Airbnb, a global B & B short rental apartment booking platform, officially landed on Nasdaq for listing and trading with the stock code of “abnb”. With a share price of $68, airbnb will be valued at $47 billion (about 300 billion yuan), which is expected to become the largest IPO in the U.S. market in 2020.
In the fall of 2007, Brian Chesky, a 26 year old literary and art youth, was encouraged by his friend and college roommate, Joe gebbia, to give up his job as an industrial designer with an annual salary of $40000 and went to San Francisco to start a business. At the time of the birth of this, the price of three bedrooms will be paid out at the price of $80 per night.
No one thought that the idea, which was born out of the problem of rent, would become a super Unicorn worth tens of billions of dollars in the future. Since its establishment, airbnb has obtained more than 10 rounds of financing and more than 6 billion US dollars. There are more than 100 well-known VC / PE companies lurking behind it. The lineup is quite luxurious. With the successful IPO of airbnb, the three young founders have also achieved wealth freedom.
“Poor light egg” founder’s counter attack, three mattresses start, by short rent to make 47 billion fortune
Three simple mattresses are the starting point of airbnb’s journey.
Chesky was born in 1981 in the small town of nishkana in the north of New York. His family was ordinary and his parents were social workers. Unlike most of the Silicon Valley tycoons born in computer science, Chesky has been obsessed with art since childhood. In 1999, he successfully entered the Rhode Island Institute of art to study industrial design.
While at school, Chesky met one of his most important partners in his life, his best friend and college roommate, jebia, who was later co-founder of airbnb. With the help of chebysky’s $1000 deposit, he decided to start a business in San Francisco in 2007.
At a time when they were at a loss for the direction of starting a business, two impoverished youths met with a very practical problem: they had no money to pay the rent. At that time, Chesky and jabia were living in a large international design exhibition, and the nearby hotels were already full of tourists and exhibitors.
Being anxious for money, Chesky thought of a way: to create a “bed + breakfast” service for the design conference. So they rented out three unused air mattresses in their home to provide a place for designers who came to the meeting and provided them with wireless network, desk, mattress and Breakfast services in the room for $80 a night.
This made Chesky smell the business opportunity. After discussing with jabia, he decided to use the unexpected idea as a start-up project. He also found his friend, Nathan blecharczyk, a software engineer who graduated from Harvard University. Chesky is responsible for the overall direction, jabia is mainly responsible for website design, and blakesyak provides technical support. In August 2008, airbedandbreakfast.com Officially launched, which is the predecessor of airbnb.
The novel “bed + breakfast” model soon attracted Paul Graham, co-founder of Y combinator, a Silicon Valley business incubator, and provided them with a start-up fund of $20000. “We had doubts about airbnb’s business model, but we had a good feeling for the three founders, who had the spirit of being competitive and not giving up easily,” Graham once said
So far, the three young people have opened the door of sharing economy entrepreneurship. In March 2009, with more than 10000 users and 2500 short-term B & B houses, the three changed the name of their website to airbnb, and expanded the leasing business from the original air bed to the whole room.
Over the past 12 years, airbnb has risen to become one of the world’s top unicorns with 4 million registered landlords and more than 7.4 million rental information. According to the prospectus, airbnb’s third quarter revenue was $1.34 billion, down nearly 19% from $1.65 billion in the same period last year, but its net profit reached $219 million, turning losses into profits.
With the rapid growth of airbnb, the three founders behind it have gained fame and wealth. According to the prospectus, before the IPO, Chesky held 15.3% of the company’s shares, while jabia and blakesyak held 14.2% respectively. Based on the valuation of US $47 billion, the three founders’ corresponding assets were US $7.2 billion (RMB 47 billion) and US $6.7 billion (RMB 43.8 billion).
Accumulated at least 10 rounds of financing, behind the VC lineup luxury
The rise of today’s super unicorn, airbnb can not do without the blessing and follow of a number of venture capital institutions.
In 2009, Sequoia Capital and Y ventures, founded by jawed Karim, a YouTube co-founder, placed a $600000 Angel round bet on airbnb after accepting Graham’s $20000 start-up capital and joining the Y combinator startup camp. Just two years later, the company’s overall valuation has exceeded US $1 billion, and airbnb has entered the vision of global VC / PE. In the following years, it has almost maintained the financing rhythm of one round a year and entered the stage of rapid development.
Until 2014, after completing two rounds of financing totaling US $675 million, the discussion on whether airbnb should IPO triggered a heated discussion in the market. In July of the following year, airbnb hired Laurence Tosi of Blackstone Group as CFO, which was also interpreted as an important measure to impact IPO.
In the same year, airbnb submitted relevant documents to the securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which showed that the company had completed the nearly $1.5 billion round of e-round involving more than 40 institutions