AIRBN
In-depth analysis and expert insight into the community marketplace for unique spaces.VCs as Lobbyists
One symptom of founders getting stronger relative to VCs is that VCs have been forced to expand their repertoire. YCombinator has an in-house designer, Sequoia has an in-house PR person, and of course many early-stage VCs are informal recruiters (in the sense that they find good employees for their hot startups, and…
A current YCombinator company founder who also participated in the summer 2009 session has compared and contrasted his experiences. The most sweeping change: valuations are far higher than they used to be: ” It’s weird to see entrepreneurs compare convertible note caps of 7, 8, 10 million dollars from this lens of low, medium and high….
Is Online Advertising Just Good for Direct Response?
Seth Godin notes that easily-analyzed, numbers-driven direct response ads are the dominant form of online ads, which has some negative side effects. But a Vizu survey indicates that advertisers will spend more online dollars on branding than direct response in the coming year.
What gives? First, there’s sampling: Vizu…
Why Google Copies
At Digital DD, we’ve long argued that Google uses a two-stage process to expand into new businesses: first, they scoop up and aggregate lots of data, while distributing lots of traffic to the people they aggregate. Then, they use their aggregated data to bootstrap their own content creation. Once their content is…
A Reductio Ad Absurdum of Facebook / Google+ Comparisons
Alan Wolk at The Toad Stool has an amazing post about a Chrome Extension called BetterFacebook, which “most notably add[s] the Circle functionality of GooglePlus to Facebook.” As regular Digital DD readers know, the “Circle” functionality on Facebook is called “Lists.” Not only does it predate Google+, but Facebook…
One of the surprising effects of blogging culture and social media is that articulate and/or popular people have a vastly different experience than the rest of us. Just look at the EJ / AirBNB saga. Here’s how EJ started her story:
I am crouched low on the carpeted steps of my apartment building’s old staircase,…
AirBNB’s Drastic Crisis Response
Hot on the heels of VC Charlie O’Donnell’s rousing defense of AirBNB, the company announced a new, dramatic policy: $50,000 in de facto insurance for all hosts. This opens AirBNB up to significant fraud risk; they may impose some pretty strict hurdles, or end up paying the $50,000 mostly to people who…
Quarterly Earnings Update
A few search- and social-driven companies have reported their earnings this quarter. An update:
Overstock.com had weak sales growth and lower gross margins, with a drop in sales and marketing expenses and an increase in technology spending. The press release has details. Early in the quarter, they were penalized by Google, which may be…
AirBNB’s First Big Crisis
AirBNB takes a commission for letting strangers pay to sleep in one another’s houses. Anyone who hears about this business model immediately brings up the question of what happens when you rent to, or from, a psycho. (Note that Psycho took place in a standard-issue hotel.) This is a case study in what…
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