But CouchSurfing didn't prove there was a profitable business there. And Airbnb is basically proof of that. If Airbnb stuck with the "stay in a shared room with

But CouchSurfing didn't prove there was a profitable business there. And Airbnb is basically proof of that. If Airbnb stuck with the "stay in a shared room with strangers" approach they also wouldn't have figured out how to make money. As other commenters have pointed out, they shifted to a wholesale vacation rental model (ie HomeAway and VRBO) and that changed everything. They got the benefit of sticking to the "sharing" narrative while making money from the pure vacation rental market.