Airbnb (Chapter 2) – Transcript

They Have Disrupted Our Perception of Renting to Strangers!

これは、AirbnbのCo-founder Joe GabbiaのインタビューのTranscriptです。解説ページは、こちらです。英語表現の説明やビジネス側面からの解説が書いてあります。ご興味があれば、是非どうぞ!

joe gabbia airbnb english 英語
Joe Gabbia
guy raz airbnb english 英語
Guy Raz

Chapter #2: A Risk Gave Birth to Airbnb Idea

With their rent suddenly raised 25%, they need to make cash.

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Joe: Oh my God! Yes! I mean, that first week felt like RISD again. This place is full of ideas and then something ominous happened. A letter came in the mail. I opened it up, it’s addressed to me. I pulled it out and it’s from our landlord, who politely states that our rent is now 25 .

Guy: Wait. Just doing one month, he raised by 25 percent?

Joe: 25 percent.

Guy: And that’s legal?

Joe: It was not under rent control.

Guy: Okay.

Joe: Believe me I looked into it.

Guy: Yeah and so, you were like freaking out?

Joe: Of course. I went random. My online banking and was like, oh my God, oh my God! Can I make rent next month and Brian, the same thing and we realized that we we almost couldn’t. We weren’t getting paychecks at this point.

Guy: Yeah.

Joe: So, this is a moment where our backs are against the wall and I feel like all the creative training that we had received started to pay off because we started to think about, okay, well, how can we design our way out of this and that was when I reflected on a previous experience that I had back in Providence.

The day before that, I drove cross-country, I sold off all my stuff and when I was having that yard sale, this guy pulls up in the red Mazda Miata and he starts looking at my stuff and I’m getting pretty annoyed cause I’m ready to go home but he ends up buying a piece of art that I was selling. So, we get to talking and he tells me all about how he’s about to go into the Peace Corps and he’s driving cross-country and he doesn’t know a soul in Providence, so, I invite and I make the mistake of asking him, ‘so, where you’re staying tonight? And he makes it worse by saying “Actually, I don’t have a place”, and I’m thinking, oh man, what do you do?

Guy: Like you have to give him a place.

Joe: Like, we’ve all been there, right? Like do I host this guy? So, before I know what I’m saying, I’m like, hey, you can stay on an air bed in my living room. So, that night, I set him up in the living room and I go to bed and I try to fall asleep. I’m staring at the ceiling thinking, oh my God, what have I done? There’s a complete stranger in my living room. What if he’s psychotic? So I get up, I tiptoe to my door and I lock in my bedroom door. The next morning, we wake up, we get breakfast together, it turns out he was not psychotic and the piece of art that he bought hangs in his classroom. He’s a teacher now.

Guy: And he’s still… Presumably, you’re still in touch with him.

Joe: Yeah. His name is Joseph, we’re still in touch.

Guy: So, this is the dude that . So, how did you…? So, you’re in your apartment, your rents going up 25 percent and what? You say, ‘Let’s just rent out a room in our apartment?