🏡 3 key lessons from Airbnb Plus
Hello! Adam Thornhill here. ‘The Podcast Guy’ saving you 10 hours a week.
Enjoy the 81st Podup with the best bits from Lenny’s Podcast.
Airbnb Plus was a bold initiative. However, it didn't quite live up to expectations. As a product lead for the project, Jiaona Zhang (JZ) provides candid insights about what went wrong.
What was Airbnb Plus?
Airbnb Plus was born out of a desire to compete with managed marketplaces like Sonder and to reinforce user trust in our quality standards. However, we were solution first and competitor afraid. Our approach was to physically inspect and manage inventory - a method that was costly and didn't play to our strengths.
Jiaona Zhang
Choose the right problem
We should have paused and asked 'Whats the real problem here?' Guests wanted assurance of what they were getting into, which meant we needed to better represent our listings. The right way would have been through guest reviews. These are free.
We should've got signal on what else people cared about. Was it cleanliness? Was it fear of being locked out? There were other solutions besides inspections that got at that. For example, it would've been cheaper to send all hosts a lock box than deploying an inspector.
Jiaona Zhang
The numbers need to work
You can have magical thinking around unit economics. You're like 'When we get to X scale it's all going work out.' Were the unit economics ever going to work for Airbnb Plus? No. We needed to get the unit economics working from the beginning.
Jiaona Zhang
Why it matters
Airbnb Plus highlights 3 important lessons:
Startups need to be unit economic positive from the start, or very soon after.
It's vital to focus on the right problem rather than falling in love with a specific solution.
Before blindly copying competitors, consider your own strengths and weaknesses.
Next steps
With these insights in mind, here are steps to consider for your own company:
Identify the right problem. Ask yourself what you're trying to achieve and select the right problem to solve from the outset.
Validate your solution. Before rolling out a solution, test it with a smaller audience to ensure it effectively addresses the problem.
Make sure the numbers add up. Be realistic about your unit economics. They should make sense from the beginning, not just in an ideal future state.
Don't copy competitors blindly. Understand why a strategy works for your competitors before applying it to your own business. It might not be the right fit for your unique capabilities.
Your thoughts?
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Quotes were pulled at different points of the episode. Sentences were left out to make the narrative more concise. Podup is not associated or affiliated with any podcast.
Very useful Adam, love these quick notes!