Airbnb teams with Sequoia and China Broadband Capital to find a CEO for its China operations, with guest rentals from Chinese users up 700% in the past year
Eric Newcomer / Bloomberg Business :
Context & Ripple Effects
In mid-2015 Airbnb's China story was almost entirely outbound: rentals by Chinese guests were up 700% year-over-year, yet the company ran the country without a dedicated chief executive. Partnering with Sequoia and China Broadband Capital — both deeply plugged into the local market — to run that search is an admission that winning China required leadership Airbnb could not promote internally.
The subsequent coverage shows how that bet played out: an Aibiying rebrand with tripled workforce and Alipay/WeChat integration in 2017, an internal hire (Hong Ge) taking the China role months after the external search, and acquisition talks with local rival Xiaozhu — before the company ultimately pulled all mainland home and experience listings in 2022, keeping only a Beijing office focused on outbound travel.
First-order effects
- Sequoia and China Broadband Capital become active recruiters for Airbnb rather than passive backers, putting their local networks to work filling a leadership gap that had left the country run without a dedicated CEO.
- The 700% surge in rentals by Chinese guests makes outbound demand — not inbound supply — the immediate commercial engine justifying the hire.
Second-order effects
- Domestic competitor Xiaozhu, which would go on to raise a ~$300M round led by Jack Ma's Yunfeng Capital, forces Airbnb into localization moves like the Aibiying brand and payments integration rather than running China as an extension of the global product.
- Local investors gain leverage over strategy: a China CEO chosen through Sequoia and China Broadband Capital arrives with obligations to partners whose portfolios depend on the company committing capital in-country.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, foreign consumer platforms' durable China business is serving Chinese travelers abroad rather than operating supply inside the country — the endpoint Airbnb itself reached when it exited mainland listings but kept a Beijing office for outbound.
- The episode foreshadows a structural split in which US internet companies treat China as an outbound-demand market managed by local leadership and local investors, instead of competing head-on with domestically capitalized incumbents.
The trend: US consumer internet companies entering China increasingly localize leadership through domestic investors, only to find their sustainable role is capturing Chinese outbound demand rather than displacing homegrown incumbents.