Brian Chesky created Airbnb in his own house, supplying an Airbed and Breakfast to guests for only $80 a night. Being unemployed, this allowed him and Joe Gebbia to pay for their rent. Chesky believed the idea of Airbnb could evolve into a digital platform. After launching it the first time, he and Gebbia noticed it struggled to gain trust and traction. Chesky has publicly shared this was a stressful time for him. He remembers having a binder full of credit cards, an enormous amount of debt, and trouble attracting investors. During the Democrat National Convention in Denver, however, Airbnb started to gain success. This was mainly because a level of trust existed between Obama supporters opening up their homes for other Obama supporters.
As bookings started coming in, Gebbia and Chesky contemplated what their hosts should provide for breakfast. They decided on their own branded cereal: Obama O’s and Cap’n McCains, which were the two presidential candidates at the time. Chesky contacted a variety of cereal companies, including Kellogg’s and General Mills. Yet, they were uninterested. To improvise, Chesky and Gebbia bootstrapped the cereal by handling the designs, supplies, and logistics independently. This endeavor had decent success, amassing $30,000 for Airbnb.
The climax of Airbnb’s beginning was their first round of funding from Y Combinator: an incubator that provides mentorship and financial support for early startups. Since then, Airbnb has grown to become a $100 billion-dollar company. When sharing his story, Chesky confesses this success did not come easy. Many people told him Airbnb was the worst idea ever. Chesky has said:
We had really smart, credible people out their telling us “No.” Had we listen to them, there might not be Airbnb today.
Airbnb shows how an entrepreneur must be flexible, persevere, and learn from failure. If an entrepreneur neglects these attitudes, their business may not last.
Sources
https://getpaidforyourpad.com/blog/the-airbnb-founder-story/
https://www.businessinsider.com/airbnb-ceo-brian-chesky-30-billion-startup-2016-8
Anthony Casalena founded Squarespace after noticing the difficulties of building a website. He was a web designer himself, having a familiarity with technologies such as HTML, Java, and CSS. He thought he could make the process more accessible, enabling anyone to make their own website. While being a student at the University of Maryland, Casalena started building Squarespace. It started as and still is, a drag-and-drop website builder.
Miracle Olatunji is the founder of an OpportuniMe, a platform to connect high schools with opportunities for career development. She started it as a high school student. Olatunji created OpporuntiMe because she wanted to “democratize the process of helping people find opportunities.” Though she knew such programs existed, they were typically too obscure to discover. Olatunji gained her passion for OpportuniMe when she participated in the University of Delaware’s Diamond Challenge. This competition allowed her to see the power of entrepreneurship and how it can be used to instigate fruitful change. Olatunji wanted to start OpportuniMe as soon and as simple as possible; hence, it began as a newsletter. She is now working towards a website that will provide even more resources.
This idea of simplicity is very new and unique. Some companies find it concerning. Others, however, are embracing it. They see the benefit of letting another company maintain their infrastructure so they can focus on their business. Facebook, McDonald’s, The Washington Post, Uber, and Tripadvisor are examples of companies that work with Vercel. Raunch also wants to make the development process more collaborative. This can be seen in the Vercel dashboard, which allows teams to see what others are working on and view previews of the changes.
Unlike other companies, Raunch believes anyone should be able to host a site for free. As such, Vercel offers a free tier that allows customers to host unlimited sites within reasonable limits. Paid plans are based on the number of team members a company has. This pricing is perfect for big companies and startups alike. It is also competitive with other platforms. Many have moved their sites to Vercel because of this reason alone. Another attractive feature is Vercel’s global network, which allows customers to distribute their website across the world within seconds. This is a particularly interesting innovation. Before, companies had to choose a single location for their servers. Vercel’s technology allows for multiple locations, each being optimized, updated, and maintained automatically.
Matthew Mullenweg is the founder of WordPress, a popular blogging and website platform used by one-third of the internet. Although WordPress is a free product, Mullenweg has still been able to create a thriving business. Mullenweg, being a blogger himself, saw a lack of free blogging platforms. He previously used b2/cafelog, which was free but outdated. Upon seeing this problem, the idea of WordPress was born. Mullenweg, alongside Mike Little, took the codebase of b2/cafelog and began the first version of WordPress in 2003. As other blogging platforms increased their pricing, consumers began looking for alternatives. Many flocked to WordPress because it was free and highly customizable. Once WordPress started to grow, Mullenweg added new features that would attract even more users. Examples include forums, moderation, spam prevention, and themes.
