Acquisition target IMO. While AirBnb bleeds, the FANGs continue to pile up cash.

Google, Facebook, and Apple all have enough cash to buy several AirBnbs rn.

Don't be fooled by the Q1 results that only cover a few weeks of the shutdown - FANGs are hurting too.

30 M unemployed and growing means no disposable income for consumer businesses, which in turn are shutting down and shrinking their spending on B2B services. The latter is delayed and won't be fully visible until Q3.

>which in turn are shutting down and shrinking their spending on B2B services

You are assuming the scenario where consumer division was making a lot of money. For a lot of very successful B2B businesses, their consumer division exists mostly to make small gains, while acting primarily as a getaway or advertisement for their B2B offerings.

You would be surprised to find out how much more revenue (and profits) a company like Microsoft makes on their B2B offerings compared to the consumer ones.

Microsoft isn't FANG, and even then, who do you think Microsoft's B2B customers serve and get their revenue from?

Even those that are still B2B eventually need cash flows from consumer businesses. Hence the statement that we won't fully realize the losses until Q3. Less spending by consumers depresses all businesses, some sooner than others, but FANGs are definitely hurting.

>who do you think Microsoft's B2B customers serve and get their revenue from

The cool thing about B2B, as opposed to consumer offerings, is that the contracts on those are usually multi-year. Just because the client enterprise suddenly receives less revenue from customers, it doesn't mean that they would be able to stop paying MSFT until the contract term is over. Unless this current lockdown situation lasts multiple years, it shouldn't affect things significantly.

That's not how B2B contracts work. They have clauses for breaking them. They are not paid out in bankruptcy. They tend to scale per variables like users or calls.

AirBnB is now paying for 7000 less exchange accounts and office licenses, and you have yet to explain how FANGs are doing well.

Bankruptcies, Bankruptcies, Bankruptcies. All these contracts go underwater once the companies file chapter-11. Gold Gym has already started, most retailers are following the suit. That said, Microsoft (my previous employer) is well diversified to come out net positive or neutral.

Yes, but instead of buying several AirBnBs, they could instead buy dozens of smaller startups that are not operating in the hospitality industry - which is going to recover much slower than most forms of B2B or B2C.

Those industries would also be hurting less which means a smaller discount.

Meanwhile, long-term prospects for AirBnb have not changed. Disease existed before COVID and will exist after COVID.

> Meanwhile, long-term prospects for AirBnb have not changed. Disease existed before COVID and will exist after COVID.

Not sure I 100% agree with this. AirBnB's bread-and-butter was urban rentals. Even before Covid, there was huge backlash against AirBnB in a lot of those locales. Now, especially after you saw huge numbers of AirBnB's convert to long term rentals (really laying bare the nonsense of the "AirBnB doesn't take from long term rental stock" argument), I think you'll see tons of cities accelerate their plans to ban lots of short-term rentals in their current form, and these cities and society at large will become a lot more hostile to AirBnBs in residential neighborhoods.

I agree that there is a general backlash against AirBnb in certain locales but this was a risk before COVID too. I don't see how COVID would compel cities to move FASTER to ban short-term rentals. During a time like this, aggressively cutting down a good business (for property owners) seems like a bad move in general.

The conversion of short-term -> long-term is a side effect of reduce demand. Once demand picks back up, supply will return.

The industries may be hurting less, but they may be in need of funding, that has dried up, and is leaving otherwise reasonable businesses in a bind.

The mass tourism boom in the year prior to Covid19 might not be the new normal.

A lot of tech is getting hit, it seems like Airbnb is more in the spotlight

FANG is surviving, if not thriving. A lot of famous companies will disappear in the next 9 months. This feels a lot like the dotcom bust to me.

Q1 results only cover a few weeks of the lock down. FAANGs require consumers to continue spending, and with 30+ million unemployed, that's a lot less disposable income and piling debt.

We won't be able to fully see the results of the pandemic in the FAANGs until early Q3.

All global companies, too.

Why do people consider AirBnB tech? They are a services company with a website connecting external parties. This isn't hard tech, this is marketing.

Edit: It seems people are under the impression that because you have lots of technology that is required to run your company you are a technology company. I don't believe that to be true in this day and age, tire distributors probably have more technology requirements then AirBnB does but we don't consider them tech companies. By the same token I wouldn't consider Expedia/Travelocity etc to be tech companies either the use tech to provide a service.

My personal take on what defines a "tech company" is a company that understands and respects that tech drives its business and thus treats its tech employees with respect.

Almost every large company is tech driven these days. But in a lot of them, tech is considered more of a necessary evil "cost center". The tech employees are treated as second class citizens compared to the marketers, salespeople, traders, etc. who are the "profit center".

A big investment bank (disclosure: I work at one) arguably has more tech running through its veins these days than say, Airbnb. But I would firmly classify Airbnb as a "tech company" per the above definition, and the bank as "not a tech company".

Their core business is a marketplace connecting travelers to hosts and their homes/rooms. That marketplace is software. If you're a company selling a service that is completely software based, are you not a tech company?

By the definition you seem to be using, the only companies that can be considered tech are enterprise SaaS.

The defining feature of tech is marginal cost of production close to zero at scale . Meaning, as you grow your business you increasingly automate away human labour. That's why Instagram was worth billions with 13 employees.

You're not a technology company just because you rely on software. Walmart makes software too, much more of it than airbnb actually. You're a technology company if you automate away human labour. This doesn't really seem to be the case for most of these 'marketplace' companies which is reflected in their margins. They just have to keep adding more labour as they expand.

I’d probably put them in the same category as Etsy: tech-enabled marketplaces.

Shortest answer: because they went through YC.