Entrepreneur Joe Gebbia, Jr., the co-founder of home-sharing platform Airbnb, made a homecoming of his own this week, speaking at the Hope Global Forum in downtown Atlanta about efforts to use his privilege — and the multibillion dollar company he founded — to benefit the world.
“I grew up about 45 minutes from here, up 85, born into a very loving middle-class family,” Mr. Gebbia said in a dialogue with John Hope Bryant, CEO of Operation Hope, which puts on the annual summit focusing on financial empowerment and wealth creation in the Black community and beyond.
Backstage, Mr. Bryant said, Mr. Gebbia told him that it’s precisely because he didn’t have to struggle that he wanted to give back.
Mr. Gebbia grew up in Gwinnett County and graduated from Brookwood High School. He went to Rhode Island for art school before moving out to San Francisco to work as an artist and industrial designer. It was there that he and co-founder Brian Chesky, struggling to make rent after a 25 percent rate hike, rented out three air mattresses on the floor of their apartment to inbound guests of a design conference they planned to attend. “Airbed…and breakfast” was born.
More than a place to stay, though, the guests gained access to a collaborative, social experience with Mr. Gebbia and his roommates and friends.
“I look at Brian and I go, ‘Did we just get paid to make friends?’ That’s when the gears began to turn. We thought, there’s got to be other people kind of like us who want to make some income to offset rent, and also want to meet people from around the world,’” he said. They brought on Nathan Blecharczyk as the third founder and started building out the platform.
An engine for financial empowerment
It was a slow start, but after 12 years the company has become a category-defining pioneer of the sharing economy, with 4 million hosts across 200-plus countries and territories. A delayed IPO in late 2020 fetched a valuation of $47 billion, though Airbnb posted a $3.9 billion loss for the fourth quarter as the pandemic’s shadow loomed over the travel sector.
The platform was criticized early on for failing to adequately tackle discrimination against Black hosts and renters on the platform — a problem the company has scrambled to root out with multiple initiatives in the U.S. and beyond.
But Mr. Gebbia said he’s been encouraged by the way the platform has helped mint micro business owners whose dreams are empowered by the income it generates. New hosts that joined since the pandemic began have earned $6 billion, and 40 percent of hosts say they rely on Airbnb to make ends meet, Mr. Gebbia said. Many have used it to generate cash to bootstrap a new company or quit an unfulfilling job.
“It’s been amazing to see how the platform can help people find financial independence,” he said, noting that the company is working on an entrepreneurial academy that will help hosts professionalize their listings to boost revenues.
But it was the hosts’ generosity, not their desire to earn more, that led to an initiative in which Mr. Gebbia has found a deeper purpose for the community he’s helped build.
When Hurricane Sandy hit New York in 2012, displacing thousands, a host reached out to ask how she could open up four guest rooms to her neighbors at no cost. Airbnb’s platform was built only for monetary transactions, and after sharing the host’s email around the company, the engineering teams held an all-night “pizza and Red Bull” session, rebuilding the site so space could be donated free or offered at a discount.
Unleashing Airbnb’s power to help in disaster situations
Since then, more than 75,000 people in 70 countries have used Airbnb.org to find shelter during times of disaster, whether humanitarians coming in to help or asylum seekers finding temporary lodging for a few nights during resettlement. The company has helped during tsunamis in Japan, earthquakes in Mexico and wildfires in Canada.
“Anytime you see a big headline on the news, we’re there,” Mr. Gebbia said to applause from the limited in-person crowd. “I should qualify that and say we’re there, but but actually our hosts are there, because they’re the ones that are opening their homes and offering them for free or at a discount.”
Wearing a bracelet representing the refugee team from the Tokyo Olympic Games, Mr. Gebbia said he has been animated recently by the growing refugee crisis after seeing a graph that showed the number of displaced people globally set to balloon from 75 million currently to more than 200 million in the coming years.
“I’m looking at this graph going,’ What could we possibly do to put a dent in that?’” he said. It turns out Airbnb is a great fit for “one specific moment” in the refugee and asylum process: housing people just after arrival at the airport in the country where they’ll be resettled.
With the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan creating the largest evacuation since the Vietnam War, leading to an expected 100,000 Afghans coming to the U.S., Airbnb has committed to working with resettlement agencies like the International Rescue Committee, Church World Services and others to house 20,000 of them while in transition to their new lives in the U.S.
“These are our new neighbors,” Mr. Gebbia said.
Mr. Bryant, who in his business life runs The Promise Homes Co., a developer of single-family rental homes, said he has instructed his team to “turn” and furnish any homes in their system that are not currently under lease and make them available to house Afghans.
“We all can find a way to do good,” Mr. Bryant said. “It ain’t that difficult.”
Mr. Bryant’s HOPE Global Forums — held each year in Atlanta — have become a trusted venue for influential leaders in business and high-level government officials can discuss issues related to financial inclusion and literacy, entrepreneurship, monetary policy and business growth.
In addition to a considerable array of powerhouse Black executives including this year, Georgia Power CEO Christopher Womack and many more, Mr. Bryant has been deft at drawing participation from Silicon Valley giants. This year’s forum, themed around “Meeting the Moment,” included executives from Etsy, stock-trading app Robinhood, online neighborhood platform Nextdoor, PayPal and more. Other heavy-hitters included U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Ambassador Andrew Young, Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian, Walmart President and CEO Doug McMillon and more. Learn more and see the full speaker list here.
See Global Atlanta’s 2019 coverage of Twitter and Square Founder Jack Dorsey’s fireside chat: How Jack Dorsey’s Love of Maps, Cities Helped Birth Twitter, Square
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