4 years in the past, considered one of Vice President Kamala Harris’ prime donors—the billionaire cofounder of LinkedIn Reid Hoffman—celebrated the IPO of Airbnb, an organization he was closely invested in, by fashioning Monopoly boards the place the sport’s “jail” area is changed by “government regulation.”
Since Harris turned the Democratic presidential nominee, many billionaire tech buyers have come out of the woodwork to assist her marketing campaign. Whereas they typically tout Harris as a business-friendly politician, they’ve been vocal of their dislike of Federal Commerce Fee chair Lina Khan’s antitrust agenda. Hoffman is likely one of the most influential donors in that group. He has donated tens of tens of millions of {dollars} in assist of the Biden and Harris campaigns and has organized different rich tech buyers to take action as nicely.
When Airbnb went public in December 2020, the corporate was valued at greater than $47 billion. Hoffman despatched a minimum of a handful of different buyers a board sport styled after Monopoly referred to as “Airbnopoly,” in response to photos of the sport obtained by WIRED. A prime Airbnb investor confirmed that he was considered one of a number of individuals who acquired the sport from Hoffman and his enterprise agency Greylock Companions.
The field is labeled as “a Reid Hoffman and Greylock production,” and it comprises all the items usually included within the traditional board sport, like playing cards, cube, and sport items—all with a journey theme. As an alternative of a prime hat or a thimble, gamers can navigate the board with an airplane seat, golf membership, flip flops, and so forth. The areas on the board are personalized, too, to incorporate airports as a substitute of railroads and Airbnb places reasonably than Atlantic Metropolis streets. In a single telling modification, as a substitute of a “Go to Jail” area, the board tells gamers to return to a “Government Regulation” nook area. If gamers keep away from authorities regulation, they transfer throughout a path titled “Progress.”
Some areas on the board require the gamers to pay government-issued fines, taxes, or belief and security charges. “Recent developments in American politics make you curious about living in Canada,” reads one of many sport’s playing cards.
Airbnbopoly is clearly extra of a novelty reward than a screed in opposition to huge authorities. “Reid is a huge lover of board games, having played Settlers of Catan, et cetera, for many, many years, so he made a custom board game called Settlers of Silicon Valley and gifted it to many friends,” says Aria Finger, podcast cohost and chief of workers for Hoffman informed WIRED. “Then for Airbnb he thought a custom game would be a nice, unique gesture, and the Monopoly board easily lent itself to Airbnb’s various rentals, so he decided on that.”
Nonetheless, it has change into public at a time when Hoffman and his Silicon Valley contemporaries have referred to as for Khan to be fired beneath a attainable Harris administration.
Since Khan was confirmed as chair in 2021, the FTC has gone after tech giants like Amazon, Google, and Meta for attainable anticompetitive habits. Many of those lawsuits have failed, whereas others are ongoing. Khan’s greatest win got here in August when a decide discovered that Google had maintained an unlawful monopoly within the on-line search market.
In 2016, Hoffman bought LinkedIn to Microsoft, and he sits on the corporate’s board. Microsoft is reportedly at the moment beneath FTC investigation as a part of a probe into collaborations and investments in synthetic intelligence. A spokesperson for Hoffman didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
