Author: Raanan Bar-Cohen

Raanan Bar-Cohenhttps://raanan.com/
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Quick thoughts on airbnb

There has been a ton written about airbnb lately around a ransacking of an apartment.

For me, I’ve been reading up on it, and also happen to be staying in a house and now apartment that I booked on airbnb (my first two ever bookings on airbnb) — so had a few thoughts on the experience and things that could be improved:

  • airbnb is hugely disruptive. If every home owner is now a potential mini hotel, that opens up a ton of inventory and really challenges the hotel business. Plus it allows owners to cover the cost of going on a trip while having guests stay in their property — so net net, the travel industry should be embracing this 😉
  • The airbnb site is beautiful, useful, easy to use, and makes it fun to look for a place to stay
  • Craigslist has created an opening for airbnb by having a completely unverified system (which is also the upside of craigslist in terms of low or no friction). I’ve been finding (and reporting) a ton of scams on craiglist around renting holiday apartments – especially overseas ones. The most common scam is that the scammer scrapes a legit property site from a listing on VRBO or similar, and then lists it as his own on craigslist
  • From my limited experience, I’ve really enjoying renting from airbnb home owners. For one, you get amazing rates VS a comparable hotel, and it’s a full apartment with a kitchen, etc. I’ve found the rates to be roughly 1/3 of what I’d need to pay at a hotel. And second, you get the huge advantage of the owners giving you tips, helping you navigate the local area, etc. In essence, you get a more true local experience which is often the opposite of staying at a hotel where you feel like you are in a tourist bubble.

In terms of what airbnb can do to tackle some of the fears people have around renting out their homes:

  • I think having a tier of verified users within the airbnb network could work. Charge something like $59/yr, get verified by passing a light background check (looking for big stuff like criminal activity). For me this would be appealing to rent from someone who is verified as well
  • For those renting our their place — two simple upsells would also make a ton of sense: insurance & storage. Should be cheap to add insurance in case anything happens, and a good rate on storage would make it easier to prep your place ahead of time

Here is a quick photo from the courtyard of a place in Neve Tzdeck (southern Tel-Aviv) that I just rented — hard to find a hotel like this 😉


Reblog: Why do corporation die so soon and cities don’t? Corporations are Machines and Cities are Networks

As I write this I am thinking of how WordPress works. At the core of WordPress is a for profit organization – but also one of the tasks of Automattic is to ensure the health of an ecosystem that is the larger WordPress ecology in which thousands of independent developers who do not work for Automattic make a living. I think of Wikipedia. At the core of Wikipedia is a set of rules about how Wikpedia has to work and how people in Wikipedia have to behave. Surrounding this core is a cadre of “White Blood Cells” AKA editors – that ensure that this DNA is kept healthy. I see no way now that Wikipedia will not be here in 50 years.

Why my confidence?

If you look at WordPress and Wikipedia you will see the key. In a network that really is a network – like WordPress and Wikipedia – the costs go up in a shallow linear curve while the outcomes rise exponentially.

via The FASTForward Blog » Why do corporation die so soon and cities don’t? Corporations are Machines and Cities are Networks: Enterprise 2.0 Blog: News, Coverage, and Commentary.

Photos: Kinneret view from an English style home

My temporary home office for a couple of days:

Engineering Recruiting and Early Days Quotes from True University

Some great ones like this:

“There is a secret to closing [a hire] when the person you’re hiring already works at a big company. You say, ‘Out of the 12,000 people there, only 200 people do all the coding and create the product. All the others are there to tell you why you can’t do what you want to do. None of those guys work for us.’”—Amit Kumar, Vurve.com

and:

“A startup is a temporary organization whose purpose is to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. There is no such thing as a 15-year-old startup. There’s a three-year-old startup attached to a 12-year-old failure.”—Steve Blank, author and retired serial entrepreneur

Full post here – thanks to Wade Roush of Xconomy for the write up.