You're the second person in the thread who has sought to diminish the point by tangentially invoking the controversial aspects of what they do. It's a non-sequitur. I'm not engaging with that part further, as I responded to it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28425675
As for financial losses, yes of course the pandemic year was hard, but it's completely false to say that Airbnb has never been profitable or that it is not a financially strong company. Indeed they have financial strength built into the foundations of the company; they were revenue-focused and profitable in their first few months, and the very thing that made them attractive to investors was that their unit economics (dollar margin per transaction) was so strong. And they have had several profitable periods in the years leading up to their IPO. Yes they may have ended up posting losses, because they've spent heavily on marketing/growth and expansion into new product categories, but that doesn't make them a weak company, quite the opposite. If you're trying to equate them to money-sinks like Theranos, WeWork, Uber, etc, you're mistaken; they are the very antithesis of those kinds of companies.
As for financial losses, yes of course the pandemic year was hard, but it's completely false to say that Airbnb has never been profitable or that it is not a financially strong company. Indeed they have financial strength built into the foundations of the company; they were revenue-focused and profitable in their first few months, and the very thing that made them attractive to investors was that their unit economics (dollar margin per transaction) was so strong. And they have had several profitable periods in the years leading up to their IPO. Yes they may have ended up posting losses, because they've spent heavily on marketing/growth and expansion into new product categories, but that doesn't make them a weak company, quite the opposite. If you're trying to equate them to money-sinks like Theranos, WeWork, Uber, etc, you're mistaken; they are the very antithesis of those kinds of companies.