# Timeline of Airbnb

This is a timeline of Airbnb, a company that brokers private lodging rentals through its website.

## Timeline

| Year | Month and date | Event type | Details |
| 2007 | October | Idea creation | Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia create the initial concept for AirBed & Breakfast during the Industrial Design Conference held by Industrial Designers Society of America. The original site offers short-term living quarters, breakfast and a unique business networking opportunity for attendees who were unable to book a hotel in the saturated market. Chesky and Gebbia themselves use Airbnb to help meet the rent for their loft in San Francisco. |
| 2008 | February | Team | Harvard University graduate and technical architect Nathan Blecharczyk joins as the third co-founder of AirBed & Breakfast. |
| 2008 | August 11 | Product | The Airbedandbreakfast.com website launches. |
| 2008 | August–November | Funding | To raise enough seed money to sustain their business, Airbnb sells cereal boxes for Barack Obama and John McCain. They sell 800 boxes at $40 each, netting $30,000 in funding for the company. Their most successful single sale event is the Democratic National Convention in August 2008. |
| 2009 | January | Funding | Airbnb is accepted into Y Combinator's Winter 2009 batch and receives $20,000 in funding. Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham says that even though he is not a fan of Airbnb's idea, he is impressed by their creative methods for bootstrapping their funding situation by selling cereal. |
| 2009 | March | Product | The website name is shortened from Airbedandbreakfast.com to Airbnb.com, and the site's content has expanded from air beds and shared spaces to a variety of properties including entire homes and apartments, private rooms, castles, boats, manors, tree houses, tipis, igloos, private islands and other properties. |
| 2009 | March | Funding | Airbnb raises $585,000 from Sequoia Capital and $30,000 from Youniversity Ventures partners Jawed Karim, Keith Rabois, and Kevin Hartz in a seed round valuing the company at $2.4 million. |
| 2010 | June 21 | Team | In response to increasing overcrowding at his residence, that is doubling up as an Airbnb office, co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky decides to move out of his apartment and live using Airbnb for a few months. |
| 2010 | November | Funding | Airbnb receives $7.2 million in Series A funding from Greylock Partners and Sequoia Capital, and announces that out of 700,000 nights booked, 80% had occurred in the past six months. |
| 2011 | February | Usage milestone | Airbnb announces its 1 millionth booking since the website launch in August 2008. |
| 2011 | March 16–17 | Funding | Venture capitalist Fred Wilson publishes a blog post saying that his firm's decision not to invest in Airbnb was a mistake. The next day, Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham publishes (with permission) correspondence between himself and Fred Wilson about the possibility of Wilson investing in Airbnb. |
| 2011 | May 25 | Endorsements | Actor and partner at A-Grade Investments, Ashton Kutcher, announces a significant investment in the company and his role as a strategic brand advisor for the company. |
| 2011 | May 31 | Acquisitions by Airbnb, international expansion | Airbnb acquires Accoleo, a small German clone of its service, thereby expanding to Germany. |
| 2011 | July 24 | Funding | Airbnb raises $112 million in additional funding. The investment round is led by Andreessen Horowitz and other investors include DST Global Solutions and General Catalyst. |
| 2011 | October | Funding, controversy | An email allegedly written by Chamath Palihapitiya to Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, that was critical of the manner in which Airbnb was structuring its funding round, is leaked to Kara Swisher of AllThingsD. A follow-up reveals that new aspects of the deal are in development that might alleviate some of the concerns expressed by Palihapitiya, and he is reconsidering his decision not to invest in the funding round. He also expressed regret about the email being leaked, and he said that he was not responsible for the leak. |
| 2011 | October | International expansion | Airbnb opens up its second international office in London in the United Kingdom. |
| 2012 | January | Usage milestone | Airbnb announces its 5 millionth booking. |
| 2012 | (early year) | International expansion | Airbnb opens six international offices, in the cities Paris, Milan, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Moscow, and São Paulo. These are in addition to existing offices in San Francisco, London, Hamburg, and Berlin where Airbnb maintains its international presence for the EMEA markets within a German incubator space. |
| 2012 | June | Usage milestone | Airbnb announces its 10 millionth booking. |
| 2012 | July 25 | Acquisitions by Airbnb, international expansion | Shortly before the 2012 Summer Olympics Airbnb acquires London-based rival CrashPadder, subsequently adding six thousand international listings to its existing inventory. |
| 2012 | November 2 | International expansion | Airbnb co-founder and CEO Chesky announces his focus on Australia, the second largest Airbnb market behind the United States, as well as Thailand and Indonesia. To support this effort, Airbnb opens its 11th office in Sydney. The Australian consumer accounts for one-tenth of the Airbnb user base. |
| 2012 | November 12 | International expansion | Airbnb announces its strategy to move more aggressively into the Asian market with the launch of their newest headquarters in Singapore. The company's goal is to acquire an additional 2 million properties within the continent. |
| 2012 | November 13 | Acquisitions by Airbnb | Airbnb acquires NabeWise, a city guide that aggregates curated information for specified locations, in November 2012. This acquisition shifts the company focus toward offering hyperlocal recommendations to travelers. |
| 2012 | December 13 | Acquisitions by Airbnb | Airbnb announces the acquisition of Localmind. Localmind is a location-based question and answer platform that allows users to post questions about specific locations online. These questions are then answered in real-time by experts on the specified territories. |
| 2013 | September | International expansion | Airbnb announces that European headquarters would be located in Dublin, Ireland. |
| 2014 | January 31 | Partnerships | Airbnb announces plans to partner with home cleaning services whereby the home cleaning service is available at a discount to those who are about to host people via Airbnb, in order to incentivize hosts to prepare homes well for guests and also give guests a more standardized experience. Prospective partners include Homejoy and Handybook. |
| 2014 | March 14 | Company | Airbnb announces plans to open a new "operational headquarters" for North America in Portland, Oregon, in summer 2014, but indicated that its main North American headquarters would remain in San Francisco. |
| 2014 | April (unofficial rumors), August 1 (announcement in SEC filing) | Funding | It is announced in April that Airbnb is getting an investment by TPG Capital at a valuation of approximately $10 billion. The amount of funding is variously reported as $450 million and $500 million. On August 1, the round is revealed to be a $475 million round. |
| 2014 | July 16 | Product | Airbnb reveals design revisions to their site and mobile app, and introduced a new logo. Some consider the new icon to be visually similar to genitalia, but a consumer survey by Survata shows only a minority of respondents thought this was the case. |
| 2014 | July 21 | Partnerships | Airbnb announces that its home cleaning trial will be in three cities, and lists Handybook as its sole partner. Homejoy, which had earlier been listed as a partner, is dropped. |
| 2014 | July 28 | Partnerships | Airbnb announces a partnership with Concur, an expense reporting service for businesses, to make it easier for business travelers to report Airbnb stays as business expenses. |
| 2014 | September 17 | Financial/legal | Airbnb announces that it will start collecting and remitting a 14% tax for short-term rentals in San Francisco starting October 1. |
| 2014 | October 23 | Funding | Airbnb announces arrangements for an employee stock sale. Valuations for the sale are rumored at around $13 billion. |
| 2014 | October 27 | Financial/legal | San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee signs a law making short-term rentals legal in San Francisco, thereby legalizing Airbnb. The law gets the moniker of "Airbnb law" because Airbnb is the most affected company. |
| 2014 | November 3 | Financial/legal | Vacation rental company HomeAway sues San Francisco for the Airbnb Law. |
| 2014 | November 20 | Product | Airbnb expands its liability insurance program for hosts and landlords. Whereas the initial liability insurance program was limited to property damage due to the guest, the new program $1 million worth of protection in the case a guest is accidentally injured anywhere in a host's building or on their property during their stay. Rentals starting January 15, 2015 will automatically be covered under the new program. |
| 2015 | January 30 | Financial/legal | Airbnb announces that it will start collecting taxes in Amsterdam, San Jose, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. |
| 2015 | February 25 | Partnerships | Airbnb announces a partnership with Deutsche Telekom, the parent company of T-Mobile, to have its app pre-installed on mobile phones in 13 countries. Those who register for the service via DT will get 30 euros of vouchers to stay in Airbnb rooms. |
| 2015 | April 29 | Product, accessibility | Airbnb launches an official iPad app. |
| 2015 | June 4 | Product | Airbnb adds a pricing recommendation tool, called Price Tips, offering suggestions on appropriate prices for people renting our apartments. |
| 2015 | June 28 | Funding | Airbnb closes $1.5 billion in additional funding, bringing its funding total to $2.3 billion. The valuation for the round is $25.5 billion. Both the amount raised and the valuation are higher than those originally projected when rumors of the round originally circulated in late February/early March (when the numbers were $1 billion and $20 billion respectively). |
| 2015 | August 25 (announcement), October 1 (start date) | Legal | Airbnb announces that it will start collecting a tourist tax on Airbnb rentals in Paris starting October 1. The tax amount will be 0.83 euros per night. |
| 2015 | September 3 | Product | Airbnb releases an app for the Apple Watch, whose main focus is to facilitate communication between guests and hosts. |
| 2015 | September 11 | Acquisitions by Airbnb | Airbnb announces its acquisition of Vamo, a company based in Seattle whose product is a multi-city trip planning app. The app would be shut down as part of the acquisition; the purpose of the acquisition is to use the team's expertise to help with the aspects of the user experience related to travel beyond just booking an Airbnb. |
| 2015 | November 4 | Financial/legal | San Francisco voters vote No on Proposition F, a measure to restrict Airbnb rentals in the city. In the run-up to the vote, Airbnb spent over $8 million in advertising to the public against the measure, whereas groups supporting Proposition F spent less than a million dollars. As part of its advertising campaign, Airbnb put out ads highlighting the role that the $12 million in taxes paid by it has played in funding city operations, but the ads are perceived by many as tasteless, so the company withdraws them and apologizes. |
| 2015 | November 12 | Product, partnerships | Airbnb announces a new "Business Travel Ready" badge and host tools. |
| 2016 | June | Legal | Airbnb sues the city of San Francisco over a new law that would require Airbnb to verify that their hosts are registered with the city. |
| 2016 | July | Funding | Airbnb is reported to be raising $850 million at a $30 billion valuation. |
| 2016 | August | | The city of Barcelona cracks down on homes that are illegally rented out to tourists, including houses listed on Airbnb. In addition, Barcelona's town hall announces that it would fine Airbnb and HomeAway (a similar service). |
| 2016 | September | Acquisition | Airbnb acquires the travel startup Trip4real. |
| 2016 | September | Product | Airbnb launches their "Friendly Buildings Program", which lets landlords and homeowners associations collaborate with Airbnb to create hosting rules, update leases and agreements to allow home-sharing, and to share portions of their tenants' reservation income. |
| 2016 | October | Competition | Two Airbnb rivals, Wimdu and 9flats, consolidate in a merger. |
| 2016 | October | Legal | Airbnb sues New York City over a new legislation that would make it illegal for Airbnb to display housing units that cannot be rented legally, and would also allow fines of up to $7,500 on hosts who rent out housing illegally. In its suit, Airbnb argues that the liability for rental listings belongs to the hosts who post them. |
| 2016 | November | Product | Airbnb launches the "experiences" feature in the Airbnb app. This feature allows hosts to offer tours and events in addition to places to stay. |
| 2016 | December 2 | Legal | Airbnb settles the lawsuit it filed against New York City. Airbnb agrees to drop the suit as long as the city fines only the hosts and not Airbnb. |
| 2017 | January 28 | | Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, tweets that the company will give free housing to refugees and any others not allowed into the United States as a result of President Trump's executive order to temporarily ban refugees from the United States. |
| 2017 | February 16 | Acquisition | Airbnb acquires Luxury Retreats, an Airbnb-like service for high-end homes and premium vacation homes. The deal is reported to be $200–$300 million. As of the time of the deal, it is Airbnb's largest acquisition. |
| 2017 | February | Acquisition | Airbnb acquires Tilt, a social payment startup. |
| 2017 | November 13 | Acquisition | Airbnb acquires AdBasis, advertising technology platform built for A/B testing and Multivariate ad testing. |
| 2017 | November 16 | Acquisition | Airbnb acquires Accomable, a startup focused on travel accessibility. |
| 2017 | November 28 | Product | Airbnb began allowing users to split payments with up to 16 other travelers. |
| 2017 | December | Product | Following a cash infusion from Brookfield Property Partners, Airbnb announces their "Niido" line of apartment buildings designed for tenants to rent out their units for up to 180 days per year on Airbnb, in conjunction with their landlords. Two Niido properties opened the following year in Nashville, Tennessee and Kissimmee, Florida. |
| 2018 | February | Product | Brian Chesky revealed the company's intention to launch an airline. |
| 2018 | February | Product | Airbnb announced Airbnb Plus, a collection of homes that have been vetted for quality of services, comfort and design, as well as Beyond by Airbnb, which will offer luxury vacation rentals. |
| 2019 | January | Acquisition | Airbnb acquires Gaest, an Aarhus, Denmark-based startup, which provides a platform for posting and booking venues for meetings and other events. |
| 2019 | March | Acquisition | Airbnb acquires HotelTonight, a website for booking last-minute hotel rooms, for over $400 million. |
| 2019 | June | Product | Airbnb announces their "Natiivo" line of condo hotels, which feature amenities such as 24-hour concierge, valet parking, co-working spaces, and other amenities. The first two Natiivo locations are planned for Austin, Texas and Miami, Florida. |
| 2020 | August | IPO | Airbnb announces it has confidentially filed for an initial public offering. |
| 2020 | November | IPO | Airbnb files its public S-1 IPO filing. |