I thought Airbnb sounded silly when I first heard about it, but I've spent the last month in the caribbean staying exclusively at apartments booked there. The UX is awesome, there's a huge discovery value to people with vacation rentals, and it's way cheaper than staying at hotels. Not to mention the money that I save because I have a kitchen to cook in. You can usually find a monthly price only a few hundred dollars more than what you would pay for an unfurnished rental with a lease. I've also been shocked at the explosive growth outside the US. When I checked the listings about six months ago I didn't see much in southern Brazil, but now there are ~500 listings. I don't know about $2B, but I've been very impressed with everything they've done so far.
Yeah, you are right... that makes it very clear why AirBnB is so valuable.
If it takes Starwood 150,000 people to make $6B, and AirBnB can make hundreds of millions with hundreds of people, I think it's pretty clear which is headed to a bigger valuation.
Starwood doesn't own most of their hotels, nor do most of the staff, revenues, etc flow through Starwood. It is just a franchise/branding company with a property management and reservation system. Their direct employees are in line with airbnb.
you cannot make these comparisons. the valuation multiplier based on revenues changes by the industry. an industry with HUUUUUGE overhead [expensive real estate and tons of staff] cannot be compared at all by revenue to a tech startup that will never have anywhere near that amount of overhead.
is the valuation high? potentially, but this is not a metric that will tell you anything at all about that
AirBnB can reasonably generate profits of $4/night with their current model. A $2B valuation makes sense if they do 30M nights in a year. They did 8M in Jun 11-Jun 12, with 5M of that in the last 4.5 months. My guess is their current run rate is in the neighborhood of 18M nights/year.
The valuation is high, but it isn't unreasonable. Also I view AirBnB as having a low risk of falling out of fashion, unlike Zynga or Facebook.
One way to look at AirBnB is as a craiglist plus escrow service. The idea is they spammed people advertising rental properties on craiglist to get them to visit the AirBnB site and it has worked so far. Eventually, though, all the people advertising on sites like craigslist will have migrated over to AirBnB and then the growth ends.
The escrow service seems a little dodgey since they are not licensed (see Greenspan's critique - he was roommates with one of the founders of AirBnB). Few major incidents so far, but how long will that last as they scale? The attraction of AirBnB over craiglist may be that the hosts perceive some added degree of safety by using AirBnB. But really, how much liability is AirBnB taking on? Can you sue AirBnB if your property is destroyed? Good luck with that.
What if another site that has an even faster interface pops up and uses a growth hacker to lure away hosts listing their properties on AirBnB? Then what? Acquire them out of fear!
The web is a medium. People use it to advertise things. It's hard to believe that any one company can monopolize a medium like the web for some class(es) of goods or services. But it sure looks like they can, doesn't it?
From For Sale ads in Usenet groups to a mailing list that grows to a website (craigslist) to AirBnB acting as an informal escrow agent to _______?
The interesting thing is that Usenet was originally free. As long as you had an internet connection, you could advertise for free. I'm not sure I understand why advertising still shouldn't be free. And we should be able to reduce the signal to noise ratio, and make doing business via internet more personable and trustworthy, without having to pay a spammer who acts as a dubious escrow agent and takes a percentage.
I have never used craigslist nor other classifieds sites, and neither have any of my family members, nor my work mates, nor the friends I meet on a weekly basis.
Yet me, my brother, a colleague and two friends have booked nights on airbnb. The growth will end when all of my colleagues, and all of my family and all of my friend use it, and they'll know about it because every time they ask me "so where did you sleep" I'll answer "found this cheap place on AirBnB".
Airbnb is the ebay of housing, creating liquid markets for unused or unwanted goods without taking on any inventory, risk or capital. This is a service that literally prints money - and so long as they don't get Meg Whitman as their CEO - they won't fuck up.
I wouldn't be surprised if they surpassed eBay within the decade in terms of net profit. Next up on the liquid market list should be cars.
Any other markets out there that need liquidity? Goods that aren't used or assets that lay dormant? I'm all ears.
When you create a company that acts as an agent or marketplace between 2 parties you have to take on some of the risk in the transaction if you're profiting from it.
AirBnB struck a goldmine in apartments cos it's pretty hard to 'steal' an apartment and take it away or damage it beyond all repair through normal expected use. I would gather most places are 'uninsured' for the duration of the sublease because the normal conditions have been broken but owners feel that that is a risk worth taking on for the expected return.
Cars that sit around are a different story - I feel for these guys http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/01/luxury-car-sharing-service-... but the truth of the matter is that with the next tier of high value illiquid stuff below apartments such as luxury cars and boats the perceived risk of letting somebody 'borrow' it is much higher. It is entirely feasible that whatever you're leasing out could get destroyed/sunk/totaled/stolen in normal use for its intended purpose. To provide such a market you would have to provide the insurance that goes with it and that's the hard bit.
This is why zipcar et al has stitched up the lower end of the car market. The car is 'common property' and they have the insurance to cover all who drive it.
Not saying it shouldn't be done - I'd actually love to build AirBnB for boats cos I sail but I can't afford my own boat or the charter prices being asked.
Aside from the insurance coverage, Airbnb appears to reduce risk for involved parties by humanizing the transactions. They encourage getting to know your host, and I'd imagine people are more likely to respect other people's property when they are aware of and can relate to the person behind the space. Even before transactions take place, users are encouraged to have rich profiles and social connections to demonstrate reliability and facilitate trust.
There may be potential for this sort of humanization in other areas where the perceived risk of a transaction currently outweighs the benefit. One way to think about it may be to consider things that you borrow from a friend. Airbnb covers the sleep on a friend's couch/spare bed niche quite well.
Some interesting things I can think of... perhaps using space on a more granular level such as holding a meeting in a conference room or watching a movie on a home theater system. Things like renting parking spaces might be interesting as well in some areas where parking is very limited.
Did a bit of search on Meg Whitman. I found this on Wikipedia:
Whitman served as president and chief executive officer of eBay from 1998 to 2008. During her ten years with the company, she oversaw expansion from 30 employees and $4 million in annual revenue to more than 15,000 employees and $8 billion in annual revenue.
Doesn't seem too bad. Not trolling or anything but why do you think she is so bad?
Congratulation to PG! Seems like working with top scammer from the FBI list that you and I had to pay in our taxes for their damages, is finally paying off!
Sounds like this could be an interesting comment, but needs substance and a link or two, instead of sarcasm and malice. No one knows what you are talking about... I vaguely suspected you were referring to that one isolated incident long ago where a woman had her apartment trashed by some renters.
Details please. Maybe you cannot name names but give us a clue.
There's no way AirBnB is going to try to IPO after the Facebook debacle. They must entice someone to acquire them.
The higher the valuation the more enticing. Pump it up!
[+] [-] pault|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joelrunyon|13 years ago|reply
Maybe it's just me?
[+] [-] sfard|13 years ago|reply
Starwood employs 150,000 people, has 1000 hotels worldwide, and has revenues of ~$6 billion
I'm not saying AirBNB can't be huge one day, but a $2B valuation... wow.
[+] [-] andrewljohnson|13 years ago|reply
If it takes Starwood 150,000 people to make $6B, and AirBnB can make hundreds of millions with hundreds of people, I think it's pretty clear which is headed to a bigger valuation.
[+] [-] rdl|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andyakb|13 years ago|reply
is the valuation high? potentially, but this is not a metric that will tell you anything at all about that
[+] [-] jcampbell1|13 years ago|reply
The valuation is high, but it isn't unreasonable. Also I view AirBnB as having a low risk of falling out of fashion, unlike Zynga or Facebook.
[+] [-] dmix|13 years ago|reply
It might not seem like it, but theres a difference.
[+] [-] asithinketh|13 years ago|reply
The escrow service seems a little dodgey since they are not licensed (see Greenspan's critique - he was roommates with one of the founders of AirBnB). Few major incidents so far, but how long will that last as they scale? The attraction of AirBnB over craiglist may be that the hosts perceive some added degree of safety by using AirBnB. But really, how much liability is AirBnB taking on? Can you sue AirBnB if your property is destroyed? Good luck with that.
What if another site that has an even faster interface pops up and uses a growth hacker to lure away hosts listing their properties on AirBnB? Then what? Acquire them out of fear!
The web is a medium. People use it to advertise things. It's hard to believe that any one company can monopolize a medium like the web for some class(es) of goods or services. But it sure looks like they can, doesn't it?
From For Sale ads in Usenet groups to a mailing list that grows to a website (craigslist) to AirBnB acting as an informal escrow agent to _______?
The interesting thing is that Usenet was originally free. As long as you had an internet connection, you could advertise for free. I'm not sure I understand why advertising still shouldn't be free. And we should be able to reduce the signal to noise ratio, and make doing business via internet more personable and trustworthy, without having to pay a spammer who acts as a dubious escrow agent and takes a percentage.
[+] [-] riffraff|13 years ago|reply
I have never used craigslist nor other classifieds sites, and neither have any of my family members, nor my work mates, nor the friends I meet on a weekly basis.
Yet me, my brother, a colleague and two friends have booked nights on airbnb. The growth will end when all of my colleagues, and all of my family and all of my friend use it, and they'll know about it because every time they ask me "so where did you sleep" I'll answer "found this cheap place on AirBnB".
[+] [-] jaggederest|13 years ago|reply
https://www.airbnb.com/guarantee
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] confluence|13 years ago|reply
I wouldn't be surprised if they surpassed eBay within the decade in terms of net profit. Next up on the liquid market list should be cars.
Any other markets out there that need liquidity? Goods that aren't used or assets that lay dormant? I'm all ears.
[+] [-] eddy_chan|13 years ago|reply
AirBnB struck a goldmine in apartments cos it's pretty hard to 'steal' an apartment and take it away or damage it beyond all repair through normal expected use. I would gather most places are 'uninsured' for the duration of the sublease because the normal conditions have been broken but owners feel that that is a risk worth taking on for the expected return.
Cars that sit around are a different story - I feel for these guys http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/01/luxury-car-sharing-service-... but the truth of the matter is that with the next tier of high value illiquid stuff below apartments such as luxury cars and boats the perceived risk of letting somebody 'borrow' it is much higher. It is entirely feasible that whatever you're leasing out could get destroyed/sunk/totaled/stolen in normal use for its intended purpose. To provide such a market you would have to provide the insurance that goes with it and that's the hard bit.
This is why zipcar et al has stitched up the lower end of the car market. The car is 'common property' and they have the insurance to cover all who drive it.
Not saying it shouldn't be done - I'd actually love to build AirBnB for boats cos I sail but I can't afford my own boat or the charter prices being asked.
[+] [-] billiamram|13 years ago|reply
There may be potential for this sort of humanization in other areas where the perceived risk of a transaction currently outweighs the benefit. One way to think about it may be to consider things that you borrow from a friend. Airbnb covers the sleep on a friend's couch/spare bed niche quite well.
Some interesting things I can think of... perhaps using space on a more granular level such as holding a meeting in a conference room or watching a movie on a home theater system. Things like renting parking spaces might be interesting as well in some areas where parking is very limited.
[+] [-] felipemnoa|13 years ago|reply
Whitman served as president and chief executive officer of eBay from 1998 to 2008. During her ten years with the company, she oversaw expansion from 30 employees and $4 million in annual revenue to more than 15,000 employees and $8 billion in annual revenue.
Doesn't seem too bad. Not trolling or anything but why do you think she is so bad?
[+] [-] paulhauggis|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Evbn|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joering2|13 years ago|reply
Pop, there goes a bottle of Dom Pérignon!
[+] [-] andrewljohnson|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] autophil|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sowhata|13 years ago|reply
There's no way AirBnB is going to try to IPO after the Facebook debacle. They must entice someone to acquire them. The higher the valuation the more enticing. Pump it up!