Ask HN: Why is Founder Mode not working for Airbnb?

I really liked Airbnb and was rooting for them ever since they launched.

The stock never attained the peak it reached post-ipo (only this month it's gotten close), while Booking Holdings roughly doubled in the same period.

The sentiment online seems to be against them (or at least in my bubble). Poor customer service and overprotected hosts seem to be recurring issues.

4 points | by jorisboris 13 hours ago

7 comments

  • notahacker 7 hours ago
    I'd say "founder mode" (if we must use such silly terms) did pretty well for them to IPO at over 100 billion for a single segment of the travel market Booking Holdings could easily have done themselves (and to an extent actually does) in the middle of the pandemic though. But all the growth since then was priced in to the market's expectations for them to deliver upon, as were expectations that AirBnB might expand into other markets...

    Booking Holdings generates more revenue and profit from having more products in more markets, and was underpriced rather than overpriced in 2020. People moan about them at least as much as AirBnB, but ultimately people moan about their websites or policies because they're using them...

  • brudgers 3 hours ago
    1. Founder mode can’t last forever, and 18 years on is close enough to forever to do until forever shows up.

    2. To the degree the market is efficient the peak IPO era price must have been dumb money.

    3. AirBnB is an attractive alternative to hotels for a limited set of use cases and users and what it sells is a fungible commodity (no differentiation on location, service, convenience, or price with VRBO, etc.).

    4. Market regulation. Citizens have used democratic processes to limit short term rentals and beyond that, pre-existing lodging regulations regarding safety and sanitation and nuisance have been applied.

    5. The supply of hosts is limited by cost-of-doing-business.

  • karmakaze 2 hours ago
    AirBnb can only be used if you are willing to accept the risk of having an unacceptable or even no reservation upon arrival. The latter did happen to me and fortunately I was able to make alternate plans--though still not recoup full payment.

    So it's good when it works, and can ruin your trip otherwise. I have no use for that range of outcome.

  • vikramshwetabh2 8 hours ago
    Maybe this isn't really a founder mode problem. Airbnb has a two-sided marketplace, so improving the experience for guests can sometimes hurt hosts, and vice versa. Some of the recurring complaints about customer service may therefore come from incentives built into the marketplace rather than from a lack of founder involvement.
    [-]
  • dyeje 4 hours ago
    The experience has degraded to the point where hotels are just better most of the time. Hosts these days tend to be commercial, unresponsive and have an unreasonable number of stipulations. I’m not really sure how you fix that, seems unavoidable with the scale they’re operating at.
  • idontwantthis 1 hour ago
    Personally, since airbnb shifted from people renting their own homes to people buying homes to airbnb it has just felt gross. The last time I used it the homeowner tried to scam me into replacing his broken tv. I have to assume there are hidden cameras in all of them because why wouldn’t there be?