Entrepreneurs are easy to mystify but at their core, they serve their customers by seeing the world and the problems in it clearly. Discovering a groundbreaking idea is a task of seeing. Seeing the day to day frustrations and problems. Seeing solutions is just recognizing how to improve the way human beings live their lives.
Joe Gebbia is one of the most influential entrepreneurs and designers today. As a millennial, his achievements in cofounding Airbnb set him apart as an innovator. Airbnb may seem like a brilliant idea to some because of its explosive growth and disruption of the overnight housing and tourism industries. But Joe would disagree with that perspective. In his Ted presentation 2 years ago, he didn’t describe unique marketing tactics or groundbreaking discoveries that lead to his success.
We didn’t invent anything new.Hospitality has been around forever.There’s been many other websites like ours.So, why did ours eventually take off?Luck and timing aside,I’ve learned that you can take the components of trust,and you can design for that.Design can overcome our most deeply rootedstranger-danger bias.And that’s amazing to me. It blows my mind. – Joe Gebbia, Ted2016
Entrepreneurs don’t have to reinvent to wheel. The best ones find out how to imagine a world where we can improve the way we do what we already try to do.
I really respect this man and his ideas about doing what we’re already doing but better. I have definitely benefited from his entrepreneurial venture in airbnb and I hope he keeps thinking of ways to disrupt and innovate in new market spaces.
This is a very interesting perspective. I have not heard it before about Airbnb, but it is very true. Joe Gebbia just took things that already existed and put them together in the right way. He also created a very trusted brand and design, which helped differentiate Airbnb from the other websites like it and before it. Sometimes entrepreneurs just see an idea that can be more organized or designed better. They do not always have to come up with a radically different idea.