> My favorite anti-portfolio example is Airbnb. Michael Siebel (Y Combinator Core CEO) emailed me their deck before they joined Y Combinator and I couldn’t help but think “Wow, air mattress rental? That’s a terrible idea!”
I've heard this sentiment repeated a lot ("Everyone thought AirBnB was a horrible idea"), but I honestly can't imagine why, and it makes me think AirBnB must have just had a bad initial pitch deck. At the time AirBnB was founded, Couchsurfing was already really popular, and HomeAway had received some gargantuan investment rounds. Is it really that much of a stretch to say people would want a safe, secure way to rent out private accommodations?
I ran into the AirBnB guys around the time they were in YC. It was a bad idea then, and it is still a bad idea. They were pitching a for-profit couchsurfing clone. And that idea never did take off, really. What happened is they persisted and were positioned to pivot to vacation rentals and then create a new segment of pseudo-hotel operations at a time when real estate values crashed and the economy was down. The combination of lots of investment real estate under water and a down economy is what made the hotel idea take off.
What was wrong with "for profit couchsurfing clone"? That's still a good chunk of airbnb's listings today, and it was a big part of the site in the early years when it was gaining traction.
I used to do couchsurfing and I've used airbnb a lot, and there's a lot of overlap in the experience when renting a room.
(The whole apartment rentals are different of course, which are a unique hybrid, not even really like a hotel. More like short term furnished apartment rentals, of the kind that formerly worked on a monthly basis for corporate travelers)
At the start, AirBnb was focused entirely on renting out individual rooms in your place, while the host stayed there (sometimes including cooking breakfast!). The ability to rent a whole place came later.
Even in hindsight, that's a quirky idea to build a company around.
The reason AirBnB was so tough to fund, at least from Fred's post, is because it represented a change in cultural norms. Investors are very resistant to ideas that change people's behavior - particularly if the investor can't picture making that change in their own lives.
Also the website back then was airbedandbreakfast.com, way too long and complex of a domain. Couchsurfing was huge, and I guess investors didn't think a paid version of it would take off if a free version existed. At least that's how I thought about it when I rejected Joe's offer to work on the site in 2008.
I've heard this sentiment repeated a lot ("Everyone thought AirBnB was a horrible idea"), but I honestly can't imagine why, and it makes me think AirBnB must have just had a bad initial pitch deck. At the time AirBnB was founded, Couchsurfing was already really popular, and HomeAway had received some gargantuan investment rounds. Is it really that much of a stretch to say people would want a safe, secure way to rent out private accommodations?