back to article Airbnb might get $10bn price tag ... despite its legal woes

Airbnb, the online home-rental marketplace, is in talks to raise funding from private equity firms that would value the company at a sturdy $10bn. New York City's Manhattan skyline Those kind of valuations are par for the course for today's net startups really, but it's still a strong vote of confidence for a company that's …

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  1. This post has been deleted by its author

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Airbnb has run into trouble at home in the US. In New York, tenants are prohibited from renting out their homes for less than 30 days if they are not present at the time

    Not sure if Airbnb were involved but there's been recent items in UK press of some London local authorities starting to investigate people who have been renting out their council houses for short term "holiday" rentals

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    All right, I'm calling it - bubble, bubble, bubble, bubble, the most bubbular bubble that ever bubbled from a place where they make bubbles. Airbnb is worth more than 10% as much as Volkswagen? A third as much as FedEx? Half as much as Sysco and Adobe?!

    Come on, people. Just... really. And to think economists still make an assumption that investors act rationally.

    1. BlueGreen

      @David W.

      > And to think economists still make an assumption that investors act rationally.

      I'd upvote this 100 times if I could.

  4. psychonaut

    10bn?

    for a fucking website that lets you rent out an apartment?

    fuck me.

    now - wheres my copy of frontpage 2003...gonna set myself up....ive just bought www.rentmeout.co.uk who wants to buy in? could also have interesting other uses.

    no wonder anyone who hasnt got any money hasnt got any money.

    all the money in the world is tied up by cunts who have lots of money giving it to other cunts who piss it away on bullshit.

    right, wheres my vat of wine. oh, its gone. sorry, i may have sworn a few times there.

    never mind.

    cunts.

    1. User McUser
      Thumb Up

      Re: 10bn?

      [...] cunts who have lots of money giving it to other cunts who piss it away on bullshit.

      That right there is the best description of Wall Street I've ever heard.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: 10bn?

        I'd be angrier about the situation personally, but my company makes some of the bullshit.

  5. Tim Roberts 1

    nice business model though

    AirBNB has a very nice business model. Charge the "tenant" to make and pay for the booking, and charge the owner to handle the booking - and then the keep the money until a day after the person moves in. Not that I'm complaining - the system works very well imho. So, I can see that the business is probably worth a lot, even if billions is way too much.

    The added advantage of course is that you get to meet lots of very nice people, both as an owner and as a tenant.

    I just hope that raising capital doesn't mean that the site will be plastered with ads.

  6. Erik4872

    Holy bubble, Batman

    Seriously, all we need is the pets.com sock puppet and it'll be early 2000 all over again.

    Except now it's not just "do xyz on the Internet," it's "do xyz on the Internet, but...social media!!!!! Facebook!!!! Twitter!!!!!! Instagram!!!!!!!!!!!! Pinterest!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

    This is completely unbelievable, and I'm really surprised that people haven't learned their lesson from the dotcom crash. Oh well, I was fine last time when the dust settled.

    No Aeron chairs or dirt-cheap hardware on eBay this time though...

  7. Tom Slee

    Language

    The terms used in Airbnb's report are adorably vague. "generating" £502m in economic activity? "supported" 11,629 jobs? what do those things mean? The 300-word report certainly doesn't say.

  8. joed

    10, 9, 8...

    until the burst

  9. cracked
    Alien

    Where did all the money come from?

    I agree with the thoughts of the folk up above, who believe this hotel booking site - which calls hotels something other than hotels - is mainly hype, with a pinch of bollox, a whiff of PR-Bunny and a light dusting of spin.

    But that isn't what's interesting me at the moment.

    What is interesting me at the moment, is where did all of this money come from? What are we not getting now, that we got before?

    Before pets.com, phonefactory, friendsreunited and compuserve - to name but 4 - which wall was all this cash getting p1ssed up? Before investors had the promise of several billion eyeballs at hotdog.com, on which to spooge their cash; where did they invest it?

    It can't have just turned up following a speech by TBL in 1997, can it? No one loaded the Cover-CD from June 1998 Computer Weekly and found several gazillion in gitcoin (did they!?).

    I don't think there's a lack of new 'bricks & mortar' stores, is there? No lack of roads, rails, airports nor gigantic cruise liners? Schools are still around ... More and more houses get built.

    So where was all this investment money going, back when selfies was a cr4p nickname for a department store?

    1. Adrian 4

      Re: Where did all the money come from?

      The money's come from the hotel trade, which has far higher margins, because of staff costs and investment in unoccupied rooms. It's a drop in the ocean of that market. AirBnB can make a profit and still leave both landlords and tenants better off.

      1. psychonaut

        Re: Where did all the money come from?

        What money? The 10bn doesnt even exist. Its certainly not in their bank account. Someone somewhere thinks...thinks...its worth 10bn. What a load of shit. The sooner we shoot these cock suckers in the face at close range the better off we will all be.

      2. NeilPost Silver badge

        Re: Where did all the money come from?

        But Intercontinental Hotel group, which has hundred's of thousands of rooms is only worth £5bn.

    2. NeilPost Silver badge

      Re: Where did all the money come from?

      Don't forget webvan.com :-)

      ... with a modern day incarnation in the UK called ocado.com, which hasn't made a profit in a decade, yet still keeps rumbling on.

  10. Ken Hagan Gold badge

    Critics should re-think

    "But critics say that people are running illegal, highly profitable businesses by renting and then subletting many empty apartments at once - and avoiding hotel and rental-related taxes in the process."

    Sooo, these people are engaging in illegal activity but registering their crimes on a well-known web-site first, to make it easy for law enforcement.

    And it's worth $10bn.

    I wonder if anyone has registered www.insidertradingtipoffs.com? It might be worth more than Wall Street!

  11. Benjol

    10bn is quite a lot, but at least these guys are ALREADY making money selling something other than their users' data, unlike most of the other overvalued web sites of recent years.

    I guess probably a large part of the perceived value of Airbnb is that they have managed to gain the TRUST of their users. That's not something you often see for sale.

    Used their service 4 times now, in 3 different European cities, and been very happy each time. I can understand hotels being miffed about being 'undercut', but I think it's reasonable to pay less with Airbnb because I (as the consumer) am taking a moderately increased risk of a bad surprise.

    And I hate staying in hotels anyway. And I hate the fact that the hotels' own websites are generally hidden behind layers of 'booking' aggregators.

  12. Sporkinum

    I used Air BnB

    I used it a couple of years ago for a relatively cheap stay in Marin County for a week. I had a work related class in San Francisco, and I got them to wait on the return flight for a week, which I used for a vacation. Most hotels were north of $100 a night, and that might get you something with bedbugs. I stayed in Fairfax, California in a detached room with private bath at someone's house for $60 a night. They even supplied breakfast. I was able to spend a week hiking in the redwoods and on the beach a Pt Reyes.

    I think the real problem is that people are using it to sublet apartments. For me though, it worked great.

    https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=879EDBEEB27AD837!401&authkey=!AHoeuO6G9zP6LjI&v=3&ithint=photo%2c.JPG

    https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=879EDBEEB27AD837!403&authkey=!AKKw0KfYk9hrEPM&v=3&ithint=photo%2c.JPG

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