Re:Airbnb (YC W09): The Rise of the One-Room Hotel
by pg on Saturday November 13, 2010 @07:01PM
(#1902036)
Yes. More generally it's remarkable how often not getting something you wanted turns out to be for the better. Perhaps because improving your situation often also constrains your options, and we undervalue lack of constraint because we underestimate how much things could change in the future (or how mistaken we could be now).
Re:Airbnb (YC W09): The Rise of the One-Room Hotel
by jamesteow on Saturday November 13, 2010 @11:47PM
(#1902557)
I think of it as providing more options. When one doesn't get what they want, they are usually forced to look into other different options, which subsequently provides alternate futures that they possibly never predicted because they were so set on a future dependent on the 'something' that wasn't acquired.
(Viaweb was originally called Webgen, but another business was already using that name (and had the trademark, I think). They offered the other Webgen something absurd like 5% of the company to let them keep using that name. They said no, so they changed to Viaweb. I think Viaweb is a better name, and it almost certainly wouldn't have made them 5% more successful if they had been called Webgen.)