4 years in the past, certainly one of Vice President Kamala Harris’ high 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” house is changed by “authorities regulation.”
Since Harris grew to become the Democratic presidential nominee, many billionaire tech buyers have come out of the woodwork to assist her marketing campaign. Whereas they usually 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 among 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 properly.
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 recreation styled after Monopoly referred to as “Airbnopoly,” in response to photographs of the sport obtained by WIRED. A high Airbnb investor confirmed that he was certainly 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 manufacturing,” and it accommodates the entire items sometimes included within the basic board recreation, like playing cards, cube, and recreation items—all with a journey theme. As a substitute of a high 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 custom-made, too, to incorporate airports as a substitute of railroads and Airbnb places relatively than Atlantic Metropolis streets. In a single telling modification, as a substitute of a “Go to Jail” house, the board tells gamers to return to a “Authorities Regulation” nook house. 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. “Latest developments in American politics make you interested by dwelling in Canada,” reads one of many recreation’s playing cards.
Airbnbopoly is clearly extra of a novelty present than a screed in opposition to massive authorities. “Reid is a large lover of board video games, having performed Settlers of Catan, et cetera, for a lot of, a few years, so he made a customized board recreation referred to as Settlers of Silicon Valley and gifted it to many mates,” says Aria Finger, podcast cohost and chief of workers for Hoffman advised WIRED. “Then for Airbnb he thought a customized recreation could be a pleasant, distinctive gesture, and the Monopoly board simply lent itself to Airbnb’s varied leases, so he selected that.”
Nonetheless, it has turn out to be 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 largest 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 presently 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.
