[gmisra]

If the goal of Airbnb's investors/BoD was to grow a viable business, this would be a reasonable question - but their job is to increase the value of their (and their LPs') existing investment as much as possible, usually within a fixed time window.

For employees in the tech sector, this misalignment of incentives is one of the ugliest lessons to learn.

[jhanschoo]

If this is the case, raising funding based on ever increasing valuations sounds like a Ponzi scheme to me, albeit a very inefficient one.