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

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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?

Airbnb is an awful product with awful service, horrible and borderline abusive hosts, and fake cleaning fees alone that cost more than a comparable hotel stay -- there is no reason to choose them.

Maybe it was good years ago but I (and all of my friends, early 20s) have never had a single good experience. Hidden cameras, hosts calling screaming about whether we ran the laundry and that it would be an extra charge, hosts cancelling with two hour notice while we were in mid-air because they could resell the slot for far higher than our early booking due to a new event, being stranded, hosts using AI to lie about damage (to the point where we have been taking 360 4K video before and after).

I got sick of AirBnb. On several stays I had to go to the store to buy basics like trash bags, a note in one told me to lie to anyone who asked why I was in the building (presumably because AirBnb was not allowed), basics like a TV or WiFi are a wild card…

With hotels being the same price, or cheaper, they are just easier. They have the basics reliably covered, if there is an issue they have a staff ready to take care of it, no extra cleaning fees, room service, etc.

For a whole house with 10 people, maybe AirBnb makes sense. As a hotel room replacement, I don’t even bother looking anymore. As soon as people started buying places just to rent out on AirBnb, that was the beginning of the end. It was no longer people renting out an extra bedroom for extra pocket change, it was landlords trying to turn it into a full time business, wanting hotel prices for motel service.

Founder Mode is just a marketing slang, not sure if that has much of an impact on business. Putting that aside

Airbnb falls in an interesting category of business. It had the first mover advantage of getting into a market segment which was not regulated and not available for general public. Its a great option in some cases, benefits the economy in areas where regular hotels are not available.

However they do not have anything additional to offer on the top of what they are already offering so far. In other words their services, attractions segment did not get enough attention from the users that the users would pay money for it.

Secondly and most importantly, even though they had an advantage of getting into unregulated market which worked fine for hosts and guests alike, the local and government bodies are trying to get their fair share of taxes from all this transaction. This just increases the costs. On the top of it the big players are investing into Airbnb rentals (big businesses managing rentals) and trying to maximize their profits by any means which is making the whole experience worse for the value of money.

Fundamentally with travel there is less of a moat and less of critical mass than with say food delivery or taxi services.

Customers have plenty of time to browse and look for alternatives. So competing in the market with price or service is much easier. Thus capturing the whole market is much harder. In general it is lot less sticky marketplace.