Not specific to ABNB, but...
The changiest time, ever.
Biz Carson
Protocol
June 5, 2021
"There are decades that go by where nothing happens, and then there's certain weeks where decades happen" — or at least that's how mmhmm and All Turtles founder and former Evernote CEO Phil Libin remembers the quote from his childhood going.
"That's what's happening right now," Libin told me from where he's living outside Bentonville, Arkansas. "The world is going through the changiest part that has ever happened in my lifetime."
Suddenly, hundreds of millions of people can decouple work from where they live — and that shift is an opportunity for startups. "A whole life cycle has been built around this idea that where you live is completely based on where you make a living. And for that to all of a sudden get decoupled is such an amazing and profound thing that I think it's going to change everything," Libin said.
-- For most of history, people's jobs have dictated where they live, from urban to rural environments to the idea of "company towns"; Libin's location outside of Bentonville, the home of Walmart, is just one example of it.
-- But that's changed now that more companies across the globe are becoming flexible with where people can work. This week, software giant SAP announced its 100,000 employees could work from anywhere. Even traditionally "in-person" professions like health care and education are shifting some work online, leaving millions of people free to move where they want.
"The scale of this change is, I think, bigger than the internet," Libin argues. He started his first company in the dot-com boom, but this feels different. "That wasn't about fundamentally tinkering with the way people had set up their entire lives and societies, which this is."
-- The shift in people moving around will mean changes to tax bases, transportation, education, health care, food and agriculture as places deal with a redistribution of people.
-- The San Francisco Bay Area saw the biggest outflow of tech workers in the last year, according to LinkedIn data. Now, a drop in enrollment in the school district could cost the city $20 million in state funding in the fall. And the effects will continue to be felt from there. Already some financial regulations feel outdated, like how Snowflake had to amend its "principal executive offices" last week to be in Bozeman, Montana, after it moved to a fully distributed workforce.
-- "So many new products have to be created for this world," Libin said. Everything from insurance to zoning laws to new kinds of software may have to be built to help navigate the change.
"If you believe that a good time to start a startup is like when everything is changing — because everything is getting thrown up in the air, you may as well be there to redirect where things land — then this is the best time to do it," he said. After all, it's time to build.
The startup opportunity that could be bigger than the internet - Protocol — The people, power and politics of tech |
