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- Unheard Roots of Airbnb 🏡
Question - Where do you stay when you travel?
If you said hotels, something is wrong with you :) 🤨
Any good travelers knows Airbnbs are the best choice.
But how did the $75,000,000,000 company get started?
And more importantly, how did Airbnb achieve 100 years worth of growth in only 10 years?
Seriously, Hilton was started in 1919 and has a 37 billion dollar market cap right now while Airbnb has a 75 billion dollar market cap.
Airbnb has only been around for 14 years and it’s achieved more growth than Hilton in that time 🤯
This is a story you will want to hear, it’s packed with valuable lessons on growing startups & achieving unfathomable levels of growth.
Designer by Trade 👩🎨
When it comes to startups, there is usually one figure that acts as the companies face - even if there are multiple founders.
That guy for Airbnb is Brian Chesky - a designer by trade.
Brian Chesky
Long story short Brian was always told to get a high paying job since his mother was a social worker and didn’t earn much money at all.
When Brian decided he wanted to be an artist, he was told he was crazy by his mom for choosing such a low paying field but he ignored the backlash and went to college for design.
“One day I tell my mom, I said I’m going to be an artist and she said oh my god you chose the only job in America that will pay less than a social worker.”
The story goes Brian graduated Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and decided to move to LA (says he always had the dream of moving to California).
In LA, Brian got a job as an industrial designer at a design agency.
Existential Crisis & Quitting 🤬
This is where everything changed for Brian Chesky - At the design agency Brian was given a lot of projects where he worked with entrepreneurs and startups.
One particular project really made an impression on Brian.
That project was helping a magician design a toilet seat for a show called American Inventor (think Shark Tank but for the early 2000s).
“So all of a sudden before I knew it I was designing a toilet seat for a magician.”
The magician had applied to the American Inventor show with a business idea and upon being accepted was given money to hire a design firm to help design his product.
“It was a cool project but I realized that myself, whats the difference between me and this magician and I thought to myself the difference is they made the chance to be an entrepreneur. I didn’t. “
The project made him reflect on what he truly wanted to do - did he want to be like the people building & growing cool companies or the guy designing their products.
“So my life was like I’m in a car. The road in front of me looks exactly like the road behind me.”
Take a wild guess at what he did.
The Butt Shaped Pillows that changed history 🧽
During this existential crisis, a friend of Brian from RISD had started selling a product called Crit Buns and sent Brian a pair.
Seeing his friend from college start a company and succeed (they were making solid sales with the butt shaped pillows) was the last nail in the coffin for Brian.
The friend selling the crit buns invited Brian to San Fransisco since that was the place to be for entrepreneurship.
“And he said come to San Fransisco and this was like my call to adventure. There might be a few times in your life where you make a decision and everything about your life changes after that decision and thats what happened.”
Again take a wild guess at what Brian did :)
Moving to SF with $1000 in the bank 🌉
“I packed everything in the backseat of a Honda Civic, I have a 1000 dollars in the bank and I get to San Fransisco and Joe [Brians friend] tells me the rent is $1,150. I thought well I should have asked that before I came up to San Fransisco.”
Good news - Brian was now in San Fransisco and ready to be like all the entrepreneurs he worked for as a designer.
Bad news - He barely had enough money to afford rent, rent was $1,150 while all he had was $1,000 in the bank.
Desperate for a way to make ends meet, Brian started looking for ways to make money.
And sure enough an opportunity presented itself.
The same week a huge international design conference was being hosted and every single hotel listed on website of the conference was fully booked.
See where I’m going with this?
This meant people would be looking for other options for accommodation in SF and Brian could give people an airbed to sleep on and charge for it.
And cut 🎬
So far you have the big picture of all the events that led to the start of Airbnb.
Now it’s time to get specific and talk about the real war stories + strategies.
Time to get into the details of how Airbnb went from a side hustle to the $75 billion giant it is today.
But you’ll have to wait for that part.
Because who doesn’t love a good cliffhanger… :)
I’ll see ya next Saturday with all the war stories 🥷