I think the original couchsurfing spirit is fundamentally incompatible with the startup "guzzle money and grow" mentality. For a successful community you need t

I think the original couchsurfing spirit is fundamentally incompatible with the startup "guzzle money and grow" mentality. For a successful community you need to keep things local to build trust networks - this is fundamentally a low profile operation, not something that's going to scale massively and make a big splash, because it involves tight groups on small scales. I think the SF startup scene just doesn't have the mentality to make that work - everyone is chasing the Next Big Thing (emphasis on Big), so a community website that, for example, makes it's mark in a handful of German cities isn't what founder CEOs and VCs are looking for.