Airbnb's success story stands out in stark contrast to the struggles of other startups. Unlike Zillow's disastrous attempt at house-flipping, Airbnb has flourished for over a decade. Their revenue skyrocketed, tripling from $3.3 billion to nearly $10 billion. Even more impressive, they flipped profitability, going from annual losses of $4-5 billion to earning the same staggering amount. Perhaps the strongest indicator of their dominance is their resilient stock price. Unlike the post-IPO crashes
  • themeatbridgeEnglish
    12•6 months ago

    Sure, but AirBnB and Uber didn’t improve the hotel and taxi markets, they just joined them. They each took advantage of a tech debt and then lowered the barriers for entry to the market. In doing so, they made a shit ton of money by carving out market share from the fucked up systems you described.

    • @iopq@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3•6 months ago

      Seriously? Not sure about airbnb since I use booking, but Uber was so much better than cabs it wasn’t even close. They didn’t even make that much money. They lost money last quarter