Airbnb (Chapter 3) – Transcript

Chapter #3: Targeting Conference Attendees

They tried to host more people by targeting conference attendees.

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Joe: Well, I’m looking at my laptop and there’s a design conference that’s coming to San Francisco, The Industrial Designers conference and on the conference website, in big red letters, it said, “Hotels sold out” and I’m thinking, oh man, what a bummer. Designers who want to come last minute, they’re not gonna have a place to stay and in that instant, I look up and I’m looking around the living room. I go wait. We have so much extra space here and I have air beds in the closet and the idea of hosting people on air beds had gradually become natural to me and the thinking is there’ll be more than just the place to sleep. We can cook breakfast in the morning, we’ll pick them up from the airport, we’ll give them a neighborhood guide and a map to San Francisco.

Guy: So, how did you get the word out? How did the designers know that this was available?

Joe: Well, we didn’t want to use any of the classified websites because there’s going to be people in our home, so we, made our own.

Guy: What do you mean you made your own?

Joe: Well, we designed our own website.

Guy: But how did? So, you designed your own website that said what ?

Joe: Well, it said who we were, it said about this concept of stay with us and we’ll provide these things for you.

Guy: So, this website was just for the design conference.

Joe: That’s it. It was meant to be for one weekend.

Guy: What did you call the website?

Joe: It was a literally called Airbedandbreakfast.com and we start to get emails from around the world. Designers who needed a place to stay. Emails from London, from Brazil, from Japan. People actually started sending us their resumes, their LinkedIn profiles to vie for one of these limited three air beds.

Guy: And for how much was it?

Joe: For $80 a night. You could stay in San Francisco with Brian and I.

Guy: That’s a great deal.

Joe: It was an amazing deal.

Guy: Do you remember who your first guests were?

Joe: Yeah. It was a Mo, Kathrine and Michael. They were the first three guests and you know, what happened next, I don’t think we could have predicted. They stayed with us and we got to show them San Francisco, they got to feel like they belonged there in the sense that they didn’t feel like outsiders, you know what I mean?

Guy: Yeah.

Joe: And you know, I’ll never forget saying goodbye and watching the door click close and thinking with Brian, wait, what if we made it possible for other people to also share their experience and to host guests in their homes and show off their city.

Guy: Yeah. Wait. At what point did you and Brian look at each other go, okay man, I think this is our business? Was it like right after that door closed and clicked?

Joe: I wish it was but I can’t say that was the case. So, that December, we both went home for holiday and at a respective New Year’s Eve parties, everyone has asked, “so, what are you doing in San Francisco? We say, well. we’re entrepreneurs. “Well, what are you entrepreneuring?” and we didn’t really have very much other than to say, well, let me tell you about this time when we hosted these three guests on air beds in our apartment and one of two things happened. People that said, “oh my God. That’s the coolest thing in the world. Where can I do that? Or they said, “that is the most bizarre, creepiest thing I’ve ever heard” and they left the conversation and I think one of the things that I’ve learned is that great ideas, I think they usually start out as polarizing. They’re not kind of like, yeah, that’s kind of okay. They either really tug on somebody’s emotions or a latent desire that they have that’s never been answered before or they really perturb them in some way but as long as there’s people who really gravitate to the idea, to me, that’s a signal that you might be onto something.

Guy: So, what did you do? How would you guys do it next?