Fortune’s Leigh Gallagher has written a new book that I’ve just put at the top of my reading list. The Airbnb Story: How Three Ordinary Guys Disrupted an Industry, Made Billions…and Created Plenty of Controversy is emerging as the definitive look at the incredible rise of Airbnb, the now break-out star of the sharing economy. You can read an excerpt on Fortune, but this caught my eye to share:
In July 2014, Airbnb introduced the rebrand, as well as a redesign of its mobile app and website. [CEO Brian] Chesky explained the concept in a cerebral, high-minded essay on Airbnb’s website: A long time ago, he wrote, cities used to be villages. But as mass production and industrialization came along, that personal feeling was replaced by ‘mass-produced and impersonal travel experiences,’ and along the way, ‘people stopped trusting each other.’
Cofounder Nathan Blecharczyk is Airbnb’s CTO, but his role has broadened over the years. He’s also a host: He has had 178 guests in his home in the past two years. Airbnb, he wrote, would stand for something much bigger than travel; it would stand for community and relationships and using technology for the purpose of bringing people together. Airbnb would be the one place people could go to meet the ‘universal human yearning to belong.’ The Bélo itself was carefully conceived to resemble a heart, a location pin, and the ‘A’ in Airbnb. It was designed to be simple, so that anyone could draw it. Indeed, the company invited people to draw their own versions of the logo—which, it was announced, would stand for four things: people, places, love, and Airbnb.
In July 2014, Airbnb introduced the rebrand, as well as a redesign of its mobile app and website. [CEO Brian] Chesky explained the concept in a cerebral, high-minded essay on Airbnb’s website: A long time ago, he wrote, cities used to be villages. But as mass production and industrialization came along, that personal feeling was replaced by ‘mass-produced and impersonal travel experiences,’ and along the way, ‘people stopped trusting each other.’
Cofounder Nathan Blecharczyk is Airbnb’s CTO, but his role has broadened over the years. He’s also a host: He has had 178 guests in his home in the past two years. Airbnb, he wrote, would stand for something much bigger than travel; it would stand for community and relationships and using technology for the purpose of bringing people together. Airbnb would be the one place people could go to meet the ‘universal human yearning to belong.’ The Bélo itself was carefully conceived to resemble a heart, a location pin, and the ‘A’ in Airbnb. It was designed to be simple, so that anyone could draw it. Indeed, the company invited people to draw their own versions of the logo—which, it was announced, would stand for four things: people, places, love, and Airbnb.
The idealism of the company pales in comparison to its financial success. Airbnb is projecting it will earn (before interest and taxes and depreciation) as much as $3.5 billion a year by 2020. This would be huge, if true, since it would be a 3,400% increase from what the company had in similar profits last year. “It would also make Airbnb the first company to prove that the so-called sharing economy can be turned into sustainable success,” writes Gallagher. “That’s something that Uber, the sector’s other superstar, has yet to prove.”
Money tends to be all the proof that investors need. Airbnb laudably continues to work hard to funnel their signature idealism into addressing the issues of race and discrimination on their platform—their decision to offer free housing to refugees and their moving Super Bowl ads about inclusion are recent examples of their reputation rehabilitation tour. But the business case for scaling fast in the sharing economy is now the benchmark; designing an inclusive product first remains a distant plan B. This is a pattern we’ve seen repeatedly in tech and one that Airbnb has yet to solve. But if they do, it would be more than a happy ending to a great business story.