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The firm鈥檚 guidance to聽 startups is to assess their runway (as future financing might become challenging), reassess sales forecasts, raise return on investment for marketing spend, and assess headcount and capital spending. All business fundamentals need to be looked at once again.

The most striking statement in the post is: 鈥淚n downturns, revenue and cash levels always fall faster than expenses.鈥�

For startups dependent on venture cash to grow, belt tightening to extend the runway–provided you are not too late and raising this quarter–might make sense. In SA国际传媒 data, we have not yet seen funding slow down. However, funding rounds announced recently were closed in the past couple of months, with conversations and diligence stretching back to a very different funding climate.

In October 2008 Sequoia鈥檚 鈥淩IP Good Times鈥� described by TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington as a 鈥� the message was dire with 鈥渃uts are a must鈥� and 鈥淕et Real or Go Home鈥�.

In the 2008 RIP report, Sequoia claimed the following:

New Realities

• $15 million raised at $100 million post is gone
• Series B/C will be smaller
• Customer uptake will be slower
• Cuts are a must

Need to become cash flow positive

• Increased challenges
• M&A will decrease
• Prices will decrease
• Acquiring entities will favor profitable companies
• IPOs will continue to decrease and take longer

Saying 鈥渃uts are a must鈥� might be interpreted as sounding cruel.

In the middle of a health crisis, where people in nonessential industries are mandated to stay home, and with heavy job losses predicted for the travel, hotel and retail industries, getting a new job will be more difficult.

Some jobs are opening up, however. just announced it is hiring to up to 100,000 new full- and part-time workers in delivery and fulfillment centers to address the crisis.

Investors are aware that in the last downturn, new companies–formed in 2008 and its aftermath in 2009–have become significant technology companies. Those companies include聽, , , , , and . Investors will continue seeking those opportunities, having raised unprecedented funds themselves with no shortage of money to invest. And with valuations likely to be capped, this might just be a good time to invest.

Sequoia signs off with: 鈥淪tay healthy, keep your company healthy, and put a dent in the world.鈥�

Illustration: .

Although startups don鈥檛 have to weather the minute-by-minute valuation fluctuations of the public markets, the downturn in travel spending will obviously be disruptive to players in the space. And not in a good way.

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Travel cutbacks come at a particularly poor time for startup investors, who poured record sums into the space last year. Per SA国际传媒 data, globally in travel and travel-related sectors raised seed through growth-stage rounds in the past year, pulling in more than $7.7 billion.

Overall, travel-focused startups posted the highest annual funding total in 2019, raising over $7.9 billion. That鈥檚 up from $7.1 billion in 2018 and well above the totals for several prior years, as the chart below illustrates:

The total for the past year contains a number of supergiant funding rounds. The largest include India-based budget hotel chain ($1.5 billion Series F), Germany-based bus service ($564 million Series F), and ($484 million Series D), a platform for booking tours.

Overall, funding data shows booking platforms and upstart lodging brands as two categories within the travel space that generated the largest share of big rounds. Both of those are areas hit hard by coronavirus-related cutbacks.

OYO in particular is seeing deepening troubles in China, where until recently it had been working to scale up business. Now, the hotel chain is to lay off about 30 percent of its China workforce, or some 3,000 employees; part of a global layoff of about 5,000 people.

Reservations have at and other online booking sites, and cancellations are up. Beyond Airbnb, there鈥檚 a whole ecosystem of startups providing services tied to the short-term rental market.聽 Meanwhile, whether volatility will also delay plans for the year鈥檚 most talked about potential liquidity event – an Airbnb IPO–remains to be seen.

One smaller area that investors have bet on that might outperform in the current environment is remote lodging. That could bode well for and , venture-backed platforms for booking camping sites in remote spots. In a world where keeping away from crowds is the preferred public health practice, there鈥檚 something compelling about a getaway that comes with a buffer of many acres from the nearest neighbor.

Illustration: .

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, 1 and others also participated in the round.

Australian-born came up with the idea for Process Street when running a distributed marketing agency through contractors all over the world. The spreadsheets and project management tools were causing more problems than solutions, he said.

So, the concept behind Process Street was born. Initially, it was an internal tool to structure and manage internal workflows by doing things like documenting and tracking simple checklist-based processes for Patankar鈥檚 company.

But then Patankar teamed up with to form a company based on that initial concept while both were staying at a hostel in Argentina.

Today, Process Street has evolved into 鈥渁 fully-fledged no-code workflow builder with an easy-to-use interface that can handle almost any type of business process, from client implementation to employee onboarding and content approvals,鈥� according to Patankar. And it does this by giving small-and-medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and enterprises the ability to create those workflows without having to write code. (Customers are mostly SMBs, with 10 to 20 percent being enterprises.)

The company services over 450,000 registered users 鈥� both free and paid 鈥� including enterprise customers like , , and , as well as institutions like and .

鈥淧rocess Street lets you build these workflows and plug them into other SaaS products, all without engineering,鈥� Patankar told SA国际传媒 News. 鈥淚t鈥檚 the same as a SAP workflow, for example, but for those you need an engineer to come in and design the flow, build integrations and connect the whole thing. Instead, we sell directly into sales or to a customer success manager.鈥�

Over time, the company realized that remote team use was still a 鈥減retty small market,鈥� despite growing fast. So it began to focus on an even greater market–enterprises with distributed teams 鈥渓ooking to standardize and automate work across vast geographical areas.鈥�

鈥淪o, while some of these companies are not technically remote, they have a lot of the same challenges as a larger, distributed team,鈥� Patankar said.

As a fully distributed company itself, Process Street has 45 employees working across North America and Europe. It鈥檚 grown its revenue to the $3 million to $4 million range and previously raised about $3 million across two seed rounds.

The strategy

The choice of investors was largely strategic, according to Patankar. As part of the financing, Accel Partner will join Process Street鈥檚 board. Accel, Patankar said, made sense to lead the round considering its understanding of the SaaS space.

鈥� is a very intriguing story of a fully distributed team building no-code workflow tools for all types of other distributed teams around the world,鈥� Wong told me.

The company鈥檚 customers integrate with hundreds of different SaaS products, and Salesforce, and are among the most popular, according to Patankar. As such, Salesforce Ventures and Atlassian were 鈥渙bvious partners.鈥�

鈥淧rocess Street workflows are tightly integrated with other SaaS products and rely on the data and activity happening in these systems to automate work,鈥� he said.

Looking ahead

Process Street鈥檚 ultimate goal 鈥渋s to be the no-code workflow solution for teams everywhere.鈥�

As part of that mission–and what some of its new capital will go toward–the company will be launching a mobile app, introducing more enterprise features and opening up greater API access so that users can control their data and build custom automations.

Process Street also has a large library of premade plug-and-play process templates created by its team, customers and partners. It plans to grow that library with the goal of making it 鈥渢he largest repository in the world for all business processes and operational playbooks.鈥�

Illustration:

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But in countries like Brazil, these types of spaces are not common for a number of reasons. (Historically, most people have lived at home with their parents until they marry, for example.) However, as the Latin American country鈥檚 society evolves, the real estate scene is attempting to keep up. One proptech startup is hoping to help bring the country up to date in terms of its apartment offerings.

As part of that goal, S茫o Paulo-based has raised a $4.7 million pre-seed round led by Brazil鈥檚 . , a cross-border firm with offices in S茫o Paulo and San Francisco, also participated in the round in addition to , Founder , Managing Partner and Partner . (It鈥檚 important to note that $4.7 million is an unusually large amount for a pre-seed round anywhere, but especially in Brazil, despite having seen a surge in venture funding in recent years.)

I talked with co-founder and CEO , who told me more about what the startup is doing exactly. He also helped shed some light on how Yuca fits into an evolving narrative of how S茫o Paulo鈥檚 core is being impacted by the growth of its startup scene.

Background

Campos was born in the Northeastern Brazil city of Recife, Pernambuco, before moving to the U.S. when he was 14 years old. His first experience with the venture world was when he helped set up a small VC practice with a family office in S茫o Paulo in 2012.

鈥淭oday鈥檚 unicorns were just getting started then,鈥� he recalls. In fact, Campos鈥檚 first deal was investing in fitness discovery platform , which last February. He also invested in fintech startup and QuintoAndar, another Brazilian real estate-related startup (that happened to become a unicorn with a $250 million Series D raise last September).

It was that experience that led Campos to 鈥渇all in love with tech as a whole.鈥�

So last year, he started Yuca after realizing how big a problem finding affordable housing was becoming in tech hubs around the world.

鈥淢ost of those cities have an affordability problem where people can鈥檛 find decent housing at a decent cost,鈥� Campos told me. 鈥淪o we put those two things together to come up with this business model.鈥�

Knocking down walls

While the funding round was actually raised last summer, Yuca did not disclose it publicly until recently. Last week, the company launched its first 鈥渦nit.鈥�

What does that mean? Well, it started off by looking at the real estate supply in S茫o Paulo, and noticed that tech companies as a whole were starting to congregate in two specific central neighborhoods that were well-served by public transportation.

But when the Yuca team looked at the real estate supply in those areas, it realized the apartments were not only decades old, but 鈥減retty rundown and super expensive still because of their location.鈥�

鈥淭hey offered no amenities or parking spaces even,鈥� Campos said.

So Yuca set about buying some of those units, completely tearing them down, and rebuilding them as shared apartments. Its target demographic is tech workers who want to live close to where they work.

Yuca has bundled the apartments with services such as cleaning and concierge, and takes care of all the backend issues like water and electricity. It鈥檚 also made sure its terms are 鈥渟uper convenient and flexible, not the standard Brazilian 30-month contract, which we think is absurd,鈥� Campos said.

鈥淲e鈥檙e not looking to make a quick buck like an rental,鈥� he added. 鈥淲e want to solve the problem of how people live.鈥�

Rent starts out at about $500 a month, including condo fees, utilities, cleaning services and support.

鈥淓ven for Brazil, this is very affordable for a new apartment,鈥� Campos said.

All units, each about 200-220 square feet, are fully renovated with four units fitting in one apartment. There鈥檚 about 600 square feet of common area, including a centralized living room and kitchen.

The buildings that were torn down were typically approximately 1,800-square-foot, three-bedroom apartments that included a separate maid鈥檚 quarters.

鈥淚n Brazil, it鈥檚 common for the middle and upper class to have a live-in maid, but these days younger folks are not wanting to have that relationship with help inside the house, so those floor plans don鈥檛 work anymore,鈥� Campos told me. 鈥淪o we turned those maid鈥檚 quarters into a fourth bedroom and, for us, tearing down that wall is a figurative thing.鈥�

The renovation process takes anywhere from one to three months, and Yuca currently has 30 units under renovation in the pipeline. It plans to launch one apartment per week over the next two months with the goal of 鈥渞amping up and scaling faster in the future.鈥�

Investor POV

For , founder of ONEVC, Yuca represented an attractive investment opportunity for a number of reasons.

For one, he said, the opportunity for full-stack proptech companies 鈥渋s extremely attractive at the moment, given how low real interest rates are.鈥�

鈥淚nvestors are looking for yield, and Yuca is a perfect example of top- and bottom-level efficiencies that are brought to this market,鈥� Sorrentino said. 鈥淲hen better utilization per square feet meets a technology-enabled apartment, you have a different, promising IRR (internal rate of return) profile than a regular REIT (real estate investment trust).鈥�

He also points to the global 鈥渆pidemic鈥� of loneliness with the rising use of smartphones ironically being a big contributor.

鈥淥nce you think through the implications of co-living spaces, they are a massive indirect solution for a mental health problem that is increasing in our society, since community building is essential for the co-living model to thrive,鈥� Sorrentino added.

Also, millennials and Gen Z are less worried about a large apartment than they are about being close to work and surrounded by a good community.

鈥淏randing and a human approach to this solution is vital,鈥� he said.

Last August, I wrote about another co-living startup that raised venture money. Specifically, , a Los Angeles-based real estate startup providing co-living space for students and聽 young professionals, raised a $10 million Series B at a $100 million valuation.

The trend of rising rental costs in hot job markets has brought all sorts of new ideas regarding living to the market. And so long as jobs continue to cluster in large urban environments, the market may keep generating demand for new housing arrangements like what Yuca, Tripalink and others can provide.

Blog Roll Illustration:

Read the front page of influential technology news aggregator this morning and you’d think that things are hot in startup land. , a financial technology startup focused on the African market, from Chinese and Japanese investors. There’s a . You can find as well.

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But if you started the day with a newspaper, you might have on startups looking to raise extra rounds and conserve cash, and the latest from the WeWork implosion as the coworking startup .

Both sets of news are correct, but they tell slightly different stories. We might summarize both story collections by saying that while individual actions in the startup market paint a bullish picture, sentiment in startupland isn’t as strong as it was last year; there’s more fear in the market.

Of course, we’ve been here before. There was the , and tech stocks fell off a cliff so hard in late 2018 that everyone with a slide deck and venture dreams got nervous. And you can find “startup winter” worries in , , , and, as we reported recently, 2019.

We raise all of this as a reminder that while some shrugging off macro (the global economic slowdown) and micro concerns ( implosion), there is reason to be worried. Investment patterns can shift quickly in private markets. But while all of that is true, there’s still plenty of optimism and dry powder in the market. Shake a stick, and you find a new venture fund (some recent news here, here), while private equity has .

It seems fair to say that while Nasdaq remains near record highs, there’s little chance that the constitutionally-optimistic — founders and their private backers — slow down, there’s enough concern to warrant caution from the sidelines.

Before It Closes

Some companies are taking advantage of today’s warm waters even as concerns rise and the holiday season approaches. Most recently, payment software company filed for an IPO on Friday. While the Bill.com IPO is a positive sign for startups in general, don’t be surprised if it isn’t quickly joined by other companies looking to debut; it would be surprising to see any more startups file to go public after this week, as most companies try to avoid a public market debut around the holidays.

In the meantime, startups may raise extra cash to raise their walls a bit. After all, why shouldn’t they? There’s so much money in the market, why not put it to good use if a company isn’t quite ready to go public.

But there is some real hope that the good times will last a bit longer. After all, there are still a bunch of unicorns that still need to go public (looking at you, and ). Postmates’ CEO said just last month that the company was waiting for the right market conditions to go public, as the markets haven’t been too friendly to unicorns like Uber and Lyft so far this year.

Heading into the end of 2019, there’s scant reason to expect a major correction in the short-term. So, we stay in the middle of caution and hope. How long we can stand on this particular edge, however, isn’t clear.

滨濒濒耻蝉迟谤补迟颈辞苍:听

expected 2020 direct listing will be one of the year’s biggest events in the world of finance and technology. The non-traditional method of going public has recently attracted offerings from well-known companies and . Airbnb would make the pair a trio, helping cement the method of going public as the new way that cash-rich private technology companies debut.

But first Airbnb will have to file, publicly, giving us a look at its numbers that remains annoying far off.

Luckily for us, . The new numbers let us pry into Airbnb’s business and answer a question that recent news has made pertinent: how strong are Airbnb’s gross margins?

The question matters because we’ve recently seen a number of venture- and private-equity backed companies with moderate gross margins struggle post-IPO. , , and are examples of the phenomenon.

So let’s take a look at Airbnb’s gross margins and ask a question or two about its revenue quality.

Numbers

Working from , here are the numbers we’ll start with:

• Q1 2018 revenue: $0.64 billion (formatting as reported).
• Q1 2018 cost of revenue: $0.20 billion.
• Q1 2018 implied gross margin: 68.75 percent.

And, in contrast, here are the same numbers from this year:

• Q1 2019 revenue: $0.84 billion.
• Q1 2019 cost of revenue: $0.28 billion.
• Q1 2019 implied gross margin: 66.66 percent.

From this, we can see that Airbnb’s gross margins are strong but not quite SaaS-level. We can also see the company’s gross margins slipped slightly from Q1 2018 to Q1 2019. The percent change is slight, but the direction of the change isn’t bullish for the company.

The Information’s report raises two other concerns that are worth citing. First, there is some concern that the company’s “repeat customer” numbers could be falling. This would have the effect, we presume, of lowering the company’s customer acquisition spend efficiency and making its revenue less “recurring,” using the term loosely.

Second, customer care costs are a possible shadow across Airbnb’s cost of revenue. Sitting apart from cost of revenue, customer care (the company spent $0.17 billion on customer care’s parent expense category in Q1 2019) could be viewed as a form of revenue expense. It’s impossible to tease out precisely what its inclusion would do to Airbnb’s gross margins, but it wouldn’t help.

How investors decide to vet customer care as a cost will change Airbnb’s revenue quality. The result could be gross margins in the high 60s or a far lower figure depending on how they count.

The Positive

We’re nitpicking so that we can understand the company’s business. But let’s not forget that Airbnb is growing nicely with a strong brand and billions in cash on its books. It’s a valuable company that will list its shares in whatever manner it chooses. But it does seem, looking at its cost structure and not-fully-recurring revenue, we can presume that it should trade for a strong revenue multiple, but not a SaaS-level metric.

Illustration: .

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It didn鈥檛 provide further details so we reached out in an attempt to find out more. An Airbnb representative told SA国际传媒 News that the company didn’t have anything to add to today’s announcement.

Since its founding in 2008, Airbnb has raised , according to its SA国际传媒 profile. This includes venture funding and debt financing. The company also engaged in a number of secondary market transactions, but the amount of money exchanged in those deals was not disclosed.

The company鈥檚 last known private market valuation, from its , was approximately $30.5 billion.

Backers include , , , and (a16z), among others.

It鈥檚 also on an acquisition spree with to date, according to SA国际传媒. Most recently, in August, it picked up , which gives people a way to find serviced apartments when traveling for work, for an undisclosed amount.

The company gave a peek into its finances on Wednesday, saying in a statement that it had more than $1 billion in revenue in the second quarter of 2019, . It鈥檚 the second time Airbnb has surpassed that level of revenue in its history.

A slew of tech companies have gone public this year, though with mixed results. Highly-anticipated IPOs like Uber and Lyft didn鈥檛 live up to the hype once they started trading on the public markets.

However, Airbnb is in a decidedly different position than other highly-valued, massively-capitalized tech companies eyeing public market debuts. Unlike the aforementioned ride-hailing giants, and real estate management firm The We Company, Airbnb has managed to turn a profit. In fact, 2018 marked the second year in a row in which Airbnb turned a profit, on an EBITDA basis.

Clearly, Airbnb is growing at a rapid clip. Last month, people familiar with Airbnb鈥檚 financials that the company was growing revenues by over 30 percent, through Q1 2019. Multiple people told the Journal that, again as of Q1, the company had 鈥渁bout $3.5 billion鈥� in cash on its balance sheet.

According to its , Airbnb is home to more than 7 million listings in more than 100,000 cities in over 191 countries.

滨濒濒耻蝉迟谤补迟颈辞苍:听

Travel On The Obscure Side

Despite itself, the world is a weird and wonderful place, full of nooks, crannies, hideaways, and local secrets just waiting to be explored. For those with the cash and professional flexibility to travel frequently and experience all that鈥檚 on offer, congratulations. For the rest of us, exploring the world from a big comfortable couch (or stolen moments at one鈥檚 desk at work) suffices.

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Reading travel sites is not just about a little escapist, vicarious living. It鈥檚 also how a lot of folks (your correspondent included) discover the experiences to fill the fantastical trips on an ever-growing bucket list.

Take where I live as an example. Though hardly a 鈥渇antastical鈥� destination, Chicago is a lovely city that鈥檚 best experienced any time that isn鈥檛 the dead of winter, unless you鈥檙e into pain.

Where are you going to go after you鈥檝e taken your selfie at Cloud Gate (aka 鈥渢he bean鈥�), ridden on the Ferris Wheel at Navy Pier, and eaten a Chicago-style hot dog replete with nuclear-green pickle relish and sport peppers? You could check out the or the , or take a spin down , or see the trading room of the old , or take yourself and your smoked fish aficionado friends down to . There are lots of options off the beaten path, and at least one company has quite literally made a name for itself by mapping the more obscure places to visit in places around the world.

is not your parent鈥檚 travel guide. Founded in 2009, what started as a project by writer and documentarian to document, catalog, and map the lesser-traveled and obscure parts of the world has evolved into a full-fledged media and events company. Now led by former Slate journalist and editor , the company鈥檚 offerings include its main travel and experience blog, a food-focused publication called Gastro Obscura, a series of 鈥渓ocal experiences,鈥� and guided group trips around the world.

Given the latter-mentioned aspects of Atlas Obscura business, it might not be a surprise that a travel company like is interested in a partnership. The home rental and accommodations booking giant鈥攚hich also features a curated collection of experiences and recently launched of its own鈥攍ed Atlas Obscura鈥檚 . Although the round was announced this week, indicate that the majority of the capital was closed back in June.

Other investors in the round include television conglomerate (which owns A&E, The History Channel, and Lifetime, among other properties) and , according to a statement provided to SA国际传媒 News. An SEC filing shows that New Atlantic Ventures through a special purpose vehicle.

Atlas Obscura鈥檚 Series B transaction brings the company鈥檚 total capital raised , according to SA国际传媒 data. The company says it now has 7 million monthly unique visitors, a network of 630,000 contributors, and has sold over one million copies of its books.

As part of the terms of the transaction, Atlas Obscrua鈥檚 local experiences and guided trips to its own site. In its statement, Atlas Obscura says its trips are kept intentionally small, typically topping out at a dozen travelers, and are typically priced at $1,300 to $5,000, depending on the trip鈥檚 destination and duration. Its local experiences are 鈥渦sually limited to 10 guests or fewer, and typically cost $20-$60 per person.鈥�

Airbnb And Corporate (Ad)venturing

Like many of the billion-dollar private companies barreling toward IPOs (or recently out the gate), Airbnb has made a number of investments into startups which align with its long-term strategy. It鈥檚 a case of the venture-backed becoming the venture backer.

Atlas Obscura鈥檚 might be the most recent investment deal struck by Airbnb, but it鈥檚 not the largest.

Airbnb鈥檚 investments seem to be part of a consistent strategy aimed at increasing inventory supply in its own network, and diversifying into other markets. And, here, 鈥渙ther markets鈥� is used both in the sense of markets outside Airbnb鈥檚 U.S. stronghold, but also into other types of service offerings.

As the company from municipalities鈥攃iting rising housing prices for locals as aspiring nano-hoteliers buy up inventory to turn around as short-term vacation rentals鈥攁nd landlords miffed about tenant rate arbitraging, Airbnb is expanding its revenue streams beyond the prototypical back bedroom and short-term apartment rentals. Its corporate venturing is a manifestation of that strategy.

Take Airbnb鈥檚 leadership in massive from this past April as an example. The San Francisco-based company works directly with landlords and owners of multi-unit buildings to convert apartment spaces into what it calls 鈥渃reative suites,鈥� nominally catering to business travelers.

According to on travel news site , listing exclusivity was likely discussed but not settled on in the final deal terms. Though Lyric will continue to list its short-term rental inventory on a number of platforms, Lyric co-founder and president told Skift that 鈥淸g]oing forward, we鈥檒l have more to share here. Some things might be exclusive, some may not, but Airbnb has always wanted Lyric to grow as an independent company.鈥�

Elsewhere in the interview, Fraiman indicated that he and his co-founder, , have known Airbnb鈥檚 founders for years. 鈥淲e spent a lot of time with [the Airbnb] team developing and sharing our vision for where we thought the ecosystem was going, and to identify what would ultimately matter most to guests and how to do it in a regulatory compliant fashion,鈥� Fraiman told Skift.

In regards to the deal it bears mentioning that Airbnb led but a small portion of a much larger Series E round raised by the low-cost Indian hotel and travel operator. Airbnb took in the venture as part of OYO鈥檚 $1.275 billion , which unspooled over the course of . Although it鈥檚 a relatively small chunk of OYO, valued at around $5 billion, post-money, its equity stake acts as a foothold in India, which alongside China is , according to a report by Airbnb from February.

Casual users of Airbnb鈥檚 services might not realize that the company has expanded beyond just accommodations and activities like cooking classes or walking tours. It genuinely seems like they want to be an end-to-end travel experience booking platform. And restaurants are, if you鈥檒l forgive the pun, part of the local flavor. Leading restaurant table-booking service 鈥檚 $43 million in January 2017 bought Airbnb the ability to list restaurants and facilitate booking on its site, facilitated through .

Airbnb鈥檚 corporate investments in startups mirror aspects of its acquisition strategy. The company for a $400 million and , according to SA国际传媒 data. As Airbnb encroaches on more legacy travel booking services, it鈥檚 trying to create network effects in other verticals outside its core short-term, largely peer-to-peer rental marketplace. And when it comes to aggregating additional services and inventory through partnerships, money talks. It鈥檒l be interesting to see which other areas Airbnb invests in before (and after) its IPO.

There鈥檚 general consensus that Airbnb will go public within the next twelve to fifteen months.

滨濒濒耻蝉迟谤补迟颈辞苍:听

, a richly valued private company long-expected to go public, is seeing use of its platform rise by about a third year-over-year, recent reporting indicates. The unicorn also sports a strong balance sheet. In contrast to the recent and IPOs (more here), not to mention twisting S-1, Airbnb appears to stand on firm footing.

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The company’s gross bookings grew 31 percent year-over-year in the first quarter of this year to $9.4 billion (the dollar value of spend on its platform; the company collects a percentage of the total). That growth came after the Airbnb’s revenue, a different metric, grew by 40 percent in 2018, according to .

The publications also reported that Airbnb had $3.5 billion in cash (and equivalents, we presume) at the end of the first quarter, giving the firm the sort of war chest that 2019’s late-stage market can explain. (Slack’s piggy bank was similarly stuffed before its direct listing.)

And the company has managed to grow as large as it has while generating positive adjusted profit, :

Airbnb previously has said its finances were positive on the basis of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization in both 2017 and 2018. This is a different metric than profitability.

It’s an impressive set of metrics. Of course, for a firm valued at around $30.5 billion (post-money following ), we expected something good.

But gross bookings expansion and adjusted profit are pretty far from GAAP fundamentals. What about, say, revenue?

The Take

If Airbnb saw $9.4 billion in gross bookings in Q1 2019, what percent of that did it take home as revenue? That’s a very good question, and it’s not simple to estimate.

Airbnb has a that it makes money, including charging hosts, charging folks renting space on its platform, and accruing fees related to its Experiences product (things to do, not just places to stay).

Even inside those groups there is variance. We can’t tell from where we sit what Airbnb’s average guest service fee is for example. (The firm notes that it is “typically under 13% of the booking subtotal.”) And we similarly cannot tell what the average host service fee is (the company states that it is “fee is 3% for most hosts,” but it may drift higher in some cases).

We also do not know what percent of Airbnb’s bookings, if any, operated under the company’s new host-only fee structure for hotel-like products (which Airbnb charges “from 14% to 20%” for, or more) in Q1 2019, the period for which we have the bookings figure. Airbnb also takes 20 percent from Experiences revenue.

How do you sum that up without an income statement? You can’t, but we can hazard a few guesses to get our hands around the company’s directional scale.

Let’s presume, in the first quarter, Airbnb only generated revenue from bookings that had split fees between hosts and renters. That’s likely the bulk of the firm’s revenue in the first quarter. Using just the three percent host fee rate, Airbnb’s revenue for the quarter came to $282 million. That’s a lot!

From here the situation gets harder to parse. For every one percent of gross bookings that you calculate the firm takes, its Q1 2019 revenue rises by $94 million. That’s insane. And it helps us understand why the firm is worth so much money. (Translation: scale.)

The only odd thing that I can summon out of the situation is that Airbnb is only profitable on an聽adjusted basis. That’s nearly always the same thing as saying that on a GAAP basis, counting pesky costs like share-based compensation, it is not profitable. So what is the company spending all its nice money on? Surely its revenue sports pretty good gross margins, leaving it with plenty of gross profit to spend on its operating costs?

And that’s why I’m hesitant to estimate Airbnb’s revenue today, even using our new facts about its size. Looking at the plain-text of the company’s fee policy, Airbnb looks like a behemoth. But surely it can’t spend all that money and more (on a GAAP) basis just running itself, so I presume my internal revenue calculations for the firm are off, somewhere.

This is a company that can go public today. It would find welcome markets and open arms. So why wait? No one else seems to be.

滨濒濒耻蝉迟谤补迟颈辞苍:听

After a busy year, today’s technology and venture-backed technology IPO pipeline is light. But while the present-day pipeline of public IPOs is low there are a few big offerings that are expected to land shortly. So let’s examine both this morning.

Upcoming, Expected

The upcoming IPO pipeline (SA国际传媒 News tracks tech and venture-backed offerings on U.S. exchanges, including companies headquartered in other countries who choose to float here) contains a single, known offering. It’s , a China-based company that is to raise around $34 million in its debut.

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And that’s where the expected roll ends. It’s a short list. You can pick a reason why, but what matters is that the unicorn IPO run has come to a pause. So, let’s look at who is supposed to get out soon.

Big Names

There are two large, expected tech and venture-backed IPOs coming later this year that we have have our eye on, those belonging to and .

WeWork is expected to go public in September. The company is fitting a number of pieces together for its debut. First, it’s raising debt to avoid an oversized IPO. Why is it raising debt before it goes public? As WeWork consumes cash to operate, it needs to raise capital in its public offering. Raising debt before is a way to limit future equity dilution.

As we’ve mentioned on these pages quite often, WeWork’s rich valuation may prove difficult to defend when it goes public. The company will stress its growth (fast!), its growing stable of software tools (neat!), and the economics of its buildings once occupied (supposedly good!). Against it are public-market comps that are priced very differently, and staggering losses.

Not since have we looked forward to an S-1 more.1

Cloudflare is a simpler beast. Back in the news over its decision to end digital protection for the odious 8chan, Cloudflare is a critical part of how the Internet works. Therefore, its numbers will also be incredibly interesting. Cloudflare most recently , meaning that its public offering will be sizeable.

The latest regarding Cloudflare’s offering is that it filed privately this summer, and will float in September (credit for breaking the news). This IPO won’t make the same splash as WeWork’s own, but I am stoked at the prospect of checking out the company’s gross margins.

And that’s where the list of expected, major offerings ends this morning.

There are other, anticipated offerings, but it’s a somewhat soggy list. Here are some companies long expected to go public, and why we don’t anticipate incipient S-1s:

• : This company just raised a bunch of money at a new valuation. It’s busy putting that money to work. And, given media coverage of some of the that led to the embarrassing “bank account” situation, the company probably still has some growing up to do before it goes public.
• : Postmates has filed, but we haven’t heard anything regarding its public S-1 landing soon. Not that we wouldn’t welcome such an occurrence, we just don’t see it happening in the next month or two. You can read our latest coverage of the company’s IPO march here. (The Postmates S-1 will be fun not only because Postmates is itself a neat company, but because it will also shed light on the on-demand space in new detail.)
• : Towards the end of every year every publication says that Airbnb could go public in the coming annum. And here we are, with no public Airbnb shares yet again.
• : A dark horse in the IPO chronicles, the social-media popular in-home exercise, and bragging-rights company is going to post an IPO document in time, detailing a mix of hardware (stationary bikes! treadmills!) and software (recurring fees for digitally-delivered classes) that will generate a fascinating blended gross margin figure. We’re stoked. But here again, other than expectant scuttlebutt there isn’t too much to report.

What we do expect are more SaaS-style offerings from mid-range unicorns. Yes, SaaS stocks have had a tough run of it over the last few days, but the category is still valued historically-high multiples.

There’s a jinx factor in saying that some companies aren’t set to go public quickly. I’m fine with that. If I accidentally induce, say, Postmates to publicly file then I’ll have committed a public service. More when we get any sort of new S-1.

滨濒濒耻蝉迟谤补迟颈辞苍:听