Leaving @Airbnb

Joining @Fanatics

Oh My!

The year 2015 begins with a lot of change, something I’m quite familiar with since I’ve done major changes all at once in the past; i.e. in 2006 I met Fiona, moved to the US to take on a new job, got married and had a beautiful daughter. Yes, I like to shake things up sometimes! Moving to the US was one of the most difficult decisions I’ve ever made, but in the end it all worked out. Just recently, I was confronted with a similar hard decision I had to make; and it was more a luxurious position I was in that made me uncomfortable what to pick. I had to choose between staying at Airbnb, or take on a new dream job at a different company with a team I worked with in the past. I picked the latter, and in December I joined Fanatics Inc. as the VP of Growth & SEO.

What made it extremely hard, is that I loved working at Airbnb, as you could tell from the many blogposts here, the Facebook posts of all my guests in between the Cereal boxes or all the tweets I’m still sending out when it comes to Airbnb. I mean, who doesn’t want to work with a company which enables Treehouse adventures for kids, story 1 & 2 here. At the moment, Airbnb is one of the hottest startups in the world, growing like a rocket ship, and is able to hire some of the most talented people in every discipline. My former boss, Juney Ham, at Airbnb has a good piece on it was well. I have had similar reactions and feelings.

I never thought I would leave the company so quickly, especially after the success I recently had with the Berlin Wall film — Wall and Chain, and a 2014 year that Rocked! Working with people like Jonathan & Willow made the decision even harder. What incredible smart and talented people! When I wrote the post I joined Airbnb a little over 2 years ago, I was thinking it would be at least 4–5 years I would hang out here, maybe even longer. So why leave?

Read more at: Thenextcorner.net