Airbnb, the English name of Airbnb, is an abbreviation, and its full name is "AirBed and Breakfast", so this company was once translated as "air accommodation".
Airbnb's early website.
An accidental super idea
In 2004, Brian Ceschi, a 23-year-old ordinary young man from an ordinary family in the suburbs of new york, graduated from Rhode Island Art College. His parents are social workers. They think that Cesc will go back to his hometown after graduation, and if he can find a job, he will probably sell insurance. Fortunately, Cesc soon found a job as an industrial designer in Los Angeles.
Until 2007, Cesc, a designer who painted at work and played games after work, received a phone call from his college friend Joe Gebia, in which Gebia invited Cesc to start a business in San Francisco. Cesc, who thought he had no business sense since he was a child and never thought about starting a business, quit his job in a daze and came to San Francisco alone with all his net worth-$65,438+$0,000.
However, as soon as he arrived in San Francisco, Cesc found himself bankrupt-his deposit was $65,438+0,000, but the rent was already $65,438+0,200. At that time, the global industrial designers conference was about to open in San Francisco, but the local hotel rooms were full. Because they couldn't afford the high rent, they decided to put some air mattresses for rent at home, so they set up a simple website called airbedandbreakfast.com and rented it to three tenants at a price of $80 per night. This website is the predecessor of Airbnb today.
This rental not only enabled them to successfully pay the rent, but also showed them a huge unmet demand. Having tasted the sweetness of "earning extra money", Sessky and Gebia found Nathan Blecharczyk, a former roommate who knows technology, to help improve the website. They plan to further expand the popularity of the website before and after the 2008 Democratic National Congress. However, they suffered a heavy blow. They prepared nearly 800 houses for the meeting. However, during the meeting, only two visitors used their website, one of whom was a basic chess player.
Life saving cereal
In the summer of 2008, they completed the development of the final version of Airbnb website. After the website went online, they were introduced to 15 angel investors. At that time, they wanted to raise $654.38+$500,000 at a valuation of $654.38+$500,000. Of the 654.38+0.5 investors, 7 did not reply at all, and the rest of the investors replied to the reasons for refusing the visa in the mail. Brian said in an interview that many people had told him that Airbnb was the last successful and worst entrepreneurial idea they knew. Some 1 of the investors decided to meet with Cesc and others. However, they didn't make a slide show of product promotion without financing experience, but decided to let investors go directly to their website. Unfortunately, the website crashed, so they lost the only investor who replied.
"This idea is terrible!"
In June 2008 +065438+ 10, a friend recommended the three of them to try to apply for YC business incubator quickly. After a long time, they had the opportunity to meet Paul Graham, the founder of YC. Paul graham is the undisputed "godfather of entrepreneurship" in Silicon Valley, and many of his ideas have directly influenced startup companies in Silicon Valley. Before being interviewed by YC, Cesc planned to bring two boxes of cereal, but two other people stopped him.
This idea is terrible. "paul graham doesn't like this crazy idea in the interview, and thinks that people who want to rent the house to strangers are sick. Later, Graham asked a series of business questions to three people, which made Cesc and others speechless. 10 minutes later, the interview is over. When the three of them were about to leave, Cesc took out the cereal he had quietly brought for Graham. Graham was a little embarrassed and thought they were trying to bribe themselves. But Seth and others said that this was the box of cereal they made themselves, and told Graham the story of Obama and McCain's cereal.
Later, on their way back, they received a phone call from Graham, who decided to provide the three people with $20,000 in start-up funds to let the entrepreneurial team join YC's incubation project. He said, "Since you can persuade people to spend $40 on a box of cereal worth $4, you may persuade people to sleep in someone else's living room."
Let users fall madly in love with your product.
Graham gave Cesc and others two pieces of advice:
"Life is the biggest enemy of entrepreneurship". Graham wants them to devote themselves to starting a business. So for four months, three people lived together, got up at 8 o'clock, 12 o'clock went to bed, and only worked every day.
Another suggestion is "100 people love your product, which is better than 100 people like it." It is difficult to make 100 people fall in love, but it is easy to make people like it. Don't always expect the number of users of products to grow to one million. There is no way to make 1 10,000 people welcome Airbnb, but 100 people love Airbnb. Therefore, the strategy of Cesc and others at that time was not to expand, but to optimize the product, and to make users fall in love with the product crazily.
The three founders of Airbnb are Blacka Siak, Gebbia and Ceschi from the left.
Three people went to new york, where the landlords gathered the most, and visited them one by one to understand their needs. Later, they added the service of taking pictures of the landlord. Users were built up bit by bit. After 13 weeks, Airbnb's weekly income increased from the original $200 to $4,500. Since the beginning of 2009, Airbnb's homeowners have started to grow geometrically around the world.
During the 13 week in the incubator, Airbnb's weekly income rose from $200 to $4,500. When the incubation ended in April 2009, Airbnb received an investment of $600,000 from Sequoia Capital. 20 10 year 10 month, the total booking days of Airbnb was only 65,438+million, but by the end of the year, this number had increased to 800,000, achieving a 700% increase within one year. By this time, Airbnb had already left new york and grown into a global network service company.
"Landlord and tenant are at risk, and we compensate"
The three founders of Airbnb have pointed out in quite a few public occasions that the foundation of Airbnb is the trust and friendship between landlords and tenants. However, on 20 1 1, a tenant anonymously rented a landlord's apartment, which brought a public relations crisis to Airbnb. At that time, no one had any insurance, which could provide protection for landlords and tenants like short rent. Therefore, Airbnb issued its own "Landlord Protection Plan" and "Tenant Protection Plan", and set the insurance with a compensation ceiling of $6,543.8+0,000 before judicial intervention. However, this concept of "both the landlord and the tenant have risks, so we will accompany 1 10,000 dollars first" has indeed alleviated the anxiety of the landlord and the tenant to a great extent.
In addition, it is the increasingly fierce market competition. Airbnb is not the first company to focus on the concept of short rent, but it is the first such company to achieve global success, which has certainly attracted the attention of local enterprises in various regions. In many markets, including China and Europe, Airbnb faces competition from local enterprises and established global companies. On this basis, Airbnb has developed a brand-new product-"Airbnb Experience" to improve the overall feeling of tenants when traveling in the local area, which is also in line with the concept advocated by Ceschi and others when they founded Airbnb-cosmopolitan.
Taylor Rains Ensi, a partner of consulting firm Flugel, said that in the tourism market, young people-millennials and Generation X-have proved to have strong spending power. However, their tastes are often quite different from those of the older generation. From the perspective of pursuing individuality, Airbnb chose a travel plan that emphasizes particularity to stimulate the consumption desires and needs of young users.
Attach importance to the China market and create a new growth engine.
From 20 1 1 to 20 18, Airbnb's valuation is getting higher and higher, and it began to make profits in the second half of 20 16. In 20 18, Airbnb vigorously laid out its business in China. During this whole year, Airbnb China spent a lot of energy on marketing. /kloc-65438+ Spring Festival marketing in October, spring marketing in May, and advertisements of stars such as Mark Chao and Sandra were also put in August. This report card also proves the immediate effect of these marketing activities-the business in China has nearly tripled. The head of Airbnb's China area also believes that China market will become Airbnb's largest source country in 2020.
When we started our business in 2008, Airbnb had only three tenants. By April 2065438+2009, 500 million tenants had moved into Airbnb. Since its inception, Airbnb landlords have earned more than $65 billion in revenue on the platform. Facing the future, Cesc listed his expectations for the goal of this enterprise in an open letter, that is, he should focus on becoming an evergreen enterprise and be responsible to shareholders.
"The success of a company is not only responsible for users and shareholders, but also thinking about the development of the next generation. One of the reasons why Airbnb has been able to receive thousands of travelers in the past ten years is that it is based on trust, and all this is just the starting point of our adventure. " Cesc said.
Airbnb's founding story tells us that the best idea may be its original idea. When the first dream didn't come true, Airbnb began to pursue new dreams. In this respect, Airbnb is very similar to other technology companies in Silicon Valley. What these successful companies have in common is: constantly improving their experience, courageously pursuing their dreams, and putting the interests of users before the interests of enterprises.
"Airbnb Welcome: Creating Users' Favorite Products" (Airbnb officially authorized works! Achieve a valuation of 30 billion US dollars, madly attract 500 million enthusiastic users, and subvert the seven product principles of the whole market! Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos, peter teale, paul graham and reid hoffman praised each other and swept the lists of Forbes, Fortune, Time, The New York Times and Washington post. )