Look, I’d be lying if I said I’d always wanted to cover Chesky and Airbnb. I hadn’t really read much about either of them. The business itself sounds pretty humdrum. People renting out apartments, spare rooms. Nothing really new or exciting there. And Chesky himself has always flown under the radar.
But each week the story I pick just depends on what catches my fancy and last week, for whatever reason, I thought, you know what, I know absolutely nothing about this guy. I want to dig into it.
And what a story.
Because Chesky and his co-founders basically took one of the crappiest business ideas — renting out airbeds on apartment floors — and through sheer tenacity and a fantastic understanding of how a product should work, they turned it into a $100 billion company.
But it’s really the stories behind the company that make this so good. Making their own cereal to clear their debts. Not knowing what a slide deck or an angel investor was. Coming up against the king of the clones, the dreaded Samwer brothers from Germany, losing 80% of their business when Covid hit.
It all makes for a cracking story.
Enjoy.