| I think this is a great observation, and well put. FWIW, had you made the same comment a year ago, I'd have only seen Uber, not Airbnb, matching precisely the model you describe. The lore was (and perhaps still is) that Airbnb has a platform substantially different & far better than Uber (e.g. http://archive.is/kE5hq). MSM painted Uber as this ultra-aggressive startup in terms of both company culture and taking on regulators; meanwhile Airbnb was just this wholesome startup simply trying to help student's travel on a shoestring budget and helping people pay rent by letting someone sleep on their couch. Anyway, that was my interpretation back then; but clearly I'm no Paul Graham. It's clear from his blog post that Paul never saw it this way. To him, Airbnb was always destined to be a platform that disrupted the hotel market. Of course if you're going to 'disrupt' the hotel market in any medium-to-large city, that means thousands of residential homes will need to be converted into short-term vacation rentals. It was either a carefully planned timing, or merely circumstance, but Airbnb has scaled at exactly the right pace to (like you mention) "become large enough to get a seat at the table when the regulations are reworked". And unlike Uber they have powerful/wealthy friends who piggyback on the Airbnb platform. It seems like almost overnight Airbnb went from an airbed in some student's loft to Corporation-Owned-Whole-Home-No-Host-punch-in-a-pin-code-to-open-the-front-door-fully-automated "STRs". Living in San Diego I couldn't hate it more. After city council passed a regulation to limit Airbnb's to primary residences (which I believe most SD residence were happy about), Airbnb & HomeAway, and other parties formed a coalition, and hired a bunch of people to gather signatures to skirt our city council's ruling and put this action on a ballet as a referendum (http://archive.is/Yf6GP). In theory I'm not opposed to voter referendum; but here is a case where Airbnb is clearly undermining the ability of our elected official's to govern our city. The voted regulations will now be put on hold until 2020; and there will be nothing but carpet-bombing adverts for the next two years brainwashing san diegans. There's no hope. |