Acquired / episode intelligence
Speakers in the public record
Claim mix
Evidence policy
Every row below preserves an exact excerpt. Identified speakers are linked; unresolved voices are labeled and excluded from people counts.
Claim ledger
63 published records
01 / belief
“I think now they’ve made somewhere between $11 billion and $12 billion, maybe closer to $13 billion.”
02 / belief
“David, I think you summed it up so well in saying this is exactly as an entrepreneur, as an investor, this is exactly the type of business you want to start that just goes on its own and that you don’t have to keep pushing the rock uphill.”
03 / belief
“I’m not sure what it means to be a 22nd Century company, but it definitely means they’re not going public any time soon. Which I think was the message behind all that.”
04 / belief
“In fact, I think the first time I went in 2010, I couldn’t get a hotel room and I booked an Airbnb.”
05 / belief
“I mean they’re technically US-based. Uber’s large in Europe, but I think probably larger in the US.”
06 / belief
“I texted David a month and a half ago. I was like, dude, I think Airbnb is going to IPO before the end of the year.”
07 / belief
“At which point then, I think sophomore at Harvard, Nate closed his consultancy business for reasons that have never been discussed.”
08 / uncertainty
“The point is, there's no doubt that a large portion of the supply on the platform is property managers, and how much that is, I don't know.”
09 / belief
“I think the disconnect is as looking back for me watching that video was I think Brian and the company really believed Airbnb—they talked about it so much in this conference—about belonging, about feeling home when you travel, and about the connections in the community between hosts and guests.”
10 / belief
“Yup, which I think was how CouchSurfing started. I think Casey was a college student and going on a trip.”
11 / belief
“I think every time I've gone, I've done an Airbnb. I've never stayed in a hotel for South By.”
12 / belief
“One thing that I think has changed over the past couple of years is there now are viable good third-party software tools to do this.”
13 / belief
“I think that’s right. I think -ish. I wondered at the time, these are pretty onerous terms on both sides.”
14 / belief
“The long term stay market—which is longer than 28-days stays—is actually smaller than the food delivery market, which I think is sort of an interesting comp.”
15 / uncertainty
“Still up. I don't know if I’ve written down their website. We’ll link to it in the show notes.”
16 / belief
“One more stat on the unique supply, great brand, direct traffic thing, the comp there is Expedia and Booking spend about $11 billion a year on Google ads, which I think makes them Google's top customers or a top handful of customers.”
17 / uncertainty
“The question is, what is the percentage of each of those use cases of supply on the platform? I don't know.”
18 / belief
“Depending on how they all work together, I think there's real potential here to lean out the business while still growing and realize the great profitable dynamics it could have.”
19 / uncertainty
“I don’t know if it mirrors—I think about like a venture capital fund life cycle.”
20 / belief
“I think there exists a steady-state for this business where they don't need to spend as much on R&D, they don't need to spend as much on sales and marketing, and they're able to spit off cash for years and years and years.”
21 / belief
“I think the ones that they notably don't have are cornered resource or switching costs.”
22 / belief
“I hadn’t thought about this, but this is probably why Instagram is—long run, even now—bigger and more valuable than Facebook. Because on Facebook, I care about my friends, my loose circles, maybe there are a thousand people on Facebook I care about.”
23 / belief
“I think all these things are true, and CouchSurfing—as we talked about a little bit—definitely didn’t have the right model, definitely mess things up, but they also were launching and starting to build in the build-up to the financial crisis during the go-go years.”
24 / belief
“I think that's probably the biggest piece, but one being that coronavirus and COVID has perhaps permanently changed some behaviors just like the part of the DoorDash ball case, perhaps, permanently changed more behaviors to be more favorable for Airbnb for travel.”
25 / belief
“The Oprah one was great for me to share with my grandma. This is another great one that I think a lot of people will understand.”
26 / belief
“How much this will happen and how deep Airbnb smoke goes and how big their core market I think is still a question.”
27 / belief
“I think to some extent, the rating and review history is some lock-in there, not that much and less than it used to be.”
28 / belief
“I don’t think I have anything new to say here. I think that's my last positive playbook one.”
29 / commitment
“Yup. And also, everybody would just like some liquidity, I will assume here, not to mention.”
30 / belief
“I think an important thing to realize here too, the thing that scares me the most is, again, it’s a sword that cuts both ways.”
31 / belief
“I think part of the reason that Airbnb has such amazing free cash flow dynamics is—whether intentional or not—they started this new market, new idea.”
32 / uncertainty
“I would say should we feed the bear? I don’t know if there are any bears out there right now to make a bear case.”
33 / belief
“I think now that this market is maturing we're going to see more and more people not willing to take the single provider risk.”
34 / belief
“Exactly. The point I was going to make is that I care about the price. I want to maximize my revenue as a host.”
35 / uncertainty
“His friend who meets is a beefy hockey player and—I don't know if it was at this or after college—an aspiring bodybuilder.”
36 / commitment
“Everyone, have a wonderful Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year’s—whatever it is that you celebrate—with or without family, or perhaps with folks on Zoom. We will see you next year.”
37 / belief
“I think there were a bunch of questions about how big is this? What’s going on? There’s crazy stuff happening.”
38 / belief
“The next big one I had was around creating unique supplies, but I think we've talked sufficiently about that one.”
39 / belief
“I think the innovations of Instant Book, payments through the platform, messaging through the platform, and their review system—together, they create the symphony that enabled this product to provide tons of value on both sides of the business.”
40 / belief
“Uber, which I think is a reasonable comp because it’s also a marketplace business, and it was also at a global scale, it had also been a long time—10 years between founding an IPO in 2018.”
41 / belief
“The new Zoom. They were growing at (I believe) close to a 200% growth rate going public.”
42 / belief
“I think the thing that becomes true is people consider Airbnb one of their options.”
43 / uncertainty
“I don't know if he actually succeeds, but if he does, he's not moving a lot of product, let's put it that way.”
44 / belief
“I don’t exactly remember which month this is, but I think that narrative is definitely one that played out during the pandemic.”
45 / belief
“I don't actually look forward to browsing Airbnb to find somewhere to stay because it's becoming more and more of a chore. They've tried it with Plus, but Plus ended up being pretty meaningless just like Superhost, which I think is the Airbnb equivalent of winning the participation award.”
46 / belief
“I think there’s a recurring theme that seems to happen from this point forward in the business, which is Brian and management feeling very aspirational about why people want to use Airbnb, particularly around the community, particularly on belonging.”
47 / belief
“I think the other thing too that took a while for people to realize—but has probably become the most sustainable part of Airbnb in the ensuing 10+ years—is you don’t always want a hotel experience.”
48 / belief
“I think for people that own their homes, that live in the homes, that are renting them out—either renting them out while they live there to help with income, or renting them out while they're on vacation.”
49 / observation
“Effectively, what they did here is say there’s value created on Craigslist. We’re going to be the way to capture it.”
50 / belief
“I really do think it's getting worse and worse to become a host over time as the company is subsidizing less and less things with investment dollars, is thinking less and less like a startup, is trying to be more profitable, and I think that that's going to be an issue for them, long-term too.”
51 / belief
“As I think through this, I was trying to come up with one example where they've done something outside of their bread and butter.”
52 / belief
“I think that's the thing, everybody knows this happened, but the actual story was they didn't have any money.”
53 / evaluation
“I'm curious what they'll start reinvesting in now that they're through this period, and obviously have to show a really good quarter and next quarter after that in order to keep the investor excitement as high as where it is right now.”
54 / preference
“I think green hair, counter-culture. I could be wrong on that, but that's the impression I have.”
55 / evaluation
“They figure out that photos are important. They figure out that having a smooth payment experience is important because bringing a bunch of cash and giving it to your host is pretty awkward.”
56 / evaluation
“As I went back and read the email exchange between Fred Wilson and Paul Graham, and then I read Fred Wilson's blog post talking about how they passed, I actually realized I had the story wrong.”
57 / prediction
“Do you think we could become the official accommodation provider for the Industry Association? It’s unclear what Bill's reaction was but AirBed and Breakfast did not become the official accommodations provider.”
58 / evaluation
“Hotel rates can be like $1000+ a night during the week because there is always a conference going on of some type.”
59 / prediction
“An A+ would be yes, and they’re already because let's be honest, there's no excuse that this company hasn't already been generating tons of cash.”
60 / evaluation
“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.”
61 / evaluation
“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.”
62 / evaluation
“Flights are kind of a silly thing to include because they don't really generate any real revenue on those.”
63 / preference
“For Airbnb, I care quite a bit because I really like having a variety of listings.”