I am not sure that this comment adds anything to the discussion. You can argue that Blecharczyk is reformed, that AirBnB is not currently spamming people, or even that the only reason he is bringing this up now is to generate interest in his anti-Money Transmission Act crusade. Insulting him does not explain why he might be wrong.
Disclosure: I knew Greenspan in college, but I wasn't important enough to be included in his book Authoritas. Sigh.
I doubt the personal ethics of founders sway investors much (if at all), but perhaps the world would be a better place if they did.
Either way, setting up a custom hardware/software stack to spam/peddle pornography as an 18 year old freshman is a pretty impressive feat of ingenuity, but it reflects poor judgement - by an 18 year old (whodathunkit!) Who knows what guy is like now. He might be a saint. Probably not though.
When a spammer gets caught attacking the commons yet again via a new company's "contractors" who just happen not to have been prosecuted or sued or even identified, it's pretty obvious he is the creature he always was.
The fact that people assume Airbnb was automating spam is entirely false.
At one point in our past we did have a small team of remote sales people that we contracted to acquire listings through person-to-person sales, but their efforts were largely ineffective. To set the record straight this process was never automated as purported. Our sales team emailed listings on Craigslist one-by-one and targeted only listings that they thought would be a good fit for our marketplace. At times they did contact people who did not want to be solicited to. However when alerted to these actions we ensured that they stopped immediately.
Yeah, it's just a really weird coincidence that someone who made a couple hundred thousand dollars spamming in college later used the same techniques in a new business? Well, maybe, but you're going to need to do better than say cross my heart and pinky swear.
Also, stop being a bullshit artist. Let me rewrite your second paragraph for you in a truthful fashion: "Yeah, we spammed people. Our sales team went through craigslist and emailed listings we wanted to poach, even if they'd said they didn't want to receive such emails. We're those assholes. But please, let me write about this in the passive tense and distance ourselves from it. What I'd really like is for none of you to hold our admitted conduct against us because, well, that would be really convenient. For us, that is. Further, please don't judge our current conduct by our past actions because, well, again, way more convenient if we can just say random external contractors <bullshit bullshit bullshit> and start over with a blank slate."
Disclosure: I knew Greenspan in college, but I wasn't important enough to be included in his book Authoritas. Sigh.