In what Chesky would later call a “bet the company” moment, the cofounders decided not to buy Wimdu, mainly for the reason Graham mentioned: Chesky didn’t want to absorb four hundred new employees who he felt were mercenaries and whom Airbnb had had no say in hiring. They also decided that since the Samwer brothers likely had no interest in running the company long-term — their whole business model revolved around selling companies, not running them — the best revenge was to force them to actually run the giant company they’d just built. “You had the baby, now you’ve got to raise the child,
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