Opinion on the email A Message From Our Founders

[Emanuel675]

Dear fellow hosts,

The letter from the founders this week read rather autotelic and was so amusing it made me laugh.

Benevolent to a degree that, in my opinion, it became condescending. I was picturing the hosts sitting in a sandbox waiting for their parents to comfort them.

What do you think? 

I have nothing against their decision making, and in fact it sort of shows just how much flexibility the company has to be able to make the right sustainable choices. Now the company is rumoured to go public this year. If the founders are true to their words, and really value the hosts that generate the backbone of value, it seems logical to me to put their money where their mouths are and redistribute a portion of their wealth back to the hosts. I would argue for every host to receive a package of shares corresponding to the value that each one of them has generated thus far. Surely than an IPO would be welcome, and if not increase the overall value of the company, function as an incentive for hosts to keep wide-eyed playing in the sand. In fact, anything less would be avarice.

Thank you for sharing your opinions on this topic!

[Huma0]

@Emanuel675 

I am just about ready to throw my toys out of the sandpit.

[Sarah977]

@Huma0  The ones Airbnb stomped all over and broke?

[Susan17]

@Emanuel675 

They'll be lucky to survive the year, let alone limp to IPO. They missed the boat - former CFO and Wall St veteran Laurence Tosi abruptly bailed out of the company in February 2018, after a series of clashes with Brian Chesky, reportedly over the timing of the IPO (Tosi wanted to go public that year, Chesky didn't) With the result, they're desperately trying to raise cash at the moment, but not quite attracting the interest from investors that they might have wished for. 

Private buyers of Airbnb shares are telling sellers they need to drop their valuations significantly. Mitchell Green, a partner with Lead Edge Capital, a Manhattan-based growth-stage investment company, was approached last week by a broker trying to sell him Airbnb shares. The ask was $30 billion, according to Mr. Green. His response to the broker... “Call me when they want $10 billion"

Even if they do make it that far, the opening of their books for their pre-IPO S1 filings, will surely have more than a few jaws hitting the floor. 

[Mark116]

@Emanuel675 The majority of airbnb communications read like they were written by and for high school students who are not too bright. Too wordy.  Too much virtue signaling.  Too much dudebro language. And that in addition to the fact that the company almost never adheres to even the few specifics they ever mention.

@Susan17  I'm curious as you follow things closely, do you know or have a theory on why didn't Chesky want to go public in 2018?  Surely they could see the negative regulatory stuff on the horizon and should have known it would be better to get out in front of all the anti STR laws and growing hostility to the platform around the world. 2019 was a bad year for airbnb even before the CA shooting.

[Susan17]

@Mark116 

I do have a theory - purely speculative, of course - but I think the clues are all in this Open Letter To The Airbnb Community, written just days before Tosi skedaddled.. 

https://news.airbnb.com/brian-cheskys-open-letter-to-the-airbnb-community-about-building-a-21st-cent...

[Mark116]

@Susan17  I have to confess, I don't see any clues in that, it just seems like the typical aspiration-speak that says nothing in as many words as possible.  Vision! Infinity! Stakeholders! Trust!  Societal good!    

[Susan17]

That's exactly it, @Mark116 - it's all airy-fairy, magical-world, la-la-land, pie-in-the-sky stuff! Not really grounded in any sort of logical reality, sound business sense, or concrete plans for the future of his enterprise. 

Let's just say, Tosi was (is) a shrewd, accomplished, hard-headed Wall St money-man, who knew the ropes, and then some... and Brian is a RISD design graduate, who more or less fell into this gig by good fortune, rather than being born with any burning ambition to be the CEO of a multi-billion dollar global corporation. 

Tosi had solid plans, Brian had magical dreams.. 

[Mark116]

@Susan17 Ha.  I forgot Chesky went to RISD.  Too funny.   You know, normally, I would be in the corner of the creative founder and would think it was sad/terrible if he were sidelined by the Wall Street money guys...but in this instance, Chesky is about as bad a CEO as it is possible to be, but you are probably right, the randomness, incredibly strange series of investments they have made, completely terrible management all down the line probably comes right as a result of Chesky and his pie in the sky dude bro mentality.  

[Emanuel675]

Thank you for your inputs.

Update from the most recent message:

"We are dropping the one-year cliff on equity for everyone we’ve hired in the past year so that everyone departing, regardless of how long they have been here, is a shareholder"

I may be starry-eyed, but newly recruited support personnel walks away with a nice paid vacation and a stake in the company, meanwhile, superhosts working hard for many years generating Airbnb's revenue are not considered as stakeholders... What the shuck, really?