientific about it...
  - Delta0 9y ago
    i agree, i actually wrote it to make fun of the whitepaper craze. if you look at it, the abstract is basically an adaption of the Bitcoin whitepaper
  - spookthesunset 9y ago
    > Why does everything crypto related feel the need to create a whitepaper following scientific conventions, even when there is nothing scientific about it... That is how you bamboozle all the rubes into buying your worthless garbage. If it sounds all high tech and futuristic, it has to be awesome, right? See also: Ethereum and all it's weird futuristic terminology like "gas" and stuff...
misterbowfinger 9y ago
> Infinite time horizon I get what he's going for here, but this phrasing just sounds too TED-talk-y for me. I also don't get what they'd change as a result, but I guess that's TBD.
Animats 9y ago
Imagine a future where there's one big landlord that owns all residential real estate. Some smaller cities already come close. Up next, the merger of WeWork and AirBnB?
- chii 9y ago
  > one big landlord that owns all residential real estate. AKA, the gov't.
rsp1984 9y ago
Being an infinite company is an idea that my friend, author Simon Sinek, has been discussing with me. Simon explained that a company’s purpose is to advance its vision, and since a vision is a mountaintop you never quite get to, you should have an infinite time horizon. But many companies are designed to be finite. Finite companies are focused on beating their competitors and appeasing short-term interests. But business is not finite. I love AirBnb and I hate being negative about Brian's post but I stopped reading there. Perhaps this is AirBnb's reality but it certainly isn't the reality for 99.999% of other companies, who aren't dwelling in unicorn land. Companies don't think finite because it's fun, but because they have to. Because there are bills and salaries to pay and shareholders to satisfy. Because there are people who expect a return on their investment in a finite time, because their lives are finite and because their kids will grow up a finite time before they enter college. Don't get me wrong, as a founder there's not much I despise more than short-term thinking, but if a strategy can't work within a time frame of, say, a couple years it's kinda worthless. It's hard enough to plan and predict 2 years into the future and god knows what's 5 years from today. Why be concerned with infinity?
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  Yeah, this sounds weird - especially from a VC-funded company! One can hardly imagine a better way of having myopic perspective, of being forced to optimize for short-term, than taking regular VC funding. Because, as you've said, "there are people who expect a return on their investment in a finite time".
whoisjuan 9y ago
This reads like "we are not going public anytime soon"...

66 points by duck 9y ago

vm 9y ago

This also announces that Ken Chenault, former CEO of American Express, joined their board. What's really interesting is that he also joined the board of Facebook last week [1]. He must be a damn good exec who was recruited left and right during his 37 years at Amex and, now that he's retired, he's going to mentor the top execs at the top companies [2]. Exciting development for both Airbnb and Facebook. [1] https://www.recode.net/2018/1/18/16905386/facebook-ken-chenault-new-board-directors-mark-zuckerberg https://www.recode.net/2018/1/18/16905386/facebook-ken-chena... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/18/business/american-express-chenault-squeri.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/18/business/american-express...

panarky 9y ago
Part of designing a 21st-century company is designing a Board of Directors that can help us implement our 21st-century vision ... This is the dinosaur who will transform Airbnb into an "infinite" 21st-century company?? Here's the ridiculous story of how Ken Chenault's old-school ways cost Amex their Costco relationship and chopped their customer base by 10%. https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-how-amex-lost-costco/ https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-how-amex-lost-costco... The Costco guys were tickled by how meticulously Amex choreographed Chenault's movements. Ken Chenault would have an advance team come to our office before he visited. They planned everything — where he would enter the building, the route to the boardroom, where he’d sit at the table. Soon after the breakup with Costco, JetBlue ditched Amex for Barclays and MasterCard. Fidelity may also be thinking about canceling its affinity card.

stcredzero 9y ago

One thing that AirBNB seems to get right, is knowing who its customers are. They have two major categories of customer: Hosts and Guests. (Those have subdivisions as well, which may be quite significant.) Curiously, one of those is effectively the "product" peddled to the other. This model can be generalized across many kinds of gig economy websites. How is it that AirBNB can be so much better at this than other websites with similar models? Is it because the services on offer are that much more complex?

timewarrior 9y ago
There are a few reasons why AirBnb is succeeding and many other gig economies are struggling. 1. AirBnb is a global market place. It’s much more difficult to build a global market place and its much easier to defend your moat once you are a global marketplace. Travelers from all over the world want to visit all over the world. There is a chicken and egg problem when you start. This benefit applies to Uber to much lesser degree because they are a city level market place. Most riders ride in their home city majority of their time. 2. Repeat business between travelers and hosts are much lesser compared to other gig economies. While people might get tempted to cut a direct deal with their cleaner or dog walker after a few good experiences, it’s much less likely to happen with AirBnb. Same benefits applies to Uber.
- ghaff 9y ago
  Re: 1. Also, at least the legitimate parts of AirBnB's business (i.e. not the condo sublets that break lease agreements or homeowner's association rules), are a pretty well-established business. Low-touch B&Bs, including without the breakfasts, is a thing. So are vacation home rentals. There wasn't a very good company to do all this through in anything like a consolidated way before. There were some vacation rental companies but none were very good. My parents rented out their vacation home in Mexico for many years and would absolutely have used AirBnB had it existed at the time.

marenkay 9y ago

Interesting how serving their customers is not part of the defining characteristics. o_O

pgodzin 9y ago
> This means that we must have the best interest of three stakeholders in mind: Airbnb the company (employees and shareholders), Airbnb the community (guests and hosts) and the world outside of Airbnb.

imartin2k 9y ago

There are good things in there, and then there is this: “Where every city is a village, every block a community, and every kitchen table a conversation. ” Didn’t he get the memo that many people explicitly want to be in cities for the very reason that they are disturbed by the social dynamics of villages (everyone knows everyone and is involved in everyone’s business)? I love Airbnb but I would hate if every city becomes a village. Also, this talk about building an infinite company. I’d argue that in the current public debate about tech’s power, this actually can sound a bit threatening.

pgodzin 9y ago
At the same time, many people in cities are disillusioned with the dynamics of cities (everyone is in a rush to get somewhere and there is little close-knit community). Maybe the implication is that everyone should have the option for either if they want it.
TallGuyShort 9y ago
Not sure what memo you're referring to - I generally hear people who like big cities reference the ability to walk to a lot of things you can do.
- matte_black 9y ago
  This has been my impression as well. If this advantage were removed there’d be little appeal to living in a city.
- clw8 9y ago
  That's why I moved to Chicago, and staying at Airbnbs while looking for an apartment was fantastic. It was hostel style so while most people were tourists, I also met friends who were in the same position as me.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  The "ability to walk to a lot of things you can do" implies your agency. You have lot of options, but you're not automatically attached to anything; you can choose what to get involved in. Whereas in villages, "everyone knows everyone and is involved in everyone’s business"; you're attached to everything whether you like it or not, with all the social consequences coming from attachment.

draw_down 9y ago

CEOs, man. Jeez.

jbob2000 9y ago

Lots of platitudes in there, but not much substance. How about you tell me how Airbnb is contributing to vacancies in crowded real estate markets? Or what you are doing about cities introducing regulations that will make Airbnb essentially the same as a hotel? Why are condos starting to ban Airbnb rentals? It kind of feels like Airbnb knows they are on shaky ground and this memo is step 1 of reinventing themselves to prevent their collapse.

bdamm 9y ago
Why should AirBNB take on ownership of the problem of vacancies in crowded real estate markets? AirBNB is, if anything, helping this problem in many cases by allowing people to compensate for the expense of living in a crowded real estate market by renting out rooms. Also, AirBNB isn't the only game in town any more and they need to compete with the likes of Vacasa among others. The regulation question is a real issue for AirBNB and I agree that they ought to be telling their shareholders and their hosts what their plan is.
- vkou 9y ago
  > Why should AirBNB take on ownership of the problem of vacancies in crowded real estate markets? Because their business actively contributes to these shortages, and the associated human suffering... While evading hospitality taxes. > AirBNB is, if anything, helping this problem in many cases by allowing people to compensate for the expense of living in a crowded real estate market by renting out rooms That's a minority use case. More commonly, landlords take rentals off the market, to let out on AirBnB.
  - Consultant32452 9y ago
    >Because their business actively contributes to these shortages NIMBY regulators are the ONLY significant contributor to long term shortages in affordable housing. In other words, the local voters are the ones responsible for their own pain.
    - 9y ago

Invictus0 9y ago

This letter sucks. Why would any host or guest take a minute out of their day to read this corporate bullshit? Believe it or not, Brian, I don't care about your journey or your company or your management philosophy, I just want a cheap room.

djsumdog 9y ago
I'd like a cheap room that doesn't cut into people being able to get affordable apartments. They need to address the issues around people leaving flats empty after people leave and turning them into permanent AirBNBs instead of renting out room to people who actually live there. If you really want to build community and meet people, you should try Couch Surfers. It's part of the real sharing economy, not the bullshit sharing economy.
- Consultant32452 9y ago
  >They need to address the issues If by "they" you mean NIMBY regulators who won't allow more housing to be built, then we agree. This is not AirBnB's fault or responsibility.
  - wankerrific 9y ago
    Didn't Airbnb just have something like 5000 units yanked off their site where the owners couldn't prove they were legit "sharing"? Seems like it's their issue now.
    - Consultant32452 9y ago
      As of July 2016 Bloomberg estimated that AirBnB had 2.3 million listings[1]. At just 0.2% of their entire listing base, culling 5k bad ones from time to time seems pretty reasonable. But more to the point, this was the original comment I'm responding to: >They need to address the issues around people leaving flats empty after people leave and turning them into permanent AirBNBs instead of renting out room to people who actually live there. If the NIMBYs weren't allowed to have a strangle-hold on supply, then it wouldn't be a problem for the wider market if some property owners turn their units into AirBnBs. [1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-11/airbnb-faces-growing-pains-as-it-passes-100-million-users https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-11/airbnb-fa...

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

hora 9y ago

"This means that we must have the best interest of three stakeholders in mind: Airbnb the company (employees and shareholders), Airbnb the community (guests and hosts) and the world outside of Airbnb." Pick one.

monkeyfacebag 9y ago

> I was thinking about the next ten years of Airbnb when I received a phone call I’ll never forget. A close advisor told me that now was the time to “institutionalize your intentions so that even as you grow, you can minimize what conflicts with your vision.” "I'll never forget that time my advisor told me to institutionalize my intentions to minimize conflicts," he said, wiping a single tear from his eye.

dictum 9y ago
He must be a relative of my late friend, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7387402 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7387402

mitko 9y ago

This seems really inspired by finite/infinite game talk by Simon Sinek: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bFs6ZiynSU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bFs6ZiynSU

kitotik 9y ago
Absolutely. As he mentions in the letter, they are friends. I’m sure he’s knee deep in most of Sineks’ philosophy on orginzations and products.

dawhizkid 9y ago

I feel like I'm supposed to be somewhat embarrassed to admit, as someone working in tech, that I prefer hotels to Airbnb. Unless hotels are completely booked, overly expensive, or it's a location with few hotels to begin with, I highly value the consistency and reliability of being able to check-in at anytime, knowing there's a baseline of security that a hotel offers, having access to basic amenities like a gym, having access to generally English-speaking staff if it's international, and having flexible cancellation policies depending on the rate. With Airbnb, you really have no idea what you're going to get until you get there. The platform skews heavily in favor of hosts, and most listings I see have stricter cancellation policies than your average hotel and zero recourse if the host decides they want to cancel on you last minute.

baby 9y ago
> I prefer hotels to Airbnb I really don't get this kind of opinion, just because it is so binary. Hotels are great when you need to quickly check-in and check-out, although the experience vary grandly and they can get pretty bad and pretty expensive. On the other hand if I want to feel "at home", if I want something cheaper, if I want a kitchen and if I want something well located. Airbnb is always the answer. There's something really impersonal about staying in a hotel that you don't get with an Airbnb (although some airbnbs are pretty bad as well). I remember almost all the airbnbs I've stayed at. I usually forget about how a hotel room looks a few days after checking out. Try to think about this, you'll be surprised ;)
- ghaff 9y ago
  I'm the same way as the parent. Especially traveling on business, I want something straightforward and reliable even if my flight is delayed. Especially outside of cities on vacation, I may well stay in "official" B&Bs (which are increasingly listed on Airbnb although I almost always book direct) assuming it's not somewhere like a national park where I likely don't have that option.
  - Consultant32452 9y ago
    I can't imagine a scenario in which I'd prefer an AirBnB for business travel. But here's a scenario that AirBnB was a perfect fit. My daughter is a cheerleader and we sometimes have traveling competitions. There are some families on her team which we're friends with. Rather than everyone getting a hotel room we rented an entire house on AirBnB. Each family got their own room, the kids got to enjoy being together, and we had a default location to just waste time watching TV or whatever all together between competition events. We ended up cooking out at our AirBnB location. It was really great for this more casual travel experience.

noobermin 9y ago

I don't get it, it's far too abstract to me. A company's goal is to fulfill its vision? It really doesn't help unless they identify what that vision is. And identifying who the stakeholders are is of course an important step but it doesn't illuminate anything unless we know what they intend.

Delta0 9y ago

I don't think that Airbnb is really giving back to the community: they might IPO this year or the next and most of the value created will go to VCs, founders and employees, while guests and hosts still pay up to 20% fees. That's why I've built CryptoCribs (https://www.cryptocribs.com https://www.cryptocribs.com) to enable repeat users to share their homes without paying a middleman

Tuxer 9y ago
Why does everything crypto related feel the need to create a whitepaper following scientific conventions, even when there is nothing scientific about it...
- Delta0 9y ago
  i agree, i actually wrote it to make fun of the whitepaper craze. if you look at it, the abstract is basically an adaption of the Bitcoin whitepaper
- spookthesunset 9y ago
  > Why does everything crypto related feel the need to create a whitepaper following scientific conventions, even when there is nothing scientific about it... That is how you bamboozle all the rubes into buying your worthless garbage. If it sounds all high tech and futuristic, it has to be awesome, right? See also: Ethereum and all it's weird futuristic terminology like "gas" and stuff...

misterbowfinger 9y ago

> Infinite time horizon I get what he's going for here, but this phrasing just sounds too TED-talk-y for me. I also don't get what they'd change as a result, but I guess that's TBD.

Animats 9y ago

Imagine a future where there's one big landlord that owns all residential real estate. Some smaller cities already come close. Up next, the merger of WeWork and AirBnB?

chii 9y ago
> one big landlord that owns all residential real estate. AKA, the gov't.

rsp1984 9y ago

Being an infinite company is an idea that my friend, author Simon Sinek, has been discussing with me. Simon explained that a company’s purpose is to advance its vision, and since a vision is a mountaintop you never quite get to, you should have an infinite time horizon. But many companies are designed to be finite. Finite companies are focused on beating their competitors and appeasing short-term interests. But business is not finite. I love AirBnb and I hate being negative about Brian's post but I stopped reading there. Perhaps this is AirBnb's reality but it certainly isn't the reality for 99.999% of other companies, who aren't dwelling in unicorn land. Companies don't think finite because it's fun, but because they have to. Because there are bills and salaries to pay and shareholders to satisfy. Because there are people who expect a return on their investment in a finite time, because their lives are finite and because their kids will grow up a finite time before they enter college. Don't get me wrong, as a founder there's not much I despise more than short-term thinking, but if a strategy can't work within a time frame of, say, a couple years it's kinda worthless. It's hard enough to plan and predict 2 years into the future and god knows what's 5 years from today. Why be concerned with infinity?

TeMPOraL 9y ago
Yeah, this sounds weird - especially from a VC-funded company! One can hardly imagine a better way of having myopic perspective, of being forced to optimize for short-term, than taking regular VC funding. Because, as you've said, "there are people who expect a return on their investment in a finite time".

whoisjuan 9y ago

This reads like "we are not going public anytime soon"...