Airbnb's Pandemic Investment
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A story about how Egan Durbin and Silver Lake invested $1 billion in Airbnb during the pandemic crisis without ever meeting the CEO.
"In April of 2020, two months into the pandemic, he invested a billion dollars into Airbnb. At the time, my wife worked there and we were at home thinking Airbnb was going out of business, that whole company was dead. They invested at around an $18 billion valuation.
He got criticized because he had never met Brian Chesky, the CEO. He made the investment sort of sight unseen and injected a bunch of capital into the business when it needed it. People were like 'Is that a rash move?' People doubted it, but Airbnb's done fantastic since then."
The story illustrates how Durbin made major investment decisions quickly and decisively, even without traditional due diligence like meeting the CEO, and how it paid off despite the skepticism.
Sam Parr
Host of MFM and fitness influencer
Sam Parr is a serial entrepreneur and business media pioneer.
In 2016, he founded The Hustle, a business news media company that started in his kitchen with just $12 and grew to eight figures in revenue.
Sam led the charge in making newsletters popular when few believed in their potential.
After four successful years, he sold The Hustle to HubSpot, a publicly traded company. Now operating as HubSpot Media, The Hustle reaches 3 million readers daily, employs a team of nearly 100, and has been the launchpad for dozens of its staff to found their own media companies and newsletters.
Sam remains the host of the popular business podcast, My First Million, and continues to start and sell companies. He also co-founded Hampton, a highly vetted community for entrepreneurs, founders, and CEOs, and teaches people to write better through his platform, Copy That.