

The Billion-Dollar Startup That Almost Never Was - turoczy
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-billion-dollar-startup-that-almost-never-was-2011-6

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npollock
Any startup that relies on the network effect to provide value is a daunting
challenge. Your product can be amazing, but without the right user acquisition
strategy, you'll be left spinning your wheels. Kudos to the AirBNB team for
having the vision and determination not to quit.

~~~
brandnewlow
Unfortunately, the article never explains what that strategy was. "Getting
into YCombinator" is posited as the solution to their problems, yet "getting
into YCombinator" is not a user acquisition strategy.

~~~
VladRussian
>the article never explains what that strategy was.

if memory serves me right it was already discussed here. Just google "airbnb
craigslist spam". They admitted it themselves :

[http://venturebeat.com/2011/06/02/airbnb-admits-gaming-
craig...](http://venturebeat.com/2011/06/02/airbnb-admits-gaming-craigslist/)

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nswanberg
The cereal fundraising story is mentioned here as evidence of desperation,
which it might have been, but Fred Wilson paints the move as an indicator of a
great entrepreneur: <http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/03/airbnb.html>

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imjk
Is this a story about a story, from the same day?

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ninjoah
Yeah, where's the beef?

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dougws
Seems like most successful companies of any kind "almost never were." Is there
any company that was successful right from the beginning, with no real
hurdles?

~~~
SatvikBeri
Depends on what you mean by successful.

I know a small company that makes about $300-500k per person year and several
smaller ones in the range of $100k per year that never had any major problems.
They are not particularly interesting stories, so you'd probably never hear
about them otherwise.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
> _I know a small company that makes about $300-500k per person year_

I'm interested ... go on.

~~~
SatvikBeri
One basically puts public domain information online in searchable form and
gets massive traffic + ad revenue. Took a while to set up, very boring, but
very easy to maintain. Note that being the first mover was _very_ important,
the #2 competitor for these niches gets about 20% of the traffic of the winner
(and I assume 20% of the revenue).

Another one literally finds links for a particular political topic and sells
the combination of links at something like $1000/month. I have no idea why
they're so successful-their process consists of Googling said topic for a few
hours a week and posting the links on their website-but somehow it works.

Like ThomasLangston mentioned, unsexy markets really work, because you're not
competing with the best and the brightest...in fact, you're often not
competing with anybody.

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hnsmurf
Interesting that it doesn't mention the craigslist spamming. I'd wager that's
far more responsible than YC. As great as YC is for many things it's not a
significant source of traction for most startups.

~~~
Timothee
It's mentioned through that part: "Airbnb contracted outside sales people to
generate leads". This was pretty much the response from the company to the
craigslist spamming story.

To be honest, while reading that line, I thought it was slightly odd because
it was pretty specific (e.g. "outside" could be removed, but it clearly
distances Airbnb from said sales people) and didn't necessarily bring anything
to the story, especially since Airbnb has said the efforts were "largely
ineffective".

The cynic in me feels that it was included specifically to add weight to the
company's response about that craigslist story.

