
Open Letter to the Airbnb Community About Building a 21st Century Company - duck
https://press.atairbnb.com/brian-cheskys-open-letter-to-the-airbnb-community-about-building-a-21st-century-company/
======
dawhizkid
I feel like I'm supposed to be somewhat embarrassed to admit, as someone
working in tech, that I prefer hotels to Airbnb. Unless hotels are completely
booked, overly expensive, or it's a location with few hotels to begin with, I
highly value the consistency and reliability of being able to check-in at
anytime, knowing there's a baseline of security that a hotel offers, having
access to basic amenities like a gym, having access to generally English-
speaking staff if it's international, and having flexible cancellation
policies depending on the rate.

With Airbnb, you really have no idea what you're going to get until you get
there. The platform skews heavily in favor of hosts, and most listings I see
have stricter cancellation policies than your average hotel and zero recourse
if the host decides they want to cancel on you last minute.

~~~
baby
> I prefer hotels to Airbnb

I really don't get this kind of opinion, just because it is so binary. Hotels
are great when you need to quickly check-in and check-out, although the
experience vary grandly and they can get pretty bad and pretty expensive.

On the other hand if I want to feel "at home", if I want something cheaper, if
I want a kitchen and if I want something well located. Airbnb is always the
answer.

There's something really impersonal about staying in a hotel that you don't
get with an Airbnb (although some airbnbs are pretty bad as well).

I remember almost all the airbnbs I've stayed at. I usually forget about how a
hotel room looks a few days after checking out. Try to think about this,
you'll be surprised ;)

~~~
ghaff
I'm the same way as the parent. Especially traveling on business, I want
something straightforward and reliable even if my flight is delayed.
Especially outside of cities on vacation, I may well stay in "official" B&Bs
(which are increasingly listed on Airbnb although I almost always book direct)
assuming it's not somewhere like a national park where I likely don't have
that option.

~~~
Consultant32452
I can't imagine a scenario in which I'd prefer an AirBnB for business travel.
But here's a scenario that AirBnB was a perfect fit. My daughter is a
cheerleader and we sometimes have traveling competitions. There are some
families on her team which we're friends with. Rather than everyone getting a
hotel room we rented an entire house on AirBnB. Each family got their own
room, the kids got to enjoy being together, and we had a default location to
just waste time watching TV or whatever all together between competition
events. We ended up cooking out at our AirBnB location. It was really great
for this more casual travel experience.

~~~
ghaff
Absolutely. And, as I said in another comment, the marketplaces for renting
vacation homes, houses, etc. was very fragmented and generally not very good
until AirBnB came along. A lot of their business still depends on sketchy host
behavior but there was clearly a legitimate need for a better service.

Also, in cities, I'm not sure I even want to spend enough time in wherever I'm
staying to have a memorable experience. The city is the experience, not the
place I'm staying. Not that I hang around where I'm staying most places but
definitely not in cities. Or if I do, it's because I'm working :-/

~~~
Consultant32452
With regards to non-business stays in cities, I'm more than happy to use
AirBnB if I can simultaneously save money and support a small business. I've
used AirBnB for beach vacations before and it worked out great for that as
well, equally a scenario where hanging out at the house wasn't desired. We
were at the beach all day.

------
vm
This also announces that Ken Chenault, former CEO of American Express, joined
their board. What's really interesting is that he also joined the board of
Facebook last week [1].

He must be a damn good exec who was recruited left and right during his 37
years at Amex and, now that he's retired, he's going to mentor the top execs
at the top companies [2]. Exciting development for both Airbnb and Facebook.

[1] [https://www.recode.net/2018/1/18/16905386/facebook-ken-
chena...](https://www.recode.net/2018/1/18/16905386/facebook-ken-chenault-new-
board-directors-mark-zuckerberg)

[2] [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/18/business/american-
express...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/18/business/american-express-
chenault-squeri.html)

~~~
panarky
_Part of designing a 21st-century company is designing a Board of Directors
that can help us implement our 21st-century vision ..._

This is the dinosaur who will transform Airbnb into an "infinite" 21st-century
company??

Here's the ridiculous story of how Ken Chenault's old-school ways cost Amex
their Costco relationship and chopped their customer base by 10%.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-how-amex-lost-
costco...](https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-how-amex-lost-costco/)

 _The Costco guys were tickled by how meticulously Amex choreographed Chenault
's movements.

Ken Chenault would have an advance team come to our office before he visited.
They planned everything — where he would enter the building, the route to the
boardroom, where he’d sit at the table.

Soon after the breakup with Costco, JetBlue ditched Amex for Barclays and
MasterCard. Fidelity may also be thinking about canceling its affinity card._

------
rsp1984
_Being an infinite company is an idea that my friend, author Simon Sinek, has
been discussing with me. Simon explained that a company’s purpose is to
advance its vision, and since a vision is a mountaintop you never quite get
to, you should have an infinite time horizon. But many companies are designed
to be finite. Finite companies are focused on beating their competitors and
appeasing short-term interests. But business is not finite._

I love AirBnb and I hate being negative about Brian's post but I stopped
reading there. Perhaps this is AirBnb's reality but it certainly isn't the
reality for 99.999% of other companies, who aren't dwelling in unicorn land.
Companies don't think finite because it's fun, but because they have to.
Because there are bills and salaries to pay and shareholders to satisfy.
Because there are people who expect a return on their investment in a finite
time, because their lives are finite and because their kids will grow up a
finite time before they enter college.

Don't get me wrong, as a founder there's not much I despise more than short-
term thinking, but if a strategy can't work within a time frame of, say, a
couple years it's kinda worthless. It's hard enough to plan and predict 2
years into the future and god knows what's 5 years from today. Why be
concerned with infinity?

~~~
TeMPOraL
Yeah, this sounds weird - _especially from a VC-funded company_! One can
hardly imagine a better way of having myopic perspective, of being forced to
optimize for short-term, than taking regular VC funding. Because, as you've
said, "there are people who expect a return on their investment in a finite
time".

------
stcredzero
One thing that AirBNB seems to get right, is knowing who its customers are.
They have two major categories of customer: Hosts and Guests. (Those have
subdivisions as well, which may be quite significant.) Curiously, one of those
is effectively the "product" peddled to the other. This model can be
generalized across many kinds of gig economy websites. How is it that AirBNB
can be so much better at this than other websites with similar models? Is it
because the services on offer are that much more complex?

~~~
timewarrior
There are a few reasons why AirBnb is succeeding and many other gig economies
are struggling.

1\. AirBnb is a global market place. It’s much more difficult to build a
global market place and its much easier to defend your moat once you are a
global marketplace. Travelers from all over the world want to visit all over
the world. There is a chicken and egg problem when you start. This benefit
applies to Uber to much lesser degree because they are a city level market
place. Most riders ride in their home city majority of their time.

2\. Repeat business between travelers and hosts are much lesser compared to
other gig economies. While people might get tempted to cut a direct deal with
their cleaner or dog walker after a few good experiences, it’s much less
likely to happen with AirBnb. Same benefits applies to Uber.

~~~
ghaff
Re: 1. Also, at least the legitimate parts of AirBnB's business (i.e. not the
condo sublets that break lease agreements or homeowner's association rules),
are a pretty well-established business. Low-touch B&Bs, including without the
breakfasts, is a thing. So are vacation home rentals.

There wasn't a very good company to do all this through in anything like a
consolidated way before. There were some vacation rental companies but none
were very good. My parents rented out their vacation home in Mexico for many
years and would absolutely have used AirBnB had it existed at the time.

------
jbob2000
Lots of platitudes in there, but not much substance.

How about you tell me how Airbnb is contributing to vacancies in crowded real
estate markets? Or what you are doing about cities introducing regulations
that will make Airbnb essentially the same as a hotel? Why are condos starting
to ban Airbnb rentals?

It kind of feels like Airbnb knows they are on shaky ground and this memo is
step 1 of reinventing themselves to prevent their collapse.

~~~
bdamm
Why should AirBNB take on ownership of the problem of vacancies in crowded
real estate markets? AirBNB is, if anything, helping this problem in many
cases by allowing people to compensate for the expense of living in a crowded
real estate market by renting out rooms. Also, AirBNB isn't the only game in
town any more and they need to compete with the likes of Vacasa among others.

The regulation question is a real issue for AirBNB and I agree that they ought
to be telling their shareholders and their hosts what their plan is.

~~~
dbmikus
In places with limited rental properties, some people have got leases on
apartments and are then renting them out via AirBnB instead of living in them.
This decreases the total amount of apartments available for long-term renters.

In NYC, you can rent a room out as AirBnb if either of the following:

    
    
      1. the rental is long term
      2. you are present in the apartment while the guest is staying
    

The issue with the third case:

    
    
      3. short term rental while owner is absent
    

is that the apartment is a secondary rental unit for the host/owner and is not
a primary residence for the guest. Rich people can afford this, poorer people
cannot. Hence the problem.

That is when AirBnB does not help the housing market and some cities have
rightfully legislated against that case.

~~~
kofejnik
> This decreases the total amount of apartments available for long-term
> renters.

I don't see why this is necessarily bad. If short-term renters provide better
value to the owners, why should they be deprived of this opportunity?

~~~
dbmikus
Because that decreases the supply of housing available for those that cannot
afford secondary residencies. If there is not enough extra housing supply, you
end up raising rent prices. If the market isn't creating enough housing for
some reason or another, middle-class and lower-middle-class are left hung out
to dry.

This dichotomy bleeds over into arguments about welfare state, supply-side
economics vs high upper income taxes, etc. You can argue that people should be
able to create value and earn however possible, but I'm going to disagree with
that view. I think regulation and limits are appropriate in some cases, this
being one of them.

~~~
chii
There's a lot of ifs in your statement. I don't necessarily think that raising
real-estate prices is a bad thing. It will encourage building of more real-
estate. Laws that precent so artificially should be abolished. Using
regulation to prevent a private owner from exploiting his property to the
maximum degree ought to only be reserved for matters of commons (such as
environmental polution/degredation etc).

------
misterbowfinger
> Infinite time horizon

I get what he's going for here, but this phrasing just sounds too TED-talk-y
for me. I also don't get what they'd change as a result, but I guess that's
TBD.

------
imartin2k
There are good things in there, and then there is this:

“Where every city is a village, every block a community, and every kitchen
table a conversation. ”

Didn’t he get the memo that many people explicitly want to be in cities for
the very reason that they are disturbed by the social dynamics of villages
(everyone knows everyone and is involved in everyone’s business)?

I love Airbnb but I would hate if every city becomes a village.

Also, this talk about building an infinite company. I’d argue that in the
current public debate about tech’s power, this actually can sound a bit
threatening.

~~~
TallGuyShort
Not sure what memo you're referring to - I generally hear people who like big
cities reference the ability to walk to a lot of things you can do.

~~~
TeMPOraL
The "ability to walk to a lot of things you can do" implies your agency. You
have lot of options, but you're not automatically attached to anything; you
can choose what to get involved in. Whereas in villages, "everyone knows
everyone and is involved in everyone’s business"; you're attached to
everything whether you like it or not, with all the social consequences coming
from attachment.

~~~
TallGuyShort
No I get that, I'm just saying I've only heard that from 2 HN users, and not
from anyone else who chose to live in NYC or SF in the years I lived there.
It's not exactly an obvious memo that AirBnB didn't get.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Fair enough.

------
mitko
This seems really inspired by finite/infinite game talk by Simon Sinek:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bFs6ZiynSU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bFs6ZiynSU)

~~~
kitotik
Absolutely.

As he mentions in the letter, they are friends. I’m sure he’s knee deep in
most of Sineks’ philosophy on orginzations and products.

------
noobermin
I don't get it, it's far too abstract to me. A company's goal is to fulfill
its vision? It really doesn't help unless they identify what that vision is.
And identifying who the stakeholders are is of course an important step but it
doesn't illuminate anything unless we know what they intend.

------
whoisjuan
This reads like "we are not going public anytime soon"...

------
monkeyfacebag
> I was thinking about the next ten years of Airbnb when I received a phone
> call I’ll never forget. A close advisor told me that now was the time to
> “institutionalize your intentions so that even as you grow, you can minimize
> what conflicts with your vision.”

"I'll never forget that time my advisor told me to institutionalize my
intentions to minimize conflicts," he said, wiping a single tear from his eye.

~~~
dictum
He must be a relative of my late friend,
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7387402](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7387402)

------
Invictus0
This letter sucks. Why would any host or guest take a minute out of their day
to read this corporate bullshit? Believe it or not, Brian, I don't care about
your journey or your company or your management philosophy, I just want a
cheap room.

~~~
djsumdog
I'd like a cheap room that doesn't cut into people being able to get
affordable apartments. They need to address the issues around people leaving
flats empty after people leave and turning them into permanent AirBNBs instead
of renting out room to people who actually live there.

If you really want to build community and meet people, you should try Couch
Surfers. It's part of the real sharing economy, not the bullshit sharing
economy.

~~~
Consultant32452
>They need to address the issues

If by "they" you mean NIMBY regulators who won't allow more housing to be
built, then we agree. This is not AirBnB's fault or responsibility.

~~~
wankerrific
Didn't Airbnb just have something like 5000 units yanked off their site where
the owners couldn't prove they were legit "sharing"? Seems like it's their
issue now.

~~~
Consultant32452
As of July 2016 Bloomberg estimated that AirBnB had 2.3 million listings[1].
At just 0.2% of their entire listing base, culling 5k bad ones from time to
time seems pretty reasonable.

But more to the point, this was the original comment I'm responding to:

>They need to address the issues around people leaving flats empty after
people leave and turning them into permanent AirBNBs instead of renting out
room to people who actually live there.

If the NIMBYs weren't allowed to have a strangle-hold on supply, then it
wouldn't be a problem for the wider market if some property owners turn their
units into AirBnBs.

[1]: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-11/airbnb-
fa...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-11/airbnb-faces-
growing-pains-as-it-passes-100-million-users)

------
hora
"This means that we must have the best interest of three stakeholders in mind:
Airbnb the company (employees and shareholders), Airbnb the community (guests
and hosts) and the world outside of Airbnb."

Pick one.

------
Animats
Imagine a future where there's one big landlord that owns all residential real
estate. Some smaller cities already come close.

Up next, the merger of WeWork and AirBnB?

~~~
chii
> one big landlord that owns all residential real estate.

AKA, the gov't.

------
marenkay
Interesting how serving their customers is not part of the defining
characteristics. o_O

~~~
pgodzin
> This means that we must have the best interest of three stakeholders in
> mind: Airbnb the company (employees and shareholders), Airbnb the community
> (guests and hosts) and the world outside of Airbnb.

------
Delta0
I don't think that Airbnb is really giving back to the community: they might
IPO this year or the next and most of the value created will go to VCs,
founders and employees, while guests and hosts still pay up to 20% fees.

That's why I've built CryptoCribs
([https://www.cryptocribs.com](https://www.cryptocribs.com)) to enable repeat
users to share their homes without paying a middleman

~~~
Tuxer
Why does everything crypto related feel the need to create a whitepaper
following scientific conventions, even when there is nothing scientific about
it...

~~~
spookthesunset
> Why does everything crypto related feel the need to create a whitepaper
> following scientific conventions, even when there is nothing scientific
> about it...

That is how you bamboozle all the rubes into buying your worthless garbage. If
it sounds all high tech and futuristic, it has to be awesome, right? See also:
Ethereum and all it's weird futuristic terminology like "gas" and stuff...

