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> But something surprising happened: they enjoyed having those first three guests staying with them. And the guests enjoyed it too. Both they and the guests had

> But something surprising happened: they enjoyed having those first three guests staying with them. And the guests enjoyed it too. Both they and the guests had done it because they were in a sense forced to, and yet they’d all had a great experience… That experience was why the Airbnbs didn’t give up. It seems safe to say that the majority of Airbnb use now is not a delightful experience of being hosted in someone else's home, but whole-apartment/house rentals or other circumstances with not much interaction between host and guest, feeling very business-like. No? I don't it's common to especially enjoy it as an experience anymore, it's just a way to make money or a way to find a nice place to stay at a good price. If that delightful hosting experience is what inspired them to keep going... it's still not what the company mostly ended up providing to the world. If we were to weigh the pro- and anti-social aspects of airbnb, that pleasant human relationship between host and guest would barely weigh on the scale, because it's mostly not what happens there anymore. The founders don't seem that concerned about that though, do they? So what do we take from all that? It seems odd to me to highlight that aspect of the founders initial motivation without even mentioning whether that's what the company actually does now.

gowld 6y ago
That's the retconned origin story. From the start they were talking about replacing Marriott; that was their pitch to investors.
- jrochkind1 6y ago
  Well, that would be even worse, as far as why Paul Graham chooses to tell the story this way, even make it the center of the story. I guess that's how he remembers it. Either way, it's not what it is now, and he's choosing not to mention that, while leaving it at the center of the story...
gamblor956 6y ago
AirBnB was always a regulatory arbitrage play.
- oblio 6y ago
  Or in layman's terms: find a legal grey area and become a billionaire before it becomes illegal. Was it Ford that said: don't ask me how I made my first million?
  - wolco2 6y ago
    What did Ford do?
    - oblio 6y ago
      Don't ask me, ask Ford! :-p
  - gamblor956 6y ago
    What AirBnb did was not find a grey area; unregistered bnb's were already illegal at the time. They simply relied on their hosts facing the primary brunt of the legal and fiscal penalties.
heavyset_go 6y ago
Before the pandemic, Manhattan was filled with apartments that had every room turned into bedrooms that were rented out on AirBnB and that violated fire code. Now cities are filled with literal flophouses.
- Noumenon72 6y ago
  What do you mean? How has the pandemic created literal flophouses, "a cheap hotel or rooming house"?
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    That was poor wording on my part. I put the "before the pandemic" in as a disclaimer, because I haven't looked at the Manhattan housing market since the pandemic began.
    - Noumenon72 6y ago
      Thanks, I get it now.
- Siira 6y ago
  Perhaps this shows that the fire code was not the best example of assessing upsides versus downsides.
crazygringo 6y ago
It doesn't matter if the "majority of Airbnb use now" is business-like. That still enables the personal-experience ones to exist -- and there are tons of them. One doesn't negate the other. A supermarket can sell conventional and organic produce at the same time. Travelers and hosts have different tastes. Why wouldn't you cater to a broad range?
- JCharante 6y ago
  To truly cater to the broad range, they should make it easier to filter out slumlords with a toggle to find listings that retain the classic feeling, so that the people who prefer a hotel feeling but with less regulations can also filter out personalized experiences.
- mrpopo 6y ago
  There was couch surfing for the "personal experience". AirBnB really just added money to the mix. It didn't enable it.
- jrochkind1 6y ago
  If you say you started a grocery store because you wanted to sell organic food and help people buy organic food, so you are very pleased with how it's went since now 3% of the food you sell is organic, I'm going to wonder about your story, or your evaluation of success. If you are making lots and lots of money selling 3% organic food, but everyone keeps talking about the organic food, I'm going to wonder if you switched to prioritizing making lots and lots of money instead of selling organic food (which you are allowed to do, nobody's going to stop you), and if the organic food is just a story, and if maybe we should stop telling that story like that, and at any rate when telling the history of your endeavor it seems worth mentioning.
  - crazygringo 6y ago
    But that's actually super common. Look at Dr. Bronners soap -- it was for spreading religion. Turned out the soap was more popular than the religious message. But every bar and bottle is still chock-full of the religious stuff. Or how people start movie theaters to show movies they love, but that's not profitable, which is why they have overpriced concession stands that actually make the entirety of the money. If someone wants to bring organic food to a town, but the only way that's a sustainable business is to make it a small area of a large conventional supermarket... that's entirely normal. I don't know why anyone would wonder about it at all?
ryanSrich 6y ago
Ive used AirBnB in multiple countries. The disconnect between guest and host exists in many places, but it's especially true in the US. However, several of my trips to Japan have produced meaningful long term relationships with hosts. It really is dependent on the country and what you're looking for.
- iratewizard 6y ago
  I have multiple vacation rentals and use several sites including AirBNB to list them. I've also spent a month in Japan traveling and gotten to know hosts who were on AirBNB. One host we talked deeply with after she lost all of her other bookings from a massive typhoon. The problems she has with guests and the problems Japanese people face as a country are very different. She has had to stop taking specific types of guests because of rude behavior like flushing food down the toilet and damaging tatami mats. When in Japan, a person described their culture as, "having a very specific way of doing things and becoming very upset when people get in the way of that." With so many people having that mentality, hosting is a more friendly sort of thing. We have different issues. We've become friendly with several of our guests, and even see some past guests once or twice a month to spend time together. When the guests come from AirBNB, we have to maintain a lot of vigilance. We've had multiple drug dealers, a large number of people smoking weed in our rentals, child endangerment, and a few parties. AirBNB has a hands-off policy and there are a lot of pieces of shit who have learned they can abuse AirBNB's system to do what they want, and we don't quite have the same culture of empathy anymore.
  - oefrha 6y ago
    > We've had multiple drug dealers Wow, how did you find out? Got calls from FBI or something? (Just curious.)
    - iratewizard 6y ago
      When "one person and her kids" turns into 6 grown adults who are constantly coming and going and I can smell the weed from outside, it's obvious. When they are dumb enough to leave an unlocked iphone after their stay with their signal account open and the details of their dealings, it's also obvious. Drug dealers aren't a bright bunch.
tsjq 6y ago
Well said. Reminds me of Joel Spolsky's Big Mac vs The Naked Chef article.
cercatrova 6y ago
> not a delightful experience of being hosted in someone else's home, but whole-apartment/house rentals or other circumstances with not much interaction between host and guest, feeling very business-like That's what I actually like about Airbnb. I get a whole house to myself and no one is there. I can go to a new country but still cook food and travel with a family, something that can be annoying in a hotel.
lambdatronics 6y ago
>It seems odd to me to highlight that aspect of the founders initial motivation without even mentioning whether that's what the company actually does now. If you feel like being cynical, you can see ycombinator as analogous to a ram pump[0] that raises a small amount of water to a large elevation by dumping a large amount of water from a lower elevation. The way they get that flow is from what inspired people to keep going. So why not promote that? It's only logical. [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i31hGJ93OTg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i31hGJ93OTg

gowld 6y ago

That's the retconned origin story. From the start they were talking about replacing Marriott; that was their pitch to investors.

jrochkind1 6y ago
Well, that would be even worse, as far as why Paul Graham chooses to tell the story this way, even make it the center of the story. I guess that's how he remembers it. Either way, it's not what it is now, and he's choosing not to mention that, while leaving it at the center of the story...

gamblor956 6y ago

AirBnB was always a regulatory arbitrage play.

oblio 6y ago
Or in layman's terms: find a legal grey area and become a billionaire before it becomes illegal. Was it Ford that said: don't ask me how I made my first million?
- wolco2 6y ago
  What did Ford do?
  - oblio 6y ago
    Don't ask me, ask Ford! :-p
- gamblor956 6y ago
  What AirBnb did was not find a grey area; unregistered bnb's were already illegal at the time. They simply relied on their hosts facing the primary brunt of the legal and fiscal penalties.

heavyset_go 6y ago

Before the pandemic, Manhattan was filled with apartments that had every room turned into bedrooms that were rented out on AirBnB and that violated fire code. Now cities are filled with literal flophouses.

Noumenon72 6y ago
What do you mean? How has the pandemic created literal flophouses, "a cheap hotel or rooming house"?
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  That was poor wording on my part. I put the "before the pandemic" in as a disclaimer, because I haven't looked at the Manhattan housing market since the pandemic began.
  - Noumenon72 6y ago
    Thanks, I get it now.
Siira 6y ago
Perhaps this shows that the fire code was not the best example of assessing upsides versus downsides.

crazygringo 6y ago

It doesn't matter if the "majority of Airbnb use now" is business-like. That still enables the personal-experience ones to exist -- and there are tons of them. One doesn't negate the other. A supermarket can sell conventional and organic produce at the same time. Travelers and hosts have different tastes. Why wouldn't you cater to a broad range?

JCharante 6y ago
To truly cater to the broad range, they should make it easier to filter out slumlords with a toggle to find listings that retain the classic feeling, so that the people who prefer a hotel feeling but with less regulations can also filter out personalized experiences.
mrpopo 6y ago
There was couch surfing for the "personal experience". AirBnB really just added money to the mix. It didn't enable it.
jrochkind1 6y ago
If you say you started a grocery store because you wanted to sell organic food and help people buy organic food, so you are very pleased with how it's went since now 3% of the food you sell is organic, I'm going to wonder about your story, or your evaluation of success. If you are making lots and lots of money selling 3% organic food, but everyone keeps talking about the organic food, I'm going to wonder if you switched to prioritizing making lots and lots of money instead of selling organic food (which you are allowed to do, nobody's going to stop you), and if the organic food is just a story, and if maybe we should stop telling that story like that, and at any rate when telling the history of your endeavor it seems worth mentioning.
- crazygringo 6y ago
  But that's actually super common. Look at Dr. Bronners soap -- it was for spreading religion. Turned out the soap was more popular than the religious message. But every bar and bottle is still chock-full of the religious stuff. Or how people start movie theaters to show movies they love, but that's not profitable, which is why they have overpriced concession stands that actually make the entirety of the money. If someone wants to bring organic food to a town, but the only way that's a sustainable business is to make it a small area of a large conventional supermarket... that's entirely normal. I don't know why anyone would wonder about it at all?

ryanSrich 6y ago

Ive used AirBnB in multiple countries. The disconnect between guest and host exists in many places, but it's especially true in the US. However, several of my trips to Japan have produced meaningful long term relationships with hosts. It really is dependent on the country and what you're looking for.

iratewizard 6y ago
I have multiple vacation rentals and use several sites including AirBNB to list them. I've also spent a month in Japan traveling and gotten to know hosts who were on AirBNB. One host we talked deeply with after she lost all of her other bookings from a massive typhoon. The problems she has with guests and the problems Japanese people face as a country are very different. She has had to stop taking specific types of guests because of rude behavior like flushing food down the toilet and damaging tatami mats. When in Japan, a person described their culture as, "having a very specific way of doing things and becoming very upset when people get in the way of that." With so many people having that mentality, hosting is a more friendly sort of thing. We have different issues. We've become friendly with several of our guests, and even see some past guests once or twice a month to spend time together. When the guests come from AirBNB, we have to maintain a lot of vigilance. We've had multiple drug dealers, a large number of people smoking weed in our rentals, child endangerment, and a few parties. AirBNB has a hands-off policy and there are a lot of pieces of shit who have learned they can abuse AirBNB's system to do what they want, and we don't quite have the same culture of empathy anymore.
- oefrha 6y ago
  > We've had multiple drug dealers Wow, how did you find out? Got calls from FBI or something? (Just curious.)
  - iratewizard 6y ago
    When "one person and her kids" turns into 6 grown adults who are constantly coming and going and I can smell the weed from outside, it's obvious. When they are dumb enough to leave an unlocked iphone after their stay with their signal account open and the details of their dealings, it's also obvious. Drug dealers aren't a bright bunch.

tsjq 6y ago

Well said. Reminds me of Joel Spolsky's Big Mac vs The Naked Chef article.

cercatrova 6y ago

> not a delightful experience of being hosted in someone else's home, but whole-apartment/house rentals or other circumstances with not much interaction between host and guest, feeling very business-like That's what I actually like about Airbnb. I get a whole house to myself and no one is there. I can go to a new country but still cook food and travel with a family, something that can be annoying in a hotel.

lambdatronics 6y ago

>It seems odd to me to highlight that aspect of the founders initial motivation without even mentioning whether that's what the company actually does now. If you feel like being cynical, you can see ycombinator as analogous to a ram pump[0] that raises a small amount of water to a large elevation by dumping a large amount of water from a lower elevation. The way they get that flow is from what inspired people to keep going. So why not promote that? It's only logical. [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i31hGJ93OTg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i31hGJ93OTg