I was perusing Hacker News today and saw an article about Airbnb’s $13B valuation.

I knew what to expect in the comments but out of morbid curiosity, I dug in and wasn’t disappointed to find the expected comment.  It was luckily further down the thread which means others found it inane as well.  Here it is:

Aside from taking care of transactions, which is easy to imitate, I don’t see what sets Airbnb apart from other vacation rental websites. They are not fundamentally different. Yes, they have a large userbase, but that’s easily threatenable considering their fees and lack of distinction.

I must be missing something.

People who haven’t built stuff drastically underestimate how difficult it is. They simplify the world into a simple, elegant and ultimately wrong model.

Among the HN crowd, that model tends to overweight technical prowess. But I imagine every community thinks their skills are the critical ones to success.  I’d imagine marketers, salespeople, etc think similarly.

Success is a combination of many different factors. It’s never easy.