Ben Gilbert: evaluation

Transcript context

…While also having to spend a lot more performance marketing than Airbnb. Totally. They’re cutting $6 billion, $7 billion, $8 billion checks to Google every year and they're still able to generate $5 billion in net income. Very different businesses. I don't know for sure that this Booking number factors out flights. It may include flights there. Flights are kind of a silly thing to include because they don't really generate any real revenue on those. All the commissions are made on hotels. Anyway, two very different businesses, one that lost to the better part of $1 billion and one that made $5 billion. The one that made $5 billion took 2.5x the scale to do that. It'll be very interesting to see with Airbnb—as they get to a Booking-type scale—are they also able to generate the profit that Booking does? Well, I think that's what's so alarming about the past few years of financials for Airbnb. They're increasing their scale, even though their growth rate is slowing, but they're increasing their expenses faster than they're increasing their gross profit scale. Yeah. All right, playbook? Playbook, let’s do it.…

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