Airbnb Files to Raise $850M at $30B Valuation
I&#x27;m late to the party, but here&#x27;s what bothers me about Airbnb: It&#x27;s being treated like a technology company and not what it is, a retail company. Which is bad because wall street hates retail, but not as much as venture capital hates retail. And when people are delusion thats when mistakes are made.<p>Look at this way, Airbnb is a broker for rental inventory that <i></i>they never own or control<i></i>. Since they don&#x27;t actually control the inventory, the owner of the inventory is free to take it anywhere they want. Airbnb has no secret sauce.<p>This leaves Airbnb&#x27;s business totally unprotected and vulnerable to an unlimited number of competitors coming up. Eventually Airbnb will make a mistake, maybe they&#x27;ll push hosts too far, maybe some catastrophic thing will happen to a guest, the point is something will happen that will shift favor to a competitor. Maybe not tomorrow or next year, but someday.<p>But it gets worse, Airbnb is going to spend a lot of their vc funds fighting lawsuits, lobbying, and paving the way for their <i></i>competitors<i></i>. If I were to compete with Airbnb, I&#x27;d spend my time building a better platform and marketing strategy. Then wait for Airbnb to solve short-term rental legislation, then slip into those markets with a far lower cost to entry than Airbnb paid.<p>But what about technology you say? They&#x27;ve built a great platform that will take time for a competitor to replicate you say. Well if your business defense is solely based on having a complicated website, you&#x27;re going to have a bad time.<p>They&#x27;ve hit on a great idea: home sharing. But they don&#x27;t own the idea, they don&#x27;t own the homes and those homes are free to list anywhere they want.