

Airbnb, Inc. is said to be doing the rounds looking to raise a $1 billion Series E round on a seriously high peak unicorn valuation of $24 billion.
The Wall Street Journal says further that the company has also been sharing its current revenue numbers with potential venture capital partners, and to say they’re quickly growing would be an understatement.
Airbnb representatives are said to initially have projected $850 million in revenue for 2015, but then raised the number to $900 million after the site performed better than expected in the first quarter; by comparison, revenue for 2013 come in at a paltry (by comparison) $250 million.
The company is predicting that those figures will be nothing though compared to where they will be in 5 years time, with revenue projected to be $10 billion in 2020.
Of note, 2020 is the first year Airbnb predicts it will be profitable as well.
To give the 2020 predicted figure some perspective, Analyst Douglas Quinby of research firm Phocuswright told the paper that Airbnb would need to increase its share of the global lodging market from 1% to as much as 10% over the next five years in order to reach its lofty revenue goals.
To get the valuation Airbnb is chasing for its new round some context, the paper compared the $24 billion figure to hotel group Marriott International, Inc. which manages more than 4,000 hotels and last year had $13.8 billion in revenue, is valued at about $21 billion.
Airbnb which owns no hotels, has <$1 billion in revenue and acts as a middleman in facilitating the rental of rooms, apartments and even occasionally houses, would have a book value $3 billion higher.
If that’s not a sign that we are experiencing peak unicorn, very few other deals would.
There’s no question that Airbnb is a successful company in what it does, and the service is growing, but how basically an e-commerce platform which doesn’t even sell or own its own products can be worth more than one of the world’s largest hotel groups which has 13 times more revenue screams bubble at every angle.
Prior to this potential new round, Airbnb has raised $798.4 million to-date from investors including SherpaCapital, TPG Growth, T. Rowe Price, Dragoneer Investment Group, Founders Fund, CrunchFund, Sequoia Capital, Ashton Kutcher, Andreessen Horowitz and others.
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