Pop Quiz on the Airbnb Debacle

If you missed the whole Airbnb affair- (now referred to as #ransackgate), you should probably consider yourself lucky and should stop reading here. You probably don't rent your house out to perfect strangers too often so this piece of news passed you by somehow. Perhaps you were more focused on how the Syrian government just wiped-out 70+ civilians last night or how a nutjob in Norway savaged a similar number of people in a national tragedy. Maybe you're one of those people that knows there is a famine going on in Somalia even though it's not getting too much press.

Still here? Well- then you probably heard that a meth addict used an alias on Airbnb recently to rent a person named EJ's house while she was travelling and then proceeded to violate, steal, defile, destroy the victim's home. What happened to EJ's home is horrific and criminal. Anyone who's had something stolen from them has some sense of the outrage and sense of violation and pain that comes with this territory. The alleged offender is apparently in custody now and will hopefully be tried. If she is indeed found guilty- I hope she'll be convicted and jailed to the full extent of the law.

But we haven't heard much about this "alleged" low-life. Media coverage of the crime has instead focused either on Airbnb's alleged complicity in EJ's misfortune and/or their poor handling of the P/R aspects. The alleged felon who committed this odious crime is hardly mentioned. This is not surprising. Airbnb's success and billion dollar valuation make it a perfect target for this sort of criticism. 

Could and should the founders have handled the P/R aspects a lot better? Definitely! But who are we kidding- did they really have a chance?  The headlines here are simply tailor-made for generating eyeballs. I am not making these up:

Airbnb Pillage Victim Says Company Tried to Keep Her Quiet

A Billion Dollars Isn't Cool. You Know What's Cool? Basic Human Decency

The Airbnb Horror Story Continues

You read these headlines and it sounds like Airbnb is some kind of rich serial murderer on the loose- pillaging and laying waste to scores of innocent and kindly citizens in its path.

Much like the Craigslist imbroglio of past years, this entire Airbnb affair has again brought to the fore questions about where a company's responsibility (legal and ethical) to its customers' safety begins and ends. Rather than presenting a long opinion on the matter I've instead decided to ask some admittedly facetious questions. For the sake of brevity I've made them multiple choice.

When a car-maker manufactures a car what scenarios do they need to anticipate? For example, is it morally or ethically obligated to protect its customers against:

a) car-jacking attacks

b) hitch-hiking meth addicts that drivers pickup on the road and invite into their car 

c) damage caused by strangers to whom drivers lend or rent their car to for free or for a fee

d) none of the above (muttered under one's breath)

Should the car-maker be obligated to place disclaimers on the driving wheel of the car warning people that inviting strangers into their car out of the goodness of their hearts or for a fee comes w/certain risks?

a) yes- people are not intelligent enough to know this and need to be treated like children

b) yes- car-makers are greedy and want to save money. They should be monitoring all their drivers via video cameras and be able to intervene via installed speakerphones when their customers are making dubious choices

c) yes- we need to legislate this. I am calling my congressman

d) none of the above (accompanied by possible expletive)

Oh wait, carmakers are brick and mortar businesses. They don't count. What about if someone uses a fake LinkedIn Profile on the internet and invites me to become a connection with them because we share two business groups in common? Then that person wants to have coffee and they seem cool and I let them stay at my house while I am vacationing and they trash my house. Shouldn't LinkedIn vet these people? Wait- what if instead of trashing my house that person partners with me in a new business and then steals all the cash I put in the business bank account?

a) yes, LinkedIn sucks! They are too greedy and don't bother to vet people on their network.

b) yes, LinkedIn should actually pay for the damage to my house. Their business model doesn't really protect me enough. I thought this person was legit! I'm calling my lawyer. 

c) this is an outrage- the LinkedIn founders don't care about their customers. They've gone IPO and cashed out. I'm calling my congressman.

d) you know it by now :)

For Part 32 in in this Series, click here

Arrington Channels Colonel Kurtz & Says of his Journalist Detractors: "#&$!@% Them All"

 

Recently, in response to criticism he has been receiving, the editor and founder of TechCrunch, Michael Arrington, channeled his inner Colonel Kurtz and unleashed a terrific riposte regarding the absurd notion of objectivity in journalism and how he intends to handle disclosures and the like at TechCrunch going forward. The title of this piece had all the subtelty of a piano being hurled cartoon-style onto his detractors in the tech press from an upper storey: The Tech Press: Screw them All.

Along the way he ended up calling-out a number of his primary critics by pointing out that they themselves have plenty of conflicts (some of a semi-permanent nature) that have not been properly disclosed:

some excerpts:

"... there is no objectivity in journalism. The guys that say they’re objective are just pretending. Everyone is conflicted in different ways, and yet the “rules of journalism” don’t require any sort of transparency or disclosure unless it’s a direct financial conflict...."

"...The man who said just a week ago how horrible I am for investing in startups has financial interests in a whole slew of tech companies – “Disclosure: Current and past consulting clients and sponsors of Silicon Valley Watcher: Pearltrees, Intel, Tibco Software, Edelman, Infineon Technologies, SAP...”

"...Before I started TechCrunch I never understood how screwed up this whole news world was. It’s ugly as hell out there, people. These people, the tech press, just disgust me..."

Regardless of what one thinks of Arrington, (I do not know him personally), what is maginificent about him is that he has the courage to stand his ground and call-out some of the old guard on their sniffling pretensions. He's basically been eulogizing them to their faces and letting people know that much like Shelly's Ozymandias, only their colossal arrogance will remain. Good for him.

I also have an inkling that Arrington knows his Conrad - his jousting with the establishment is an echo for me of this exchange from Coppola's epic 1979 Film, Apocalypse Now

Kurtz: Did they say why, Willard, why they want to terminate my command?
Willard: I was sent on a classified mission, sir.
Kurtz: It's no longer classified, is it? Did they tell you?
Willard: They told me that you had gone totally insane, and that your methods were unsound.
Kurtz: Are my methods unsound?
Willard: I don't see any method at all, sir.
Kurtz: I expected someone like you. What did you expect? Are you an assassin?
Willard: I'm a soldier.
Kurtz: You're neither. You're an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill.

For Part 30 in in this Series, click here

I Am Incubator

This is part of my Series on Entrepreneurial Culture.

The leading dramatis personae of the early-stage tech ecosystem are well established by now in the mainstream collective consciousness. High-tech wunderkind entrepreneurs are of course the most recognizable of the various archetypes, but nowadays once obscure protagonists with strange appellations such as hacker, combinator, seed-stage VC and angel no longer generate quizzical looks and raised eyebrows when others point them out at cocktail parties or gush about them in the mainstream press. The newest hero/villain cast member is of course the so-called “superangel” who one immediately associates with Silicon Valley Olympians such as Ron Conway, Jeff Clavier, Aydin Senkut, Keith Rabois, Chris Sacca, Dave McClure, Mike Maples and others. If the production were an opera, these men would certainly be the tenors and would be seen furiously making out checks by the hundred to web-native entrepreneurs, enjoying great feasts (sometimes replete with petty human dramas) at restaurants like Bin 38, and occasionally hurling lightning bolts at one another in fits of pique, (or thunderous indigestion).

There remains, however, another sort of actor altogether in this early stage landscape of ours. He dwells far from this rarefied air and his profile is yet obscured and shrouded from public view.  In the aforementioned operatic production, he would most certainly play the the phantom.  And what is it that he does? Ensconced in dank subterranean forges these Hephaestus-like practitioners hammer-out out from the mute schist of their environments the vaguest and earliest impressions of ideas and technologies some of which will one day appear as these same companies that superangels will foist with lavish checks. Yet the work of these shadowy figures is so nascent as to sometimes resemble the proverbial cave-art of our most ancient forbears.

I am one such troglodyte.

Another appellation is of course, “Incubator”. Or, as I thought I heard Russell Crowe say to the very Emperor’s face at the center of the gladatorial arena:   

“I Am Incubator”

Among my brethren and sistren in incubation I count the folks working at places like idealab, betaworks, alleycorp, as well as certain current and former university venture lab specialists I hold in high esteem. These modern-day alchemists are constantly mixing, tweaking, stirring and coalescing the incipient ideas, technologies, nascent teams and pre-seed capital that form the raw ingredients of what they hope will become valuable companies one day.

In this mini-series I will be shining a light on the sorts of activities with which we are engaged. I’ll be sharing some lessons learned from my own entrepreneurial life, which, between my solo ventures and work within Columbia University, has led to the incubation of a few dozen companies by now. But I’ll mainly be drawing from conversations I'll be having with some of the real heavyweights in this field who have achieved great things and have some remarkable stories to share.

With this said, I shall now retreat to my lair from whence I shall write my next piece. :)

For Part 27 in in this Series, click here