Remember Airbnb’s Super Bowl commercial? The one that flashed through different faces and ended with the hashtag #weaccept? As a result of that 30-second spot, 16,000 people pulled up the website /weaccept, read the rather lengthy letter about tolerance from Airbnb’s founders, and clicked the link buried in the last paragraph inviting them to share their home with refugees or people affected by natural disasters. For context, that’s roughly the size of the entire US population. Thanks to climate change and manmade disasters, by the year 2047, Sinclair said there would be 325 million people displaced from their homes. Consider that in 2000, there were 20 million refugees in the world. It’s really what he’s been working on for his entire career, and since Sinclair started, the need has exploded. As best I can figure, this is the company’s version of Google X, an R&D outfit tasked with taking on the projects of most ambition and import.Īs head of social innovation and community development, Sinclair has been trying to find ways for Airbnb to connect refugees with housing. Airbnb quietly announced the lab, dubbed “Samara” after the winged dry fruit that carries a seed safely from a tree, last August. A year and a half ago, Airbnb cofounder Joe Gebbia hired him on to be part of a stealth innovation and design studio run out of a separate building not far from Airbnb’s campus.
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