101 Inspirational Quotes From Super Successful People

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image">Kimberly White/Getty</div></div></div>Airbnb, the $25 billion global hospitality behemoth, may have met its match. And right in its hometown of San Francisco.On Tuesday, November 3, the voters of San Francisco will vote on Proposition F, the citizens initiative that, if passed, will crack down on Airbnb's business. In the heart of Silicon Valley, a coalition of homeowners, neighborhood groups and tenants advocates gathered over 20,000 signatures to say "enough is enough."I have been an Airbnb host in San Francisco for about nine months. Last January I watched Katie Couric interview Airbnb's 34-year old billionaire CEO, Brian Chesky, and that's when I realized that something didn't add up right.<h2>Testing Airbnb's claims</h2>Couric asked Chesky if his company inspects its hosts' homes for safety and fire hazards. Chesky replied, "We want to be a gold standard," saying that he has 100 employees devoted exclusively to safety and that "hosts verify their IDs by connecting to their social networks and scanning their official ID or confirming personal details."So to test Airbnb's system, I signed up as a host. I took a few photos of my house, inside and out, uploaded them to the Airbnb website, and within 15 minutes my place was "live" as an Airbnb rental. No background check, no verifying my ID, no confirming my personal details, no questions asked. Not even any contact with a real human from their trust and safety team. Nothing.I could have used photos of my neighbor's house, or even photos saved from the website of Better Homes and Gardens. Within an hour, I had my first inquiry from a guest. Within a couple of months, I had over a dozen reservation requests that would have netted me at least $4,000 in short-term rental income. This had the makings of a seriously lucrative enterprise. Indeed, an accidentally leaked memo from huge real-estate developer Coldwell Banker Commercial estimated that a landlord could more than double net annual income by renting to Airbnb tourists than to local residents.I was both impressed and appalled at how easy Airbnb's website made it.When Couric asked Chesky about fire safety, instead of outlining his company's inspection procedures he replied that Airbnb, a company valued at $25 billion, offers free smoke and carbon monoxide detectors to its hosts. When Couric pushed a bit further, Chesky talked about their "self-administered" system. "We want to make sure that the codes and regulations are modernized," he said. "A lot of the laws are 20th-century laws, or sometimes even 19th-century laws, in the 21st century."I decided to take Chesky up on his "gold standard" offer of receiving a free and "self-administered" smoke and carbon monoxide detector for my Airbnb home. I requested one via the Airbnb website, and my query received the briefest of e-mail responses, directing me to a particular Airbnb webpage. But on that page, instead of offering me a free detector it offered me a free "Emergency Safety Card," saying I could use it to "list emergency numbers, exit routes, and other resources" for my guests.Apparently the offer for a free smoke detector had expired faster than a Groupon coupon. But the Airbnb representative didn't mention that, nor did Chesky in his interview with Couric.Besides the hosts, Airbnb has no quality control over the types of guests either. Neighbors suddenly find themselves living next door to a "hotel" where complete strangers are traipsing in and out, keeping tourist hours, in close proximity to children, seniors and other vulnerable populations. That's true of regular hotels as well, but usually they exist in areas that have been zoned for such activity.<h2>Who's really renting their places out?</h2>All of this revealed to me a "credibility gap" between the company's public face and reality.But the biggest gap of all is in how Airbnb portrays "regular people" hosts, who rent out spare rooms to tourists to make some extra money in these difficult times, as the face of its company. What could be wrong with that?<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">AP Photo/Bebeto MatthewsSupporters of Airbnb hold a rally outside City Hall, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2015, in New York.</div></div></div>Here's what's wrong: an increasing amount of Airbnb's commercial activity in cities like New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles does not come from the listings of "regular people" who are merely renting out a spare room. Instead, it comes from professional landlords who are removing badly needed housing from the local market and making it available exclusively for tourists. Many of these landlords are evicting thousands of people and getting rid of rent-controlled housing.A <a href="http://www.ag.ny.gov/pdfs/Airbnb%20report.pdf">2014 investigation</a> by state attorney general Eric Schneiderman found that nearly 40 percent of Airbnb's $451 million in revenue, some $168 million in New York City alone, came from hosts who had at least three listings on the site. Data analyst Tom Slee plucked info from the Airbnb site in September and found that of the 30,268 listings in New York City, 44% of guest visits are to hosts with multiple properties. (Slee shared the latest information with the author via email; here's <a href="http://tomslee.net/2014/5/the-shape-of-airbnbs-business.html">an example of earlier research</a> along the same lines.)These are not "regular New Yorkers" renting a spare room - not too many can afford to have control over multiple properties - they are professional operators who took on multiple leases in desirable locations.One of those operators, Robert "Toshi" Chan, was revealed to be the Airbnb "host" of more than 200 apartments in dozens of different buildings, known collectively as Hotel Toshi. Eventually, Toshi's illegal operation was shut down, and he <a href="http://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/372-13/mayor-bloomberg-chief-policy-advisor-feinblatt-one-million-dollar-settlement-and/">agreed to pay a $1 million settlement</a> for not obtaining proper hotel permits or insurance.Under political pressure, last year Airbnb kicked off some of the worst violators, but recent data indicates little has changed. Its service is eating up affordable housing for local residents.In San Francisco, various <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/business/item/Window-into-Airbnb-s-hidden-impact-on-S-F-30110.php">studies have found</a> that a third of Airbnb rentals are controlled by people with two or more listings, and 40 percent of revenue comes from Airbnb hosts with multiple listings.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">Joey Cosco/Business InsiderAnti Airbnb protestors in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood in 2014.</div></div></div>In Los Angeles, <a href="http://www.laane.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/AirBnB-Final.pdf">another study</a> revealed that while a majority of hosts were "regular people," those rentals generated just 11 percent of the company's revenue. The other 89 percent was generated by professional landlords and agencies.Perhaps the biggest tragedy in all this is that at the core of Airbnb is a really good idea - it has cleverly used Web- and app-based technology to bust open a global market that connects tourists with financially strapped homeowners. After interviewing some of Airbnb's "regular-people" hosts, I'm convinced that this service legitimately does help them make ends meet.But by taking such a hands-off, laissez-faire attitude toward the professionalization of hosting by greedy commercial landlords and multiproperty agents, Airbnb has become its own worst enemy. As the number of victims piles up, it undermines its own "sharing and trust" ethos because Airbnb could easily meet cities half way: <ul><li>With one stroke of the computer mouse, Airbnb could "evict the evictors"- de-list from its website any professional landlords or property managers operating multiple properties as tourist hotels. It has the data and knows who they are.</li><li>Cooperate with cities like San Francisco, Santa Monica, and Portland, which require hosts to register with local agencies, by delisting any unregistered hosts.</li><li>Pay the same hotel occupancy taxes that hotels pay in all 34,000 cities in which Airbnb operates, or collect them from the hosts and turn them over to the cities.</li><li>Stop refusing to supply the data that cities need to enforce regulations and taxation, including the number of rental nights and rates charged by each host.</li></ul>Whatever its remarkable origin as a rags-to-riches story that began in Brian Chesky's living room, Airbnb is no longer simply a platform of "regular people" hosts. Instead, it has morphed into a giant loophole for professional real-estate operatives, allowing them to evade long-standing city laws that previously had protected the local housing stock by banning short-term rentals to tourists. The fast-growing company and its politically-connected investors have shown no interest in killing their golden goose.So some of the citizens of San Francisco have taken the matter into their own hands. Airbnb is clearly panicked - it is <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/airbnb-spends-8-million-against-prop-f-2015-9">spending over $8 million</a> to defeat the ballot measure, while the neighborhood activists can't hope to match that. It's David vs Goliath in San Francisco. So goes the "sharing" economy.Steven Hill (<a href="http://www.steven-hill.com/" target="_blank">www.Steven-Hill.com</a>) is a Senior Fellow with the New America Foundation and the author of the book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1250071585/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=1250071585&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=stevenhillcom-20&amp;linkId=2QZBSXI6TL42BM3Y" target="_blank">Raw Deal: How the "Uber Economy" and Runaway Capitalism Are Screwing American Workers</a>. You can follow him on Twitter, @StevenHill1776 <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/stay-nyc-39-dollars-tiny-home-taxi-van-queens-airbnb-2015-8">You can get a room in NYC for $39 a night on Airbnb - you just have to sleep in a van in Queens</a></h3> <div> <div> <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="prMjIxdzqI9a5YWKOlUAGbhGm-RBFqYT" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div> </div> </div> </div>

The two faces of Airbnb

<div class="image-container float_right" style="width:400px"><div class="image"></div>GettyCrow and Armstrong were engaged in 2005 before calling it quits in 2006.</div>Celebrities ranging from <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/celebrity-reactions-to-lance-armstrong-confession-2013-1" target="_blank">Joan RIvers to Donald Trump have already tweeted their reactions</a> to <keyword id="17998" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Lance-Armstrong">Lance Armstrong</keyword>'s <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/live-lance-armstrong-oprah-interview-2013-1" target="_blank">doping confession to Oprah</a>, but for the first time since the groundbreaking interview, Armstrong's former fiancé <keyword id="25799" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Sheryl-crow">Sheryl Crow</keyword> has broken her silence.
“I think that honesty is always the best bet and that the truth will set you free,” Crow <a href="http://www.etonline.com/news/129419_Sheryl_Crow_on_Her_Ex_Lance_Armstrong_s_Confession/index.html" target="_blank">told “Entertainment Tonight”</a> in an interview set to air Tuesday. 
“It’s got to be really hard to walk around knowing that you’re not telling the truth about something," added the singer. 
Crow and Armstrong dated in 2003, got engaged in 2005 and <a href="http://radaronline.com/exclusives/2009/05/lance-armstrong-reveals-reason-behind-breakup-sheryl-crow/" target="_blank">broke up in 2006</a>. 
At the time, Armstrong said it was the singer's desire for a baby that ended the relationship.
“She wanted marriage, she wanted children; and not that I didn’t want that, but I didn’t want that at that time because I had just gotten out of a marriage, I’d just had kids,” Armstrong <a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/item_SusX3utr6K9wxobKMRyLTP;jsessionid=A4520A4DE88026BDF03E99C55D4022DD" target="_blank">wrote in his book "Lance."</a> “Yet we’re up against her biological clock — that pressure is what cracked it ... we were not compatible on that issue.”
While Crow says she only caught “bits and pieces” of Armstrong’s interview last week, see what she thought of it below:

According to <a href="http://www.celebuzz.com/2013-01-21/sheryl-crow-was-in-the-room-when-lance-armstrong-asked-teammate-to-cover-up-doping-exclusive/" target="_blank">Celebuzz</a>, Crow was named in affidavits submitted to the agency last year.
The singer was allegedly present when Armstrong's teammate Frankie Andreu and his wife, Betsy, were asked to deny that Armstrong had admitted to doctors in 1996 that he was using performance-enhancing drugs.
“His girlfriend at the time, Sheryl Crow, was in the room and I felt uncomfortable talking about this in front of her so I did not say much,” Celebuzz reports Frankie Andreu said in the signed affidavit.
Last year, <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/sheryl-crow-truth-set-free-armstrong-article-1.1244748" target="_blank">Crow told Katie Couric</a>, “I felt bad for [Armstrong], I felt bad for his family and I kinda felt like the rest of America.”
SEE ALSO: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/celebrity-reactions-to-lance-armstrong-confession-2013-1">Celebrities tore Lance Armstrong's Oprah interview apart on Twitter &gt;</a>

Lance Armstrong Ex Sheryl Crow Breaks Her Silence On His Doping Confession

When Marissa Mayer took over as CEO, Yahoo's stock was trading at $15.92. Today, it's trading at $51.07.&#xa0;
When Marissa Mayer took over as CEO, Yahoo was generating $4.5 billion in annual revenue. It's expected to do <a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ae?s=YHOO+Analyst+Estimates">$4.41 billion in revenue this year</a>.
So, how did the stock triple while revenue fell?&#xa0;
Anybody that's been paying attention knows the answer: Alibaba.&#xa0;
Yahoo owns a nice chunk of Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant that's trading at ~$274 billion right now. When Mayer took over, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/scott-thompson-cost-yahoo-54-billion-2014-11">Alibaba was a private company valued at ~$30 billion</a>.&#xa0;
Scott Thompson, the CEO that preceded Mayer, sold half of Alibaba's stock back to Alibaba. As part of that deal, Alibaba agreed to IPO by 2014.&#xa0;
As Nicholas Carlson explains in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Marissa-Mayer-Fight-Save-Yahoo/dp/1455556610">his new book on Mayer and Yahoo</a>, that provided "air cover" for the next two years, which happened to be Mayer's first two years as CEO.&#xa0;Yahoo's stock appreciated as investors woke up to the fact that Alibaba was a beast of a company and it was going to go public in a few years. Yahoo was the best way to get exposure to Alibaba.
Investors didn't really care all that much about what Mayer did as CEO. As long as she didn't infuriate Alibaba, or prematurely sell shares, she was free to do whatever she wanted. This allowed her to do the following:
<ul>
<li>Avoid giant job cuts to slim the company.&#xa0;</li>
<li>Spend a billion on Tumblr.&#xa0;</li>
<li>Go nuts with acqui-hires that had little-to-no coherent logic other than just getting warm bodies in the door.&#xa0;</li>
<li>Spend millions on Katie Couric, even though it's unclear if Yahoo is getting anything in return for that big spend.&#xa0;</li>
<li>Hire, fire, and massively overpay COO Henrique De Castro.&#xa0;</li>
</ul>
Investors didn't care. Alibaba made life great for Mayer. The stock went up because of Alibaba.&#xa0;
But now that Alibaba is public, it's making life miserable for Mayer.
Yahoo's failure to do anything with its core business has left it vulnerable to angry shareholders that only care about squeezing every dollar out of Alibaba. They don't trust Mayer.
Earlier this year, activist fund Starboard decided to <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/what-happens-to-yahoo-2014-9">launch an attack on Yahoo</a>. Starboard wants to spin out Yahoo's core business and merge it with AOL. The remaining Yahoo would basically be <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/investor-plan-for-yahoo-2014-10">a holding company for Alibaba and Yahoo Japan shares</a>.
Now <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/102284610">John Jannarone at CNBC is reporting</a>, "several large Yahoo shareholders say they are effectively in a negotiation with CEO&#xa0;Marissa Mayer&#xa0;over what she will concede and when. The ideal outcome, those shareholders say, would be similar to something envisioned by activist investor Starboard Value, which took a stake in Yahoo earlier this year."
On <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-yahoo-earnings-call-2014-10">the company's last earnings call</a>, Mayer and her CFO Ken Goldman said Yahoo has&#xa0;"the best tax experts in the country working intensively on structures to maximize the value to our shareholders of our remaining stake in Alibaba." 
That made investors happy, but it also set the clock ticking. Yahoo shareholders are now expecting an answer from Yahoo how it's going to capitalize on its Alibaba stock without losing half of the money to US government.&#xa0;
If Mayer can't deliver a good plan by the next earnings call (which should be in January)&#xa0;"there would be a riot" <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/102284610">according to a large shareholder who spoke with CNBC</a>.
This is not why Yahoo hired Mayer. She was hired to breathe life into Yahoo's products and reinvigorate the brand. But instead of working on that,&#xa0;Mayer is now haggling with shareholders and tax experts over how to deal with its Alibaba shares.

The Thing That Saved Marissa Mayer's First Two Years At Yahoo Is Now Making Her Job Miserable

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div></div></div>Promoting the release of his new book, "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Worthy-Fights-Memoir-Leadership-Peace/dp/1594205965" target="_blank">Worthy Fights</a>," former Secretary of <keyword id="6354810" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="Defense">Defense</keyword> and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency Leon Panetta has embarked on a media tour full of criticism of President Barack Obama's foreign policy.
Panetta's criticism has been squarely aimed at the president's handling of the situation in Syria and Iraq over the past few years.
He has painted Obama's decision not to enforce his own "red line" against the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad as a mistake that hurt U.S. credibility. And he's said Obama has made decisions that have created a vacuum for the rise of extremists like the group calling itself the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL).
"It was damaging," Panetta <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/katie-couric-interviews-leon-panetta-103323328.html" target="_blank">told Yahoo's Katie Couric</a> of Obama's decision to draw a "red line" over Assad's use of chemical weapons and then back away from action.
It "sent a mixed message, not only to Assad, not only to the Syrians, but to the world," said Panetta, who served as Obama's CIA director from 2009-11 and secretary of defense from 2011-13. "And that is something you do not want to establish in the world, an issue with regard to the credibility of the United States to stand by what we say we're going to do."
Panetta took over as US secretary of defense about six months before the US pulled all of its troops out of Iraq, a move Obama's critics say is at least partly responsible for the growth of extremism in the country over the next two-plus years. Panetta joined those critics, saying he's of the opinion that as few as 8,000 to 10,000 could have made a difference.
"I don't think there's any question that, had we left 8,000, 10,000 troops there, plus our intelligence operations, plus a strong diplomatic presence, that that would've had an impact," <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-terror/leon-panetta-u-s-mistakes-helped-create-vacuum-spawned-isis-n220586" target="_blank">Panetta told NBC's Andrea Mitchell</a>.
In April, ISIS began a sweeping offensive in northern Iraq, gaining swaths of territory and <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/us-air-strike-in-iraq-isis-2014-8" target="_blank">eventually prompting the US to intervene</a>. The US is also striking the group's targets in Syria, and a coalition of partners is confronting the group along with the US in Iraq.
Panetta placed most of the blame at the feet of former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the Shiite leader he said was mostly responsible for the governmental dysfunction and rise of sectarianism. But he said the US pulling out troops "created a vacuum" and shifted US attention away from the region while extremist groups were building up their operations.
"I think when we stepped out of Iraq, in many ways, we created this vacuum in which not a lot of attention was paid to what was happening in Iraq or what was happening in Syria with the extremists who were developing a base of operations there," Panetta told NBC. "That combination, plus obviously not getting all of the intelligence that we should've had on it, I think is what produced the ISIS that we're confronting today."
<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div></div></div> 
<h3>Not the first</h3>
Panetta is just the latest former Obama administration official to heap criticism on the president after his or her exit. Both former Secretary of Defense Bob Gates and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have also used their memoirs to condemn elements of Obama's foreign policy. (Clinton's point man on Syria, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/fred-hof-counters-obamas-famers-syria-argument-2014-8">Fred Hof</a>, and former ambassador to Syria <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/21/world/middleeast/ex-envoy-sees-assad-as-staying-in-power.html?_r=0">Robert Ford</a> have also chimed in.)
In her memoir, "Hard Choices," Clinton, who is viewed as the likely Democratic frontrunner for president in 2016 if she decides to run, <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/hillary-clintons-hard-choices-bergdahl-benghazi-and-more/2/" target="_blank">took aim</a> at Obama's ultimate decision not to arm and train moderate elements of the Syrian opposition.
"[T]he risks of both action and inaction were high. Both choices would bring unintended consequences. The Presidents' inclination was to stay the present course and not take the significant further step of arming rebels. No one likes to lose a debate, including me. But this was the President's call and I respected his deliberations and decision," Clinton wrote.
Earlier this year, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/bob-gates-book-white-house-joe-biden-obama-2014-1" target="_blank">Gates reserved his strongest criticism</a> for Vice President Joe Biden, who he said has been "wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades." Like with Clinton and Gates, the White House pushed back on Panetta's barbs earlier this week. White House press secretary Josh Earnest said that "as a general matter," Obama was "proud" to have Panetta serve in his administration. But Earnest also rebutted Panetta's criticism and defended Obama, and called into question Panetta's timing in his book release.
"Anybody in any administration who serves in prominent positions like that has to make a decision about how and when and whether to talk about their experience serving the President of the United States," Earnest said. And I'll leave it to others to judge the conclusion that Secretary Panetta has reached about sharing his experience."

Obama's Former Secretary Of Defense And CIA Director Has Been Shredding Him On Syria And ISIS

The Republican Party Just Dumped A Whole Bunch Of Their Dirt On Hillary Clinton 

Media mogul Tina Brown on what she learned transforming Vanity Fair and the New Yorker, enduring a failed partnership with Harvey Weinstein, and what the #MeToo movement is missing

You Searched For "katie couric book" and got 9 results

101 Inspirational Quotes From Super Successful People

Jacquelyn Smith,Emmie Martin

The two faces of Airbnb

Steven Hill

Lance Armstrong Ex Sheryl Crow Breaks Her Silence On His Doping Confession

Aly Weisman

The Thing That Saved Marissa Mayer's First Two Years At Yahoo Is Now Making Her Job Miserable

Jay Yarow

Obama's Former Secretary Of Defense And CIA Director Has Been Shredding Him On Syria And ISIS

Brett LoGiurato

The Republican Party Just Dumped A Whole Bunch Of Their Dirt On Hillary Clinton

Hunter Walker

Media mogul Tina Brown on what she learned transforming Vanity Fair and the New Yorker, enduring a failed partnership with Harvey Weinstein, and what the #MeToo movement is missing

Richard Feloni,Anna Mazarakis

The 50 Most Innovative People Of 2013

VanityFair.com

Facebook's Carolyn Everson on the importance of 'hard conversations'

Nicholas Carlson