The energy he had poured into helping his friend Sam Altman reclaim the CEO seat at OpenAI left him energised but restless. Alone in his San Francisco home over Thanksgiving weekend, he began typing furiously, not about OpenAI but about Airbnb.

For years, Airbnb had been synonymous with short-term vacation rentals. It disrupted hotels, built a global community of hosts and guests, and weathered crises from regulatory hurdles to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was profitable, dominant, and for the first time in Chesky’s entrepreneurial life, dangerously close to stagnation.

Chesky’s breakthrough was a realisation. Airbnb didn’t have to be just a travel company. Its strengths in trust-building between strangers, design thinking, and crisis response were transferable. Why couldn’t it become the infrastructure for booking all real-world services, just as it once did for homes?

In a burst of creative output, Chesky wrote a 10,000-word document reimagining Airbnb as a comprehensive service platform. He envisioned users opening the app not just to book a place to stay, but to hire a dog walker, book a massage, find a personal chef, or connect with a local photographer.

Like Amazon’s evolution from bookstore to everything store, Chesky believed Airbnb could evolve into a life concierge, where anything physical, experiential, or service-based could be booked with trust and ease. This wasn’t a pivot. It was a platform expansion. The goal was to transform Airbnb into the first app people think of, not just for travel, but for everyday services.

From one-off experiences to recurring needs, Chesky wants Airbnb to be the destination where your digital reputation meets your real-world needs. The company would leverage its massive user base and robust vetting infrastructure to match people with not only homes but also hairstylists, personal trainers, tutors, and more.

The 200 million dollar reinvention now underway is Airbnb’s largest strategic bet since its founding. For Chesky, it’s more than just growth. It’s a reclamation of creativity, a doubling down on mission, and a fight against the dreaded word that haunts mature companies: stagnation.

In this reimagining, Airbnb isn’t settling into middle age. It’s breaking out of its pigeonhole and trying to redefine what it means to belong anywhere, not just for a night but in every facet of modern life.

Channelling Apple to build a super-app

Brian Chesky has always believed that great companies are built on great design, not just in aesthetics, but in philosophy as well. Airbnb’s reinvention isn’t simply a business move; it’s a design-led revolution. At the heart of this evolution is Chesky’s lifelong admiration for Apple and its late founder, Steve Jobs.

Design has always been central to Airbnb’s DNA. Chesky and co-founder Joe Gebbia are alumni of the Rhode Island School of Design. But what Airbnb is attempting now is a full-scale transformation into a super-app for services and experiences, which requires a design discipline on par with the world’s most revered product companies. This is where Jony Ive comes in.

The legendary former Apple designer and Chesky have been collaborating closely, bringing Ive’s team at LoveFrom into the fold. While the specifics of their contributions remain mostly under wraps, their fingerprints are everywhere in Airbnb’s new visual language. It is minimalist, emotionally warm, and obsessively refined.

The app’s new interface revolves around three core icons: a house for traditional stays, a bell for services, and a hot-air balloon for experiences. Each icon was crafted with symbolic intent. The hot-air balloon, for example, was chosen after extensive internal debate. It needed to evoke exploration, joy, and a touch of nostalgia. Even the flame size beneath the balloon basket was scrutinised. That level of microdetail isn’t an indulgence; it is the strategy.

Chesky is deeply involved in these choices. In daily product reviews, he doesn’t just give broad direction; he adjusts shadows, rewords labels, and debates icon proportions. He refers to himself not only as a CEO, but also as a product designer who never lets go of the pencil. This hands-on approach mirrors Jobs’ intense focus on the tiniest elements of Apple’s devices and interfaces.

This design-first philosophy extends beyond visuals. Airbnb is rethinking flow, friction, and feel. Services need to be instantly discoverable yet not overwhelming. Profiles must inspire trust without feeling transactional. Experiences should feel curated, not commodified. Every interaction is designed to express care.

For Chesky, this isn’t just about making something functional. It’s about making something memorable, something that stirs emotion. Like Apple, Airbnb is chasing the kind of design that becomes invisible in its elegance and essential in its utility.

The result is a platform that feels less like an app and more like a beautifully organised world, where belonging doesn’t just mean staying the night but navigating life with beauty, ease, and trust. Airbnb isn’t simply copying Apple. It’s aiming to join the same cultural and emotional tier.

Reinventing identity in the digital age

In a world increasingly dominated by anonymous online interactions, trust has become the ultimate currency, and Airbnb knows it. From its earliest days, the platform’s success hinged on strangers trusting strangers. That leap of faith involved sleeping in a stranger’s home, which only worked because of reviews, identity checks, and responsive support. Now that Airbnb aims to become a hub for booking real-world services, trust must be redefined and fortified.

At the centre of this transformation is identity. Brian Chesky doesn’t just want users to create profiles. He wants those profiles to become the gold standard of online authenticity. In his vision, an Airbnb profile could one day function as a digital credential, almost like a passport, that users could carry across platforms, services, and borders.

That may sound like a fantasy in today’s fragmented digital landscape, but Chesky is serious. He’s betting that a meticulously verified Airbnb identity will be more trustworthy than anything online.

This ambition requires going far beyond a photo and a phone number. Airbnb is now vetting service providers with rigorous background checks, license verification, resume screenings, and professional photography. The company is investing in biometric security features, holographic overlays, and reactive inks, similar to those used to prevent counterfeiting on the government-issued IDs. It’s identity proofing on a whole new level, because it’s flashy and necessary.

Why the overkill? Because the stakes are higher. Booking a vacation rental is one thing. Inviting someone into your home for a haircut, massage, or tutoring session requires deeper psychological assurance. Airbnb is building a framework where trust isn’t implied; it is engineered.

There’s a broader ambition at play. If Airbnb succeeds, it could pioneer a new form of decentralised, user-owned identity. In a future where people distrust large tech companies and governments are slow to adapt, a neutral, globally recognised digital credential could transform the landscape. Chesky knows this is a stretch goal and one worth reaching for.

The challenge? Airbnb is not alone. Facebook tried and failed to become a universal identity layer. Apple, Google, and Microsoft all have their own ambitions in this space. But Airbnb has one key advantage. It already has a strong track record of managing high-stakes interactions between strangers. It knows how to handle disputes, mediate claims, and prevent fraud.

Ultimately, trust is not just a feature for Airbnb. It is the product. And as the company expands its scope, this product will need to be rebuilt step by step, brick by digital brick, to meet a new and even more demanding standard. In Chesky’s mind, belonging isn’t possible without trust. And now, trust must be designed as deliberately as any interface or business model Airbnb has ever built.

Lessons from a flop turned flagship

Airbnb’s new wave of ambition includes something old with a fresh coat of strategy, namely, Experiences. Launched in 2016 with high hopes, Airbnb Experiences promised to let travellers do more than just stay in a location because it invited them to live like locals, guided by hosts offering activities ranging from dumpling-making to architectural tours. But the programme flopped. Interest waned, inventory stagnated, and the excitement faded. Fast forward to 2025, Brian Chesky is betting big on the reinvention of that same concept.

Why bring back something that failed? According to Chesky, the original Experiences launch wasn’t flawed in vision but in timing and execution. The infrastructure wasn’t ready. The user base wasn’t large or engaged enough. Airbnb, still focused on scaling its core rental business, didn’t have the bandwidth to support it. The product quietly lingered in the background, underdeveloped and under-promoted.

This time, things are different. Airbnb has matured, and the ecosystem is ready. With a massive, engaged global user base and a richer tech backbone, Experiences is returning not as a side project, but as a core pillar of Airbnb’s identity. The numbers speak volumes, with more than 22,000 Experiences available across 650 cities, and a growing roster of high-end, curated offerings labelled “originals.” These are hosted by top-tier professionals such as star chefs, elite athletes, and even celebrities like Conan O’Brien.

Chesky has learnt from his past mistakes. Rather than a big bang rollout followed by silence, the relaunch features a steady cadence of promotional drops and exclusive events. The goal is to create a rhythm that keeps users curious and engaged, more like a content platform than a travel add-on. Airbnb encourages users to plan their trips and discover memorable activities for the upcoming weekend, all within the app.

Experiences now benefit from deeper integration into the Airbnb app itself. The design team has made them easier to find, more visually compelling to browse, and quicker to book. The hot-air balloon icon representing Experiences on the app’s home screen is not just decorative but serves as a gateway to a new kind of engagement that is spontaneous, local, and personal. Of course, the risks remain. Experiences must scale without losing their artisanal, one-of-a-kind charm.

Airbnb has to ensure safety, quality, and consistency across vastly different geographies and cultures. There is also the issue of regulation, since offering services like culinary classes or wellness treatments can bring local licensing complications.

If Airbnb can overcome those hurdles, Experiences could be more than a profitable side business. They could become the emotional core of the platform, the feature that connects users to real people, real stories, and real memories.

As Chesky put it, the original Experiences was Airbnb’s “Newton,” meaning it was a too-early precursor to something that could eventually be game-changing.

Now, rebooted and reimagined, Experiences has the potential to become Airbnb’s iPhone moment, the product that changes everything.

Chesky’s return to the product trenches

There is a moment in every successful founder’s journey where they must choose between staying involved in the weeds or stepping back to let professional managers take over. For Brian Chesky, that moment came during the COVID-19 pandemic. When Airbnb lost 80% of its business in a matter of weeks, survival required more than delegation. It required leadership grounded in obsession. And Chesky stepped in. That decision marked the beginning of what he now calls “Founder Mode,” a state of hands-on, deeply detailed, and often intense leadership that goes far beyond executive oversight. This is not micromanaging for the sake of control. It is about product-level immersion.

For Chesky, this meant showing up to every design review, obsessing over copywriting, layout, button shadows, iconography, and more. Every corner of the Airbnb experience had to be re-evaluated. If Airbnb was going to reinvent itself, the founder had to be back in the trenches.

Not everyone welcomed the shift at first. Some employees saw the reengagement as overbearing. The culture had drifted toward consensus and process, away from urgency and instinct. As Chesky became unapologetically meticulous, something changed. Clarity returned. Momentum returned. The company stopped trying to please committees and started building again.

Brian Chesky’s approach echoed the founder-driven ethos popularised by Paul Graham of Y Combinator, who later wrote an essay inspired by Airbnb titled “Founder Mode.” Graham argued that only founders truly know what a company should become. Listening too much to external managers, he warned, can dilute the vision. Chesky became the poster child for a new wave of founder-led craftsmanship.

His team now expects and respects the intensity. Product reviews with Chesky can swing from philosophical to painstakingly granular. Chesky might rewrite a headline mid-meeting, question the spacing on a profile card, or pull up screenshots of rival apps on the spot. While that can make team presentations nerve-wracking, the result is cohesion. The app, the brand, the company—it all begins to feel like it came from a single mind.

This kind of leadership is not scalable forever. Eventually, Airbnb will need other leaders who can operate with a similar vision and intensity. But for now, Founder Mode is fuelling a renaissance at the company. Chesky is not just overseeing a transformation. He is architecting it one pixel at a time and one principle at a time.

It is a vivid reminder that great products often come not from efficient processes, but from unrelenting obsession. In Chesky’s case, his return to the product trenches may be the thing that turns Airbnb’s next chapter from just another evolution into something iconic.

Can Airbnb compete on so many fronts?

Brian Chesky’s vision for Airbnb is sweeping. He wants to turn a travel company into a services super-app, a trust platform, a credentialing authority, and a cultural hub. It is a bold move worthy of admiration. But it also raises a difficult question. Can Airbnb compete on all these fronts without losing its focus?

The market Airbnb is entering is not just enormous. It is fragmented, entrenched, and fiercely competitive. For every category Chesky wants to touch, there is already a dominant player. Instacart and DoorDash dominate local services. Yelp handles discovery. OpenTable manages dining. Eventbrite curates experiences. Craigslist covers almost everything else. Then there are the tech giants such as Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft, each with greater reach, deeper pockets, and in many cases, a head start.

Airbnb’s traditional moat has been its trust infrastructure in short-term rentals: user reviews, verified identities, and effective dispute resolution. But applying that same model to high-touch services such as massages, personal training, or hairstyling presents new challenges. There is no room for error. One bad experience, such as a bad haircut, a missed chef appointment, or an uncomfortable massage, can damage more than one night. It can erode trust across the entire platform.

Each new vertical brings different regulations, user expectations, and logistical issues. Booking a rental is transactional, while booking a service is relational and full of unpredictable variables.

Is Airbnb prepared to resolve disputes between a nail artist and a dissatisfied customer? What happens if a service provider forgets an appointment or performs poorly? These scenarios are not theoretical. They are inevitable at scale.

Internally, the challenge is equally steep. Expanding across many categories could stretch Airbnb’s culture, product roadmap, and engineering bandwidth too thin. The company is no longer refining one product. It is trying to build a platform that serves hundreds of micro-industries, each with unique behaviours and expectations. Few companies manage such complexity while maintaining a coherent user experience.

Chesky’s bet on identity is similarly bold. The idea of Airbnb becoming a universal digital credential is almost a moonshot. Governments are slow to recognise private-sector IDs. Facebook tried and failed. Apple, Google, and others have more institutional reach. While Airbnb has trust credibility, convincing the world to treat a vacation rental profile as a legitimate form of ID is a steep climb.

There is also the risk of user confusion. Including more features, icons, and flows could bloat the platform. Airbnb’s simplicity has always been its secret weapon. Since it is an app you open a few times a year, it still feels intuitive. Turning it into a daily-use super-app may overwhelm casual users who want to book a place to stay.

Chesky is not naive about these risks. He knows that reinvention is a gamble. But he believes the greater risk is standing still. A profitable yet stagnant product is still vulnerable to disruption. In that sense, expansion is not just ambition but also self-preservation.

Success will hinge on execution. If Airbnb can integrate new services while maintaining its design clarity, scale without losing trust, and build a cohesive experience that feels useful rather than crowded, it could redefine how people interact with the real world through technology. If it cannot, it may become a cautionary tale about a company that tried to do everything and ended up excelling at nothing.

Brian Chesky’s gamble is now in motion. The Airbnb CEO is betting that the future belongs to platforms that do not just fulfil one need but anticipate all of them. In his mind, to truly belong anywhere, you should be able to do anything.

The post Chesky’s ‘Founder Mode’ ignites revival of Airbnb appeared first on International Finance.

Understanding a Gig Economy

Many people work part-time/temporary jobs, or as independent contractors in a gig economy. For those willing to use them, a gig economy produces less expensive, more effective services like Uber or Airbnb. The advantages of the gig economy may be lost on those who don’t use modern services like the Internet. Cities typically have the most advanced services and the deepest roots in the gig economy.

A gig can be any job with a wide range of positions. The labour can be everything from delivering food or driving for Uber to programming code or doing freelance writing. For instance, contract employees as opposed to tenure-track/tenured professors, including adjunct and part-time professors. By appointing more adjunct/part-time professors, colleges and universities can save expenditures while better-matching teachers to their course requirements.

Factors behind Gig Economy

Experts predicted as of 2021, up to one-third of the working population would have already been engaged in some form of gig work in America, and the gig economy is very much on its way to becoming a dominant market force in the coming years. Since these professions permit independent contract work and the companies don’t require freelancers to report to offices, experts are now anticipating a rise in the employment figures in this sector. Part-time/remote works are far more common among gig workers.

Additionally, since they are not required to recruit someone based on proximity, employers get the luxury of having a greater selection of suitable candidates. Also, computers have advanced to the point that they can either replace human jobs or enable people to work from home just as productively as they could in person.

Market factors are contributing to the rise of the gig economy as well. Businesses which cannot afford to recruit full-time workers to complete all the necessary work frequently use temporary/part-time workers to handle time-specific projects.

On the employee side of the equation, individuals frequently discover that they must relocate or hold numerous jobs in order to support the lifestyle they desire. The gig economy might be seen as a large-scale reflection of the fact that changing occupations frequently throughout a lifetime is also prevalent.

In 2020, the gig economy saw tremendous growth due to the COVID pandemic, as gig workers supplied goods to customers, and locked down at their own homes. People whose occupations got terminated in those pandemic times turned to these part-time works for money.

Criticisms of the Gig Economy

The gig economy has significant drawbacks despite its advantages. While not all firms favour hiring contract workers, the gig economy trend can make it more difficult for full-time employees to advance in their careers because these temporary workers are frequently less expensive to hire and have greater availability and flexibility. In some industries, workers who prefer a traditional career path and financial stability, are seeing those jobs getting crowded.

For some workers, the flexibility of gig work might actually disrupt the work-life balance, sleep patterns, and everyday activities. In a gig economy, frequent flexibility implies that the employees must be accessible for duties, regardless of their other priorities, and must always be on the hunt for the next gig. The competition for gigs has grown too, and the workers who are unemployed are not often covered by insurance or any other financial assistance, which comes under the USA’s CARES Act of 2020.

In effect, gig economy employees behave more like entrepreneurs than regular employees. The stability of consistent employment with a regular salary, benefits—including a retirement account—and a daily schedule that has defined work for generations is quickly disappearing, which may provide the individual worker more flexibility of choice.

Last but not least, long-term connections between employees, employers, clients, and vendors may deteriorate as a result of the fluidity of gig economy transactions and relationships. As a result, the advantages that come from long-term relationships of trust, established routines, and familiarity with clients and employers may be eliminated. It could also discourage investment in relationship-specific assets that would otherwise be profitable to pursue since no party has the incentive to invest significantly in a relationship that only lasts until the next gig comes along.

Examples of Gig Economy

Occupations that people find and access through online job-listing sites are examples of gig economy jobs. These positions are frequently temporary or contract ones. These include operating a vehicle for a ride-sharing company, painting a person’s home, and working as a freelancer for duties like gym training and private tutoring. There are no additional perks, such as health insurance, and the job is exchanged for money.

Benefits of the Gig Economy

The gig economy had many benefits for both employees and employers. A hiring manager has access to a diverse talent pool. There is no commitment to keep the employee on or concerns with firing them if the skill turns out to be subpar. Additionally, firms can hire from the gig economy at a time when it is getting harder to find full-time employees. Additionally, since employers don’t have to cover benefits like health insurance, using gig workers is a cost-effective option. Benefits of the gig economy for employees include the ability to perform several jobs, the freedom to work from anywhere depending on the employment, and flexibility in their daily schedule.

Is Gig Economy worth it?

Studies show that 79% of individuals who work in the gig economy are more satisfied than when they were doing traditional jobs. In 2021, the value of the global gig economy is predicted to be USD 347 billion. It is predicted that design and computer freelancing employment is the most common with 59% of gig workers working in them globally. It is also noted that the oversupply of expertise in these industries is driving down the compensation. In the US, 60% of gig workers are engaged in freelancing activities at least weekly, with 44% of them considering it to be their main source of income.

The global gig economy is anticipated to develop at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.4%, from USD 204 billion in 2018 to USD 455 billion in 2023. In the Western World, the number of independent contractors is rising steadily. For instance, it is predicted that there will be 86 million freelancers in the US by 2027, while there were 4.7 million more gig workers in the UK between 2016 and 2019.

The average hourly wage for freelancers in the world is USD 21. The number of high-earning freelancers in the US (those who claim to have an annual income of over USD 100,000) has been increasing every year and now totals 3.1 million people (20% of the workforce). The majority of full-time freelancers in the US are unprepared for a financial emergency; 80% of them say it would be challenging to cover a USD 1,000 unforeseen bill.

Overall, gig economy employees are happier with their jobs. Around 79% of full-time independents claimed that working for themselves made them happier than working in a typical formal employment in the US. Gig workers worry about their cash more. It is reported that around 45% of full-time gig workers and 24% of typical full-time employees have high Economic Anxiety Index scores. According to data from 2017, in the US, most freelancers worry about their working circumstances. Among gig workers, 54% don’t have employer-based benefits.

According to analysis and the figures provided by Mastercard, the global gig economy is predicted to be valued at close to $350 billion in 2023. Uber, Airbnb and asset-sharing platforms account for a significant portion of the value added by the gig economy.

If one examines the global gig economy state from 2018, the division of capital in the gig economy is clearly visible. The TRNS (Transportation-Based Services) has $117.8 (57.8%) capital. Whereas the ASSET (Asset-Sharing Services) $68.1 (30.3%), HGHM (Handmade Goods, Household & Misc Services), $16.7 (8.2%), PRFS (Professional Services), $7.7 (3.8%), respectively.

Nearly 90% of the overall gig economy is attributed to asset-sharing platforms and services based on transportation. This is not surprising, given the rapid expansion of services from these categories that could be provided on a freelance basis, driven by the phenomenal success of businesses that offer them, such as Uber and Airbnb. It is not shocking that the economy is worth so much if one considers the number of workers currently contributing to this sector. For instance, there are 4.7 million freelancers in the UK compared to 57.3 million in the US. According to Mastercard, the stark difference in numbers between these two countries can probably be explained by more than just the total population difference, Americans account for 44% of global gig gross volume.

Freelancers steadily rising in the West

The total number of gig workers worldwide is expected to continue increasing in the coming years. Experts give reference to the studies conducted by MBO Partners, Upwork, and the University of Hertfordshire when discussing the growth. For instance, the University of Hertfordshire study discovered that between 2016 and 2019, there were 4.7 million gig workers in the UK (defined as persons who had worked for an online platform at least once per week). In just three short years, there has been a considerable increase. Additionally, the present US gig workforce of 57 million is anticipated to increase to 86 million by 2027; this corresponds to a 50% increase in 7 years, which is an astounding number given the US gig labour’s already large size. Finally, the rise of sporadic gig workers in the US is another example of how the gig economy’s workforce is expanding. In the US, the number of occasional independents (those who perform gigs for less than 15 hours per week) increased by 42% over the course of three years and was stable at 15 million workers in 2019.

As per the Payoneer report, freelancers around the world earn $21 per hour on average. The report stated that the younger generations are paid less than the global average, with income progressively increasing as age groups move along. Earnings for the ages 18 to 24 and 25 to 34 are $16 and $19 per hour, respectively, which are less than the global average. The report also stated that 69% of all gig workers fall into one of these age categories. As a result of age and job experience, the majority of the population earns less than the average, which indicates that there is an unbalanced allocation of capital in the gig economy. Furthermore, according to Upwork, the median rate for freelancers in the US is $20/hour, whereas the median rate for the overall US workforce is $18.80/hour. Additionally, the hourly median wage for freelancers providing skilled services is $28.

According to MBO Partners, a full-time US independent makes $68,000 on average annually, which is more than the $59,000 median household income nationwide. There are a startling 3.1 million high-earning full-time independents in the nation. To be clear, the survey defines a high earner as someone who earns more than $100,000 each year. Over the past ten years, the number of high-earning freelancers in the US has been continuously increasing. That number increased from 1.9 million to 3.1 million people between 2011 and 2019, a 64% increase.

Tech leading the way

Technology has dominated the development of the gig economy by overcoming the complexity of contingent labour. Without technology, gig work would just be limited to project-based work. Using a gig workforce independently has its own set of challenges, regardless of how advantageous it is for any business. Most businesses struggle to handle sizable on-demand staffs that are not on a regular payroll without the right tools and technology. However, the emergence of work tech platforms has enabled businesses to efficiently finish the full cycle as each step of the process becomes effective thanks to automation and built-in smart-assist capabilities. Work tech cloud-based systems give businesses the instruments they need to manage deliverables and hours worked as well as monitor and assess results to increase efficiencies, improve communication, and generate higher income.

For instance, a no-code technology can offer end-to-end workflow management that is tailored to business requirements. It can configure the permutation and combination of potential workflows, calculate payouts automatically, and use algorithms to ascertain the skills and backgrounds of gig partners, among other things. The same technology also provides training interventions, automatic reallocation to meet deadlines and SLAs, project-wide visibility across the world, and local insights into attendance, shifts, and task completion.

Assuming the role of a gig partner nowadays, technology has made it possible for businesses to outsource essential operational recurring work to gig partners rather than just transactional, short-term project labour. Finding employment has become simpler and smoother for gig partners because of the technology infrastructure of work-tech platforms. From applying for a job to finding work based on their abilities and location to in-app training, task fulfilment, and even payment, processes and applications are made to ensure a seamless experience. All of this can be done with only a few touches on the phone.

The tech of endless possibilities

Experts say, technological advances, notably in the fields of artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and data analytics, have shortened the gap between people and services, particularly in the labour market. For instance, there are platforms available today that process reams of big data from all over the world on a second-by-second basis, use AI & ML powered smart task allocation to ensure the right gig partners are matched for tasks in real-time, and simultaneously validate a different set of big data provided by gig-workforce using image recognition and artificial intelligence-powered audio transcription.

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At an all-time high for the lodging website, close to 104 million bookings took place on the platform between April and June.

The fastest-growing travel category is still long-term stays, a change brought on by the expansion of remote employment. Travel to international destinations has also improved over the recent past.

The business told investors that it was prepared for whatever the economy might throw at it, noting that it was currently in the midst of its biggest peak summer travel season yet.

According to experts, a slowdown can even be beneficial to the business.

In a conference call with analysts to assess the company’s performance, chief executive Brian Chesky stated that Airbnb was formed during the recession.

He further added that “we anticipate a lot of people may turn to host once more, therefore this is a significant opportunity for us” in the event of another slowdown.

Overall, reservations from April through June increased by 24% in 2018 and by 25% in 2019.

The company’s sales increased by 58% from the previous year to USD 2.1 billion thanks to higher prices.

According to the business, reservations for a week or more make up about half of all bookings.

North America continues to have the highest demand for travel, with bookings up 37% in 2021.

While travel has rebounded from the pandemic, Europe’s growth is lagging behind it due to factors like the weaker pound.

Demand in the Asia Pacific region is still below pre-pandemic levels, according to the business, which announced in May that it was leaving China, as COVID regulations kept Chinese visitors at home.

Although China listings were taken down in July, Airbnb still has more than 6 million active listings.

The company has now achieved “growth and profitability at scale,” according to Chesky, who also announced plans to spend USD 2 billion on buying back its own shares, whose value has declined this year.

The buyback program, according to executives, was a demonstration of their faith in the company’s future.

Compared to 2021, when the company lost USD 68 million, it posted a profit of USD 379 million.

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A select group of asset owners, however, experienced 2018 in a very different light. Between them, they shared $10 billion in additional revenue by engaging in a practice which is described as one of the best-kept secrets in finance. What could this secret be? These asset owners engaged in the 50-year-old practice of lending out their stocks, bonds, and exchange traded funds in the same way, that many homeowners choose to rent out their home or, in other words, they engaged insecurities lending.

At its very core, securities lending presents a lucrative opportunity that all investors in stocks, bonds, and ETFs can benefit from. Furthermore, this additional revenue stream does not require investors to sacrifice their economic rights, other than the right to vote. Sounds cool, right? But despite all this, while the market capitalisation of global equities has trebled since the 2008 trough, the value of securities on-loan, a common measure for the size of the securities lending industry, is still way below its pre-recession highs, representing a ‘real’ shrinkage in the industry size.

So why has the securities lending industry failed to keep pace with the rest of the market?

Until now, securities lending operated as a closed ‘members club’. For decades, a small group of financial institutions, mainly pensions funds, asset managers, and ETF issuers, were the sole beneficiaries of securities lending. That’s like a housing market where only real estate conglomerates are able to rent. But even these institutions faced a trade-off. Either they had to invest considerable time and money in doing it themselves, or hand over control to someone else.

As a result, globally more than $40 trillion worth securities are idling instead of collecting income. These assets belong mainly to private investors, through their banks and online brokers, as well as small and medium asset managers, and digital wealth managers.

So how can we level the playing field and enable these investors to benefit from this basic right?

For most investors, securities lending is too complex, too opaque, and not user-friendly. While the rest of the world has moved to transparent pricing and user empowerment, securities lending is still heavily intermediated, traded over the counter, and is extremely opaque. Worst of all, securities lending requires a large investment of time and money, even though it will likely never be an investor’s primary investment objective –leaving them with little interest inactively managing it.

It can, however, become a secondary investment objective, if extracting additional value from a portfolio can be done with minimal risk and in a simple and transparent manner. In that respect, user-experience is not just a fancy dashboard with buttons and dials. Rather, it is the ability to deliver a simple solution which most investors can ‘set and forget’, retaining full control, transparency and the peace of mind. What the securities lending industry needs is to design an equivalent user experience to the one offered by modern day digital wealth managers.

At Sharegain, we offer a securities lending solution fit for the 21^st century, which we have achieved by relentlessly focusing on the user. In doing so, our offering finally brings a fully automated solution that enables investors to set their lending appetite and let our technology work for them. By introducing the world’s first digital agent lender, we eliminated the need for operational overheads and high level proficiency in the technology, enabling all investors to benefit from this basic right. Our vision is to fully democratise the securities lending industry, effectively bringing the ‘Airbnb moment’ to the stocks, bonds, and ETFs of each and every investor.

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Businesses from the UK, to Spain and Romania are no longer looking inward – rather, outward, toward peer-to-peer (P2P) participation and community.

In fact, peer-to-peer transactions generated by the UK’s five most prominent sharing economy sectors stand to grow by 60% – or £8 billion – in 2017 alone, per recent predictions from PwC.

By 2025, it is projected total transactions in the UK sharing economy could reach £140 billion, up from just £13 billion in 2016: proving the progressive nature of today’s P2P business.

Rob Vaughan, economist at PwC, comments: “Innovation will remain crucial to success in the sharing economy. Several established players branched out into new service offerings in 2016 and we expect them to invest significantly in these this year. The success of these new services will be an acid test of whether sharing economy platforms can eventually become the established leaders of their markets, or will forever be known as the ‘disruptors.’”

OnBuy.com analysed how the sharing economy in Europe is progressing and discovered at least 275 sharing platforms have been founded in Europe; facilitating 28 billion euros worth of transactions in the past few years.

The findings showcase the UK and France as sharing economy trailblazers – with over 50 collaborative organisations founded and others continuing to grow.

Following the standard set by the UK and France is Germany, Spain and the Netherlands, each contributing over 25 collaborative economy organisations; while less than 25 collaborative economy organisations were previously established in Sweden, Italy, Poland and Belgium.

Evidently, the idea of a sharing economy has transitioned into something more. Today, it is a residual, socio-economic trend that is fundamentally changing the way societies – and consumers – operate around the world.

OnBuy MD, Cas Paton, comments: “Today’s economy is prime for sharing – from freelance platforms changing the way we work, to food-sharing platforms changing the way communities connect – it’s time for businesses to embrace the concept. In doing so, businesses across the globe can achieve a sustainable way to appeal to a modern-day audience, with far higher reach that is readily accessible.”

Certainly, whilst the rapid development of sharing platforms is considered as an opportunity which is beneficial to the economy, it could prove a challenge for policy makers and regulators to keep up with the pace.

However, though areas such as the UK and France appear to be more progressive than elsewhere in Europe, the fact remains that the trend is continuing to infiltrate borders; albeit more slowly, as trepidation subsides and the urge to connect increases.

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The market for initial public offerings (IPOs) was weak in the first half of 2016, but the outlook for 2017 seems positive. Many companies plan on going public as early as the first quarter of this year.

One of them is Snap Inc., the newly renamed parent company of messaging app Snapchat. The company has created a buzz in the market since it confidently filled for an IPO. It is the most anticipated IPO this year. The popular messaging platform is valued at $25 billion and is the most high profile stock debut since Facebook. Snapchat’s debut could provide the breakthrough that the IPO market is in dire need of.

AppDynamics, a technology firm which manages apps and websites for other businesses, has filed for an IPO, which could hit the market in early 2017. In recent times, the importance of apps has increased exponentially, which has proved to be beneficial for this tech firm. It filed paperwork for a $100 million offering with the US Securities and Exchange Commission and could offer shares in January or February this year.

Tintri, a Silicon Valley-based provider of flash storage for virtualisation and cloud environments, has filed IPO documents with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The company’s core product is the VMstore, a storage array designed to simplify the management of virtual machines and containers. The company also offers a software suite that includes the ability to replicate, protect and recover virtual machines, optimise the placement of those virtual machines, and provide analytics that predict an organisation’s need to scale storage capacity and performance.

Other possibilities

Pinterest is a visual bookmarking site which boasts of over 150 million active users. Pinterest has gained global momentum since being founded in 2010. More than one million shops and businesses are found on Pinterest and thousands rely on it for advertising. The site generated revenue of $300 million and is projected that this figure will rise to $1 billion in 2017.

Uber is a taxi service which connects riders with independent drivers. Since its launch in 2009, the service provider has been tremendously successful and has ventured into different parts of the world. Uber generates its revenue by charging a 20% commission. Although Uber has generated high profits, it is not a profitable company as it spends much of its revenue on advertising and promotion in an attempt to capture or increase market share. There are indications that the company might finally file for an IPO.

Airbnb is an app and website that connects people seeking lodging with renters who have listed their personal houses, apartments, guest rooms, etc., on either platform. Travellers can book accommodations around the world online or from a tablet or mobile phone. It operates in over 34,000 cities and 191 countries around the world. There is speculation that Airbnb might go public this year.

Spotify, the music streaming giant, aims to go for a public offering in the second half of 2017, according to Bloomberg. Equidate values Spotify at $8.1 billion after its last round of funding in 2015. In 2016, Spotify raised $1 billion in convertible debt, the Wall Street Journal reported.

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