Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, 40, announced Thursday that he would be leaving his position with the peer-to-peer accommodation booking group. In a letter to staff, the friend of Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, who co-founded the platform in San Francisco 14 years ago, says his “brain is overflowing with ideas” and that he wants to create other start-ups.
He was the president of Airbnb.org, a group foundation established in 2012 that provides help in housing crisis situations around the world. He will continue to be a member of the board of directors of the platform and the foundation. “The main reason for this transition is that (Airbnb) is the only company I’ve helped create and my brain is full of ideas to take to the world,” writes Joe Gebbia.
Record number of overnight stays in the first quarter of 2022
This graphic design graduate turned millionaire recounts how he and his roommate started the business by subletting rooms in their apartment, whose rent had just increased by more than $1,000, through a newly created website called “AirBed and Breakfast”. The company, which has suffered from the pandemic like the entire travel sector, emerged at the beginning of the year “from an unprecedented setback with the best quarter since we made Airbnb a company fourteen years ago,” the co-founder says again.
In the first quarter of 2022, the San Francisco group, which has revolutionized the hotel world, had registered 102 million overnight stays, more than in any other quarter until then. Revenue was up 80% from the first quarter of 2019 to $1.5 billion. Profitable in the third and fourth quarters of 2021, the platform had slightly entered the red in the first quarter of this year, with a loss of 19 million dollars. The group, whose share price has fallen by almost 70% since the beginning of the year, following the stock market crash, will release its second-quarter results on August 2. The stock fell 1.88% on Thursday to $105.71.
Source: BFM TV
