Ben Gilbert: belief

Transcript context

…Okay, man. All right. Never heard of a startup winning a Nobel Peace Prize, but okay. Alfred’s going to resent us for this, but he has a great quote about all these in Upstarts to Brad. He says, “Well, growth covers a lot of sins, and the growth of this company was spectacular.” David, I think you summed it up so well in saying this is exactly as an entrepreneur, as an investor, this is exactly the type of business you want to start that just goes on its own and that you don’t have to keep pushing the rock uphill. Once you have that, the lesson is, do not rest on your laurel. Stay analytical. You have to keep figuring out what’s next. Or at least, don’t say you’re going to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Anyway, in 2015, Expedia bought HomeAway—the only really viable product-wise competitor out there in the market for just under $4 billion. You know, there are some headlines about, Expedia, HomeAway, they’re going to compete with Airbnb. No, this is surrender. This is basically admitting that there is no viable competitor out there. In 2015, Airbnb made almost $1 billion in net revenue on $8 billion in bookings. 2015 is the first year in the S1 where we have this data.…

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