Airbnb wants to give its guests equity in its business – TechCrunch

Airbnb wants to give the owners who supply his service the opportunity to own a part of his business. That's why, as reported by Axios, the $ 31 billion company wrote to the SEC asking if its ownership rules could be revised.

Specifically, Airbnb seeks to amend SEC Rule 701 – which governs the ownership of shares in corporations – to allow a new class of shareholder class for workers who participate in concert economy companies and their shareholders. services. Uber, for one, met the SEC to propose a similar allocation, but Airbnb's argument is presented in a letter that you can read here (thanks to Axios.)

"As a sharing economy market, Airbnb succeeds when these hosts succeed," writes the company in a passage. "We believe that allowing private companies to give their hosts and other participants in the economy a share of the company's shares at an earlier stage would further align the incentives between these companies and their participants in the sharing economy. benefit of both.

Airbnb would intend to become public as early as next year.

Although it is not known how to earn equity could work for an Airbnb host – or an Uber or a Lyft driver – further rule changes would be required. Currently, SEC regulation requires that any private company with more than 2,000 shareholders or 500 or more that are not registered investors in the United States be registered.

This is clearly a problem for Airbnb, which has reached over five million listings since its inception in 2008. It remains to be seen how many owners could own capital even if the rules were changed to allow it. More generally, however, start-ups do not look for stock options for entrepreneurs, as this triggers mandatory SEC reports while they are private entities.

Then there are additional complications for companies that have developed outside the US market. Most Airbnb are located abroad – the service claims to provide housing in some 81,000 cities in more than 190 countries – making it difficult to distribute US-based equity.

However, public recognition by Airbnb of its hosts and the crucial role they play is a positive element of this relationship. It's something rare, of course.

Most of the discussions around the role of the market provider and the market economy worker were negative, with Uber in particular wanting to distinguish between business and entrepreneurial staff.

While this modern mode of work gives those who choose it a degree of flexibility like never before, they do not enjoy the conventional benefits of a conventional employee, such as paid time off, benefits, overtime, health insurance and much more. A large number of start-ups have sprung up to help fill some of these gaps, but their solutions all come at a cost to the worker, many of whom are already financially struggling.