News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:“Startup Robs Every Customer They Have for Thousands of D... by Animats on Saturday April 06, 2019 @01:34PM (#19591908)
Homeshare fits the description.[1] Not finding any other articles which mention this problem, though.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/homeshare-rents-luxury-apart...

Re:“Startup Robs Every Customer They Have for Thousands of D... by daguar on Saturday April 06, 2019 @01:51PM (#19592008)
Twitter user complaining with a story that appears to match the Reddit description: https://mobile.twitter.com/aCUBEDtv/status/11127859103350415...
Re:“Startup Robs Every Customer They Have for Thousands of D... by Animats on Saturday April 06, 2019 @02:47PM (#19592351)
Oh, and here's an SF tenant attorney who says that California law prohibits rental agreements requiring arbitration, or waiving a jury trial.[1]

Main page for California small claims courts.[2] Some things can be done online.

[1] http://mcwrealestatelaw.com/eviction/arbitration-clause-in-y...

[2] https://www.courts.ca.gov/selfhelp-smallclaims.htm

Re:“Startup Robs Every Customer They Have for Thousands of D... by rurban on Saturday April 06, 2019 @02:19PM (#19592197)
They have 3 investors in the first and only round: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/homeshare#section-in...
Re:“Startup Robs Every Customer They Have for Thousands of D... by Animats on Saturday April 06, 2019 @02:36PM (#19592281)
How did they manage to lose money in that business? They get paid up front, so they don't have a cash flow problem. They don't have much of an investment. There's plenty of demand. What went wrong?
Re:“Startup Robs Every Customer They Have for Thousands of D... by netsharc on Saturday April 06, 2019 @03:30PM (#19592549)
It's a startup, so they probably have 20 developers and 5 business majors who are "C-levels", each getting 6 digit salaries...

As someone asked somewhere, "Why does Twitter need hundreds of developers? It's basically a CRUD interface."

Re:“Startup Robs Every Customer They Have for Thousands of D... by egypturnash on Saturday April 06, 2019 @04:00PM (#19592688)
What Twitter - or any large social media site - needs is a large, well-paid abuse team. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people. That'd blow through a bunch of money.
Re:“Startup Robs Every Customer They Have for Thousands of D... by tedunangst on Saturday April 06, 2019 @03:50PM (#19592646)
Too large sales team? Or community outreach ambassadors or whatever we call them these days.

The business model as I understand it is they pay for any missing roommates rent until the spot is filled? Maybe they had a fragmentation problem? 30 people move into 10 rooms, 10 people move out, negative 30% income.