AirBnB Is Here To Stay

Co-founder Joe Gebbia talks about regulation and the future of the sharing economy.

 

- Farhan Shah

Joe Gebbia’s eyes tell the tale of a man who has been on far too many flights in a short period of time. We’re sitting in one of the meeting rooms in the three-storey AirBnB Singapore office and 35-year-old Gebbia looks like he would rather be anywhere in the world than within these four walls.

Then we talk about sneakers and Gebbia perks up. He’s what the young’uns call a hype beast, a person who buys, collects and wears sneakers. But he’s been in the game for a long time. “I started collecting sneakers in middle school and I drove my parents crazy,” Gebbia reminisces. He’s already lost count of the sneakers he has although he tells me that he only wears a dozen of them on a regular basis. The rest, it seems, are still in their boxes or displayed on a shelf. He has everything from the old Nikes to the more recent Yeezy Boosts and NMDs.

And while sneakers are a grand passion, it pales in comparison to the love he has for design. He’s absolutely bonkers about it. He sincerely believes that good design is the key to creating a better product and a better future. It was the magic of design that propelled AirBnB to the top.

Today the firm is valued at $30 billion and is the second-most valuable American tech startup after Uber. But just like Uber, AirBnB too is facing its own set of problems, ranging from clashes with regulators to global uncertainty. Gebbia tells us more.

Do you think AirBnB’s design ethos, centred on trust and reputation, can solve immigration woes?