<story><title>How The Hell Is This My Fault?</title><url>http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/30/how-the-hell-is-this-my-fault/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jacquesm</author><text>It&apos;s &apos;schadenfreude&apos;.&lt;p&gt;This issue is very emotionally charged because:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  - everybody that uses AirBNB thought &apos;this could be me&apos;

  - everybody that has a sister thinks &apos;that could be my sister&apos;

  - everybody that runs a start-up thinks &apos;this could be a
    shakedown&apos; (including some preposterous claims about
    hotel chains putting her up to this)

  - everybody is wondering if AirBNB is sitting on a huge
    stack of cash why they didn&apos;t just put it right and
    changed their terms of service / signup process
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
Being the &apos;ebay of spaces&apos; means that you will be doing the same things that ebay spends the most of its time on: battling fraud. AirBNB is coming of age with this incident, from now on the stakes will be raised considerably in how they deal with the reputation of their hosts and tenants.&lt;p&gt;What doesn&apos;t kill you makes you stronger. Looking forward to the period after this incident has blown over when AirBNB will be a company that is that much stronger and that will put action to their claims of transparency and  being a &apos;trusted marketplace&apos;.&lt;p&gt;If they can make that work they&apos;ll be fine.</text></item><item><author>kyro</author><text>HN has been pretty disgusting the last few days: the level of schadenfreude here has hit ridiculous new highs.&lt;p&gt;It seems that every time a story breaks about a successful company, a bunch of envious and disgruntled people come out of the woodwork and jump onto the bandwagon headed straight for the founders&apos; heads. A community of seemingly intelligent and rational individuals turns into the most rabid, emotionally-charged group of catty girls I&apos;ve ever seen. We only have one side of the story here. What if the&apos;ve offered help and she&apos;s rejecting it? What if there are some very legitimate reasons that AirBnB is not going totally public about it? &lt;i&gt;You don&apos;t know, and you have not heard the other side of the story.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;The same thing happened with Dropbox. You guys were so ridiculously quick to foam at the mouth with your theatrics and conspiracies.&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s pretty revolting. Envy is just not a good color on many of you.&lt;p&gt;Edit: Spelling. Thanks, Jacques.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>raganwald</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Being the &apos;ebay of spaces&apos; means that you will be doing the same things that ebay spends the most of its time on: battling fraud.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is the most old-school HN insight I&apos;ve seen so far, thanks. Quite often, what a business appears to do for it&apos;s users (allow you to read your mail on line, hook landlords up with renters) and it&apos;s competitive advantage (spam fighting, ad targeting, fraud detection, &amp;#38;c.) are very different things.&lt;p&gt;Back when I was young and rode a nice, sporty dinosaur to work, I made software for publishing classified ads. On the surface, it&apos;s a publishing business. But in reality, it&apos;s an operations business, because classifieds used to have very high revenue per column inch, but the transaction costs were also very high. So the profitability of a page of classifieds was driven by how efficiently the paper could take ads.&lt;p&gt;Anyways, I agree with your speculation. Running a c2c business is going to be all about fraud and other bad actor detection as well as operation efficiency.</text></comment>
<story><title>How The Hell Is This My Fault?</title><url>http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/30/how-the-hell-is-this-my-fault/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jacquesm</author><text>It&apos;s &apos;schadenfreude&apos;.&lt;p&gt;This issue is very emotionally charged because:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  - everybody that uses AirBNB thought &apos;this could be me&apos;

  - everybody that has a sister thinks &apos;that could be my sister&apos;

  - everybody that runs a start-up thinks &apos;this could be a
    shakedown&apos; (including some preposterous claims about
    hotel chains putting her up to this)

  - everybody is wondering if AirBNB is sitting on a huge
    stack of cash why they didn&apos;t just put it right and
    changed their terms of service / signup process
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
Being the &apos;ebay of spaces&apos; means that you will be doing the same things that ebay spends the most of its time on: battling fraud. AirBNB is coming of age with this incident, from now on the stakes will be raised considerably in how they deal with the reputation of their hosts and tenants.&lt;p&gt;What doesn&apos;t kill you makes you stronger. Looking forward to the period after this incident has blown over when AirBNB will be a company that is that much stronger and that will put action to their claims of transparency and  being a &apos;trusted marketplace&apos;.&lt;p&gt;If they can make that work they&apos;ll be fine.</text></item><item><author>kyro</author><text>HN has been pretty disgusting the last few days: the level of schadenfreude here has hit ridiculous new highs.&lt;p&gt;It seems that every time a story breaks about a successful company, a bunch of envious and disgruntled people come out of the woodwork and jump onto the bandwagon headed straight for the founders&apos; heads. A community of seemingly intelligent and rational individuals turns into the most rabid, emotionally-charged group of catty girls I&apos;ve ever seen. We only have one side of the story here. What if the&apos;ve offered help and she&apos;s rejecting it? What if there are some very legitimate reasons that AirBnB is not going totally public about it? &lt;i&gt;You don&apos;t know, and you have not heard the other side of the story.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;The same thing happened with Dropbox. You guys were so ridiculously quick to foam at the mouth with your theatrics and conspiracies.&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s pretty revolting. Envy is just not a good color on many of you.&lt;p&gt;Edit: Spelling. Thanks, Jacques.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rexreed</author><text>This is probably the most useful comment of the bunch for me personally and my startup - I&apos;m trying to learn from other people&apos;s lessons (it&apos;s the cheapest way to learn), and I think what you said above really helps. I made the comment elsewhere, but here&apos;s what I learned:&lt;p&gt;* Respond quickly&lt;p&gt;* Respond in the open so that there&apos;s no he-said / she-said&lt;p&gt;* Be fair, and err on the side of the customer&lt;p&gt;* Don&apos;t spin the company line - be thoughtful, especially if someone has lost money / time / confidence / data / faith in humanity&lt;p&gt;* Think &quot;This could be me / this could be someone I know &amp;#38; love&quot;&lt;p&gt;* If relevant, get the authorities involved quickly so that you can be sure it&apos;s not a shakedown.&lt;p&gt;* Assume the customer is telling you the truth unless you have specific and verifiable reason to believe otherwise&lt;p&gt;* Get insurance&lt;p&gt;* Don&apos;t let others (especially those with interests) speak for you.&lt;p&gt;* Try to establish a single point person for all contact with the customer, and make that person easily and quickly available to the customer at the customer&apos;s behest&lt;p&gt;* Try not to respond to what&apos;s said in the press&lt;p&gt;Did I miss any good lessons here?</text></comment>