In September 2007 Joe Gebbia sent his friend Brian Chesky an email which read: "I thought of a way to make a few bucks...". The idea was to turn their place in San Francisco into a bed and breakfast for designers who were coming to a conference in the city. It worked well so they decided it could be a business if they could could get more property owners involved, and take a small slice of each transaction.
After initially being rejected by investors, that idea morphed into Airbnb -- the short-stay marketplace we know today. Joe's email turned out to be an idea worth a whole lot more than "a few bucks" -- less than a decade later the company was set to be the next hot IPO on Wall Street with a $30bn+ valuation.
A missed opportunity?
An IPO for Airbnb was discussed as early as 2016, but the company opted to raise further capital in the private markets, pushing the possibility of an IPO back to 2018, and then 2019... and then 2020.
Those delays may mean the Airbnb management are kicking themselves that they didn't tap the public markets in the "good times", as they raised $1bn this week to help them navigate coronavirus, but at less than half of the company's peak valuation. That said, a pandemic that completely shuts down the global travel industry is probably on the list of threats you can't expect a management team to predict.
