The tone in here sure has shifted. I remember Brian showing us his binder of maxed out credit cards they used to bootstrap the company. I remember the early version spitting unicorn errors every few seconds.
A few things can be true at the same time:
- Airbnb is an inspiring story for any entrepreneur
- it has had arguably detrimental impacts
- the founders came from privileged backgrounds
- they also worked their ass off and are fiercely intelligent and risked plenty
On the tech side - it’s always funny to hear the (correct) critiques of early Rails. It reminds me of when I was talking trash about Java as a kid. My boss laughed and said “Java bought me my house, so it’s good in my book”. Or the first Tesla I ever saw with the license plate “PHP LOL” in the Facebook parking lot.
Pragmatism must beat idealism. In business and in database primary keys and everything in between.