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There were plenty of ways to get paid on the internet before stripe. On paper it didn’t look like they were doing anything new. They just did it better. Airbnb

There were plenty of ways to get paid on the internet before stripe. On paper it didn’t look like they were doing anything new. They just did it better. Airbnb… idk. Who wants to rent their house out to total strangers? I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t have thought it would take off like it did.

jjcob 2y ago
Airbnb is mostly commercial listings that are basically unlicensed hotel rooms / appartments. I don't think people renting out their personal living spaces is a big part of their income. It's just a story they use to get around regulations.
- KingMob 2y ago
  That's true now, but not when they first took off.
- adastra22 2y ago
  None of that existed when they first started. The pitch was to rent out your house while you're out of town.
  - Lionga 2y ago
    But they only got big when the commercial "hotels" came on and saw they could "work around" laws like that.
    - adastra22 2y ago
      That's the point--their utility wasn't obvious at first, until a new market showed up.
    - immibis 2y ago
      Yes... later. They couldn't have predicted it when they started. It sounded like a stupid idea when they started.
aaronblohowiak 2y ago
It was commercial version of couch surfing and/or web2.0 version of vrbo. I was highly skeptical of it taking off because it was “a copycat”! How wrong I was…
- KingMob 2y ago
  Man, I used to use couchsurfing.org to get free places to crash in grad school.