

Airbnb Commits To SF By Signing A 10-Year, 169,000 Square Foot Lease - joebottherobot
http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2012/05/02/airbnb_commits_to_soma_by_signing_a_10year_169000_square_foot_lease.php
Airbnb signed a 10-year lease for the historic 888 Brannan building. The lease is for over 169,000 square feet, and Airbnb plans to move in by February of next year to accommodate the company's anticipated growth to more than 1,000 employees.
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cpeterso
888 Brannan does _not_ look anything like the pristine building pictured in
the article. Why would they need to post a clearly 'shopped picture of a
building that already exists unless they were hiding something?

The actual building's windows are all painted over and that tree in the
foreground does not exist. The freeway overpass pictured just across the
street is a homeless encampment strewn with shopping carts, human feces, and
needles. The city comes by about once a month to hose the sidewalk down with a
noxious bleach solution.

btw, 888 Brannan is just around the corner from Zynga and Adobe.

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ajross
Presumably they'll be renovating and this is planning artwork from their
architect. This is the equivalent of my sending my family concept sketches of
my kitchen renovation. I can't imagine what they'd be "hiding".

Edit: this seems to be pretty close to the angle in the picture:
<http://g.co/maps/xj758>

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Arelius
Speaking from having met someone on the renovation project, That is indeed
artwork from the architect, The building itself quite nice, but it's gone a
bit to shit recently, the renovation is supposed to be rather impressive.

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marcusf
For any other europeans, 169,000 sq ft = 15 700 m^2 (or slightly bigger than
two football pitches joined up).

I don't know enough about retail space to say if this is ambitious or not? On
the one hand, a ten year lease is a big commitment, on the other hand I guess
AirBnB is thinking 'go big or go home', and in that case it might well get
cramped sooner than that.

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TazeTSchnitzel
Thank you. I was wondering why they were renting such a massive amount of
space for a moment there.

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hoop
So every time a startup signs a lease for office space we have to read about
it on front-page HN? Who cares? This isn't even interesting. As for the
"commitment," a lease is simply an asset and can be sold like anything else.

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carguy1983
1,000 employees? For what?

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untog
I imagine that AirBnb needs a very large customer service team, for one.

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brianchesky
Our customer support team is primarily home-shored, and works around the world
in over 15 countries - less than 5% is in SF. The majority of people will be
product, design, engineering... plus marketing, bd, operations, G&A, etc.

~~~
staunch
Completely sincere question that I'd love to hear your thoughts on: why in the
world do you need 1000 people doing that stuff? I get how
sales/marketing/customer service require high headcounts -- but product
people?

Is there really something useful for 500 developers to do that the top 50 of
them couldn't have done?

I've always assumed (since I don't understand it) that it's just a momentum
thing. Did you ever consider keeping Airbnb under 100 employees? Would your
investors have freaked at that idea? Would it have hurt your growth?

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pbreit
To get big, you have to grow your headcount. Staying lean forever will not
support the kind of growth that AirBnB is currently enjoying or would like to
achieve. The "lean" mentality is fine when you're searching for a business
model or want to run a lifestyle business. It's suicide if you want to build a
large company to service a large customer base. And there's nothing wrong with
wanting to grow big. In fact, it's admirable.

~~~
untog
I don't think that's a global rule- look at Instagram (nothing to do with the
sale, just the number of users served by a company with two employees).
Obviously, AirBnb is a very different business, but it is possible to grow by
orders of magnitude without also growing headcount.

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hornbaker
It's about revenue, not user count. Money changes everything: when customers
pay, they expect a different level of service.

A company's revenue per employee is a common benchmark, and is usually around
$600K-$1MM or so for successful companies at or near scale, up to $2.2MM for
outliers like Apple(1). A company cannot grow to $100MM revenue and higher
without having a large number of employees just to manage those revenue
streams, partnerships, contracts, and support issues.

I should add that Instagram had ~13 employees, not two. That is a very low
number, but mobile apps are easier to scale, support-wise, than web apps –
users are just less likely to bug you, especially with a free app.

(1) Comparing Google, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon's Revenue per Employee:
[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=revenue+per+employee+ap...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=revenue+per+employee+apple,+google,+microsoft,+amazon)

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true_religion
A different level of service means customer support, it doesn't mean 10x-100x
the number of developers working on the product.

So honestly, I'm curious---what is AirBnB going to do with ~1000 developers.
Facebook expanded their headcount and created a whole suite of products
glomped onto their original vision. I'd like to know if AirBnB intends the
same and if so what are their plans.

Ofcourse, they have no obligation to blab about them early.

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pbreit
1,000 developers? Downvote.

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mistermann
What could they possibly need this much space for, and who is paying for it?

Bubblelicious.

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il
Airbnb is frequenty cited as a counterpoint to all the bubble talk because
they have a real business model and are making money. Same goes for all the
other highly valued YC companies(Dropbox,OMGPOP,Heroku,etc).

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mentat
There seem to be non-trivial possible legal landmines though which are likely
to multiply internationally.

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philwelch
That's not unusual--PayPal was in the same boat and they made billions.

