Airbnb

Acquired

Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal

Venturecapital, Ma, Investing, Acquisitions, Startups, Vc, Investment, Business, Technology

4.8 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 11 December 2020

⏱️ 158 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Over 13 years after its founding, one of the defining startup companies of the past decade finally makes its public debut — and boy was it a big one. But for all the hype (and all the legitimately great things Airbnb has accomplished), this is a company that looks very different today than in the past. Even before COVID, Airbnb's once-exponential bookings growth had declined to linear levels while the company's costs continued to balloon at accelerating rates. What’s going on here? Are public investors smart to bet on a permanent shift in travel behavior coming out of the pandemic? Or is this a case of unrealistic expectations? As always, we dive in.

If you want more Acquired and the tools + resources to become the best founder, operator or investor you can be, join our LP Program for access to our LP Show, the LP community on Slack and Zoom, and our live Book Club discussions with top authors. Join here at: https://acquired.fm/lp/

Sponsors:
Vanta: https://bit.ly/acquiredvanta

Statsig: bit.ly/statsigacquired
Modern Treasury: https://bit.ly/acquiredmoderntreasury

Playbook Themes from this episode are available on our website at https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/airbnb

Carve Outs:

David — San Francisco Ballet's Nutcracker: https://www.sfballet.org/productions/nutcracker-online/
Ben — Star Wars Lofi HipHop: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5iu1sp3UBb1rjf8KNKETtJ?si=WxPdJcRpSnelHN9qh0xYSw

Transcript

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0:00.0	I took Tanny's collar off her so that we don't have the same problem.
0:05.0	That'll save us some time in post. Welcome to Season 7 episode 8, the season finale.
0:23.8	I've acquired the podcast about great technology companies
0:26.7	and the stories and playbooks behind them.
0:29.2	I'm Ben Gilbert and I'm the co-founder of Pioneer Square Labs,
0:32.6	a startup studio and venture capital firm in Seattle.
0:35.8	And I'm David Rosenthal, and I am an angel investor
0:38.6	and startup advisor based in San Francisco.
0:41.9	And we are your hosts.
0:44.0	Today we cover the hottest and most anticipated company to IPO in 2020.
0:50.0	And oddly, in a year marred by the global pandemic, and just this month an all-time high number of
0:56.1	stay-at-home orders, this hot IPO is a travel company.
1:01.0	AirB&B, originally known as Air Bed and Breakfast Incorporated, The company is
1:04.0	Inc.
1:05.0	is going public today raising over 3.5 billion dollars
1:09.0	and initially valued at over 47 billion dollars. The company is insanely impressive. They operate in
1:16.7	220 countries and 100,000 cities. Last year there were 38 billion dollars of bookings made on the platform
1:24.4	There are over 50 million active guests who book nights to stay at over 7 million
1:29.9	listings and unlike other companies that we've covered recently, well yesterday, like Doordash, this is truly a global company with 86% of hosts outside of the United States.
1:41.0	And yet, well, this company has changed the world and how a meaningful
1:45.4	fraction of the human race travels, their growth has been slowing more severely than any of the
1:51.3	other unicorn IPOs we've covered.
	...

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