so welcome back to hippo Joe right
before we took a break you asked me for
some examples of cases where the CEO
maybe didn’t act so morally correct and
basically blamed his VC on the board not
saying that this was the case but take
Airbnb right so are you familiar with
Airbnb yeah absolutely it is it is you
know the site where you can pretty much
go with lease properties online to
complete strangers and recently they had
a problem with someone who let out her
apartment came home found it completely
trashed vandalized they turned replace
into a toilet basically so I’ve used
Airbnb and I think the first time I came
across it I was like genius idea now the
thing that’s tricky is one time I
realized that I was basically subleasing
from someone who themselves was
subleasing so the owner well the owner
found out and basically told me it’s not
legal she didn’t threaten to kick us out
but you know between being there with a
wife and a young daughter I did sort of
hesitate to use it in the future but I
still think it’s a good service now
getting back to the story is this when
this story first broke out Airbnb didn’t
comment on it publicly a month later
basically the victim the alleged victim
came out and basically more or less
blasted Airbnb and then Airbnb sort of
went out and wrote a blog post and it
was a lot of black back and forth and
even the VCS came out you know great guy
the you know the guy behind y combinator
but a lot of people thought well he was
being disingenuous because you know he’s
got his investment there so do you think
that that happens like if you work at a
company and the boss has outside
investors do you find that it’s easier
to just blame the investors and say hey
sorry I gotta lay off twenty percent of
the staff the VC made you do it well I
think in the moment I think it’s easier
blame investors internally where it’s
not going to get back to them but yeah I
think it’s difficult to blame them
publicly because if you’re that worried
about them that you’re making bad
decisions just to keep them happy why
would you publicly piss them off can you
imagine why anyone might do that well I
don’t know I just think it’s more that
if you don’t have that outside you know
the requirements that a vc has you can’t
walk in and tell your employees or your
clients something like you know let’s
say all we got to charge more the
clients like well you’re making this
decision if you lay someone off you
can’t just blame you know an outside
force you know okay um well have you
ever taken venture capital from anyone
no partly because they make you do
things that you don’t think are in the
best interest of the company for like
the short period and the
long term as well that’s the main reason
it’s just so you think as far as
startups go at least for the first few
years whether they can get money or not
they should really focus on developing
their product or their service rather
than no no not necessarily I think
that’s the another argument I think it’s
if you’re going to find investors that
know the industry and who are reasonable
people then you should do business with
them because they’ll help you the
problem is oftentimes I don’t think
these seas make investments in companies
based on where they want to invest they
make investments based on which
entrepreneurs going to give me what I
want so in that sense it’s almost like
you know it’s it’s a recipe doomed for
failure so to speak we have to shift
gears and move on to lightning round but
staying on the Airbnb topic question one
right in five years a craigslist will
have crushed Airbnb or B Airbnb will
have crushed craigslist social media
douchebag response co optician I think
Airbnb may or may not be around if it
continues to it will eat slightly into
Craigslist’s market share as far as
property lease and goes but let’s face
it use craigslist for a lot of other
things like sex and second hand
furniture it’s good to know a question
too if you start a company tomorrow do
you raise capital or do you bootstrap
I’d bootstrap at least for the first
year or two and then see how things were
going and how badly I needed money and
like you said which VCS would be willing
to give me something that I wanted so I
wouldn’t have to hand over complete
control we’re not talking about sex
anymore I hope she’s checking okay
question 3 it this week on watchmojo
yeah this this week on watchmojo we
published a couple of profiles on Steve
Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg learnt a lot i
must say now my question to you is if
you had to be one of those two guys for
a week which one would you pick Mark
Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs i think i would
pick mark zuckerberg one as powerful and
everything is Steve Jobs is I’m sure
Mark Zuckerberg gets laid a lot more
more importantly I think the company
probably has a lot of ties into the
intelligence community kind of like
Google might and I’d love a first-hand
glimpse at what they got going on that
was pretty random but okay so good stuff
if you have any questions that was the
first show feel free to email us your
feedback your comments or suggestions
that live at watchmojo.com thanks et
thanks ash
you
before we took a break you asked me for
some examples of cases where the CEO
maybe didn’t act so morally correct and
basically blamed his VC on the board not
saying that this was the case but take
Airbnb right so are you familiar with
Airbnb yeah absolutely it is it is you
know the site where you can pretty much
go with lease properties online to
complete strangers and recently they had
a problem with someone who let out her
apartment came home found it completely
trashed vandalized they turned replace
into a toilet basically so I’ve used
Airbnb and I think the first time I came
across it I was like genius idea now the
thing that’s tricky is one time I
realized that I was basically subleasing
from someone who themselves was
subleasing so the owner well the owner
found out and basically told me it’s not
legal she didn’t threaten to kick us out
but you know between being there with a
wife and a young daughter I did sort of
hesitate to use it in the future but I
still think it’s a good service now
getting back to the story is this when
this story first broke out Airbnb didn’t
comment on it publicly a month later
basically the victim the alleged victim
came out and basically more or less
blasted Airbnb and then Airbnb sort of
went out and wrote a blog post and it
was a lot of black back and forth and
even the VCS came out you know great guy
the you know the guy behind y combinator
but a lot of people thought well he was
being disingenuous because you know he’s
got his investment there so do you think
that that happens like if you work at a
company and the boss has outside
investors do you find that it’s easier
to just blame the investors and say hey
sorry I gotta lay off twenty percent of
the staff the VC made you do it well I
think in the moment I think it’s easier
blame investors internally where it’s
not going to get back to them but yeah I
think it’s difficult to blame them
publicly because if you’re that worried
about them that you’re making bad
decisions just to keep them happy why
would you publicly piss them off can you
imagine why anyone might do that well I
don’t know I just think it’s more that
if you don’t have that outside you know
the requirements that a vc has you can’t
walk in and tell your employees or your
clients something like you know let’s
say all we got to charge more the
clients like well you’re making this
decision if you lay someone off you
can’t just blame you know an outside
force you know okay um well have you
ever taken venture capital from anyone
no partly because they make you do
things that you don’t think are in the
best interest of the company for like
the short period and the
long term as well that’s the main reason
it’s just so you think as far as
startups go at least for the first few
years whether they can get money or not
they should really focus on developing
their product or their service rather
than no no not necessarily I think
that’s the another argument I think it’s
if you’re going to find investors that
know the industry and who are reasonable
people then you should do business with
them because they’ll help you the
problem is oftentimes I don’t think
these seas make investments in companies
based on where they want to invest they
make investments based on which
entrepreneurs going to give me what I
want so in that sense it’s almost like
you know it’s it’s a recipe doomed for
failure so to speak we have to shift
gears and move on to lightning round but
staying on the Airbnb topic question one
right in five years a craigslist will
have crushed Airbnb or B Airbnb will
have crushed craigslist social media
douchebag response co optician I think
Airbnb may or may not be around if it
continues to it will eat slightly into
Craigslist’s market share as far as
property lease and goes but let’s face
it use craigslist for a lot of other
things like sex and second hand
furniture it’s good to know a question
too if you start a company tomorrow do
you raise capital or do you bootstrap
I’d bootstrap at least for the first
year or two and then see how things were
going and how badly I needed money and
like you said which VCS would be willing
to give me something that I wanted so I
wouldn’t have to hand over complete
control we’re not talking about sex
anymore I hope she’s checking okay
question 3 it this week on watchmojo
yeah this this week on watchmojo we
published a couple of profiles on Steve
Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg learnt a lot i
must say now my question to you is if
you had to be one of those two guys for
a week which one would you pick Mark
Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs i think i would
pick mark zuckerberg one as powerful and
everything is Steve Jobs is I’m sure
Mark Zuckerberg gets laid a lot more
more importantly I think the company
probably has a lot of ties into the
intelligence community kind of like
Google might and I’d love a first-hand
glimpse at what they got going on that
was pretty random but okay so good stuff
if you have any questions that was the
first show feel free to email us your
feedback your comments or suggestions
that live at watchmojo.com thanks et
thanks ash
you
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