Good research. I don't think this is anything new. I'm familiar with a few YC companies that use CL as a method to get their supply (in this case vacation rentals).
I think it counts as "blackhat", but I'm not really outraged. To me, its equivalent to cruising the singles section of Craigslist and responding as a sock puppet recommending a particular dating site. Not a huge deal, but its not 100% above board either.
Of course it's blackhat. They're sending unsolicited, automated spam to people who explicitly stated that they didn't want emails regarding commercial interests. There is a big difference between advertising and spam.
Not that I'm against what they're doing and if I was a VC I probably wouldn't care too much - but it's somewhat illegal in this case... Certainly against CL ToS as well.
CAN-SPAM, sending from a fake address (illegal headers). CA has a specific law that pre-empts CAN-SPAM that definitely makes this illegal if sent from CA (don't ask how I know).
I thought according to the article, AirBnB was posting from their own real gmail accounts they made, and the article writer was the one misusing others' email addresses.
Man oh man, there are a lot of (very bad) armchair lawyers on HN.
You might consider AirBnB's actions unethical, but they certainly aren't illegal - which would be obvious to anyone who bothered reading the CAN-SPAM wikipedia page. It's not illegal to violate Craigslist's TOS, and AFAICT the "spam" messages were sent from a legitimate Gmail account.
For those of you claiming "I'd rather be poor than violate craigslist's terms of service": Bullshit.
They most certainly are illegal. They are unsolicited advertising (which is fine under CAN-SPAM, sadly), and contain none of the requirements of CAN-SPAM - a legitimate business address, and a clear unsubscribe link.
Just because they come from gmail accounts does not exempt AirBnB from the law.
It's commercial email 100%. Probably a fake sender name (illegal), against gmail ToS, against CL ToS and no unsubscribe link and no one even subscribed in the first place. 100% against CAN-SPAM.
A state law cannot pre-empt a federal law; when a federal law and a state law are in conflict, the federal law takes precedence over the state law. (U.S. Constitution, Article VI, Clause 2.) Notably, the CAN-SPAM Act expressly pre-empts any state law that "expressly regulates the use of electronic mail to send commercial messages, except to the extent that any such statute, regulation, or rule prohibits falsity or deception in any portion of a commercial electronic mail message or information attached thereto" (15 USC 7707). (So, a CA law against fraudulent email would survive pre-emption by CAN-SPAM, but a CA law against simple bulk spamming would be pre-empted by the federal law.)
I think you misunderstood my comment. It is legally impossible for a state law to pre-empt a valid federal law. However a state law may, in certain situations, enact additional regulations on types of conduct already covered by federal law.
It's true. It's the difference between 'hustle' and 'hustler'. I think most confuse 'hustling' in the sports sense, with 'being a hustler' in the black-market sales sense.
I think Fred Wilson's quote is referencing entrepreneurs who 'hustle' and try very hard/use alot of energy in the sports analogy --- and NOT entrepreneurs who are 'hustlers' and use shady means to fulfill their needs.
I love this. Being scrappy is one of the best qualities among entrepreneurs. The attitude of "do anything" to succeed usually results in success not to mention it is one of the characteristics that PG looks for in founders.
Even when it's illegal? Is this an action that you consider moral but illegal (re: CAN-SPAM and various state laws)? Should AirBnB's investors be worried about the potential liability of lawsuits?
> Each separate email in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act is subject to penalties of up to $16,000
I'm very curious if they misrepresented the nature of their growth to their investors. If they did, they could be in violation of securities laws, in addition to CAN-SPAM.
Have you been on craigslist? I fully expect to be spammed about anything I post on the site, it seems like a natural price to pay for being able to get the attention of hundreds of interested buyers instantly. And at least in this case the spam was a useful offer that was in line with what the posters were trying to do anyway.
I agree - maybe I'm just drinking the YC gatorade here, but to me it shows scrappiness and dedication and does not seem especially immoral. Who did it hurt? For the people who were annoyed by the spam, it took 30 seconds out of their life to read and delete the email. For the ones who went ahead and posted their rental on airbnb, it probably led to more business plus the added benefit of getting to use airbnb's elegant interface instead of trying to keep track of dozens of craigslist emails. The only money that airbnb made from this lie was by finding people additional renters for their homes, which seems like an everybody wins scenario.
If it was outright illegal then they'll have to face the repercussions of that, but I doubt they'll lose much sleep feeling bad about what they've done.
When someone says "Craigslist spam!", is the first you think of a) spam posted to craigslist as listings, or b) emails advertising something (surreptitiously) to people that have listed their property on craigslist?
Not that the latter isn't "spam" of a sort, but it doesn't feel quite like "craigslist spam".
Blackhat or not, this is a great example of how there are very viable alternatives to SEO in terms of internet marketing. The ever changing rules and laws of search engines unfortunately make or break a vast majority of online businesses.
In Startups Open Sourced, he says Airbnb "tried everything" but he says that press is the single best source of their growth. Having the happy customers came in second, but would be interested to hear if this helped them much. It's hard to believe that Craigslist is the reason why they'd be so successful when the product is so easy to spread by word of mouth and press.
If CL spam is responsible their phenomenal growth, then more power to them. It wouldn't work if they didn't have a better solution to a huge market need.
i think people would have a much different view if this wasn't airbnb and was a less reputable company. The things described in the post definitely constitute as spam and violate CAN-SPAM...but these types of tactics do work (if they didn't we wouldn't have spammers) and there wasn't anything malicious about it.
This. I used to think they were clever, but now we know they're such repellent scumbags willing to abuse public resources for private gain that it's actually a black mark against Y Combinator to have been partly responsible and holding dirty money.
Of course. Email is the main immediate worldwide communication medium that isn't under the arbitrary control of one private owner. Spam is an existential threat to that, which makes it pretty much unforgivable. It's the price of a free society (and here's where I try to remind myself that really is worthwhile) that we can't impose an http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/I/Internet-Death-Penalty.htm..., but if we had some legitimate way to pull the plug on these douches today I surely would.
How is spam an existential threat to email? Spam filters have gotten exceptionally good, to the point where I find it hard to believe that anyone using a decent filter receives enough true spam in their inbox to make them stop using email altogether.
I use the default GMail filters - perhaps I'm just lucky and receive easily filtered spam. I get hundreds of spam messages per day, and none break through on the average day.
Hundreds a day sounds plausible. So with that much crap to wade through, how long does it take to finally discover and rescue false positives from the spam folder?
I am slightly disturbed. I don't mind startups using Craigslist to market and heck, they might even be allowed to do this if they have an option on AirBnB to "market my property on my behalf" to just post the properties on CL every two weeks but what bothers me is this:
1) They explicitly violated the posters request to not receive "commercial" mail of any kind. This is basically the same thing as SPAMing. Would HN condone any type of unsolicited SPAM from a YC startup? I think not. The intent of the poster was to receive only credible inquiries from people interested in renting their property, not from competing services or people wanting to sell them on services, etc.
2) They tried to hide the fact that it was SPAM by using fake Gmail aliases and pretending to be normal folk just trying to help that vacation rental owner out. If you're going to push your service out there to people, be transparent about who you are and allow people to tell you to not contact them anymore.
I think startups are held to a looser standard and of course we all love to be "hustlers" but the idea that this behavior should be applauded regardless of it's ethnical nature seems wrong.
The analysis seemed to be from 2009, perhaps things are much different now.
What bothers me more is that Craigslist is one of the great Silicon Valley stories of something that grew from nothing (an email list that one person created). They weren't always big. Long ago they were a small, scrappy startup. It took years of perseverance, hard work and providing a useful service.
It's a story startups should aspire to. Instead AirBnb seems to get a pass because they are a YC company. I can't wait for irony to strike when another startup does this to AirBnb.
I agree the 'attaboy' comments are way out of place, but there is also an over the top reaction the other way with the criticism being heaped onto the AirBNB guys in my opinion.
It was technically wrong of them to leverage craigslist by circumventing the community's own "no commercial email" request, and they should get dinged for it.
But in the grand scheme of things, when you are a tiny start up struggling to survive, this is a relatively benign grass roots attempt at marketing which the AirBNB guys even probably regret doing.
Comparing RIAA's scare tactics to this seems a little out of place, but it is right in line with Microsoft's shady attempts at astroturfing.
"But in the grand scheme of things, when you are a tiny start up struggling to survive, this is a relatively benign grass roots attempt at marketing which the AirBNB guys even probably regret doing."
Hmm. Maybe. If you built a billion dollar business would you look back and regret a part of it that may have been instrumental to your success?
I'm definitely not excusing them for their actions but if I were in their position, I don't know if I could honestly say I would've regretted the past.
I agree. Likening this to spammers sending out millions of wholly untargeted emails is incorrect. These were extremely well-targeted communications likely sent out one-by-one by humans who had done some research.
It's hard to say. Microsoft can push out new products with splashy announcements, TV ads, etc. Similarly, they can afford to do "proper engineering" these days. But Microsoft as a startup, and as a growing company, was extremely unscrupulous. Likewise, the majority of the "scrappy" web startups cheat on their tech and cheat on their marketing, in the hope that they can find traction before they lose goodwill, and get profitable so that they can go back and fix the system before it blows up.
On a personal level this is very frustrating, because we like everyone we know to behave in a honest and straightforward fashion. But from a business standpoint there is a huge tradition of using some amount of misdirection to push new products to people. Parallels can be made with the animal kingdom and the use of camouflage, bright colors, and social interactions. Sometimes your business is in a position to strut your stuff, because you're the lion in the room. Other times you have to sneak around or be deceptive. Sometimes, fragile, trust-breaking tactics work - at least for a time.
In the end, the real condemnation for this behavior has to come from yourself, not from others. The market sees what is in front of it at the moment; it rarely knows the truth.
Clearly the unethical part of this discovery is that Airbnb used 'shell' gmail accounts to do their work. Instead they should have found a way to present themselves with honesty and integrity to future members.
What are the good reasons for Airbnb's success and valuation? Are there any stories about their actions that inspire both confidence and congratulations. (aside from their Obama O's and Capt'n McCain flash success).
I started my own company to get away from the do-anything-for-a-sale attitude of corporate america. I do not admire or respect AirBnb for this behavior. I don't care that it worked. I don't care if it was legal or not, it was dishonest. I know it's common, but it takes a fundamental lack of respect to lie directly to another human being.
I'll just continue to toil in obscurity; self-respect intact.
I am not being facetious by this question, but did you make a product that you are selling ?
If so, how did you get your first set of customers ?
Please share.
If you have not made a product that you need to sell yet, I think you will find when you do it, it's MUCH, MUCH more difficult than you ever thought it would be.
Also, selling a service - i.e. web development/design is very different than selling a product.
I have not released the product I am building. I have been supporting myself doing contract work.
My bad experience came when I was the first employee (not founder) at a VC backed startup. I was originally a developer but was promoted to be the technical liason in sales. My job was to sell the incomplete product. We went back and forth between government and enterprise sales while I was there. The company is still around but is doing something completely different now.
In the interest of not burning any bridges, I'll only say that when we would bid on contracts, every vendor from big guys to the other pre-product startups were stretching the truth beyond what I consider simply being optimistic about delivery schedules and ROI.
So yes, I do know what I'm getting into. My plan this time is to build a product that has obvious value to the customer on day 1, and leave selling by 'hustle' to someone else.
This is a FAQ: for your first sale, you sacrifice the price (all the way down to free if you have to). For the next sales, you show your reference customer.
You know what I mean. Even in EDA, having a reference "user", as long as they are using the product, is a major achievement that will be leveraged [to death] with future [paying] customers.
I am not trying to be pedantic. In my experience there is an enormous difference between having a user and having a paying customer. They may be a user before they are a paying customer, but there is a very significant difference.
I didn't spam. I talked with customers before the product was even finished to make sure we were solving a real problem, to make sure they understood our marketing message, and to make sure we really understood the space.
This led naturally to a situation where I had paying beta customers, and even more customers who signed up and started paying as soon as we launched.
There's a fundamental difference between building a product that doesn't depend on others for its functioning, and a marketplace, where the core function is access to other users.
It is about impossible to get a marketplace going from a standing start. I've commented on it before elsewhere: picking off Craigslist users was always critical for Airbnb to get going. There are dozens of startups trying to build companies off the back of what Craigslist doesn't provide.
I'm sure the Airbnb guys probably started with the honest approach, realized it got them nothing but cease and desist notes, so switched to the craftier fake emails from girls interested in the well-being of vacation renters everywhere. I bet it felt icky at the time, but here they are. And "you know what's cool....?"
There are two-sided networks that have launched without spam, or deceit.
The standard approach would be to pick a city like NYC, and pound the pavement selling the site to every high-influence group you can possibly identify, do that to get a decent inventory built up and then launch with that inventory and start proving the model.
Then, pound the pavement in other high-influence cities, work to get inches in the media, do biz-dev deals with travel/vacation sites, get yourself interviewed on local radio and tv, find every possible way to insert AirBNB into the news stories of the day And frankly, with the real estate crash, there were a lot of possible ways to insert themselves into the news.
Or they could just spam craigslist.
That said, my big question continues to be 'did they disclose this behavior to their investors'.
I do not want to argue if this type of stuff is good or bad. But I do want to point out to you all that list of tech gods is full of similar stories. Off the top of my head:
MySpace started out purely through spam...Tim Ferris started out in online supplement sales...People complained about Plaxo doing black hat stuff... they sold ok. People complained about Zynga ripping off other games and about breaking every Facebook platform rule there was... look at Mark Pincus now. People complained about Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg stealing their idea... he does not care.
Is this 'grey' ? In the sense that it can be interpreted as 'shady' ? Hell yes. But is it "wrong" ? I don't think so.
I always thought that getting that first set of customers that will take you to product/market fit was going to be easy. What with the Twitterverse, Facebook and all and sundry. But let me tell you, from experience, it is DAMN HARD!
I guess the true test of whether or not this is 'unethical' is whether those people that signed up felt scammed after using the service.
If I were one of those people that got that email, sure I might feel a bit 'weird' that they presented themselves as 'Jill D' and not AirBnB, but after going through what I have been doing the last few weeks - trying to get customers - I can't say I would be upset.
"Is this 'grey' ? In the sense that it can be interpreted as 'shady' ? Hell yes. But is it "wrong" ? I don't think so."
I post a listing on Craigslist specifically saying it's not "ok for others to contact me about other services, products or commercial interests" (an option in Craigslist) and then a business tries to convince me to use their site using a disguise DESPITE clearly stating that I don't want to be contacted?
No, I'd say the true test of whether something is ethical or not is whether it violates rules and/or the choices of a user. Then again, I'm the type that actually wants businesses to respect my decision.
But wouldn't you say that's a bit unreasonable given that if you listed your apartment/house for rental on Craigslist - it can be safe to assume that you are interested in renting your house/apartment, no ?
I think every 'savvy' user always checks those boxes, but if there is an option that allows you to actually fulfill your original intent - i.e. you got no hits on Craigslist, but with AirBnB you have tons of requests and make a ton of money, wasn't that a win/win - even though they used a 'grey' tactic to reach you.
You say you don't want to be contacted, but that's to protect you from emails from the Nigerian prince and the blatantly obvious annoying spam. But things that are targeted at you, and can add value - I think it would be safe to say it makes sense in those cases.
They said they didn't want to be contacted. It isn't up to others to decide that they are a special case. Any marketer would find the wiggle room to make their email a special case.
This is spam pure and simple the seller can't decide their product is so in line with what you need that they can spam you. Who is then the judge of what is spam. Contacting user that haven't specified they don't want to be contacted by commercial interest is OK, but not someone who said no.
This is probably why the post is only interesting now (after a huge valuation).
I expect lots of the CL folks were perfectly happy to list their places on AirBnB and so far I've not heard complaints from users about they were approached (although I've not been looking for them either).
It is both "wrong" and WRONG: if you have to fake the real fans and the real efficiency of your startup, no matter how good your idea you think it is, it's just a bubble. Your startup sux, big time. As did and does Microsoft's (someone mentioned MS took quite the same savage approach when they launched).
AirBnB raided Craigslist for users. Those users made more money and had a far better user experience on AirBnB to boot. Not exactly your traditional Viagra/Nigeria type spam.
When the end doesn't justify the means, sure, complain about the means. But this is not such a case.
I second that. What scares me the most is that no one from AirBnB came on that thread to strongly deny this article. And you know they read HN a lot and post often.
I'm sure that their attorneys have let them know that acknowledging that they sent out spam would expose them to massive damages under the CAN-SPAM laws. So AirBnB can't really acknowledge what they did and try and move on... financially, it would be ruinous for them. They are probably hoping that the controversy will blow over, until the statute of limitations expires at which point they can apologize and blame the previous regime.
Since this has been on the front page of HN long enough, I expect more in-depth coverage from TechCrunh really soon. That's usually how it works. That could get the ball rolling.
(I know TC has its critics, but they are exactly what's needed for this kind of story)
This is the same thing spammers do to steal money from people, and it's the same thing that dating sites do to pretend to have women interested in meeting dudes. Either way, it's fraudulent.
I don't hate that they did this, but I hate that they tried to pretend they were anonymous women that happened to really like AirBnB. Why be so shady about it and instead why not just be honest?
"Hey, we noticed your rental and thought you might like something we built. It's helped a lot of people fill vacancies and make money; check it out - url"
I assume they couldn't be honest because it would've violated Craiglist's Terms of Use, namely:
You agree not to post, email, or otherwise make available Content:
k) that constitutes or contains "affiliate marketing," "link referral code," "junk mail," "spam," "chain letters," "pyramid schemes," or unsolicited commercial advertisement;
l) that constitutes or contains any form of advertising or solicitation if: posted in areas of the craigslist sites which are not designated for such purposes; or emailed to craigslist users who have not indicated in writing that
it is ok to contact them about other services, products or commercial interests.
m) that includes links to commercial services or web sites, except as allowed in "services";
I wonder if Craigslist could legitimately sue Airbnb.
While it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what's happening here, it takes a bit more than connecting the dots to make a legal case stick.
[EDIT] Just to be clear I'm certainly not a fan of this. It strikes me as unethical and a little low on the "sleazy marketer" scale. I don't however beleive that this is illegal unless you can somehow prove that JillSmith03@gmail.com is professionally connected to AirBnB, and that this was done under corporate directive.
It's actually very easy to prove, because the same email was sent from several different accounts: you go after AirBnB directly and shoot for discovery, get them under oath to answer whether they did this or not.
If you have ever been questioned under oath, you know how tough it is to lie (ping me offline for details).
No point in chasing the gmail accounts themselves, that would be a dead-end.
this is correct - I've tried to reach out to CL ads to obtain early customers for a web app that would seem to solve their problem (and I'm very honest about it, saying it's our app), but it gets flagged as solicitation, with a note to post it elsewhere.
I assume AirBnB have received many cease and desist letters from craigslist. Craigslist is just waiting for AirBnB to get bigger so they can get big chunk of money.
I doubt it. I worked at a company that aggregated job listings from Craigslist. We actually didn't do anything insidious; in fact, we served up their jobs with attribution and if the job was clicked, it would take the user to the Craigslist site. So basically we were feeding them extra traffic.
They sent a cease and desist relatively early on (not waiting until we got bigger).
It's likely that they didn't know and have either just sent them a cease and desist or AirBnb has chosen to ignore it.
Glad you did all that testing to find something so damn obvious. Look at how they rank on google - they don't. It was really obvious they were spamming craigslist.
Is this something the the AirBnB guys would put on their YC app form if they were applying again? And then what would PG & co make of it? In fact, did pg know about this or encourage it in the first place?
Answers to these questions might be a good test of whether they should have done it or not.
196 comments
[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 208 ms ] threadNor would I want to work there.
I wonder if this is the tenacity of founders that pg speaks of.
Blackhat insinuates that someone is being gamed, in this case, both the home owners and AirBnB are benefiting (maybe craigslist is losing out?).
http://www.betabeat.com/2011/05/31/airbnb-takes-manhattan-wi...
I'd like to borrow his words in regard to this post.
Fred's original post - http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/03/airbnb.html
Are you saying it's a violation of the CAN-SPAM act? Or something else?
You might consider AirBnB's actions unethical, but they certainly aren't illegal - which would be obvious to anyone who bothered reading the CAN-SPAM wikipedia page. It's not illegal to violate Craigslist's TOS, and AFAICT the "spam" messages were sent from a legitimate Gmail account.
For those of you claiming "I'd rather be poor than violate craigslist's terms of service": Bullshit.
They most certainly are illegal. They are unsolicited advertising (which is fine under CAN-SPAM, sadly), and contain none of the requirements of CAN-SPAM - a legitimate business address, and a clear unsubscribe link.
Just because they come from gmail accounts does not exempt AirBnB from the law.
A state law cannot pre-empt a federal law; when a federal law and a state law are in conflict, the federal law takes precedence over the state law. (U.S. Constitution, Article VI, Clause 2.) Notably, the CAN-SPAM Act expressly pre-empts any state law that "expressly regulates the use of electronic mail to send commercial messages, except to the extent that any such statute, regulation, or rule prohibits falsity or deception in any portion of a commercial electronic mail message or information attached thereto" (15 USC 7707). (So, a CA law against fraudulent email would survive pre-emption by CAN-SPAM, but a CA law against simple bulk spamming would be pre-empted by the federal law.)
Pre-empts it. www.DanHatesSpam.com
I think Fred Wilson's quote is referencing entrepreneurs who 'hustle' and try very hard/use alot of energy in the sports analogy --- and NOT entrepreneurs who are 'hustlers' and use shady means to fulfill their needs.
The spam is the opposite of all that. The spam destroyed a wonderful founding story. The spam destroyed their professional and ethical credibility.
> Each separate email in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act is subject to penalties of up to $16,000
- http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus61-can-spam-act-complia...
Really? Personally, I hate spam.
This was illegal in the "this was illegal" sense.
If it was outright illegal then they'll have to face the repercussions of that, but I doubt they'll lose much sleep feeling bad about what they've done.
Not that the latter isn't "spam" of a sort, but it doesn't feel quite like "craigslist spam".
Think the response here would be the same if it was MicroSoft or the RIAA caught in something like this and not a YC alum?
Anyway, great investigation and great analysis here, I think.
Oh and all the false positives that are a nightmare for so many legit uses.
Are there better alternatives I am not aware of?
What a complete and utter waste of resources.
1) They explicitly violated the posters request to not receive "commercial" mail of any kind. This is basically the same thing as SPAMing. Would HN condone any type of unsolicited SPAM from a YC startup? I think not. The intent of the poster was to receive only credible inquiries from people interested in renting their property, not from competing services or people wanting to sell them on services, etc.
2) They tried to hide the fact that it was SPAM by using fake Gmail aliases and pretending to be normal folk just trying to help that vacation rental owner out. If you're going to push your service out there to people, be transparent about who you are and allow people to tell you to not contact them anymore.
I think startups are held to a looser standard and of course we all love to be "hustlers" but the idea that this behavior should be applauded regardless of it's ethnical nature seems wrong.
The analysis seemed to be from 2009, perhaps things are much different now.
It's a story startups should aspire to. Instead AirBnb seems to get a pass because they are a YC company. I can't wait for irony to strike when another startup does this to AirBnb.
It was technically wrong of them to leverage craigslist by circumventing the community's own "no commercial email" request, and they should get dinged for it.
But in the grand scheme of things, when you are a tiny start up struggling to survive, this is a relatively benign grass roots attempt at marketing which the AirBNB guys even probably regret doing.
Comparing RIAA's scare tactics to this seems a little out of place, but it is right in line with Microsoft's shady attempts at astroturfing.
AirBNB didn't become 'ramen profitable' until April 2009.
http://www.quora.com/How-much-money-did-Airbnb-raise-What-is...
Hmm. Maybe. If you built a billion dollar business would you look back and regret a part of it that may have been instrumental to your success?
I'm definitely not excusing them for their actions but if I were in their position, I don't know if I could honestly say I would've regretted the past.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/uu/why_does_power_corrupt/
On a personal level this is very frustrating, because we like everyone we know to behave in a honest and straightforward fashion. But from a business standpoint there is a huge tradition of using some amount of misdirection to push new products to people. Parallels can be made with the animal kingdom and the use of camouflage, bright colors, and social interactions. Sometimes your business is in a position to strut your stuff, because you're the lion in the room. Other times you have to sneak around or be deceptive. Sometimes, fragile, trust-breaking tactics work - at least for a time.
In the end, the real condemnation for this behavior has to come from yourself, not from others. The market sees what is in front of it at the moment; it rarely knows the truth.
What are the good reasons for Airbnb's success and valuation? Are there any stories about their actions that inspire both confidence and congratulations. (aside from their Obama O's and Capt'n McCain flash success).
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad he confirmed his suspicion before blogging about this. But even one e-mail like that is suspicious.
I'll just continue to toil in obscurity; self-respect intact.
If so, how did you get your first set of customers ?
Please share.
If you have not made a product that you need to sell yet, I think you will find when you do it, it's MUCH, MUCH more difficult than you ever thought it would be.
Also, selling a service - i.e. web development/design is very different than selling a product.
My bad experience came when I was the first employee (not founder) at a VC backed startup. I was originally a developer but was promoted to be the technical liason in sales. My job was to sell the incomplete product. We went back and forth between government and enterprise sales while I was there. The company is still around but is doing something completely different now.
In the interest of not burning any bridges, I'll only say that when we would bid on contracts, every vendor from big guys to the other pre-product startups were stretching the truth beyond what I consider simply being optimistic about delivery schedules and ROI.
So yes, I do know what I'm getting into. My plan this time is to build a product that has obvious value to the customer on day 1, and leave selling by 'hustle' to someone else.
I didn't spam. I talked with customers before the product was even finished to make sure we were solving a real problem, to make sure they understood our marketing message, and to make sure we really understood the space.
This led naturally to a situation where I had paying beta customers, and even more customers who signed up and started paying as soon as we launched.
It is about impossible to get a marketplace going from a standing start. I've commented on it before elsewhere: picking off Craigslist users was always critical for Airbnb to get going. There are dozens of startups trying to build companies off the back of what Craigslist doesn't provide.
I'm sure the Airbnb guys probably started with the honest approach, realized it got them nothing but cease and desist notes, so switched to the craftier fake emails from girls interested in the well-being of vacation renters everywhere. I bet it felt icky at the time, but here they are. And "you know what's cool....?"
The standard approach would be to pick a city like NYC, and pound the pavement selling the site to every high-influence group you can possibly identify, do that to get a decent inventory built up and then launch with that inventory and start proving the model.
Then, pound the pavement in other high-influence cities, work to get inches in the media, do biz-dev deals with travel/vacation sites, get yourself interviewed on local radio and tv, find every possible way to insert AirBNB into the news stories of the day And frankly, with the real estate crash, there were a lot of possible ways to insert themselves into the news.
Or they could just spam craigslist.
That said, my big question continues to be 'did they disclose this behavior to their investors'.
Can anyone explain why this is so controversial ? If you downvoted it, mind explaining why ?
MySpace started out purely through spam...Tim Ferris started out in online supplement sales...People complained about Plaxo doing black hat stuff... they sold ok. People complained about Zynga ripping off other games and about breaking every Facebook platform rule there was... look at Mark Pincus now. People complained about Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg stealing their idea... he does not care.
I always thought that getting that first set of customers that will take you to product/market fit was going to be easy. What with the Twitterverse, Facebook and all and sundry. But let me tell you, from experience, it is DAMN HARD!
I guess the true test of whether or not this is 'unethical' is whether those people that signed up felt scammed after using the service.
If I were one of those people that got that email, sure I might feel a bit 'weird' that they presented themselves as 'Jill D' and not AirBnB, but after going through what I have been doing the last few weeks - trying to get customers - I can't say I would be upset.
I post a listing on Craigslist specifically saying it's not "ok for others to contact me about other services, products or commercial interests" (an option in Craigslist) and then a business tries to convince me to use their site using a disguise DESPITE clearly stating that I don't want to be contacted?
No, I'd say the true test of whether something is ethical or not is whether it violates rules and/or the choices of a user. Then again, I'm the type that actually wants businesses to respect my decision.
I think every 'savvy' user always checks those boxes, but if there is an option that allows you to actually fulfill your original intent - i.e. you got no hits on Craigslist, but with AirBnB you have tons of requests and make a ton of money, wasn't that a win/win - even though they used a 'grey' tactic to reach you.
You say you don't want to be contacted, but that's to protect you from emails from the Nigerian prince and the blatantly obvious annoying spam. But things that are targeted at you, and can add value - I think it would be safe to say it makes sense in those cases.
I expect lots of the CL folks were perfectly happy to list their places on AirBnB and so far I've not heard complaints from users about they were approached (although I've not been looking for them either).
When the end doesn't justify the means, sure, complain about the means. But this is not such a case.
So I'm sad.
(I know TC has its critics, but they are exactly what's needed for this kind of story)
I don't hate that they did this, but I hate that they tried to pretend they were anonymous women that happened to really like AirBnB. Why be so shady about it and instead why not just be honest?
"Hey, we noticed your rental and thought you might like something we built. It's helped a lot of people fill vacancies and make money; check it out - url"
You agree not to post, email, or otherwise make available Content:
k) that constitutes or contains "affiliate marketing," "link referral code," "junk mail," "spam," "chain letters," "pyramid schemes," or unsolicited commercial advertisement;
l) that constitutes or contains any form of advertising or solicitation if: posted in areas of the craigslist sites which are not designated for such purposes; or emailed to craigslist users who have not indicated in writing that it is ok to contact them about other services, products or commercial interests.
m) that includes links to commercial services or web sites, except as allowed in "services";
I wonder if Craigslist could legitimately sue Airbnb.
While it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what's happening here, it takes a bit more than connecting the dots to make a legal case stick.
[EDIT] Just to be clear I'm certainly not a fan of this. It strikes me as unethical and a little low on the "sleazy marketer" scale. I don't however beleive that this is illegal unless you can somehow prove that JillSmith03@gmail.com is professionally connected to AirBnB, and that this was done under corporate directive.
If you have ever been questioned under oath, you know how tough it is to lie (ping me offline for details).
No point in chasing the gmail accounts themselves, that would be a dead-end.
They sent a cease and desist relatively early on (not waiting until we got bigger).
It's likely that they didn't know and have either just sent them a cease and desist or AirBnb has chosen to ignore it.
Answers to these questions might be a good test of whether they should have done it or not.