Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in 2016
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Re: Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in 2016
#2A shame that they didn't raise this money through an IPO. I'm afraid of how long unicorns are staying private: it's a big bummer for their employees and early investors. It'll be a tough sell for early employees of the next batch of unicorns if Uber, Airbnb, Palantir, Dropbox, etc. stay private for 10-15 years or more!
Re: Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in 2016
#3A shame that they didn't raise this money through an IPO. I'm afraid of how long unicorns are staying private: it's a big bummer for their employees and early investors. It'll be a tough sell for early employees of the next batch of unicorns if Uber, Airbnb, Palantir, Dropbox, etc. stay private for 10-15 years or more!
If investors are enthusiastically in disagreement about the potential of a company (both the buy + sell sides), it's probably better for the company's valuation to stay private. It blocks out any negative opinions' effect that you'd have if public via investors shorting / betting against the company.
This probably leads to an overly high valuation it wouldn't hold up to on the stock market, though, (i.e. Uber) so then the company feels pressured to stay private until they can justify that overly high valuation. In Uber's case, though, they'll keep raising money at absurd valuations and keep the cycle going.
Palantir is an exception: If they were public and had to disclose much information, their value would plummet, so it'll likely stay private in the foreseeable future.
Re: Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in 2016
#4A shame that they didn't raise this money through an IPO. I'm afraid of how long unicorns are staying private: it's a big bummer for their employees and early investors. It'll be a tough sell for early employees of the next batch of unicorns if Uber, Airbnb, Palantir, Dropbox, etc. stay private for 10-15 years or more!
I'm not saying this is the case with this round in particular, but it's not unheard of for early employees to take money off the table in a round like this
Re: Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in 2016
#5A shame that they didn't raise this money through an IPO. I'm afraid of how long unicorns are staying private: it's a big bummer for their employees and early investors. It'll be a tough sell for early employees of the next batch of unicorns if Uber, Airbnb, Palantir, Dropbox, etc. stay private for 10-15 years or more!
If investors are enthusiastically in disagreement about the potential of a company (both the buy + sell sides), it's probably better for the company's valuation to stay private. It blocks out any negative opinions' effect that you'd have if public via investors shorting / betting against the company. This probably leads to an overly high valuation it wouldn't hold up to on the stock market, though, (i.e. Uber) so the…
Isn't that bad for employees with stock options though? The market could tell them how much those options are really worth.
Re: Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in 2016
#6If they are already profitable, why raise money again?
Re: Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in 2016
#7A shame that they didn't raise this money through an IPO. I'm afraid of how long unicorns are staying private: it's a big bummer for their employees and early investors. It'll be a tough sell for early employees of the next batch of unicorns if Uber, Airbnb, Palantir, Dropbox, etc. stay private for 10-15 years or more!
I'm not saying this is the case with this round in particular, but it's not unheard of for early employees to take money off the table in a round like this
The company isn't compelled in any way to allow this though, and is actually disincentivized from doing so because it increases the probability of key departures as those people are able to extract some value.
If you're in such a position, you better hope that your founders _really_ like you.
Re: Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in 2016
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
If investors are enthusiastically in disagreement about the potential of a company (both the buy + sell sides), it's probably better for the company's valuation to stay private. It blocks out any negative opinions' effect that you'd have if public via investors shorting / betting against the company. This probably leads to an overly high valuation it wouldn't hold up to on the stock market, though, (i.e. Uber) so the…
Isn't that bad for employees with stock options though? The market could tell them how much those options are really worth.
Completely, and a small part of why employees are cautioned on here to take salary over equity.
The market telling them would be a loss of billions for the investors/founders, both on the value of their own equity and the increased equity they'd have to offer employees (many exceptions apply, but this seems to be the case particularly with startups who lack an easy path to profitability but can show substantial growth).
Re: Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in 2016
#9If they are already profitable, why raise money again?
If you can raise money on great terms, it's usually in your best interest to do so. Maybe they want to build up their war chest as they see increasing regulatory hassles, more competition, and a possible downturn in the market. I'd also guess they are expanding their scope now to more expensive endeavors, as they are building physical hotels now (and probably many other things they haven't announced yet).
http://www.businessinsider.com/airbnb-builds-hotel-japan-com...
Re: Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in 2016
#10If they are already profitable, why raise money again?
Profitable can also mean $1.