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Why do you think AirBnB looked silly? "After moving to San Francisco in October 2007, roommates and former schoolmates Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia came up with

Why do you think AirBnB looked silly? "After moving to San Francisco in October 2007, roommates and former schoolmates Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia came up with the idea of putting an air mattress in their living room and turning it into a bed and breakfast." -Wikipedia

_delirium 6y ago
That didn't end up being the actual business model though. The vast majority of AirBnB's current revenue is from renting out private apartments or rooms, more in competitition with VRBO or hotels. You can definitely still rent out an air mattress in the living room, but that's not what AirBnB is making its money from.
fsloth 6y ago
There are good stories of their beginning out there. The wikipedia summary really does not do justice to how hard their start was. I enjoy especially the ones as told by their founder in the excellent startup school lectures. They were scrappy, lacked clear direction and hustled and struggled.
hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
Agreed. This mythology keeps getting repeated, where the only thing that happened was a couple of rich VCs (pg and others) didn't like the idea originally. But as many others have pointed out, Couchsurfing was already big, and VRBO/HomeAway had already received huge funding rounds. Was it really that hard of a leap to see how people (especially millennials) would flock to cheaper urban rentals if a company made the safety and payment aspect of it much better than what existed before?
- fsloth 6y ago
  Seeing a market and implementing a unicorn class product are quite different things even if you have the accurate perception of market needs. There is a reason unicorns are called unicorns and not justsurveythemarketfortrends-corns. I admit AirBnB was perhaps not the most relevant example given it's a different industry. I have no reason to champion the team but having a fairly good knowledge of games and software development I don't see the need to criticize the YC investment based on the context of their pitch.
- dang 6y ago
  "Didn't like the idea originally" is no different from "looked silly". And it wasn't just "a couple of rich VCs" who thought that. (Btw, the word 'rich' seems gratuitous there.) YC wasn't going to fund them but did anyway because they liked the founders. It's not mythology. "Was it really that hard a leap?" - yes it was. That it seems otherwise now is pure hindsight fallacy.
  - hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
    It keeps getting repeated that the original AirBnB idea was "crazy and outlandish" at the time, but it was only with hindsight that we see how it could be successful. My argument is that that is false, because at the time there were already numerous examples of successful lodging sharing platforms, just none of which had the special combination of features (e.g. social reviews, ease of payment) that AirBnB had. As another analogy, when Facebook launched there were already many previous social networks (MySpace, Friendster), but FB was the first with a unique combination of features (uncluttered design, real name policy, eventually the feed, etc.) that made them the primary social media winner. But nobody repeats the false myth "Oh wow, social media was such a crazy and outlandish idea before Facebook came along".
    - dang 6y ago
      Sorry, but this strikes me as classic hindsight fallacy. Here's Fred Wilson in 2011: https://avc.com/2011/03/airbnb/ https://avc.com/2011/03/airbnb/, and the original email thread between him and PG from 2009: http://www.paulgraham.com/airbnb.html http://www.paulgraham.com/airbnb.html. PG went all the way to using an exclamation mark (has there ever been another?) and even that wasn't enough. Anyone who thinks VCs would have been happy to fund a Couchsurfing knock-off in 2008 is looking at this history through many filters, for example the fact that startup fundraising became much easier in the subsequent decade.
      - hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
        The reason I strongly disagree is that I was intimately involved in the VR (vacation rental) space at that time. I have seen those articles before, and yes, both Fred Wilson and pg missed seeing the potential benefit, but in my opinion despite their phenomenal success otherwise, this "miss" here was just the miss in their minds, not the space more broadly. My understanding is that one of the first big investors in AirBnB did so because he was familiar with the VR space. Being very familiar with the holes in user experience and technology at the time with VR websites, it was not a leap in my mind at all to see how a winner was destined for the space.

_delirium 6y ago

That didn't end up being the actual business model though. The vast majority of AirBnB's current revenue is from renting out private apartments or rooms, more in competitition with VRBO or hotels. You can definitely still rent out an air mattress in the living room, but that's not what AirBnB is making its money from.

fsloth 6y ago

There are good stories of their beginning out there. The wikipedia summary really does not do justice to how hard their start was. I enjoy especially the ones as told by their founder in the excellent startup school lectures. They were scrappy, lacked clear direction and hustled and struggled.

hn_throwaway_99 6y ago

Agreed. This mythology keeps getting repeated, where the only thing that happened was a couple of rich VCs (pg and others) didn't like the idea originally. But as many others have pointed out, Couchsurfing was already big, and VRBO/HomeAway had already received huge funding rounds. Was it really that hard of a leap to see how people (especially millennials) would flock to cheaper urban rentals if a company made the safety and payment aspect of it much better than what existed before?

fsloth 6y ago
Seeing a market and implementing a unicorn class product are quite different things even if you have the accurate perception of market needs. There is a reason unicorns are called unicorns and not justsurveythemarketfortrends-corns. I admit AirBnB was perhaps not the most relevant example given it's a different industry. I have no reason to champion the team but having a fairly good knowledge of games and software development I don't see the need to criticize the YC investment based on the context of their pitch.
dang 6y ago
"Didn't like the idea originally" is no different from "looked silly". And it wasn't just "a couple of rich VCs" who thought that. (Btw, the word 'rich' seems gratuitous there.) YC wasn't going to fund them but did anyway because they liked the founders. It's not mythology. "Was it really that hard a leap?" - yes it was. That it seems otherwise now is pure hindsight fallacy.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
  It keeps getting repeated that the original AirBnB idea was "crazy and outlandish" at the time, but it was only with hindsight that we see how it could be successful. My argument is that that is false, because at the time there were already numerous examples of successful lodging sharing platforms, just none of which had the special combination of features (e.g. social reviews, ease of payment) that AirBnB had. As another analogy, when Facebook launched there were already many previous social networks (MySpace, Friendster), but FB was the first with a unique combination of features (uncluttered design, real name policy, eventually the feed, etc.) that made them the primary social media winner. But nobody repeats the false myth "Oh wow, social media was such a crazy and outlandish idea before Facebook came along".
  - dang 6y ago
    Sorry, but this strikes me as classic hindsight fallacy. Here's Fred Wilson in 2011: https://avc.com/2011/03/airbnb/ https://avc.com/2011/03/airbnb/, and the original email thread between him and PG from 2009: http://www.paulgraham.com/airbnb.html http://www.paulgraham.com/airbnb.html. PG went all the way to using an exclamation mark (has there ever been another?) and even that wasn't enough. Anyone who thinks VCs would have been happy to fund a Couchsurfing knock-off in 2008 is looking at this history through many filters, for example the fact that startup fundraising became much easier in the subsequent decade.
    - hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
      The reason I strongly disagree is that I was intimately involved in the VR (vacation rental) space at that time. I have seen those articles before, and yes, both Fred Wilson and pg missed seeing the potential benefit, but in my opinion despite their phenomenal success otherwise, this "miss" here was just the miss in their minds, not the space more broadly. My understanding is that one of the first big investors in AirBnB did so because he was familiar with the VR space. Being very familiar with the holes in user experience and technology at the time with VR websites, it was not a leap in my mind at all to see how a winner was destined for the space.