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> Clearly you’re not a business person if you wouldn’t care what the long-term implications of your company’s response to this were. Doing the right thing is m

> Clearly you’re not a business person if you wouldn’t care what the long-term implications of your company’s response to this were. Doing the right thing is more important than making money. I'm really glad I learned that before earning my business degree. I'll tell you a story. A couple of years ago, during the height of the financial crisis, I decided to quit a pretty safe job, move across the country, and focus full-time on building and selling iOS apps. Just before the move, with cash tight, I shipped a new app. It was doing... so well. A nice bit of press, good placement in the App Store, and revenues like no other project had yet produced. There was just one problem: sometimes, you could enter a shitload of data into the app – and then it would crash without saving. A lot of work lost. Not all of the time, just enough to make you suspicious of the app. And as a result, a worthless tool. The fix was very easy. Absurdly easy: one line of code. An over-released object. But Apple doesn't work quickly now and definitely didn't then. I had a choice: two weeks of selling what I knew to be a worthless app or destroy all my momentum and pull the app until the fix was ready. So I pulled the app. Lost the high ranking that would have led to even more sales. Donated all the sales from that first day to a worthy cause, since I couldn't issue refunds. Fuck, did I need that money. But I never looked back. Because it was the right thing to do. You profit from creating value. If you do harm, you take responsibility and put things right. Anything less is unworthy of your humanity. That's it. If my passion for doing the right thing makes me bad at certain things, oh well. Money comes and goes. My conscience is with me until I die. > What happened to this girl sucks, but your post is overly emotional and absurd. It’s not Airbnb’s moral responsibility to do anything about this. Sorry you feel that way. We'll never have common ground to work together. Good luck!

codyrobbins 15y ago
You’re patting yourself on the back for not selling a buggy app to people? That's a completely different situation than that in the story at hand. Airbnb worked precisely like it was supposed to—there were no bugs. It’s just that Airbnb is in no way supposed to prevent things like this from happening. If you do harm Again, you’re not addressing the simple fact that you’re working from the assumption that Airbnb itself did harm here. They simply didn’t. Doing the right thing is more important than making money. Clearly Airbnb does not believe that doing so would be ‘doing the right thing.’ You’re simply calling them evil instead of recognizing that they have a different—and quite defensible—point of view concerning their responsibility.
- danilocampos 15y ago
  > there were no bugs. The utter destruction of your home at the hands of a service that aims to help you monetize it is ipso facto a bug. Intent: create value. Result: destruction of value. Bug! It would be like a roach trap that helped roaches breed instead of killing them. It's pretty simple. You can't talk to guests until the transaction is consummated. If that's so, it's on Airbnb to make sure that they're not sending a dangerous creep into your arms. They failed in that task. If they want to be the "Ebay of spaces" then they need to provide for some basic level of safety and security. It's okay that you and I have different value systems. They're incompatible, so we won't ever work together.
  - codyrobbins 15y ago
    The utter destruction of your home at the hands of a service that aims to help you monetize it is ipso facto a bug. Again, Airbnb didn’t destroy her home. Are you under the impression that someone from Airbnb itself was the one staying at her house? Intent: create value. Result: destruction of value. Bug! You’re basically defining what you want the responsibilities of Airbnb’s service to be and then faulting them according to those responsibilities. But those are not Airbnb’s responsibilities. Again, Airbnb doesn’t claim to prevent things like this, therefore it’s not a bug. If they want to be the "Ebay of spaces" then they need to provide for some basic level of safety and security No they don’t. There will be business consequences for not doing so, but they don’t have to. They can define their service to be whatever they want it to be. As it currently stands, their service is not meant to prevent this from happening. They're incompatible, so we won't ever work together. This came through loud and clear the first time you patronizingly said it.
    - danilocampos 15y ago
      Conveniently, you fail to address the point upon which this whole issue is predicated: "You can't talk to guests until the transaction is consummated. If that's so, it's on Airbnb to make sure that they're not sending a dangerous creep into your arms." No one thinks anyone from Airbnb blew up her home, dude. I'm not paid well enough to know if this meets the standard of tortious negligence. Yet it was negligence. Had she not used the service, she'd be fine now. And, I mean, if you've got such a boner for the business side of this, in what universe can you trust a service like Airbnb now? You can't vet people until you're locked in, you have no recourse if you get screwed. This is a business problem, without the morality of hey, it's a good idea not to bring harm into people's lives.
veyron 15y ago
"You profit from creating value." I really wish more people, especially SV-esque startup people, approached business this way.

codyrobbins 15y ago

You’re patting yourself on the back for not selling a buggy app to people? That's a completely different situation than that in the story at hand. Airbnb worked precisely like it was supposed to—there were no bugs. It’s just that Airbnb is in no way supposed to prevent things like this from happening. If you do harm Again, you’re not addressing the simple fact that you’re working from the assumption that Airbnb itself did harm here. They simply didn’t. Doing the right thing is more important than making money. Clearly Airbnb does not believe that doing so would be ‘doing the right thing.’ You’re simply calling them evil instead of recognizing that they have a different—and quite defensible—point of view concerning their responsibility.

danilocampos 15y ago
> there were no bugs. The utter destruction of your home at the hands of a service that aims to help you monetize it is ipso facto a bug. Intent: create value. Result: destruction of value. Bug! It would be like a roach trap that helped roaches breed instead of killing them. It's pretty simple. You can't talk to guests until the transaction is consummated. If that's so, it's on Airbnb to make sure that they're not sending a dangerous creep into your arms. They failed in that task. If they want to be the "Ebay of spaces" then they need to provide for some basic level of safety and security. It's okay that you and I have different value systems. They're incompatible, so we won't ever work together.
- codyrobbins 15y ago
  The utter destruction of your home at the hands of a service that aims to help you monetize it is ipso facto a bug. Again, Airbnb didn’t destroy her home. Are you under the impression that someone from Airbnb itself was the one staying at her house? Intent: create value. Result: destruction of value. Bug! You’re basically defining what you want the responsibilities of Airbnb’s service to be and then faulting them according to those responsibilities. But those are not Airbnb’s responsibilities. Again, Airbnb doesn’t claim to prevent things like this, therefore it’s not a bug. If they want to be the "Ebay of spaces" then they need to provide for some basic level of safety and security No they don’t. There will be business consequences for not doing so, but they don’t have to. They can define their service to be whatever they want it to be. As it currently stands, their service is not meant to prevent this from happening. They're incompatible, so we won't ever work together. This came through loud and clear the first time you patronizingly said it.
  - danilocampos 15y ago
    Conveniently, you fail to address the point upon which this whole issue is predicated: "You can't talk to guests until the transaction is consummated. If that's so, it's on Airbnb to make sure that they're not sending a dangerous creep into your arms." No one thinks anyone from Airbnb blew up her home, dude. I'm not paid well enough to know if this meets the standard of tortious negligence. Yet it was negligence. Had she not used the service, she'd be fine now. And, I mean, if you've got such a boner for the business side of this, in what universe can you trust a service like Airbnb now? You can't vet people until you're locked in, you have no recourse if you get screwed. This is a business problem, without the morality of hey, it's a good idea not to bring harm into people's lives.

veyron 15y ago

"You profit from creating value." I really wish more people, especially SV-esque startup people, approached business this way.