Airbnb is a giant example of what happens when you go too far into thinking you can solve real world issues with software UI.
Or run a hospitality business without doing any real hospitality.
Yes, a marketplace is a dream business from a profitability perspective, but it’s too easy to forget the marketplace is not the actual product that people come to the marketplace for.
It doesn’t matter if you have 5000 overpaid developers building the slickest software, the end product is not the Airbnb software, it’s the actual hospitality experience.
I don't think anyone at AirBnB wanted to solve a real world issue.
They wanted to disrupt a market, same as uber, and did this by circumventing laws and breaking everything.
There is a reason why we have zoning laws: To protect housing for people. AirBnB broke this. Took my city munich / germany years in curt to get the data from AirBnB.
While Covid, plenty of reports came up how suddenly good flats in good locations became available again for renting to humans.
My mother uses flats for her retirement (she is not employed by a company and therefore doesn't get benefits) and she always tries to keep the rent low. Just that someone tried to AirBnB HER flat for more money than the rent.
Uber, just in case you are not aware of, takes the cake from taxi companies. Taxis who are there even if uber is not available. The only problem with taxis i have: They fight accepting credit cards still today. "Oh credit card? Mh were do you want to go?" yeah fu...
Taxis were a nightmare to use before Uber; and they often weren’t available at all.
The whole concept of taxi medallions is also extreme market manipulation with basically no benefit to the average consumer, which makes it doubly odd that someone would consider them somehow more ethical or less manipulative.
Again: if you tried to get a taxi prior to Uber existing, it was a nightmare and not at all reliable. You called the taxi company and if they felt like sending someone, they would. Often they'd say, "Sure, we'll send someone in 2 hours," and the driver never showed up. More than once I was stranded somewhere because of an unreliable taxi company.
This experience doesn't exist anymore, because Uber/Lyft/ridesharing apps out competed useless taxi companies.
People who needed to get taxis certainly didn't always get taxis.
I'm not sure where you made this experience though.
But at least here most cities i'm aware of, do not offer uber. But Taxis.
Big cities sure they have uber.
I also agree though, i don't like that uber is disrupting existing markets just because but taxis are shitty. Still i haven't seen an uber doing dialisis drive in my hometown, its taxis not ubers.
You can't link a web page to the person behind it. Maybe Airbnb is in the right to offer the service in the country, it's just nobody could verify/enforce the ability to rent short term.
You should probably consume less sensationalist activist propaganda and spend more time delving into the actual unglamorous history of how, where, when, and why they came about. Chesterton's Fence [1] is a very relevant concept here.
Can cars be used as a weapon? Yes. Was Henry Ford a racist antisemite? Also yes. Do cars exist so people can run over Jews and minorities? No. (Family Guy cutaway aside)
Zoning isn't as simple as that though. Zoning laws can restrict neighborhoods to with height limits, density limits, large minimum lot sizes, single family homes only, etc, with the aim of prohibiting affordable housing for undesirables.
I think we're come to declining marginal gains of software driven businesses when the real competitive advantage comes from real product and operations.
Or run a hospitality business without doing any real hospitality.
Yes, a marketplace is a dream business from a profitability perspective, but it’s too easy to forget the marketplace is not the actual product that people come to the marketplace for.
It doesn’t matter if you have 5000 overpaid developers building the slickest software, the end product is not the Airbnb software, it’s the actual hospitality experience.