Lukezic hit it big time! Airbnb worth $1.3 billion!

You're right, Twitter turns a profit now. That would put it in a similar position to Airbnb. 150mil profit=7.7 bil valuation?

Examples of others in a quick search:

Groupon (profit?): Daily deals giant Groupon just filed its S-1 in June, aiming to raise $750 million in the public offering. Though the company has an impressive revenue run rate of $2.6 billion for 2011, but has drawn criticism for a lack of profits and the fact that the founders have taken a significant amount of money off the table. The company is looking at an IPO in the Fall.

HOMEAWAY (NASDAQ:AWAY) (similar to Airbnb)

Vacation home rental service HomeAway debuted its IPO last week, pricing at $27 per share. HomeAway, which listed on the NASDAQ, saw its shares pop over 30 percent in initial trading last Wednesday, giving the rental service as valuation of $3 billion.

HomeAway’s shares have maintained its value, relatively speaking, in its first week of trading, reaching a low of $34.92 and a high of $42.30. On Friday, HomeAway’s shares closed at $38.42, a 42 percent increase from the stock’s pricing.

PANDORA (NYSE:P) (another co. with a profit problem)

Similar to LinkedIn, music streaming service Pandora also drew considerable attention to its IPO, which debuted on the New York Stock Exchange under the desirable, single character symbol ‘P.’ The company priced its IPO at $16 per share (valuing the company at $2.6 billion), but opened at $20 per share on June 15 (up 25 percent), valuing the company at $3.2 billion.

In the two weeks following the IPO, Pandora’s stock took a bit of a dive, reaching as low as $12.16 per share. But like LinkedIn, Pandora’s shares saw an uptick over the past week, closing at $20.04 on Friday, which is up 25 percent from the company’s initial pricing in June.

TMoney wrote:

Avocado, you certainly are no expert. It may be caused by a tech bubble, but current valuations of several companies are in this neighborhood that show no revenue. Twitter has no real revenue stream, and has a much higher valuation. There is a long list of current tech companies moving toward IPOs.

Most of those companies are worthless. Linkedin is a joke. Losing money but the stock skyrockets. May never make much money at all. Investors love it....why?

This is just a re-hash of dozens of high priced internet companies that flopped because investors don't have a clue. What's pets.com sock puppet up to these days? How about iwon.com -- still giving out millions of dollars? How about globe.com? eToys?

Zillow is one that is actually worth something. I haven't seen many others that are.

this is what makes it all worth it with airbnb:

http://ejroundtheworld.blogspot.com/2011/06/violated-travelers-lost-faith-difficult.html

an outlier for sure, and the woman doesn't blame airbnb the way, well, i might.

scary shit!

we only give a few thou shares to recent grads

Christopher is currently the Director of Communications at Airbnb where he overseas the brand marketing and communications strategies.

During the summer of 2009 Christopher retired from a career as a world class professional runner to join Airbnb as the 5th employee. As a runner he competed primarily in the 1500m distance where he is the 9th fastest American ever at that distance (3:33.28).

comm degrees are a dime a dozen

script programming is not engineering

yarbles wrote:

this is what makes it all worth it with airbnb:

http://ejroundtheworld.blogspot.com/2011/06/violated-travelers-lost-faith-difficult.html

an outlier for sure, and the woman doesn't blame airbnb the way, well, i might.

scary shit!

WOW, just WOW. The motherfu**ers who did that deserve to get their a**es kicked and spend a long time in jail. I feel really sorry for that person.

Any update if the people who did it were ever caught?

Tech startups only give stock options to engineers and executives. Once the company goes public they should establish and Incentive Stock Option plan for valuable non-techincal employees.

yarbles wrote:

this is what makes it all worth it with airbnb:

http://ejroundtheworld.blogspot.com/2011/06/violated-travelers-lost-faith-difficult.html

an outlier for sure, and the woman doesn't blame airbnb the way, well, i might.

scary shit!

I haven't looked at the website. Is there any kind of user rating system so you know who is staying at your place?

Not true, most of them give to other employees and in his marketing role, I'm sure he got some.But its paper profit now, a long way from cashing with of course risk.I'm just a little envious because he may have hit it on his first one and I keep trying. He probably wont get rich from this but a down payment on a house and some good experience on his resume. But he's a couple years away from spending this.

Wired Magazine wrote:

Tech startups only give stock options to engineers and executives. Once the company goes public they should establish and Incentive Stock Option plan for valuable non-techincal employees.

I agree that this lady did not deserve to have her house ransacked and that I feel awful for her. However, I have to ask myself " what was she thinking?

She admits she knew nothing about this person/persons, so why did she leave her credit cars, family jewels, essentially her entire life at their disposal.

If there is a lesson to be leaned it us that you can't not trust anyone... No one!

There's no shortage of English and Business majors so they don't normally give stocks to marketing and sales until they get the 3rd round of financing or IPO. At least I never have seen it done.

The price per share wasn't divulged and Airbnb is seeking outside financing for a service that requires minimal infrastructure. You can cut that 1.3 billion down, as they are not publicly traded, and those numbers are always exaggerated since they cannot be independently confirmed and both parties want to come out of the deal looking good.

I'd bet Lukezic is only making 50-60k a year.

Startup Guy wrote:

There's no shortage of English and Business majors so they don't normally give stocks to marketing and sales until they get the 3rd round of financing or IPO. At least I never have seen it done.

Google Options Make Masseuse a Multimillionaire

If they IPO they will have to disclose the full names of every shareholder as part of the public filing. If they shop for another round odds are the numbers will leak out, and people at least in the VC business will have some unconfirmed idea. If they are like every other HI-tech company then the non-techies have a very small percentage of the total issued shares. But don't believe me. Be my guest and ask around.

Get a load of this. I know a kid in NYC who has no 'real' job but he lives in Brooklyn and rents 3 apartments in the city. How can he afford all that you ask? He sub-rents them out on AirBnB and not only makes up for the 2000 dollars a month rent but makes an extra grand or two each month. So he's making a few grand a month sitting on his *** using AirBnB. His landlords would not be happy if they knew, but genius.

Given the investors they have, they won't fail at this point. I bet Lukezic gets paid a minimum of $100k, and probably has equity worth at least a milli at this valuation, depending upon whether he was a good enough negotiator when he joined.

His equity is based on the valu a buyer puts on it.

With private, its often a buy high sell low phenomena unless it has a good chance of going public.

I doubt he's making 60k a year. He probably isn't being paid in stock options though, he might be but we don't know the details.

He probably is making about as much as a number 3-4 professional runner is in his respective distance in the 800-3000 range.

it's actually not true that the non techies have a very small share. that depends on whether they are founders first. the techies have a big advantage after that, because they are a major reason for their success. he got in early and is probably not a techie, but he was not a founder. I'm betting that there was a substantial equity position adequate to entice him away from a professional running career, and only now is the value of that position evident to him. It has got to be in the millions with a 1.3 B value and a very small company in terms of employees. We are very much in the midst of another internet bubble and it'll be pretty sweet for a few years until investors realize that most of these firms will never make much money. Then there will be lots of pain. But fun if you get in early to these pyramid schemes, and a few of the newbies will make it big time and get through the crash, just as they did the last time.