Whether you are well-versed in global travel or someone just looking for a place to crash overnight during a road trip, chances are you have heard of Airbnb.
Millennials Brian Chesky and his roommate Joe Gebbia were living in a San Francisco apartment in 2007, when the Industrial Designers’ Conference was coming to town. Both men were unemployed and thought to capitalize on the shortage of hotel rooms and accommodations by offering an air mattress and breakfast for $80 per night to designers looking to stay for the conference (hence the name Airbed and Breakfast). They set up a simple website and welcomed three people to stay that showed up at their door.
While this sounded like a great new business opportunity to Brian and Joe, everyone they spoke to would tell them what a bad idea this was, and how no one would rent a room in their home to complete strangers. They invited a friend, Nathan Blecharczyk to help with a business plan, and the months that followed would prove difficult until they were drowning in debt and desperate for a win. After a number of creative yet failed attempts to get the business going, the founders’ spirit and passion caught the eye of Y Combinator, a start-up accelerator program. They were able to procure $20,000 in funding and headed to New York to build relationships with hosts and guide them on how to create the best experience for their guests. (Airbnb Startup Story: The Journey of Airbnb Founder Brian Chesky (boldbusiness.com)
What set the Airbnb site apart from other vacation rental sites, is that it was urban. It was for the adventurous travelers who were also millennials, as opposed to the families renting vacation homes at the Jersey Shore. At the start, it was renting a room while the hosts were still in the home. It offered a millennial college grad a way to make some money on their loft apartment while they crashed on the couch of a friend. People began to feel like real estate moguls without owning real estate. The Inside Story Behind the Unlikely Rise of Airbnb – Knowledge at Wharton (upenn.edu) And while the intent wasn’t to compete with the hotel industry, Airbnb’s exponential growth year over year, began to get the attention of hotels.
Now, with over 4 million hosts around the world, Airbnb is a publicly traded company with the founders being worth over $9B each. “We had a saying that you would do everything by hand until it was painful. So Joe and I would photograph homes until it was painful, then we’d get other photographers. Then we’d manage them with spreadsheets until it was painful. Then we got an intern.” (Brian Chesky (forbes.com)
While the idea of renting space isn’t unique, and the desire to make one’s stay enjoyable is a tale as old as time, what makes this entrepreneurial story interesting to me is that the founders never fully understood how big their idea could get. They never dreamed of becoming billionaires, and I can appreciate their naivete. Upon learning of the many business plan modifications they made as each one failed, from air mattresses to cereal boxes, the principles that can be applied here are the importance of persistence and creativity. Entrepreneurship is not for the weak, for those who cower at every “no”.
Airbnb’s mission is built around making people around the world feel like they could “belong anywhere”. Even the logo is a squiggly shape that symbolizes “Belonging”. It’s a combination of a heart, a location pin and the “A” in Airbnb. They want travelers to feel like they belong when they land in a place far from home, after a long day’s journey. The company’s culture is one of caring and showing humanity. How Airbnb Found a Mission—and a Brand | Fortune. It is inspiring to be part of a generation that forms businesses around showing compassion to those around us.
I found it interesting that what set it apart from other sites was that it was urban. They found an area that was dormant and was able to take advantage of that and make a huge company out of it.