Ben Gilbert: belief

Transcript context

…I was thinking about what you said. The only thing I can think of that was a non-original idea—there was also pretty early in the company's life that I think they executed incredibly well—was Instant Book. I think that was over a year into the company that they innovated on Instant Book. 100% and they deserve all the credit for that. I think the innovations of Instant Book, payments through the platform, messaging through the platform, and their review system—together, they create the symphony that enabled this product to provide tons of value on both sides of the business. Instant Book, that's part of the initial product. That's not a subsequent thing. I debated whether we talked about this in power, but I think it makes more sense a narrative maybe leading into power for a bear case on the company is—we talk about the bull case. You got to believe that they're going to keep penetrating a huge part of this huge TAM. You probably also have to believe that these prices that coronavirus has shifted the winds in Airbnb’s favor. To a certain extent, I think it probably has. But I think it's also exposed a structural weakness for the company, which is if you think about zooming out—you mentioned Amazon like an analogy here—Airbnb is not Amazon. They are much more like eBay, and eBay has been on a similar path, enormous TAM, global network effect, torrid growth for many years, but then it slowed and has now—I don't know what their growth is, but they’re still a decent size company and whatnot.…

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