That's not necessarily true. PG says that there's one strategic sentence redacted.

Vacation Rentals is an upgrade from yuppies' airbeds, with commensurately higher margins.

Hotels are an upgrade from Vacation Rentals, with higher margins again.

Did you know that 25% of your hotel booking fee goes to the "Online Travel Agent" that runs your card?

Also, the assumption that no unique information was provided in the airbnb founders' meeting with Fred, and email conversation contains all the information, is probably incorrect.

ouch, hard to read over that background!

Yea, thanks for the feedback. I changed it and also dialed down the translucency on the white background area for the text significantly. Hopefully readability will now be improved. Thanks for reading.

Everything is red now!

They probably didn't miss anything, you did. You are judging two people's (two very initiated people at that) knowledge based on one (semi-censured) email conversation.

There are several more likely scenarios, such as:

a) no need to mention either VBRO nor couchsurfing since they were both well aware of them.

b) it was mentioned but in another context.

c) it was redacted.

d) there was no point mentioning it since AirBNB would've said it in their pitch.