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Airbnb S-1

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101–110 of 471 posts

Re: Airbnb S-1

#101

>> the board of directors reduced Mr. Chesky’s base salary from $110,000 to $1, set his target bonus at $0, and granted him a long-term, multi-year equity award comprised of 12,000,000 RSUs (the “Multi-Year Award”). Its quite surprising that CEO of Airbnb should make just $110k/ annum in base salary before the company goes public. I would expect it to be around $500k.

He's got a place to live, and food to eat, and he spends 200% of his time at work. At that point money is really just a thing that idles in the bank.

No, money is the thing you use to allow yourself to spend 200% of your time at work. Private tutors to school your kids so you don't have to. Cleaning services so you don't have to spend time cleaning. First class plane tickets so you can relax, sleep or work on the flight. Private driver or Ubers so you can work while driving places. A personal assistant to book travel, appointments and everything else mentioned so far.

Re: Airbnb S-1

#102
I'm curious how badly the pandemic has hit and will hit AirBnB. I scanned a couple of tidbits from the S-1:

- Reducing full-time employee headcount by approximately 25% (I'm curious from what/to?)

- Setting expectation for the potential of no employee bonuses for 2020 and reducing executive team member salaries for six months (interesting that executive team _salary_ is getting reduced rather than bonuses, no? At this level isn't most of your compensation not direct salary?)

- (to the above point) , in May 2020, we announced a reduction in our workforce of approximately 1,800 employees (So I guess they had ~9,000 employees?)

- Outstanding RSU obligations are quoted as ~$2.7B

It seems fair to wonder, given the timing during a pandemic, that there's a need or desire to cash out by the investors and founders.

I wonder if their headcount downsizing wasn't severe enough. 9,000 employees seems like a lot for an intermediary. A lot of these companies seem to get in the habit of thinking they're the next Google long before they have the Google revenues to fund such pursuits.

The risks section reads as expected.

I do wonder if the tide is turning against home "sharing". Unlike ride-sharing, there are significant externalities to deal with. People don't generally don't want to live near an illegal (in many cases) hotel and it's not so easy for them to up and move. It's classic tragedy of the commons.

What's more AirBnB has (IMHO) a provable negative impact on the supply of rental units in many cities.

So cue the standard self-serving defense of AirBnB. I, for one, would not be sad to see it go.

Re: Airbnb S-1

#103

Can anyone estimate what an investors in 2009 in Air BNB will get for an ROI post- IPO? I just looked and S&P 500 returned 426.134% with dividends reinvested through September 2020.

Would be quite hard to tell. AirBnb raised money 22 times since it was founded in 2008, including 6 rounds of VC funding. The early investors could do great or they could be wiped off if that's what the later investors wanted to do.

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/airbnb/company_finan...

Re: Airbnb S-1

#104
I like airbnb. They need to get better at weeding out fake/scammy listings, that tend to plague many online marketplaces where things can be listed for free. Maybe some in-person verification system, or a fee that gets refunded if you have a certain number of guests. There are plenty of listings with huge/exclusive homes, yet no reviews and extremely cheap prices. I don't know what people get out of these listings, but it's really weird and makes the user doubtful about the authenticity of the marketplace.

Re: Airbnb S-1

#105

>> the board of directors reduced Mr. Chesky’s base salary from $110,000 to $1, set his target bonus at $0, and granted him a long-term, multi-year equity award comprised of 12,000,000 RSUs (the “Multi-Year Award”). Its quite surprising that CEO of Airbnb should make just $110k/ annum in base salary before the company goes public. I would expect it to be around $500k.

He's got a place to live, and food to eat, and he spends 200% of his time at work. At that point money is really just a thing that idles in the bank.

> he spends 200% of his time at work

Perhaps the money goes towards cloning costs?

Re: Airbnb S-1

#106
post #84

The seesaw in revenue over the last 3 quarters is insane: 841M, 334M, 1.3B in Q1, Q2, Q3. They even posted a profit last quarter. I've gotta say, the S1 looks appealing considering how few profitable silicon valley companies there are these days. On the other hand, I have a hard time interpreting whether this is truly a profitable company since the numbers are all over the place. It also looks like Q3 tends to be the…

Compared to something like Snowflake, Airbnb's business is very seasonal (most people travel during summer & holidays), so there is always some seesaw even on good years. NYE is the most popular night of the year.

Re: Airbnb S-1

#107
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was it the host's fault that you got punched?

Did I say it was? It is the host's fault for charging me damages outside of my control. It is also Airbnb's fault for refusing to take a side.

You bled all over the host's towel, was that in their control? They have to replace that once it's been soiled with blood.

Re: Airbnb S-1

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's got a place to live, and food to eat, and he spends 200% of his time at work. At that point money is really just a thing that idles in the bank.

No, money is the thing you use to allow yourself to spend 200% of your time at work. Private tutors to school your kids so you don't have to. Cleaning services so you don't have to spend time cleaning. First class plane tickets so you can relax, sleep or work on the flight. Private driver or Ubers so you can work while driving places. A personal assistant to book travel, appointments and everything else mentioned so…

I'm sure he has an EA at the company's expense at this point.

Re: Airbnb S-1

#109
post #49

77% of nights booked were for entire homes ( not spare rooms ). I would have guessed this to be much higher, like 95+ or something. That’s interesting and I guess the big thing that makes this different than vrbo if they can grow the spare room side much more over time

I think the number is bullshit. They can't tell the difference between a room and a full home.

At least that's my experience when I was trying to search on the site. There was little filtering available and the owners were listing their properties as anything.

Re: Airbnb S-1

#110

>> the board of directors reduced Mr. Chesky’s base salary from $110,000 to $1, set his target bonus at $0, and granted him a long-term, multi-year equity award comprised of 12,000,000 RSUs (the “Multi-Year Award”). Its quite surprising that CEO of Airbnb should make just $110k/ annum in base salary before the company goes public. I would expect it to be around $500k.

He's got a place to live, and food to eat, and he spends 200% of his time at work. At that point money is really just a thing that idles in the bank.

That's not at all how most rich people behave. They want more money, and they wanna make sure nothing stops them from getting even more.
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