Four years ago, one of Vice President Kamala Harris’ top donors, billionaire LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, celebrated the initial public offering of Airbnb, a company he invested heavily in, by creating Monopoly boards where the “jail” space ” of the game is replaced by “government regulation.”
Since Harris became the Democratic presidential candidate, many billionaire tech investors have come out of the woodwork to support her campaign. While they often tout Harris as a pro-business politician, they have openly expressed their distaste for Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Lina Khan’s antitrust agenda. Hoffman is one of the most influential donors in that group. He has donated tens of millions of dollars in support of the Biden and Harris campaigns and has organized other wealthy tech investors to do so as well.
When Airbnb went public in December 2020, the company was valued at more than $47 billion. Hoffman sent at least a handful of other investors a Monopoly-inspired board game called “Airbnopoly,” according to footage of the game obtained by WIRED. A major Airbnb investor confirmed that he was one of several people who received the game from Hoffman and his venture firm Greylock Partners.
The box is labeled “a Reid Hoffman and Greylock production” and contains all the pieces normally included in the classic board game, such as cards, dice, and game pieces, all with a travel theme. Instead of a top hat or thimble, players can navigate the board with an airplane seat, golf club, flip-flops, etc. The spaces on the board are also customized to include airports instead of railroads and Airbnb locations instead of Atlantic City streets. In a telling tweak, instead of a “Go to Jail” space, the board tells players to return to a “Government Regulations” corner space. If players avoid government regulation, they travel a path titled “Progress.”
Some spaces on the board require players to pay fines, taxes, or government-issued trust and security fees. “Recent events in American politics make you curious about living in Canada,” reads one of the cards in the game.
Airbnbopoly is clearly more of a novelty gift than a rant against big government. “Reid is a big board game lover, having played Settlers of Catan, etc., for many, many years, so he created a custom board game called Settlers of Silicon Valley and gave it to a lot of friends,” says Aria Finger, podcast co-host and Hoffman’s chief of staff told WIRED. “Then Airbnb thought a custom game would be a nice, unique gesture, and the Monopoly board lent itself easily to the various Airbnb rentals, so they went with that.”
Still, it has become public at a time when Hoffman and his Silicon Valley contemporaries have called for Khan to be fired under a potential Harris administration.
Since Khan was confirmed as chairman in 2021, the FTC has gone after tech giants like Amazonorth, Googleand Goal for possible anti-competitive conduct. Many of these lawsuits have failed, while others continue. Khan’s biggest victory came in August, when a judge found that Google had maintained an illegal monopoly in the online search market.
In 2016, Hoffman sold LinkedIn to Microsoft and serves on the company’s board of directors. Microsoft is reportedly currently under FTC investigation as part of an investigation into collaborations and investments in artificial intelligence. A spokesperson for Hoffman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
