[jacquesm]

Paul is not just 'some AirBNB investor', if you want to picture it that way, sure go ahead.

AirBNB has - in my opinion - been doing the very wrong thing here for much too long and this will blow up at some point if something isn't done pronto.

Tracking her down sounds like it was real work, believe me it wasn't, and as I explained below I gave her some hints on how to make that a lot harder than it was last night.

I figure that if by Monday this hasn't been resolved to everybody's satisfaction that it could get really ugly with losers all around, and EJ who has already lost more than anybody should go through still stands to lose the most. Once lawyers get involved all bets are off.

If you don't trust Paul to be objective when given the opportunity then that's your call.

[sunchild]

The nagging issue for me is the extremely unusual eloquence of the victim. I wanted to believe this was just another online echo-chamber shit-show until I read her blog posts and found EJ to be a level-headed, articulate and eminently reasonable person.

EJ says that AirBnB didn't offer to help and stopped communicating with her after the 25th of June. That's in direct conflict with pg's report to TechCrunch.

It's one thing for AirBnB to say "hey, buyer beware – you know the risks". (In fact, that's a perfectly valid response, albeit not a great business move.) But it's an entirely different thing to dispute the victim's story.

Now we're in a situation where someone is not telling the truth. On one side, you have a group of people with a lot of money and time invested into a business. On the other side, you have an extremely sympathetic victim of a crime. And somewhere in the middle is the fact that these kinds of unfortunate eventualities should have been obvious to both AirBnB and to their users.

[kenjackson]

EJ says that AirBnB didn't offer to help and stopped communicating with her after the 25th of June. That's in direct conflict with pg's report to TechCrunch.

I don't think that's factually correct. I believe she says communication stopped after the 30th of June.

pg says this, "I’ve just learned more about this situation, and it turns out Airbnb has been offering to fix it, from the very beginning. From the beginning they offered to pay to get her a new place and new stuff, and do whatever else she wanted."

I suspect they may have said that on June 30th. And then they went dark. It seems no one at AirBnB has actually said they made contact with EJ during the month of July at all, until the night before her second blog post on this incident.

To me it sounds like it may not have been malicious on AirBnBs part, but rather a dropped ball. Someone probably had tons of other work on their plate and didn't follow-up with her. After a week forget about it. Until her first blog entry went up...

[gojomo]

EJ neither said communication stopped after the 25th, nor stopped after the 30th. She said the communication was very frequent and emotionally reassuring before the 30th. After the 30th – about when she wrote her 1st blog post – it was more 'occasional' with a cofounder.

Lots of people (including the parent and grandparent post here) have been treating this as a 'cutoff'. That's how EJ felt. That feeling comes across in how she chose to describe everything, but the real message she's sending is that she stopped liking the communication after June 30th, not that it ended.

My theory is that's because some initially empathetic support people were replaced with a 'just-the-facts' cofounder. Let's say he's trying to help by concentrating on the tangibles – do you have a place to stay? ok. is the perp caught? ok. will you call if you need anything? ok. is there any way we can twist this ending for you so you wrap things up on your blog more positively so people know AirBnb helped? er...

That style of communication could rub a still-stressed victim the wrong way. And a request like the last one could have been intended as a way of asking, "how do we help you so much that you can balance the fear and anger of your June 29th post with something better in an update?"... but instead be misinterpreted as untoward pressure.

That's just a theory, but it's a better theory than the one that AirBnb are jerks, or the false idea (based on various misreadings of EJ) that no offer of financial support was made and no communication happened for weeks. EJ's own posts refute those ideas.

When dealing with contentious, emotionally-charged situations, give everyone involved the benefit of the doubt.

[SoftwareMaven]

I really don't believe it would be possible to "drop the ball" on something like this. They knew from the start this could destroy their business, they are working with the police, they won't just "forget" the victim.

Now, if they tried to wash their hands by handing it over to their lawyer to "solve", that might be different, but still reprehensible.

[jacquesm]

I think the big issue is whether or not AirBNB offered assistance or not and if they did if it was unconditional.

If it turns out they attached a bunch of conditions to their offer (for instance: you have to remove your blog posts or you have to write something positive) then they might as well not have made these 'offers'.

An offer of help should be unconditional. And from EJs point of view being muzzled would obviously be unacceptable.

That's pure speculation on my part, but it is one interpretation that would be consistent with what everybody has said so far with nobody having told a falsehood.

[cbs]

>Paul is not just 'some AirBNB investor'

I know we're posting on the HN temple of the YC church, so I always expect a little bit of fanboyism in attitudes towards PG, but you've really gone off the deep end if you think that in this situation Graham is anything but just another investor.

[jacquesm]

I've butted heads with PG more than most here and to call me a fanboy is really hilarious.

Yes, PG is an investor (or, more accurately, YC is an investor), but I've seen enough of Paul to know that he's more than 'just another investor' and if it turns out I'm wrong about that I'll be most surprised, I have not seen any evidence to date that PG does wrong by anybody when he has all the facts.

And that last bit is where I think the problem lies.

Calling YC a church and HN a temple is really ridiculous.

[jdh]

What does "more than just another investor" mean? Like everyone here, I'm a PG fan, but I don't know what's being implied.

It's okay to connect her to Paul because...

- he's smarter than a typical investor? - he's more involved than a typical investor? - he's more wise than a typical investor?

If anything, PG and YC are much less involved than a typical investor (VC) when the company is at this stage. No board seat (for starters. But also he's invested in 100+ companies over the last few years. The other VCs involved here focus all their time on the 3-5 investments they have made over this period.

So I guess I just don't see the point. As far as I can think, either you're saying he's different because he's way better, which may be true but not fair to assume all would know or agree (see the church/temple posts above), or because YC's investment model is different, which to me would be true but with the opposite implication.

[jacquesm]

> It's okay to connect her to Paul because...

Both EJ and Paul stand to gain from resolving this situation quickly and orderly.

And both could lose considerably if this is allowed to drag on much longer and/or hits the mainstream press.

[samtp]

How exactly could she lose as much as PG? It seems that PG is in a situation to lose a lot more. Instead, EJ would likely get public sympathy and help.

This honestly sounds borderline threatening. But judging from your recent actions, I don't expect you to take care with how things are said.

[jacquesm]

When people from both camps vilify you equally you can be fairly sure that you're even handed.

[mst]

Except that this is a YC company, and YC was explicitly created to be a company that provided investment and mentorship - their core competency isn't picking companies that will make money so much as picking companies that they can help to make money.

So, in this situation, Paul Graham is definitely not "just another investor" - he's a mentor too.

[adw]

I'm sorry, but It's not your call as to whether pg is objective or not. Like you, I'm sure we all think a lot of him, whether we've met him or not. But you just, at best, took agency away from someone who, it's totally reasonable to assume, is freaking out about her lack of agency right now.

We believe you when you say your intentions were good, but that doesn't really excuse the actions.

[jacquesm]

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2826040