Instead of nagging eBay management for a PayPal spin-off, Carl Icahn should be asking it why it didn’t develop its own Airbnb. Yesterday, Airbnb raised its third round of venture capital, at a reported valuation of $10bn. The company functions as an eBay – for spare bedrooms in houses or flats, rather than household flotsam and jetsam. The brilliance of the business is that Airbnb doesn’t buy land and build hotels. It simply runs a website linking vacationers and residents. It doesn’t take much to build a website; it does take marketing acumen to build a sizeable user base before anyone else thinks of the idea.
卡尔•伊卡恩(Carl Icahn)不应纠缠于要求eBay管理层将PayPal分拆出去，而是应当质问该公司为什么没能开发出自己的Airbnb式服务。昨日Airbnb募集到了第三轮风险投资，据报道该公司的估值已经达到100亿美元。Airbnb的功能与eBay类似——不过交易标的是独立屋中或公寓中的空闲房间，而非家中的零碎物品。这项业务的聪明过人之处在于，Airbnb并不购买土地修建宾馆，而只是通过经营一家网站，帮助度假观光客与当地居民建立联系。建立一个网站并不需要太多投入，不过抢先想到这个主意并打造出上规模的用户基础，确实需要一点营销智慧。