Rent on their San Francisco apartment had just gone up, and neither of them had the cash to cover it. A design conference was coming to San Francisco, and every hotel in the city was booked. Chesky and Gebbia set up air mattresses in their living room and rented them out to conference attendees for the meager sum of $80 a night.
They expected guests like themselves to turn up at their door; other 20-somethings passing through for the conference and looking for a place to crash. Instead, their first booking included a father of five from Utah, a 35-year-old woman from Boston and a man from India. "It was a modest beginning.
It was never envisioned to be a company, really. Joe and Brian were just solving their own personal problem, which was that they had quit their jobs to become entrepreneurs, also known as unemployed," Nathan Blecharczyk, who joined the company that would become known as Airbnb a few months later as its third co-founder, told Newsweek. Chesky and Gebbia accompanied their guests to the conference, introduced them to friends and wider network and showed them a side of San Francisco most tourists never see.
More than a place to sleep, the group encountered a unique social experience that was unlike anything a hotel or hostel could deliver. The company officially launched that August as Airbed and Breakfast, timed to the Democratic National Convention in Denver. Y Combinator invested in January 2009, and the name shortened to its final incarnation of Airbnb a couple of months later.
Nearly two decades on, Airbnb hosts stays in everything from spare bedrooms and city apartments to actual castles. It's also one of the most reputable and trusted names in online travel. Pinpointing one feature that has led to the brand’s reputation and success might sound like a tall order.
And yet, Blecharczyk doesn’t hesitate to answer, saying it’s “clear” in his mind. I mean, first of all, trust is everything. And if there's one thing we've innovated on, it's how do you create trust?
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