Airbnb hires Blackstone's Laurence Tosi as CFO

New York

AIRBNB Inc has hired Blackstone Group LP's Laurence Tosi as chief financial officer of the home-sharing startup, filling a position left vacant since Andrew Swain left last year.

"LT's expertise in hospitality and finance is the perfect combination to help take Airbnb to the next level," the San Francisco-based company's CEO Brian Chesky said in a statement last Friday.

Hiring executives from publicly traded companies is often a precursor to an initial public offering for Silicon Valley startups. Airbnb in June was in talks to raise another round of financing at a US$24 billion valuation. The company is projecting revenue of US$900 million this year, up from US$250 million in 2013.

Silicon Valley is increasingly attracting talent from Wall Street. Ruth Porat in May joined Google as CFO from Morgan Stanley, where she had the same role. Anthony Noto, Twitter Inc's finance chief, joined the company last year from Goldman Sachs Group Inc, where he co-led telecommunications, media and technology investment banking.

Mr Tosi, 47, has been CFO of Blackstone since 2008. Since then, the world's biggest manager of investment alternatives to stocks and bonds has doubled assets under management (AUM) to US$333 billion from US$119 billion.

The firm paid Mr Tosi US$15 million last year in salary, bonus, stock awards and a cut of profits, according to Blackstone's annual report. He also holds partnership units that gave him US$1.4 million in dividends.

Mr Tosi has long been drawn to technology. When he was at Merrill Lynch & Co, he helped create Ipreo Holdings, the financial data provider that Blackstone and Goldman Sachs bought last year for US$975 million. At Blackstone, he helped start iLevel, a tool for gathering data from an investment portfolio and packaging it for reporting to clients, including on mobile phones and tablets.

Mr Tosi's closest brush with Silicon Valley came in late 2010, when Apple Inc's Steve Jobs invited him to his California home to discuss the iPhone maker's future. There, Mr Jobs offered the then 42-year-old the job of CFO of Apple. Mr Tosi told Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman and declined Mr Jobs' offer.

Mr Schwarzman earlier this year tipped his hat to the success of Silicon Valley startups. At a May conference in New York, the 68-year-old said that if he were 30 years younger, he'd move to California to be an Internet entrepreneur.

"There's so much disruption and so much amazing value creation," said Mr Schwarzman, who has built a US$12.5 billion fortune based on Blackstone's success. "The valuations are really heroic." WP