Brian Chesky and a Joe Gebbia founded Airbnb in 2008. They got the idea when there was a conference in town that completely booked all the nearby hotels. They decided to take advantage of the circumstances and rent out air mattresses and space in their apartment to those who couldn’t find a hotel to make enough money to pay rent, this is where they got the name Air bed and Breakfast. After their success, they decided to create a website that offered their apartment as an alternative to those that couldn’t book a hotel during the large conferences that were held in San Francisco. After launching their website, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia traveled around the US to meet with users and promote their business to potential investors, it didn’t take long for them to see success. Just one year later they had around 3,000 listings and only a few years after that, they also started to offer their services in foreign countries. Now in 2022 Airbnb is a multi-billion dollar company with thousands of listing across the world.
These two entrepreneurs innovated the house rental industry by appealing to renters and being on average a cheaper option than hotels, Airbnb is also starting to beat hotels in the hospitality sector as well. Back in 2008 they even made $30,000 selling presidential candidate themed cereal at conventions during the elections.
AirBnB is an awesome business concept and its been neat to see it develop from its humble beginnings. I never new the story of how it got started but its cool to have been able to learn more about the company and see how a company can reshape the hotel/lodging industry.
As AirBnB is still such a popular brand, its so cool to see that the founders were young and it began so small. Even though their company picked up quick, it has only continued to become more popular and utilized.
It is crazy to see the success that Airbnb has seen over the past few years. My family and I have used them many times and have always enjoyed our experiences. Even through some scandals and controversies, Airbnb has prevailed and continued to succeed and has still seen growth. It is incredible to see the success from such a great idea and I cannot wait to see what they do next!