Ben Gilbert: evaluation

Transcript context

…They didn't facilitate the payments, and the idea was everybody was just going to do this out of the goodness of their heart for their community. I think, for a long time, the only monetization that happened on CouchSurfing was you paid essentially a verification fee to have your identity verified. I think the way they did that was they took a credit card payment and then matched your name with the name on the credit card. That was the only way they made money. Actually, the similarities to HomeMobil don't end there. CouchSurfing was—for a long time—actually registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit. And then they had to convert from a nonprofit into a C-Corp when they raised money. It was a whole mess. I mean it makes sense it was a nonprofit because in my head—the way I always thought about CouchSurfing and I think when I first heard about Airbnb, I sort of equated it with the same thing of literally a stranger who’ll just let you crash while you're, I don’t know. At this time, I was a college student. I see it's for other college students, or interns, or whatever who don't have money and you can just stay on some stranger's couch. Yup, which I think was how CouchSurfing started. I think Casey was a college student and going on a trip. Did you ever use it? I looked at it, but I’ve never used it.…

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