Airbnb ($AIRBNB) is planning on a 2020 IPO. After growing revenue, hiring up staff, and building mindshare, investors will finally have a chance to buy a piece of the company. Here's why this startup is poised to stage a huge IPO.
Hiring
Airbnb has been on a steady workfroce growth path since its inception, with recent acceleration as it's expanded into new territories and as local laws have changed to allow the service to operate legally.
According to our tracking of people who list on LinkedIn that they work for Airbnb, the company has grown 30% so far this year. Its job listings, seen below, are down slightly, but on the whole, are still quite high compared to February. Not quite the 500 openings in the summer, but since this is shaping up to be the biggest IPO of 2020, things could improve for those who want to work for Airbnb.
Social media
Airbnb is ready-made for Instagram, as social-media users are likely to post — and look up photos of cool places to potentially stay, not to mention the occasional cat or dog that comes with a chic city condo (and no one doesn't hate-like a cat).
From August 4th to September 17th, Airbnb's Instagram gained 120,000 followers. Airbnb broke 4 million total fans on the platform, and it isn't looking back.
On Twitter, Airbnb just broke 700,000 followers this month.
Since the summer of 2015, the Twitter following has been at a steady 74% increase year over year. It's slightly plateauing as of late, but this IPO is going to be so big, that will only add more bees to the honey.
App Reviews
Airbnb's app is one of the main touchpoints consumers have with the brand, from finding, to booking, to unlocking the properties they rent. And the trends for the startup's apps appear to be heading in the right direction.
The amount of people rating the Airbnb app on the Apple Store has gone up 132% from last summer to this summer. The same rate can be seen on the Google Play Store, just astronomical numbers.
And when you consider all these people using the Airbnb app, the fact that the average review ratings on both stores is going up is nothing short of impressive.
About the Data:
Thinknum tracks companies using information they post online - jobs, social and web traffic, product sales and app ratings - and creates data sets that measure factors like hiring, revenue and foot traffic. Data sets may not be fully comprehensive (they only account for what is available on the web), but they can be used to gauge performance factors like staffing and sales.