
Airbnb finalizes deal to buy social payments startups Tilt - uptown
https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/22/airbnb-finalizes-deal-to-buy-social-payments-startups-tilt/
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krashidov
I think this could be powerful in the hands of Airbnb. This takes a lot of
risk away from someone who wants to take the initiative and rent out a 20
person villa with their friends only to see half of them flake out, and now
that person would be stuck with the bill.

I wonder if they will integrate it directly with AirBNB or keep it as a
standalone.

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puranjay
Here's what would be great:

1\. Person A takes the initiative and books an Airbnb

2\. Airbnb gives him a link to a landing page.

3\. On this page, his friends can 'opt-in' to the vacation. When they opt-in,
the cost gets split. Say, if the rent/night is $200 and 3 people opt-in, the
cost would be $50 each (including person A).

4\. Each person who opts in gets charged for his share.

5\. Airbnb can also promote other services on this custom landing page such as
guided tours. Person A doesn't have to worry about getting the 'yes' from his
friends; if you've opted in, you're coming.

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jwent88
I was one of those remote employees that got laid off. I’m kicking off the job
search (non-engineering), let me know if anyone knows of anything interesting
in Austin or remote -- specifically in account management, customer/partner
success etc!

~~~
lukasm
This may help you [https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-
job](https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job)

~~~
mago0
I am also one of those remote workers. This resource looks great - thanks for
posting!

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sasper
Send me a message with your email address. My company just started looking for
a Customer Success Hero today and I can pass along the information to you.

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mildbow
This is one of the benefits of being a founder with YC/well-connected VCs.

Even if you burn though millions without figuring out a market, you will land
on your feet (if you are on the executive team). Your employees? Not so much.

My words may sound negative, but my point is: most people who are working at
startups should seriously consider starting one instead.

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brogrammernot
*should start one or join a late stage startup who is still offering equity

N=1, but a friend has done this twice as a product manager with joining late
stage startups, getting a decent amount of equity/stock and then the company
has IPO'd.

I agree with your point though, the risk/reward for most early employees who
are not part of the founding team is not worth it. You'll work just as hard as
the founders with a fraction of a fraction of the payout compared to the
founders

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100k
> Many of Tilt’s San Francisco employees including CEO James Beshara were
> asked to stay on board, but most of the remote team was not.

Bummer for the remote employees. :(

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kentf
I am one of those remote employees :)

Luckily we had a stellar remote team, and most of our growth was coming from
our international markets. Anyone would be lucky to have one of them if they
are still available.

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cpcat
Why hasn't AirBnB, CouchSurfing, or similar companies started disrupting the
global shipping business yet by using their users as shippers. They don't even
provide an API for building such apps. It's a huge opportunity i think.

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patio11
What type of package is small enough to fit in someone's luggage, light enough
to not cost extra baggage allowance, tolerates non-delivery well enough to
lose 10% of shipments to flaking non-professional couriers, and is not well-
served by UPS, FedEx, or airmail, and cannot be transported at rock-bottom
costs with mild latency via a shipping container?

I have an answer to this question: illegal drugs. I don't have a second answer
to this question. This makes me think that you'd have difficulty finding 1,000
of legal packages to run through a proof of concept, to say nothing of scaling
to the millions you need to have a viable logistics business.

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cpcat
How about legal drugs, Pharmaceutical products, etc. I do not know a single
person who doesn't ship items with friends. It's not a new idea i'm proposing,
but a way for non friends to make money, and for it to be more often.

When Uber first came out i thought it won't work because of all the
kidnappings and robberies that would happen. I wonder if you have the same
skepticism about travellers becoming carriers.

Edit: not disagreeing, it's a totally valid reason.

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lmm
> I do not know a single person who doesn't ship items with friends.

Huh? Where/in what culture is that? I don't think I know anyone who does ship
items with friends with any kind of frequency. I think I've shipped an item
with a friend once in my life (a figurine that I could only find on sale in
the US), and there are proxy buyer services that cover that use case in a much
easier (and safer for them) way.

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napoleond
Counter-anecdote: I live in Canada, and it is not at all uncommon to ask
friends who are visiting the U.S. to pick up items on their behalf (either
alcohol and tobacco, which are often significantly cheaper at the border's
duty-free stores, or e-commerce purchases that would not ship into Canada--
there are several places close to the border that will receive and hang onto
such packages for a fee).

Maybe that doesn't count as "shipping an item with a friend" but it's quite
similar.

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lmm
I think a service that buys something for you (from businesses that sell to
the public) has a big safety advantage over one that ships custom packages -
while I'm sure it would still be possible to smuggle drugs that way doing so
becomes a lot more complex. Likewise one that holds it and lets you pick up
_in person_ (which usually require you to present ID) rather than shipping it
on.

And while it's a fair example, I think Canada, where most of the population
lives very close to the US border, probably doesn't generalise to the rest of
the world.

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pbreit
Not super surprising. Tilt scaled up its burn way before nailing a big market.

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chambo622
What "big market" did Tilt "nail"? Haven't heard much about them in a long
time.

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pbreit
None. That's the point. They ramped up the burn before finding one.

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chambo622
Thanks, I misread your comment. Agreed.

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dhruvrrp
From tilt's homepage, it seems like they are a mash up of venmo, gofundme and
craigslist(?). Is there a particular direction they are headed for or are they
just throwing stuff at the wall and waiting for something to stick?

Some comments point out that it would make group payments for Airbnb bookings
a lot easier which seems fine. But is that problem worth spending $12 mil in
cash + tens of millions in employee retention packages?

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pyromine
Last I heard of Tilt it was mostly a bunch of people using it to fund large
scale parties. Enough people committed, and then boom yup we have the money
we'll do it.

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thecopy
We have a system like this in Sweden, it is called Swish and works wonderful.
The way you recieve money is my connecting your mobile phone number to the app
and connect it to one of your back accounts in your banks web interface. Then
to send money to me you enter my phone number and "swish" the money and you
will have it on your bank account within seconds.

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vertex-four
The UK has this as well, it's called Paym here. Mind, bank transactions
through Faster Payments are also almost always instant, so it's just a
convenience feature, nothing majorly new. In the US, inter-bank transfers are
not instant at all, so these middleman services provide direct benefits.

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amasad
I remember learning about them from a tweet from pg about them saying they're
growing 41% month over month.

[https://twitter.com/paulg/status/712020590840778752](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/712020590840778752)

I wonder what happened.

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HammadB
this might be purely anecdotal, but seeing that the quote is about college
campuses: a lot of people I know in college downloaded the app and never used
it

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nikanj
This is what you get when you have a "show us you installed our app and we'll
give you a T-shirt/coffee/whatnot" tent

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EGreg
What exactly are Tilt's plans ultimately?

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stale2002
To power all informal, friendly, crowdfunding I guess?

