The Representative

India's Youth News Tank

Airbnb- From 3 airbed to a $100 billion company

2 min read
airbnb

It started with 3 airbeds and $80 per night with all the hotels in the city being booked, which now is a $100 billion company!

Broke and unemployed Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia were looking for ways to earn money in 2007 when due to the Industrial Design conference all the hotels in their city were occupied. Seeing the opportunity the duo bought 3 airbeds and launched Airbedandbreakfast.com now known as Airbnb. Charging $80 dollars for a night with a home-cooked breakfast, they managed to get 2 men and a woman as their customers.

Soon realizing that this could be a big idea, they together with Nathan Blecharcyk, build it into a business and relaunched the same in 2008. They went unnoticed. Reaching out to 15 angel investors with a 3 click book model they got rejected by all 15.

Broke and with debts founders of Airbnb decided to relaunch it in the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver which attracted a huge crowd. Also launching Obama O’s a cereal box sold by them on streets for $40 with a limited edition number and the information about their company. This got the company a $30,000 fund to bootstrap their dream and an invitation to Y Combinator a startup accelerator. But they got rejected again.

Not giving up, they started visiting their hosts in New York City, staying at their apartment, writing reviews, and clicking pictures of the place. In March of 2009, the company was renamed to a much easier Airbnb. And a month later they even got a $600,000 investment from Sequoia Capital which accelerated the company! Airbnb was in 89 countries and had got 1 million nights booked by 2011 when some VCs at the Silicon Valley invested $112 million making it a billion-dollar company. The company faced many backlashes from the hosts and the local governments which they tackled with millions of dollars and agreeing with the government policies.

Today what started as $80 for a night with 3 airbeds on the floor is worth close to $100 billion with their share listed on NASDAQ as Airbnb Inc.

Source : The Economic Times and Business Insider

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.