by brad stonethere were some obvious risks to the announcement from airbnb inc ceo brian chesky back in february that his company wont go public in 2018 tech workers are a notoriously restless bunch and by further postponing an initial public offering chesky took a chance that his most talented employees could defect during airbnbs home stretch as a private companyriley newman is one executive who got away one of the first 10 employees at the company rose to run its data science unit and then left last summer to start a san francisco venture capital firm called wave capital this month another wellregarded executive sara adler airbnbs head of corporate development quietly left the company and joined newman as a general partnerand one of wave capitals first investments a startup founded by another former airbnb executives dan hill who was director of product and performance marketing hills company is tentatively called give local and aims to connect prospective donors with local philanthropiesall of this sounds rather grim for the decadeold homerental startup currently valued by investors at about 31 billion but id argue that amid all the recent handwringing over the health of silicon valley wave capital demonstrates one of this tech communitys unique strengthswave capital has raised around 50 million say two people familiar with the firms financing and will soon become one of hundreds of bay area investment firms focused on providing seed funding for startups but wave capital also has a more specific mission newman adler and their third partner david rosenthal a former principal at seattlebased madrona venture group aim to back exiting airbnb employees who are eager to start their own businessesairbnb they are predicting will produce an airbnb mafia akin to the notorious network of founders and investors who sprang out of paypal 15 years ago peter thiel and elon musk among them there are a ton of these people that are raring to go says adler they are mulling over their decisions and the time horizons they want to spend at the company it feels like there is a ton of excitement for people to do whats nextalready airbnb has helped birth two highprofile startups cryptocurrency exchange coinbase inc was founded by brian armstrong who worked for two years as a software engineer at airbnb and database company mesosphere inc was started by florian leibert who also spent time at airbnbwave capital wants to help create more of these airbnblings it wasnt the first to pursue the idea of creating an airbnb mafia there was another fledgling firm trying to raise money in the last year to back the dreams of airbnb employees that effortinitiated by jonathan golden airbnbs former director of product and andrew swain its former cfowas recently abandoned when investors coalesced around wave capital say people familiar with the behindthescenes machinations who asked not to be identified because the details are privateyoud think that all of this would be creating massive headaches for chesky and his crew an airbnb