As people become increasingly comfortable using web platforms to swap homes, cars, and everything in between (spouses?), some have said that the collaborative consumption movement has the potential to be as profound as the industrial revolution. But, before that can happen, marketplaces and platforms that deal in collaborative consumption need to recognize the importance of ensuring consumer… → Read More
I love my two cats Pepper and Magic and kind of think of them like two extra children and definitely part of the family. I also travel a lot — sometimes on my own, more often with my husband and two (human) kids.
So this company launching today is right up my alley, and chances are you if you live in one of the 72.9 million households (63 percent of homes) in the U.S. with pets you might feel… → Read More
Airbnb has acquired Crashpadder, a London-based company that runs an online marketplace where people can list their homes and apartments to be rented out for short stays (essentially, it was like a smaller Airbnb.) Financial terms of the deal haven’t been disclosed.
Visitors to Crashpadder’s website are automatically directed to a landing page about the Airbnb deal, which will affect… → Read More
Airbnb is growing like a weed.
The young company is today releasing a ton of statistics about its business to showcase its growth, accompanied (of course) by a fancy infographic. → Read More
Brian Chesky, co-founder and CEO of Airbnb, took the stage this afternoon at the DLD Conference in Germany for a keynote covering his views about the ‘sharing economy’.
In terms of news, there isn’t much to report based on his talk, but Chesky talked about the fact that sharing used to be an integral part of human life and ‘hardwired’ into our DNA, that it disappeared after the second World War… → Read More
After about a year of being iPhone only, the Airbnb app comes to Android this morning alongside a complete revamp of the Airbnb mobile features.
With over 500K downloads and 125k active users on iOS, and over 10% of its traffic coming through mobile, Airbnb mobile web genius Andrew Vilcsak tells me that the move to Android was inevitable, “The biggest complaint was that it wasn’t on Android… → Read More
The nominations have been tabulated and the votes are in. Over 300,000 nominations were calculated across 20 categories. Along with our partners GigaOm and VentureBeat, we are very proud to announce the finalists for 2011′s best in technology. Voting begins now.
For 2011, we’ve added some new categories. Best Location App, Best Cloud Services and Biggest Social Impact join the Crunchies ranks… → Read More
Very very quietly (there is almost no Google footprint), investment bank and securities firm Goldman Sachs held its “Private Internet Company Conference” this week in Las Vegas. During the two-day conference, which lasted from November 29-30th, a gaggle of companies presented their business models to an elite audience composed of bankers, investors and peers. → Read More
Back when we first wrote about Vayable (the site that lets just about anyone offer to host paid tours/activities for travelers) Alexia said it was “like an Airbnb for Travel Experiences.”
Airbnb would agree, it seems. We’ve learned tonight that Airbnb is prepping to launch a partnership to upsell travelers with Vayable’s tour experiences. → Read More
Remember, R.I.P Good Times, the Sequoia slide deck in 2008 warning its portfolio companies to batten down the hatches and “spend every dollar as if it were your last”? Things aren’t yet quite as dire as the last time the economy tailspinned into recession, but a number of factors are making some startup investors wary. “I think 2012 will look more like 2008 than 2011,” warns First Round… → Read More
We spoke to Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky after his talk onstage at the GigaOM Roadmap conference — during the talk Chesky spoke about many possible avenues for the company’s expansion but didn’t commit himself to any one path.
Instead Chesky held that what users want is one of the most important factors in deciding where the company focused their efforts. For example, two months ago a critical… → Read More
Airbnb, a marketplace that allows people to rent their homes and apartments via the web, is considering entering the car-sharing space. In a survey sent to us by an Airbnb host, the startup is asking hosts if they would rent out their cars along with their residences.
As shown in the screenshots below, Airbnb asks if owners allowed a guest to use a car during a stay, and if owners would rent a… → Read More
Airbnb, the hot online room (and sublet) reservation startup, this morning announced that it has teamed up with business incubator Springstar to define a strategy for international expansion, confirming rumors that kept the German tech blogosphere busy the past weekend.
Springstar was founded in 2007 by German entrepreneurs and angel investors Klaus Hommels and Oliver Jung, and Harish Bahl, who… → Read More
When you’re just a wee babe, the idea of a new toy is the most exciting thing ever. Then you grow up, and “toys” become ridiculously expensive. You want a Chevy Corvette C6 Z06? That’ll be $70,000, please. You’re interested in picking up a 2011 Roehr 1250sc motorcycle? $40,000.
Though I’m sure plenty of our utterly successful readers have no problem throwing out cash like that, the vast… → Read More
Last May, at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC, Airbnb cofounder Brian Chesky announced that there would be a new category of rentals coming soon: Sublets. It’s been a few months since then (the launch may well have been delayed as the site worked to ramp up its safety features after a major backlash in late July), but the wait is over — and the new feature is sure to save quite a few headaches.
Now… → Read More
CouchSurfing International is one of those rare Web companies– like Mozilla or Craigslist– that has eschewed the normal Silicon Valley values of growth, greed and venture capital.
It’s one of those startups that uses the word “community” to mean people that have lasting, real-world connections to one another, not just the new industry jargon for “eyeballs.”
And its CEO Daniel Hoffer still… → Read More
Less than two weeks ago, red-hot startup Airbnb got rocked by a wave of negative press after one of its guests blogged about the traumatizing experience of coming home to her apartment to find it utterly wrecked by a guest.
Airbnb’s initial response was lackluster at best. But after a couple of false starts, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky wrote an unconditional apology that reaffirmed that the… → Read More
If you read the comments on any our recent stories about the Airbnb controversies, you’ll see plenty of people saying that Airbnb needs to take a page out of the Zappos playbook. It turns out, they tried. → Read More
It’s never too late to fix bad press with a straightforward, unconditional apology. That’s what the world got from Airbnb today. It was the first time that the company addressed the robbery/ransacking issue on its blog, and CEO Brian Chesky offered an unconditional apology. From the post: → Read More
This last week we’ve all watched in horror as the story unfolded about an Airbnb user who had her home ransacked a month ago.
Other than the sideshow of us getting dragged into the story, it seemed to be winding down yesterday. The company appears to be bending over backwards to compensate the victim and avoid another of her blog posts where she writes about how scared she is, still homeless… → Read More
You’ve doubtless heard about the Airbnb fiasco – being dubbed #ransackgate by some – that’s been exploding the last couple of days. If you’re not familiar with the story, we first covered it here, and there’s some terrific source material from the woman who’s home was ransacked and robbed here and here.
Today Y Combinator founder (and Airbnb investor) Paul Graham wrote this: → Read More
Yesterday we wrote about “EJ,” a woman who had her San Francisco apartment burglarized and vandalized by someone who rented her home for a week via Airbnb.
There was some confusion about how Airbnb was and is dealing with the situation. See the updates to that post above, and CEO Brian Chesky’s post here on TechCrunch later yesterday talking about the situation.
The event happened, which is… → Read More
We’ve taken some of the biggest news stories of the week and put them together for you in TechCrunched.
On the heels of recent management changes at Twitter, the company is now changing the way brands interact with users. Follow a brand you like and you’ll see their ads pop up in your Twitter stream. Over in the travel space, Airbnb experienced the best and worst of the business world, while… → Read More
Brian Chesky is the CEO of Airbnb. In this guest article he discusses the recent Airbnb user safety incident we reported on earlier today.
On June 22nd, we learned that the home of one of our San Francisco hosts was vandalized by an Airbnb guest. We were devastated when we received this news. With a single booking, one person’s malicious actions victimized our host and undermined what had… → Read More
Until now everything has been just great for Airbnb, a service that lets people rent out their homes and become a sort of mini-hotel. The company launched in 2008 and has grown rapidly. They’ve been cloned by the Germans, which is always a mark of success. And they’re now a part of the billion dollar valuation club. Even the clone raised $90 million.
Which is all super great. But now the story… → Read More
The scrappy apartment sharing startup Airbnb has just raised $112 million at a one billion plus valuation led by Andreessen Horowitz. We’re hearing that the split is around $60 million from Andreessen, $40 million from DST and $5 million from General Catalyst — the rest coming from previous investors and newcomer Jeff Bezos.
We previously reported that the startup was raising $100 million at a… → Read More
The Allen and Co. conference at the Sun Valley Resort in Idaho is a peculiar beast. Press aren’t allowed to attend or cover any of the panels and aren’t allowed in the storied Duchin bar.
In addition, attendees are not allowed to talk to the press about the content of any of the meetings which makes for some interesting adventures in reporting.
Still, despite restrictions, attendance is… → Read More
Recently I sat down with a well-connected Silicon Valley CEO who just raised a ton of money, and who knew of other startups raising even more. There is a new startup club of younger companies raising money right now at $1 billion valuations. I already knew a couple of them, but I started asking a few venture capitalists and now I have a pretty good list of who is in that club and who is trying… → Read More
Exclusive – TechCrunch has just learned that Wimdu, a recently launched Airbnb clone that has already managed to irk the latter, has raised a whopping $90 million round.
The capital injection comes from European investors Kinnevik and the infamous Samwer brothers’ Rocket Internet. → Read More
Exclusive – TechCrunch has just learned that Wimdu, a recently launched Airbnb clone that has already managed to irk the latter, has raised a whopping $90 million round.
The capital injection comes from European investors Kinnevik and the infamous Samwer brothers’ Rocket Internet. → Read More
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