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The primary externality Airbnb generated was RISK

This exploded into public awareness when a host found her apartment absolutely destroyed by a guest

Which, you know, of course: a system like that is bound to fail spectacularly on occasion.

But what shocked me was how unprepared Airbnb was to make their host whole again. They were dodging accountability and only public shame, orchestrated by the host’s desperate PR campaign, could make the difference

It drove me bonkers.

These guys were getting absolutely rich off the backs of the communities that hosted them.

And they couldn’t take care of someone when things went wrong?

It was such a breach of the basic, reciprocal, implied social contract we should all adhere to.

And what I was learning was that all of Silicon Valley business culture was premised on that kind of breach. Move fast and break society if it earns you a better valuation next round

I didn’t like that at all.

Man, Steve Huffman tried to open the door for me, too.

Sometimes I look back and wonder if I fucked up. He’d invite me to hang at the beach with his YC buds.

But I just couldn’t get excited about them and their world. I couldn’t play the game the way they all expected. It wasn’t for me.

We haven’t talked in years. I got pretty mad at him and Alexis, after they returned to Reddit. I felt they had a greater responsibility to community health.

At the time, Steve… disagreed.

Today all those guys are RICH

I mean, beyond fuck-you money, this is fuck-everyone money. And powerful, in that they can do more or less what they want any given year, and have access to anyone else they need to meet or influence.

Meanwhile, I’m not rich.

It feels like I could have been, if I’d made different choices. But I couldn’t do that any more than I could have sprouted wings.

It’s one of the enduring heartbreaks of my life that I found the Valley so inimical to my values.

So now I live in the woods, almost as far from San Francisco as you can get and still be in the US.

I’ve got a fiber connection and half a prayer everything I know about software and technology strategy can still matter, can still pay some bills.

It’s hard to spend a lifetime really learning something, knowing it down to your bones, only to find the Mecca of its practice so hostile to the vision of the future you hold dear.

It’s been quite a walk through the desert.

@danilo I am in this picture and I do not like it.

I still live in the area, I haven’t had that big falling out with anyone personally, but the dawning realization that the engine of “tech” was just breaking existing laws with technobabble obfuscation (a partial list: illegal cab company, illegal hotel, illegal parking garage, illegal rocket launches, wildcat bank, mass art theft) and it only works because law enforcement is perpetually asleep at the wheel … makes it hard to maintain enthusiasm

@glyph yeah

WAY too much of the last cycle’s “innovation” was software outrunning sleeping regulation

It’s depressing stuff

@danilo I obviously think the crime-doers doing the crimes are to blame here.

But the sleeping regulators are also an important part of the problem.

If you are an executive who is not comfortable with rampant criminal behavior, but you’re also not an incorruptible paragon of righteousness (as most of us are not), there’s only so long you can watch the rest of the industry do a bunch of crimes before you can start wondering “wait, are these actually crimes or is it just acceptable CODB?”

@danilo If everyone is willing to externalize their costs but you, you get out-competed and replaced by someone else who is willing to do that externalizing. The incentives make the environment more than the personalities do.

@glyph this is real as hell and especially visible with the self driving car fiasco

The shit is out there running people over and it takes how long to shut it down? It’s pathetic

@Npars01 @clive @danilo it’s a *little* unfair to put that all on AirBnB. They were one accelerant among many, on a market with some pretty bad fundamentals

@glyph @clive @danilo

It's not all on AirBnB, but buying multiple homes for short-term rentals became a gold-rush amongst the tax-evasion crowd.

@Npars01 @clive @danilo no disagreement there.

@xris @glyph @clive @danilo

Several cities have experienced the same carpet bagging influx.

London. Atlanta. Austin. San Francisco. Miami. Los Angeles. Vancouver. Seattle. Madrid. Rome.

@clive @danilo @glyph indeed. And with a balance- impaired space, that sidewalk action is scary. We've experienced it. And we are not alone; there is an aging population, and the sidewalk e- scooters are are a threat.

@clive @danilo @glyph though, to be fair, we were out one day and met a young couple riding e-scooters on the San Francisco sidewalk. All of us waiting at a loooong light. Nice people. Why were they on the sidewalk? Well, they tried the street ( the label says not to ride on the sidewalk (giggle)). And the drivers terrified them. So, onto the sidewalk. And guess what? They hated the e-scooter experience, would never do it again. (Speaking as one who bicycle commuted through a Chicago winter, I stopped bicycling because of safety concerns/ bad drivers.)

Think of how much better it would be, if instead of thinking of the sidewalk as a hot new property to squat on, the brilliant tech mind had actively engaged with the city to develop good protected lanes for bikes & scooters? They'd be heroes. And their political clout would have accelerated development of a safe, fast travel network.

@artemesia @clive @danilo @glyph simple business case: more demand from potential riders who would ride if not forced into auto lanes & congestion., and won't ride on sidewalks because in many cases they are either too badly maintained, or they don't want to risk pedestrian traffic, or even no sidewalks .

@PaulWermer @clive @danilo @glyph

That's not a business model. How do you make money?

@artemesia @PaulWermer @clive @danilo not sure what you are getting at here. You make money in this case by renting scooters. The “model” is just rental; these are strategies to boost demand. Most businesses do have a productive economic activity underlying them, even if it is buried under a pile of perverse economic incentives and crenellations of weird anticompetitive behavior

@glyph @PaulWermer @clive @danilo

No, a simple shop makes money by renting scooters. A company distributing 2500 scooters across a city (and abusing public infrastructure by doing things like tying up every bike rack near popular attractions with truck-moved scooters at 7AM) is in the business of selling stock.

My question to the OP is, how are these tech geniuses supposed to make money by "the brilliant tech mind had actively engaged with the city to develop good protected lanes for bikes & scooters?"? There's no growth story, no greater fool to sell to, no elevator pitch, and as my largely rhetorical question pointed up, no business model.