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 “authorities 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 effectively.
When Airbnb went public in December 2020, the corporate was valued at greater than $47 billion. Hoffman despatched not less than a handful of different buyers a board recreation styled after Monopoly known as “Airbnopoly,” in line with photographs 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 manufacturing,” and it comprises the entire items sometimes included within the traditional board recreation, like playing cards, cube, and recreation 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 relatively 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 “Authorities 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. “Latest developments in American politics make you interested in residing 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 big 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 known as Settlers of Silicon Valley and gifted it to many associates,” says Aria Finger, podcast cohost and chief of employees for Hoffman instructed WIRED. “Then for Airbnb he thought a customized recreation can 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 into public at a time when Hoffman and his Silicon Valley contemporaries have known as for Khan to be fired beneath a doable Harris administration.
Since Khan was confirmed as chair in 2021, the FTC has gone after tech giants like Amazon, Google, and Meta for doable anticompetitive habits. Many of those lawsuits have failed, whereas others are ongoing. Khan’s largest win got here in August when a choose discovered that Google had maintained an unlawful monopoly within the on-line search market.
In 2016, Hoffman offered LinkedIn to Microsoft, and he sits on the corporate’s board. Microsoft is reportedly at present 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.
