Airbnb

“We realized That we had about a billion and a half dollars of refunds to make in about a couple of weeks.”

“This instance of trying something was meant to be a weekend, never meant to be a company, but it gave us the basis for what became the next iteration.”

“For our investors, we took out about two billion dollars in debt just to make sure we had money in the bank, because no one knew how long this was gonna go on for.”

“And it's actually started as an innovation team inside Airbnb. We spun it out late last year brought in a co-founder, Mike McNamara, and we started an independent company.”

“In December of 2019, we started the paperwork process to file to go public.”

“We implemented transient oxypeed tax or hotel tax which since we've launched that, we've I believe it's over five billion dollars”

“For our employees we did have to go through a riff, laid off about 25% of our workforce.”

“For our hosts, we came up with a relief fund to help put some money back into their pockets. That was two hundred fifty million dollars. Out of our pocket.”

“And now I would argue that Brian Chesky could not have built Uber.”

“Like, I think this is one of the hardest challenges I've ever faced. Besides how do you get a stranger to stay in a stranger's home? This is like the next biggest challenge. How do you upgrade a whole web of outdated digital experiences for the American people…”