The Airbnb Mafia

Startup Mafias is a blog series that shines a light on unicorn tech companies producing the next generational entrepreneurial talent. Learn how you can start to track when an employee of any company in the world leaves to start a company of their own.

Author

Dishita Shah
April 08, 2024

In this Startup Mafia Series, we’re taking a deeper dive into some of the companies that started after their founders spent time at Airbnb. With Landscape, you’re able to track all employees who previously worked at Airbnb and started a new company. If you’d like to track companies like Airbnb, you should book a demo for our data-driven VC platform Landscape.

Note: This is not an exhaustive list but instead a look at some of the founders who have already seen success to those at the earliest stages of their entrepreneurial journey.

Founded in: 2007

Founders: Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, Nathan Blecharczyk

Stage: IPO on Dec. 10, 2020

Airbnb started with two hosts who welcomed three guests to their San Francisco home and has since grown to over 4 million Hosts who have welcomed over 1.5 billion guest arrivals in almost every country across the globe more authentically. Airbnb has been intentional about developing a positive and entrepreneurial culture over time.

Ex-Airbnb founders spotted in Landscape

All successful companies begin their life as a startup before joining the Mafia ranks. Below we highlight ex-Airbnb employees who are recent founders and have been spotted in Landscape in the early stages of building.

Founded in: 2024

Fundraised: n/a

Landscape founder background highlights:

  • Based in Washington, USA

  • Technical

  • Serial Founder

  • Ex-Big Tech

ChihWei worked as an Engineer at Airbnb for over 7 years and recently launched MeetAndy, an AI Virtual assistant for proactive task automation with ambitions of a world where AI assistants take care of routine tasks allowing people to focus on the awesome stuff.

Founded in: 2023

Fundraised: Amount not disclosed - investors include Y Combinator

Landscape founder background highlights:

  • Based in SF, USA

  • Technical

  • Lived Abroad

  • Ex-Big Tech

Ntambwa was a Senior Software Engineer Technical Lead at Airbnb for over 6 years before launching VaultPay, a platform enabling financial institutions to transform local businesses into bank agents with a focus on Africa.

Luba Yudasina - Stealth Mode

Founded in: 2023

Fundraised: n/a

Landscape founder background highlights:

  • Based in SF, USA

  • Technical

  • Serial Founder

  • Ex-Big Tech

Luba has worked in several roles at Airbnb ranging from Software Engineer to Chief of Staff, is a member of AirAngels (Airbnb Alumni Investors), and recently launched her own company in stealth mode.

Pooya Tavakoly - Stealth Mode

Founded in: 2024

Fundraised: n/a

Landscape founder background highlights:

  • Based in British Columbia, Canada

  • Technical

  • PhD Founder

  • Ex-Big Tech

Pooya worked as a Sr. Product Manager on Airbnb's Globalization team along with spending time at Amazon. He went into stealth mode this year and is working on something new.

Shruti Gupta - Stealth Mode

Founded in: 2023

Fundraised: n/a

Landscape founder background highlights:

  • Based in SF, USA

  • Technical

  • Ex-Big Tech

  • Ex-Unicorn

Shruti was a Founding Security Engineer at Airbnb and helped build the Security team at Airbnb from the ground up. She has since worked at Instacard, Brex and Microsoft and went into stealth last year working on her own startup.

This is a sample feed of the companies you can discover through Landscape at the earliest stages of their launch. If you’d like to learn more feel free to book a demo here.

The Mafia

Some ex-Airbnb employees have already seen great success from launching their startup and scaling it to Series A and beyond. Below we look at some of the founders further along in their entrepreneurial journey following their time at Airbnb.

Founded in: 2012

Stage: IPO on April 14, 2021

Brian was a Technical Product Manager at Airbnb for a year before leaving and starting Coinbase. Coinbase is a leading cryptocurrency exchange platform with a mission to create an open financial system for the world and be the leading global brand for helping people convert crypto into and out of their local currency.

Founded in: 2015

Fundraised: $240.2M with investors including Lightspeed Ventures and Tiger Global

Nick spent 3 years at Airbnb in a generalist role spanning product, engineering, and operations. He later launched Outschool, an innovative education platform offering engaging, small-group classes online. Outschool recently partnered with OpenAI to power an AI Teaching Assistant tool and continue to innovate in the ed-tech space.

Founded in: 2021

Fundraised: $19.5M with investors including Amplify Partners and Menlo Ventures

Eppo is a next-gen A/B experimentation platform for data and product teams to run 10x more experiments with existing infrastructure and headcount fostering an entrepreneurial culture. Chetan previously spent nearly five years at Airbnb as a Data Scientist where he established a culture of experimentation by running hundreds of A/B experiments.

Founded in: 2017

Fundraised: $110.5 with investors including Kleiner Perkins

Before co-founding Future, Justin was the Director of Platforms & Guest Experience at Airbnb. Future takes fitness to the next level by using a combination of technology, content, and elite personal trainers.

Founded in:

Fundraised: $52.2 with investors including Accel and Sequoia Capital

Karri spent over 3 years as Airbnb's Principal Designer and Creative Director working on the Airbnb product design language and system. He then left to launch Linear with a vision to create a more enjoyable and efficient way to manage software development.

Forward-thinking venture funds use Landscape to unlock data-driven sourcing, AI-assisted screening, and much more.