Airbnb appoints Amazon’s Dave Stephenson as CFO

As Airbnb prepares for their much-awaited initial public offering scheduled for 2019, the popular home-renting and experiential tourism company has appointed Dave Stephenson as CFO to replace Lawrence Tosi. Tosi had left the company in February, this year.

Stephenson had been with Amazon for the last 17 years and his is not the only departure that Amazon has to deal with at the moment. Jason Warnick, yet another veteran is also quitting the online retail behemoth and reportedly joining Robinhood, an online brokerage startup as CFO.

Stephenson’s latest post at Amazon was that of Vice President and CFO of the their worldwide consumer organization, which manages all global website sales for Amazon including the Prime service as well.

Airbnb is valued at $31 Bn and has expanded its offerings over the last months by incorporating more relevant services and adding luxury home-stays and hotels to their portfolio. The organization is not only gaining popularity and loyal fans by the day, it also seems set to continue on a strong growth and expansion plan. Stephenson’s experience in the online consumer management space will definitely aid Airbnb’s growth chart.

As the trend of shifting the top pieces of the talent jigsaw puzzle continues, how are companies coping with these migrations? There is also a clear trend of top executives from more established organization gambling on new startups. Are the reasons behind this financial or do they have more to do with being able to hold a position that would allow and demand more hand-on involvement while also allowing an opportunity to build something of scratch?