the vc and founder winners in airbnb’s ipo

after a tumultuous year for the travel industry, airbnb’s long-awaited ipo filing just dropped. one thing is clear: there is still plenty of juice left in the home-sharing platform, and a smattering of vcs and the company’s founders are positioned to receive some serious returns.my colleague alex wilhelm has an overview article on airbnb’s financial picture and overall metrics. it’s a mixed bag, but perhaps stronger than might otherwise be expected, given the global collapse of tourism due to the pandemic. revenues are stabilizing, growth is up and bookings aren’t catastrophic.airbnb files to go public
so let’s get to the most fun question with these big startup ipo offerings, who made the money?first and foremost, airbnb’s founders brian chesky, nathan blecharczyk and joe gebbia managed to hold together a whopping 41.95% of the company based on data offere in its s-1 filing, with chesky owning slightly more than his two co-founders.
perhaps even more significantly, the founders actually own a larger proportion of their company individually than every other vc investor in the company outside of sequoia.what are their stakes worth? airbnb’s valuation has reached highs of $35 billion and lows this year of $18 billion in the maelstrom of covid-19. that’s a huge range, and of course, the public markets will make their own calls in the weeks and months to come. so given that valuation range, the three co-founder’s stakes are worth somewhere in the ballpark of $2.5 billion to upwards of $5 billion.each.let’s just say, it’s nice when you own a few unicorns yourself.
now, when it comes to the venture investors, there are just two massive winners, and then a longer list of folks who have some returns coming, but aren’t going to rock the checkbook quite as significantly.first and foremost, sequoia owns about 15.84% of the company, worth somewhere between $2.8 billion to $5.5 billion based on historical valuations. more importantly, the fund predominantly invested out of its early-stage funds (specifically, sequoia’s twelfth fund) in early rounds in the company. that means that not only is sequoia’s stake worth a huge amount, but the firm’s multiple on investment will be industry-defining for a long time. the firm owns a small part of its stake through its growth funds.secondarily, founders fund has the second-highest vc stake disclosed by airbnb at 5.13%, worth somewhere between $900 million and $1.8 billion pre-ipo. those investments were made across three of the firm’s funds: its second, third and fourth. founders fund has traditionally mixed early- and late-stage investing within its funds, but it clearly is also going to have a nice return profile from this ipo.outside of those two, there are other vcs with investments, although with significantly smaller ownership stakes. dst global owns 2.73%, silver lake has 0.97%, sixth street has 0.77%, “jonathan poulin and affiliated entities” has 0.44%, general catalyst owns 0.29%a nd accel owns 0.18%. accel’s stake is worth somewhere between $30 million and $60 million that’s not anything to complain about (and the multiple on investment is great for its early investment dollars), but still, that stake is nothing compared to a few others here.so, why do these vcs own such small stakes? the answer is mostly that airbnb just became a hugely valued company very quickly in its life and these investors never got the kind of large stakes that come with the size of checks they were writing. take a look at this chart showing airbnb’s share prices over time:that’s a price increase from $0.01 to $52.50. it’s hard to get the same ownership at those higher prices.in short, this is a happy story for three founders and two firms and a nice day in the office for a whole bunch of other investors.