Hardware Podcasts

Airbnb: Joe Gebbia

How I Built This · 17 Oct 2016 · 41m

What this episode covers

Joe Gebbia, co-founder of Airbnb, recounts the company's origin story, starting from a rent hike in San Francisco that led to the 'Airbed & Breakfast' experiment during a design conference. After failing to secure venture capital due to investor skepticism about strangers sharing homes, Gebbia and co-founder Brian Chesky pivoted to selling politically themed breakfast cereal ('Obama O's' and 'McCain O's') to raise $30,000 and prove their hustle to Y Combinator. Once accepted into Y Combinator, they learned to 'do things that don't scale' by flying to New York to take professional photos of listings themselves, which doubled their revenue and revealed critical UX flaws, ultimately leading to product-market fit and Series A funding from Sequoia Capital.

Most relevant to

founders before launch and early-stage companies

Topics

Mentioned

Companies
Airbnb, Y Combinator, Sequoia Capital, U.S. Bank, Kellogg, General Mills, CNN
Products
Airbed and Breakfast, Obama O's, McCain O's, Crit Buns
Also
South by Southwest

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