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5 posts tagged airbnb
True Story: The Samwer Brothers are now Cloning Amazon
Please find updates at the end of the article:
Oops, they did it again. TechBerlin found out that the notorious Samwer brothers just launched a new site in Southeast Asia called Lazada. According to a TechBerlin source the company is headquartered in Singapore and geared towards countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Taiwan. Amazon currently has no presence in these countries.
In good old photo copying manner the Samwer brothers decided to take on the biggest e-commerce company on the planet, cloning Amazon down to the last pixel just like they have previously done with other US startups like Fab , Pinterest (Samwer Version), Airbnb (Samwer Version) or Groupon (Samwer Version). Interestingly enough, Lazada copied Amazon’s old design. According to TechBerlin sources the company is led by ex McKinsey man Maximilian Bittner. TechBerlin has contacted Maximilian as well as Amazon for a statement.
Lazada’s Design is a one-to-one copy of the old Amazon design
This time the Samwer brothers are attacking one of the biggest companies in the world and it will be interesting to see how that will play out. Will Amazon give in and buy them in the end, just like Groupon or Ebay have done in the past? What do you think?
Update 1: TechBerlin has still not received an official statement from Rocket Internet.
Update 2: Lazada changed their logo overnight. When posting this article yesterday, the logo still had the Amazon style orange curve. It now features a shopping cart instead.
-> 
Update 3: Caroline Winter from BusinessWeek told TechBerlin today that Oliver Samwer confirmed Lazada’s HQ location (Singapore) with her, thereby verifying what TechBerlin had originally reported. Samwer described Lazada as an “early stage startup focusing on consumer electronics.” The BusinessWeek article was updated accordingly.
Update 4: Apparently Lazada is also available in Egypt and the Gulf States.
Update 5: The name of the site was changed from Lazada to Mizado. The logo was changed again.
Ashton Kutcher invests in Gidsy
Gidsy has a new, prominent investor: Ashton Kutcher! After Amen and Soundcloud, social marketplace Gidsy is already the third investment in a Berlin based startup by the Hollywood actor. In the US, Kutcher has been investing in tech startups for a while and with portfolio jewels such as Flipboard, Airbnb or Path, he seems to be doing a great job picking the right deals.
The round is led by Sunstone Capital and is joined by Index Ventures, Werner Vogels, and Peter Read. The total investment sum adds up to $1.2M.
For more background on Gidsy, have a look at the interview TechBerlin did with Gidsy CEO Edial Dekker some time ago. You can find the video as well as an exclusive preview of their office here. (Also check out the TechBerlin interviews with the founders of other Kutcher investments such as Soundcloud, Amen or Airbnb).
SKYPE A FOUNDER #7: Felix Petersen, Co-Founder & CEO, Amen
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This is the Best Interview With The CEO Of One Of The Greatest Fucking Apps In The World. Amen.
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SKYPE A FOUNDER #4: Gunnar Froh, Country Business Manager Germany, Airbnb
This is a follow up to the interview TechBerlin did with all founders of Airbnb last week.
Gunnar Froh was one of the founders of Accoleo, an Airbnb clone that was acquired by Airbnb four weeks ago. Accoleo was Airbnb’s first acquisition and as a newly titled Country Business Manager, Gunnar just opened Airbnb’s first office outside the US.
They are rapidly growing the team and they sure need to. The Samwer cloning machinery behind the heavily funded Wimdu is in full swing and anyone in the tech scene knows what that means. Most people I have talked to in recent days seem to think that the Samwers will ultimately make the race, worldwide! As one commentator on Gründerszene put it (referring to the original Airbnb founders):
“These guys are design softies. The Samwers eat those for breakfast.”
This will be one of the most interesting competitive races in the internet industry, with two completely different approaches and company cultures facing each other: The incumbent, Airbnb, with its focus on community and product development vs. the challenger, Wimdu, with its focus on fierce sales and distribution.
The Airbnb model is one that was born out of the collaborative consumption movement. It will be interesting to see whether Airbnb’s strong community values prevail in the end or whether battlesome land grabbing tactics will lead to a sustainable long-term success for the clone(s).
If you ask me: I place my bet on Airbnb. Sure, it is not a winners-takes-all market and brand loyalty among hosts and barriers to entry for new players are low. However, in a competitive market like this, inventory is just one area of competition. Brand experience, product development and customer support (see Zappos!) are other important areas and I do not see any of the current clones competing on these fronts effectively.
Who knows, maybe Wimdu will sell to Airbnb in the end. Anything else would kind of be against the legality of the Samwer’s modus operandi. However, with $90M raised, Wimdu does not seem to be in it for the quick flip. Only time will tell.
During the interview Gunnar talks about the acquisition, his strategy to compete with the clones and explains why he decided to base the German office in Hamburg instead of Berlin.
He also answers some of the practical questions that people have raised about Airbnb such as: Do I need to have professional photos taken to list my place? Do I need to tax the income that I make off the site? And how does insurance work with Airbnb?
(Sorry for the visuals of the video, there are a couple of “freezes”. #skype #fail :-))
“Billion Dollar Darling Airbnb” Exclusive Interview with all Founders
Last weekend TechBerlin met up with the founders of Airbnb Brian Chesky (CEO), Joe Gebbia (CPO) and Nathaniel Blecharczyk (CTO) for an exclusive video interview (below).
Airbnb is a trusted community marketplace for people to list, discover, and book unique spaces around the world. What started out with the founders renting out their living room and air mattress in order to make rent, has developed into a fast growth marketplace for all kinds of spaces. Now you can rent rooms, apartments, houses, castles, saliboats and even entire countries if you wanted to.
STATS AND FIGURES (CEO BRIAN REVEALED SOME NEW STATS)
Airbnb currently offers over 70.000 spaces in 184 countries and 14.000 cities, growing their offerings by “40% month-to-month”. A total of 1.9 million nights have been booked on the site to-date. There are more spaces to rent on Airbnb in New York, than rooms in the biggest hotel of the city. Brian mentioned that the Hilton Group, the largest hotel group in the world, had 600.000 rooms to rent worldwide and that Airbnb strived to top that within the next 12 months. While they “only” have around 900 spaces in Berlin to rent today, Brian said that by summer next year, they would have “more spaces to rent here than the leading hotels have rooms combined”.
How do they finance such expansion? They were one of the first to come out of YCombinator, announced a $7.2M Series A from Greylock Ventures and Sequoia Capital and are allegedly in the process of raising $100M or more (at $1 Billion+ valuation) with Andreessen Horowitz and DST participating in the round. Oh, and Ashton Kutcher is an investor, too.
WHAT BROUGHT THESE GUYS TO TOWN?
Airbnb recently made their first international acquisition in Germany, buying essentially the team behind the small, local player Accoleo. Next to being of strategic importance, Germany is also the birthplace of the strongest competition for the site. The “copy-caty industrial complex” of the Samwers raised over 90M for Wimdu and its chinese sister Airzu, while Qype founder Stephan Uhrenbacher raised more than 10M for 9flats. Playing high stakes is not always a subtle game and Airbnb decided to openly address some alleged malpractices on behalf of competition, referring to some players as “scam artists”.
The community truly is important to them and may ultimately make them win over their competitors. The founders have done community meetups in more than 100 cities of the world, talking one-on-one with hosts about their experiences with the service. That feedback is what drives product development at Airbnb and while competitors can copy the service today, they will have a tough time to anticipate future product developments.
I met up with the founders at the Airbnb community event at Betahouse in Berlin.
THE VIDEO FROM THE INTERVIEW
During the interview I deliberately leave out questions on the great startup story of the company, because it has been well documented in countless interviews. The story is phenomenal and i can only recommend you to watch the presentation by Brian at YCombinator and find out how the service became what it is today. There is also a very interesting email thread between two legendary internet investors in the US, that gives insights into the great vision and stamina of the founders and their first investor Paul Graham.
Photo: Thanks to Alexander Gloning
