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Jonathan Lowenhar is the co-founder of Enjoy The Work, an executive coaching firm that helps founders become great CEOs. Over the past decade, Enjoy The Work has supported over 165 founders on their journey to becoming better leaders. In our conversation, we discuss:• The difference between being a founder and being a CEO• Common failure modes for startup CEOs and how to avoid them• The four key elements of an effective go-to-market strategy• A framework for evaluating potential acquisitions: the magic box paradigm• How to find and hire the best people• How to build a repeatable GTM machine• Why founders need to trust their intuition• Much more—Brought to you by:• Pendo—The only all-in-one product experience platform for any type of application• OneSchema—Import CSV data 10x faster• Vanta—Automate compliance. Simplify security—Find the transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-a-great-founder-becomes-a-great-ceo-jonathan-lowenhar—Where to find Jonathan Lowenhar:• X: https://x.com/jlowenhar• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jlowenhar/• Enjoy the Work: https://etw.live/lenny—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Jonathan's background(02:56) Understanding the rhythm of well-run companies(09:20) The founder mode vs. manager mode debate(12:05) Common company failure modes(13:36) Common CEO failure modes(25:25) The magic box paradigm for selling your startup(43:07) Advice for founders on building relationships(49:28) Hiring and building an amazing team(57:11) Types of executives: architect, optimizer, scaler(59:45) Working backward in hiring(01:02:54) Four key components of a go-to-market strategy(01:15:01) Trusting founder intuition(01:19:12) Founder vs. CEO: different roles, different skills(01:20:52) Closing thoughts and lightning round—Referenced:• Founder mode memes: https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/04/those-founder-mode-memes-keep-coming/• Founder mode: https://paulgraham.com/foundermode.html• “Founder Mode” Is a Dangerous Red Herring: https://enjoythework.com/founder-mode-is-a-dangerous-red-herring/• Magic Box Paradigm: A Framework for Startup Acquisitions: https://www.amazon.com/Magic-Box-Paradigm-Framework-Acquisitions/dp/0692778047• Facebook Buys Instagram for $1 Billion: https://archive.nytimes.com/dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/04/09/facebook-buys-instagram-for-1-billion/• Chris Voss on X: https://x.com/fbinegotiator• Who: https://www.amazon.com/Who-Geoff-Smart/dp/0345504194• Brian Chesky on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianchesky/• Joe Gebbia on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jgebbia/• Nathan Blecharczyk on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/blecharczyk/• 4 questions Shreyas Doshi wishes he'd asked himself sooner | Former PM leader at Stripe, Twitter, Google: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/shreyas-doshi-live• Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth: https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Startup-Achieve-Explosive-Customer/dp/1591848369• Adam Grant on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adammgrant/• This will make you a better decision maker | Annie Duke (author of “Thinking in Bets” and “Quit,” former pro poker player): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/making-better-decisions-annie-duke• How to identify your ideal customer profile (ICP): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-to-identify-your-ideal-customer• How to get your marketing team to drive more impact: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-to-get-your-marketing-team-to• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable: https://www.amazon.com/Five-Dysfunctions-Team-Leadership-Fable/dp/0787960756• The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself: https://www.amazon.com/Untethered-Soul-Journey-Beyond-Yourself/dp/1572245379• Will & Harper on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81760197• Slow Horses on AppleTV+: https://tv.apple.com/us/show/slow-horses/umc.cmc.2szz3fdt71tl1ulnbp8utgq5o• Aura frames: https://auraframes.com/• Augie studio: https://augie.studio/• Harrah's Entertainment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrah%27s_Entertainment—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.—Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe
Got a product, app, or idea you want to bring to life? Nathan Blecharczyk, co-founder of Airbnb, shares how he helped turn a simple concept into a global brand. I talk with him about Airbnb's early days, the challenges they faced, and their new Co-Host Network. Plus, he explains how Airbnb tackles concerns like hidden cameras in rentals.
Got a product, app, or idea you want to bring to life? Nathan Blecharczyk, co-founder of Airbnb, shares how he helped turn a simple concept into a global brand. I talk with him about Airbnb's early days, the challenges they faced, and their new Co-Host Network. Plus, he explains how Airbnb tackles concerns like hidden cameras in rentals.
Guest post by Sally Percy is the author of new book The Disruptors: How 15 Successful Businesses Defied the Norm, published by Kogan Page on 03 September. We will shortly be reviewing this book too. What's the secret to disruptive business success? Well, there's no denying that an ultra-powerful algorithm certainly helps. Take social media giant, TikTok, for example. It became a global phenomenon on the back of its powerful recommendation algorithm, which learns users' interests from their viewing habits and makes compelling, personalized recommendations that keep them hooked. The Disruptors, achieving disruptive business success Another disruptive business that has capitalized on algorithms is music streaming platform Spotify. Its highly effective algorithms analyse the listening habits of hundreds of millions of users, make connections based on historical listening behaviour, and then predict what individual listeners will want to hear in future. As a result, it delivers a highly personalized experience that listeners love. TikTok and Spotify are two of the groundbreaking businesses that I studied for my book, The Disruptors: How 15 Successful Businesses Defied the Norm. Along with the other businesses I researched, they can teach powerful lessons on achieving disruptive success. While investment in state-of-the-art technology is a common characteristic of disruptors, they also embrace these three critical strategies: Do what other businesses don't dare to do It's a risk to try to turn your product's greatest weakness into its greatest strength. But that's what casual footwear brand Crocs did with its foam-based shoes. Even Crocs' own inventors thought they were ugly. But would-be customers were willing to overlook the shoes' unusual appearance because of their sheer practicality and comfortable fit. So, the brand turned the unattractiveness of the shoes into a marketing advantage, using the strapline 'Ugly Can Be Beautiful' in an advertising campaign. Crocs has successfully established itself as a "love or hate" brand, which has enabled it to generate a huge amount of traction in the fashion marketplace and earn the enduring loyalty of consumers. Thanks to their iconic design, Crocs are instantly recognisable - even if they are not to everyone's taste. Execute a concept better than anyone else Home-sharing platform Airbnb was not the first website in the US to enable people to book short-term accommodation. But who needs to be the first mover when you can execute the concept better than anyone else? Two out of Airbnb's three co-founders, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia, come from a design background. This helped enormously when it came to building the company's distinctive brand, which is grounded in the concept of community. The third co-founder, Nathan Blecharczyk, studied computer science at Harvard and, from the outset, made clever use of technology to help Airbnb gain a competitive edge. By developing a better product and a more distinctive brand, Airbnb has overtaken its rivals. In fact, the concept of staying in Airbnb accommodation has become so well known that 'Airbnb' is even used as a verb by people looking to rent space. Tackle big problems Disruptive businesses like to tackle big problems - and problems don't get much bigger than climate change. Electric car maker Tesla is tackling this challenge head-on, through its self-proclaimed mission to build a world "powered by solar energy, running on batteries and transported by electric vehicles". Climate change isn't the only problem that Tesla is trying to address, however. It is also trying to make car travel safer through automation, reducing the number of deaths in road traffic accidents. Specifically, Tesla has plans to launch the so-called 'robotaxi', an autonomous car that is able to drive itself completely without human intervention. What makes a disruptor? While disruptive businesses will inevitably share some similarities, the business model of no two disru...
In today's episode, Neil Harvey delves into the essence of Airbnb as a company. He provides a detailed backstory of Airbnb's founding by Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, and Nathan Blecharczyk in 2007, highlighting their innovative approach to offering accommodation. Neil emphasizes the significance of understanding Airbnb's vision and philosophy, particularly focusing on the company's commitment to fostering genuine human connections through hosting. He also shares valuable insights into why he exclusively uses Airbnb as his booking portal, citing reasons such as extensive marketing support, insurance coverage, guest verification, streamlined payment processes, and exceptional customer service. KEY TAKEAWAYS Airbnb was founded in 2007 by three friends who saw a gap in the market for travelers to be hosted by locals, providing a more personalized and authentic experience. Airbnb has over 7 million listings run by more than 4 million hosts, with hosts making at least £6,000 a year and some making up to a million pounds annually. Airbnb's vision goes beyond just renting out space; they aim to create genuine human connections globally, promoting a heart and soul business model. Airbnb handles marketing, insurance, guest verification, payments, and has a strong customer rating, making it a hassle-free platform for hosts. Utilize the tools provided by Airbnb and leverage your property to create a successful hosting experience, as the success triangle consists of you, your property, and Airbnb. BEST MOMENTS "I've hosted over 1,200 guests from over 40 countries around the world." "Airbnb provides a platform that promotes genuine human connections globally." "Airbnb has one of the strongest customer ratings in the industry with more than 96% of guests being happy with the site, service and their stay." "Hosting is a deeply human experience." "To make some extra money, just sign up with Airbnb." ABOUT THE HOST Neil has led a fulfilled and unconventional life, navigating an extraordinary journey from the Royal Navy to prop-making in London's West End theatres. Born into a military family, it was a twist of fate which led him to the theatre, where he contributed to iconic productions such as Phantom of the Opera. Eventually, Neil transitioned to Corporate Event Team Building, eventually founding his own venture in 1999. Financial challenges in 2017 are what prompted a strategic shift to Airbnb hosting, proving a reliable backup income. By 2021, Neil and his business partner triumphed over significant debt, fuelled by their resilience and the success of Neil's Airbnb venture. Now, Neil has left the corporate world behind, thriving solely through his flourishing Airbnb endeavours. ABOUT THE SHOW Welcome to "The Airbnb Superhost," your ultimate guide to mastering the art of hosting on Airbnb. In each concise 15-minute episode, Neil will reveal the secrets to creating unforgettable guest experiences and maximizing the potential of your property, drawing on over 8 consecutive years as a qualifying Airbnb Superhost. With a focus on 3 specific aspects of running an Airbnb business; the host, the property, and Airbnb itself, Neil provides step-by-step guidance on everything from ambiance creation to effective communication. In each episode, a Superhost Secret will help you elevate your hosting game and keep guests coming back for more. Whether you're a seasoned host or just starting out, Neil's actionable tips and tricks will help you become a hospitality superstar. Disclaimer: The Airbnb Superhost is in no way affiliated with Airbnb. All ideas, thoughts, concepts and data presented in this podcast are entirely Neil's own and do not represent the views of Airbnb.
Giant Ventures is a multi stage venture fund, founded by Cameron McLain and Tommy Stadlen. We recorded these first episodes at our live Giant Ideas summit, held at London's Tate Modern. The Giant Ideas summit brings together 200 founders, CEOs, heads of state and other leaders to explore how we can harness cutting edge technology as a force for good. Today we bring you an interview with Nathan Blecharczyk, the co-founder of Airbnb. Airbnb is one of the biggest technology success stories of the last 20 years and, at the time of recording, they have a market cap of 90 billion dollars.Airbnb is the ultimate ‘Giant Idea': when they started the idea of staying in a stranger's home was unthinkable, and 14 years later they've had over a billion stays. But it didn't begin with a grand vision and there were plenty of false starts. In this interview, Nathan talks about the power of purpose, and specifically how Airbnb's values helped them survive a series of crises including a racism scandal involving hosts, guests trashing apartments, and losing 80% of their revenue in 8 weeks during the pandemic. Asking the questions here at the Giant Ideas summit was CNBC and Sky News anchor, Wilfred Frost.Music credits: Bubble King written and produced by Cameron McLain and Stevan Cablayan aka Vector_XING.Building or investing in purpose driven companies? Read more about Giant Ventures here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Brian Chesky is the co-founder and CEO of Airbnb. Under Brian's leadership, Airbnb has grown into a community of over 4 million hosts who have welcomed more than 1.5 billion guests across over 220 countries and regions. I had the privilege of working under his leadership, so it is a great honor to have him on the show. We discuss:• How Airbnb has shifted their thinking on product management• Why bureaucracy happens in companies, and how to avoid it• The importance of founders diving into the details• Why Airbnb moved away from traditional growth channels and what they are doing instead• Airbnb's newly released features• How and why Brian encourages his team to set ambitious goals• Why he says he still has a lot to prove—Enter to win $1,000 in Airbnb credit: https://forms.gle/UX7mWoajxhVPi9bK9—Brought to you by Sidebar—Catalyze your career with a Personal Board of Directors | Jira Product Discovery—Atlassian's new prioritization and roadmapping tool built for product teams | Eppo—Run reliable, impactful experiments—Find the transcript for this episode and all past episodes at: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/episodes/. Today's transcript will be live by 8 a.m. PT.—Where to find Brian Chesky:• X: https://twitter.com/bchesky• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianchesky/—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Brian's background(05:18) The current structure of product management at Airbnb(09:21) How fast-moving companies become slow-moving bureaucracies(12:20) Brian's thoughts on performance marketing(13:50) Airbnb's rolling two-year roadmap(15:30) Brian's journey as CEO in a growing company(18:34) Best practices for A/B testing (20:30) Who inspired Airbnb's new direction(23:18) The first changes Brian implemented at the onset of the pandemic(24:51) Why founders should be “in the details” (30:15) Airbnb's marketing, communication, and creative functions(31:38) Advice for founders on how to lead(34:15) Tips for implementing Airbnb's business methodology (38:48) Airbnb's winter release(41:47) Why Airbnb no longer has separate guest and host teams (42:38) Brian's thoughts on design trends (45:36) The importance of empowering hosts with great tools(45:57) How setting ambitious goals improves team performance (50:05) Tips for preventing burnout(56:02) Tips for personal and professional growth (58:19) Why Brian says he still has a lot to prove(1:02:58) Paying it forward(1:05:03) A fun fact about Brian(1:09:26) Airbnb's origin story—Referenced:• Localmind: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/localmind• Config 2023 in review: https://www.figma.com/blog/config-2023-recap/• Why Founders Fail: The Product CEO Paradox: https://techcrunch.com/2013/08/10/why-founders-fail-the-product-ceo-paradox/• Hiroki Asai on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hiroki-asai-a44137110/• Jony Ive on Crunchbase: https://www.crunchbase.com/person/jonathan-ive• Charles Eames: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Eames• Airbnb 2023 Winter Release: https://news.airbnb.com/en-in/airbnb-2023-winter-release-introducing-guest-favorites-a-collection-of-the-2-million-most-loved-homes-on-airbnb/• Airbnb 2023 winter release reel: https://x.com/bchesky/status/1722243847751970861?s=20• John Wooden's website: https://coachwooden.com/• An 85-year Harvard study found the No. 1 thing that makes us happy in life: It helps us ‘live longer': https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/10/85-year-harvard-study-found-the-secret-to-a-long-happy-and-successful-life.html• Sam Altman on X: https://twitter.com/sama• Alfred P. Sloan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_P._Sloan• Bob Dylan quote: https://quotefancy.com/quote/950807/Bob-Dylan-An-artist-has-got-to-be-careful-never-really-to-arrive-at-a-place-where-he• OpenAI: https://openai.com/• Michael Seibel's website: https://www.michaelseibel.com/• Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/• The Norman Rockwell Museum: https://www.nrm.org/• Rhode Island School of Design: https://www.risd.edu/• Joe Gebbia on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jgebbia/• Nathan Blecharczyk on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/blecharczyk/—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.—Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe
In dieser Folge "So geht Startup" berichtet Gründerszene-Chefredakteur Alex Hofmann, wie er den Airbnb-Mitgründer Nate Blecharczyk im Backstage-Bereich der Münchner Digital-Konferenz zum exklusiven Interview traf. Dabei hat er von den Anfängen seines Unternehmens erzählt und warum an der Theorie, dass erfolgreiche Firmen in Krisenzeiten gegründet werden, seiner Meinung nach wirklich etwas dran sei.
2008 gründeten drei junge Männer in San Francisco das Startup Airbnb – und machten daraus den größten Vermittler von Übernachtungsmöglichkeiten der Welt. Im OMR Podcast spricht Gründer Nathan Blecharczyk über die Anfänge, millionenschwere Konkurrenz aus Deutschland und die Frage, was Vermieter sagen, wenn plötzlich der Airbnb-Gründer vor ihrer Haustür steht und bei ihnen übernachten will.
The treatment that helps women avoid passing on defective genes to their child. Foldables, tablets and AI expected at Google's I/O event. Thousands prescribed antidepressants “without sufficient scientific proof they help” Apple brings Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro to iPad. In this episode:AirBnB co-founder Nathan Blecharczyk on rise in demand for private roomsExperts: Thousands take antidepressants for pain without proof they workBriton pleads guilty to Twitter hack that included Kim Kardashian and Elon MuskUS challenges hackers to break ChatGPT and other AI modelsMr Beast reportedly buys a whole neighbourhood for his family, friends and employeesFollow us on Twitter #TechScienceDaily Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The $77 bln travel company weathered the pandemic and is now navigating a tech valuation bloodbath. Its co-founder Nathan Blecharczyk told The Exchange podcast that lessons learned during Covid-19 about disruption and never sitting still are key to its future. Visit the Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement for information on our privacy and data protection practices. You may also visit megaphone.fm/adchoices to opt-out of targeted advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Esta semana, Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia y Nathan Blecharczyk, los creadores de AirBNB.
Esta semana, la historia de Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia y Nathan Blecharczyk.
Esta semana, la historia de Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia y Nathan Blecharczyk.
Esta semana, Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia y Nathan Blecharczyk, los creadores de AirBNB.
Entrevista con Nathan Blecharczyk, cofundador, director en Jefe de Estrategia, y director de Airbnb China
Brenden and Billy discuss the story of Airbnb, founded in 2008 by Brian Chesky, Nathan Blecharczyk, and Joe Gebbia.
Today's episode on spam is read by the illustrious Joel Rennich. Spam is irrelevant or inappropriate and unsolicited messages usually sent to a large number of recipients through electronic means. And while we probably think of spam as something new today, it's worth noting that the first documented piece of spam was sent in 1864 - through the telegraph. With the advent of new technologies like the fax machine and telephone, messages and unsolicited calls were quick to show up. Ray Tomlinson is widely accepted as the inventor of email, developing the first mail application in 1971 for the ARPANET. It took longer than one might expect to get abused, likely because it was mostly researchers and people from the military industrial research community. Then in 1978, Gary Thuerk at Digital Equipment Corporation decided to send out a message about the new VAX computer being released by Digital. At the time, there were 2,600 email accounts on ARPANET and his message found its way to 400 of them. That's a little over 15% of the Internet at the time. Can you imagine sending a message to 15% of the Internet today? That would be nearly 600 million people. But it worked. Supposedly he closed $12 million in deals despite rampant complaints back to the Defense Department. But it was too late; the damage was done. He proved that unsolicited junk mail would be a way to sell products. Others caught on. Like Dave Rhodes who popularized MAKE MONEY FAST chains in the 1988. Maybe not a real name but pyramid schemes probably go back to the pyramids so we might as well have them on the Internets. By 1993 unsolicited email was enough of an issue that we started calling it spam. That came from the Monty Python skit where Vikings in a cafe and spam was on everything on the menu. That spam was in reference to canned meat made of pork, sugar, water, salt, potato starch, and sodium nitrate that was originally developed by Jay Hormel in 1937 and due to how cheap and easy it was found itself part of a cultural shift in America. Spam came out of Austin, Minnesota. Jay's dad George incorporated Hormel in 1901 to process hogs and beef and developed canned lunchmeat that evolved into what we think of as Spam today. It was spiced ham, thus spam. During World War II, Spam would find its way to GIs fighting the war and Spam found its way to England and countries the war was being fought in. It was durable and could sit on a shelf for moths. From there it ended up in school lunches, and after fishing sanctions on Japanese-Americans in Hawaii restricted the foods they could haul in, spam found its way there and some countries grew to rely on it due to displaced residents following the war. And yet, it remains a point of scorn in some cases. As the Monty Python sketch mentions, spam was ubiquitous, unavoidable, and repetitive. Same with spam through our email. We rely on email. We need it. Email was the first real, killer app for the Internet. We communicate through it constantly. Despite the gelatinous meat we sometimes get when we expect we're about to land that big deal when we hear the chime that our email client got a new message. It's just unavoidable. That's why a repetitive poster on a list had his messages called spam and the use just grew from there. Spam isn't exclusive to email. Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel sent the first commercial Usenet spam in the “Green Card” just after the NSF allowed commercial activities on the Internet. It was a simple Perl script to sell people on the idea of paying a fee to have them enroll people into the green card lottery. They made over $100,000 and even went so far as to publish a book on guerrilla marketing on the Internet. Canter got disbarred for illegal advertising in 1997. Over the years new ways have come about to try and combat spam. RBLs, or using DNS blacklists to mark hosts as unable to send blacklists and thus having port 25 blocked emerged in 1996 from the Mail Abuse Prevention System, or MAPS. Developed by Dave Rand and Paul Vixie, the list of IP addresses helped for a bit. That is, until spammers realized they could just send from a different IP. Vixie also mentioned the idea of of matching a sender claim to a mail server a message came from as a means of limiting spam, a concept that would later come up again and evolve into the Sender Policy Framework, or SPF for short. That's around the same time Steve Linford founded Spamhaus to block anyone that knowingly spams or provides services to spammers. If you have a cable modem and try to setup an email server on it you've probably had to first get them to unblock your address from their Don't Route list. The next year Mark Jeftovic created a tool called filter.plx to help filter out spam and that project got picked up by Justin Mason who uploaded his new filter to SourceForge in 2001. A filter he called SpamAssassin. Because ninjas are cooler than pirates. Paul Graham, the co-creator of Y Combinator (and author a LISP-like programming language) wrote a paper he called “A Plan for Spam” in 2002. He proposed using a Bayesian filter as antivirus software vendors used to combat spam. That would be embraced and is one of the more common methods still used to block spam. In the paper he would go into detail around how scoring of various words would work and probabilities that compared to the rest of his email that a spam would get flagged. That Bayesian filter would be added to SpamAssassin and others the next year. Dana Valerie Reese came up with the idea for matching sender claims independently and she and Vixie both sparked a conversation and the creation of the Anti-Spam Research Group in the IETF. The European Parliament released the Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications in the EU criminalizing spam. Australia and Canada followed suit. 2003 also saw the first laws in the US regarding spam. The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 was signed by President George Bush in 2003 and allowed the FTC to regulate unsolicited commercial emails. Here we got the double-opt-in to receive commercial messages and it didn't take long before the new law was used to prosecute spammers with Nicholas Tombros getting the dubious honor of being the first spammer convicted. What was his spam selling? Porn. He got a $10,000 fine and six months of house arrest. Fighting spam with laws turned international. Christopher Pierson was charged with malicious communication after he sent hoax emails. And even though spammers were getting fined and put in jail all the time, the amount of spam continued to increase. We had pattern filters, Bayesian filters, and even the threat of legal action. But the IETF Anti-Spam Research Group specifications were merged by Meng Weng Wong and by 2006 W. Schlitt joined the paper to form a new Internet standard called the Sender Policy Framework which lives on in RFC 7208. There are a lot of moving parts but at the heart of it, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, or SMTP, allows sending mail from any connection over port 25 (or others if it's SSL-enabled) and allowing a message to pass requiring very little information - although the sender or sending claim is a requirement. A common troubleshooting technique used to be simply telnetting into port 25 and sending a message from an address to a mailbox on a mail server. Theoretically one could take the MX record, or the DNS record that lists the mail server to deliver mail bound for a domain to and force all outgoing mail to match that. However, due to so much spam, some companies have dedicated outbound mail servers that are different than their MX record and block outgoing mail like people might send if they're using personal mail at work. In order not to disrupt a lot of valid use cases for mail, SPF had administrators create TXT records in DNS that listed which servers could send mail on their behalf. Now a filter could check the header for the SMTP server of a given message and know that it didn't match a server that was allowed to send mail. And so a large chunk of spam was blocked. Yet people still get spam for a variety of reasons. One is that new servers go up all the time just to send junk mail. Another is that email accounts get compromised and used to send mail. Another is that mail servers get compromised. We have filters and even Bayesian and more advanced forms of machine learning. Heck, sometimes we even sign up for a list by giving our email out when buying something from a reputable site or retail vendor. Spam accounts for over 90% of the total email traffic on the Internet. This is despite blacklists, SPF, and filters. And despite the laws and threats spam continues. And it pays well. We mentioned Canter & Sigel. Shane Atkinson was sending 100 million emails per day in 2003. That doesn't happen for free. Nathan Blecharczyk, a co-founder of Airbnb paid his way through Harvard on the back of spam. Some spam sells legitimate products in illegitimate ways, as we saw with early IoT standard X10. Some is used to spread hate and disinformation, going back to Sender Argic, known for denying the Armenian genocide through newsgroups in 1994. Long before infowars existed. Peter Francis-Macrae sent spam to solicit buying domains he didn't own. He was convicted after resorting to blackmail and threats. Jody Michael Smith sold replica watches and served almost a year in prison after he got caught. Some spam is sent to get hosts loaded with malware so they could be controlled as happened with Peter Levashov, the Russian czar of the Kelihos botnet. Oleg Nikolaenko was arrested by the FBI in 2010 for spamming to get hosts in his Mega-D botnet. The Russians are good at this; they even registered the Russian Business Network as a website in 2006 to promote running an ISP for phishing, spam, and the Storm botnet. Maybe Flyman is connected to the Russian oligarchs and so continues to be allowed to operate under the radar. They remain one of the more prolific spammers. Much is sent by a small number of spammers. Khan C. Smith sent a quarter of the spam in the world until he got caught in 2001 and fined $25 million. Again, spam isn't limited to just email. It showed up on Usenet in the early days. And AOL sued Chris “Rizler” Smith for over $5M for his spam on their network. Adam Guerbuez was fined over $800 million dollars for spamming Facebook. And LinkedIn allows people to send me unsolicited messages if they pay extra, probably why Microsoft payed $26 billion for the social network. Spam has been with us since the telegraph; it isn't going anywhere. But we can't allow it to run unchecked. The legitimate organizations that use unsolicited messages to drive business help obfuscate the illegitimate acts where people are looking to steal identities or worse. Gary Thuerk opened a Pandora's box that would have been opened if hadn't of done so. The rise of the commercial Internet and the co-opting of the emerging cyberspace as a place where privacy and so anonymity trump verification hit a global audience of people who are not equal. Inequality breeds crime. And so we continually have to rethink the answers to the question of sovereignty versus the common good. Think about that next time an IRS agent with a thick foreign accent calls asking for your social security number - and remember (if you're old enough) that we used to show our social security cards to grocery store clerks when we wrote checks. Can you imagine?!?!
Dear founders Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, and Nathan Blecharczyk, board members Angela Ahrendts, Ken Chenault, Belinda Johnson, Jeff Jordan, Alfred Lin, and Ann Mather, and all investors, hosts, and guests;I write to you today in the hope that you will radically re-structure your company before it starts a class war in which you will almost certainly lose the lion's share of your wealth, your moral conscience, your place in history as innovators instead of oppressors, and you and your family's physical safety.Brian, Joe, Nathan; you started Airbnb with the best of intentions. You couldn't afford to make rent on your San Francisco apartment, so you bought some air mattresses and served breakfast to your guests. Brilliant.But things of changed since then. Now you control an $80 billion company that has devoured millions of housing units, evicted countless families, and turned their homes into full-time clerkless hotels, with a promise in your IPO documents to fight democracies in court for as long as you can afford to do so.To be clear, renting out spare rooms, attics, basements, and backyards in owner-occupied properties isn't the problem. It's when an investor outbids a family for a second property and turns it into a full-time Airbnb. Or worse, when a holiday rental company does so. Or worse, when a highly-leveraged hedge fund buys a swath of holiday rental companies. Or worse, when a sovereign wealth fund buys a portfolio of hedge funds. It's why the average house will cost $10+ million within 50 years.Picture the future and do the math. Your company's mandate is to grow exponentially forever. If new housing construction doesn't keep up — and it hasn't for more than a decade — it's mathematically impossible that your company won't take hundreds of millions of houses away from real families in the decades ahead. Do you think this will end well for you?As it stands, you have set your company on a path that can only lead to ruin — for millions of houseless families, and eventually, your leadership team and your investors.But it doesn't have to be this way.1. Start with transparencyAs far as we're aware, only 8% of Airbnb hosts are renting a room in a single house, and that number is falling fast. How many million houses has Airbnb taken off the market so far, and how many more are being stolen each month?It's only fair that the commons knows what we're up against. If you want to build real public trust, your company needs to allow independent auditors to track how many of your hosts are actually owners who rent rooms in houses they occupy full-time, versus how many investors have taken a housing unit off the market and turned it into an unregulated clerkless hotel.2. Ensure all your hosts are owner-occupiers onlyYou must revert to your original model. When an owner occupies a house, they take care of it. They know their neighbors. They keep the noise down. They shop locally. They keep the local schools open by sending their kids. They set down roots.Absentee landlords kill communities. They don't have roots. They don't care about noise or safety or cleanliness. They don't care about schools. They don't care about neighbors. All they care about is extracting wealth.Worst of all, the huge proliferation of holiday investors is skyrocketing house prices beyond all affordable values. This means that the real societal contributors — productive workers — have to relocate to less desirable locations further away from their places of work. This is already robbing millions of people of billions of hours of life due to extra commuting, and the environmental toll of all that pollution is yours to bear.All of this could be ameliorated by ensuring that every single one of your hosts is only renting out space in a housing unit that they own and live in full-time.3. Limit the number of rental nights to 14/yearObviously, high year-round commercial availability removes a house from the residential market. The average American gets two weeks of vacation per year. As such, it seems reasonable to limit the number of rental nights to the number of vacation days of the average owner-occupier. Many cities have already started to put such a limit in place, but if your company truly cares about the commons, you'll pre-empt them all by ensuring your hosts are good citizens first, and hosts seconds.In a word, there must be no more full-time Airbnbs in residential homes.4. Stop suing democraciesI realize that part of your business plan includes building a war chest to fight 100,000+ cities in court. But is this really how you want to make your money? By fighting democracy? How will your children and grandchildren look at you when they learn the truth of your actions? Is this how you want history to remember you?Airbnb's fight-the-public-forever model is going to cost you a ton of money, and it's going to cost the commons even more. But do you expect us to just roll over and die? When millions of us don't have a place to live, what will you expect us to do instead?5. Stop bribing CongressLet's face it, the rest of the world calls corporate lobbying what it actually is: bribing. Why do you have 13 lobbying firms in Congress? Why did you hire a PR firm to meet with Scottish delegates on 28 occasions? Why did you fund more than 400 fake grassroots organizations?Instead of bribing corporate-captured puppet politicians to make laws that oppress the commons, why not build a company that doesn't require the overthrow of democracy instead?6. Start building clerkless hotelsClearly, there is a huge market for your business.People don't love the hassle of hotel check-ins and check-outs.They like paying online.They like having kitchens.They like having unique and interesting spaces.If you build it, they will come.Seriously — as more people start to travel regularly, there's likely a market for more than a billion Airbnb hotel units globally. Airbnb could earn (actually earn) a real profit by revolutionizing the hotel industry.You've been bleeding investor cash for nearly a decade, so why not make a profit for a change?7. Start an AirbnbankNow, of course, the sheer brilliance of extraction economy companies is that you take a massive cut of the profits without shouldering any of the risks and costs, shunting all those pesky expenses onto the backs of your army of hosts.So why not continue to pass the buck by giving your hosts an opportunity to invest in full-time commercially-zoned vacation space?Start a bank, give hosts mortgages, and allow them to buy units in Airbnb towers in properly zoned commercial areas. This would allow hosts to skim passive profits off tourists, allow you to make your hefty Airbnb fee, and earn interest like a fat cat Wall Street banker.You could also control maintenance and cleaning and security on these buildings, extracting further fees from your hosts. You could also rent ground-level space to restaurants, fitness centers, food shops, pubs, barbershops, and spas. Heck, you could even save a few floors for office share space and destroy WeWork for good. Best of all, you'd never have to take another residential unit away from a family ever again.Because even one house taken off the residential market to be used as a holiday house is one too many.Like it or not, your company is now the tip of the spear in a movement that is rapidly commodifying global residential real estate. You're leading the charge in turning a human necessity into a tradeable commodity. Access to affordable shelter is a universal human right, and you're devastating real people.A word of warningNow obviously, your full-time job is simply to boost Airbnb's stock price, so I don't expect you'll heed any of these suggestions; in which case, all that's left to say is: Enjoy it while it lasts. Because they're coming for you, and when they do, there will be blood. You thought Occupy Wall Street had a big turnout? Wait until hundreds of millions of evicted renters smash your empire. Rule number one of business: Never back desperate people into a corner. Pretty soon, the listings on your website will just become a hit list.Expect thousands of municipal lawsuits from city councils. Expect class-action lawsuits from evicted renters and priced-out buyers. Expect pitchforks in the streets.Expect bricks through windows and fires in listed properties.Expect homeless mobs climbing the walls of your gated mansions.If you continue on your current course, you will pay reparations one way or the other — so either get a good insurance policy or get back to your original business model so the world may call you blessed.A personal noteMy wife and I are having our first baby in late September. Our house lease expires in March, and our landlord is turning our home into an Airbnb. There isn't a single house to rent at any price within a half-hour drive. We have to leave the village we've come to love these past few years. We want to raise our child in a real home, but let's be honest — our landlords will extract way more money by renting our house out nightly instead of monthly.Our whole village is the same way. Nearly every property that comes up for sale is snapped up in days by a holiday rental company for far more money than any local family can afford to pay. If the trajectory continues — and there's no indication that it won't — there's a good chance our local school will close before our child has a chance to attend.I can't describe to you the sinking feeling I get in my stomach every time a sixty-year-old suburban woman stops in front of our place and says to her husband, “oh, that one would be cute,” or worse, when a holiday rental company van pulls up and snaps a photo of our home.There's a ticking clock that hangs over our heads, counting down the days until we'll inevitably have to move to a less desirable location, into likely a much smaller place, and still pay way more money, thanks to the commodification of real estate in the hands of Airbnb land-lorders.Calls to actionThere is much to be done in this world, and much of it is an undoing.Airbnb investors and board members: For the sake of long-term societal safety and short-term societal affordability, I call on you to divest of Airbnb stock in the same way you would of fossil fuels and weapons of war, or at the very least, become activist members that force the board to abandon its non-owner-occupied position.Airbnb hosts: I encourage you to only rent out rooms or units on your primary residential property, and sell any properties that you have stolen from the commons.Airbnb guests: I encourage you to stay in hotels, resorts, regulated bed and breakfasts, and in real commercially-zoned vacation rental properties, not in residential neighborhoods. If you want to use Airbnb in an ethical manner, do your due diligence to ensure that the property you're renting is a bona fide owner-occupied unit and not a unit that has been taken away from a family. It's deeply troubling to enjoy family vacation time in a space when you know another family has lost theirs — it's time to make the Golden Rule popular again.Citizens: Lobby your city councilors, county clerks, state representatives, and Congresspeople to ban all commercial activity and investment in residential real estate. Whether they include a 500% second house premium, a cost-prohibitive landlording license, or an outright ban on non-owner-occupied clerkless hotel rentals, we simply must drive investors out of the residential real estate market.Please sign this petition to save my village.Please spread the word and raise awareness about Airbnb.If you'd like to write to any of Airbnb's board members or executive management, their email is [first name].[last name]@ airbnb.comBrian, Joe, Nathan: You started Airbnb with the best of intentions. You couldn't afford to make rent on your San Francisco apartment. Today, your company has made it nearly impossible for people like your former selves to live in San Francisco, Paris, New York, London, or nearly any other desirable place on earth, including my little village.Houses are supposed to be homes. You've extended the capitalist script by turning houses into abusive investments, extractive commodities to be sold to the highest bidder. Please go back to your roots before society burns your whole empire to the ground. Get full access to Surviving Tomorrow at www.surviving-tomorrow.com/subscribe
Le podcast "Il était une fois l'entrepreneur" est l'ex podcast "l'apprenti", le podcast des histoires d'entrepreneurs. Airbnb, c'est une histoire de galères. Brian Cheski, Joe Gebbia et Nathan Blecharczyk ont mangé des céréales déssechées pendant 2 mois. Et ce sont ces mêmes céréales qui leur ont permis d'intégrer Y Combinator. Vous êtes des cafards, leur dit Paul Graham, c'est pour ça que vous convaincrez les gens de dormir sur des matelas pneumatiques. Dans ce 2e épisode sur Airbnb, entre croissance, batailles avec les villes et introduction en bourse, la décennie 2010 confirme que Airbnb est bien là pour rester. Retrouvez l'histoire intégrale de Airbnb => https://inspire-media.fr/airbnb-2-comment-airbnb-est-devenue-un-phenomene-mondial/ Inspire Média, le média des histoires d'entreprises et d'entrepreneurs. Les extraits audio: https://youtu.be/BEDx-bkhwuo https://youtu.be/efNyRmTLbjQ https://youtu.be/1YE-Nx7iJEQ https://youtu.be/Iywwa3wfhoU https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/la-story/id1460685072?i=1000512710891 https://youtu.be/SavXqsZyti0
Le podcast "Il était une fois l'entrepreneur" est l'ex podcast "l'apprenti", le podcast des histoires d'entrepreneurs. Airbnb, c'est une histoire de galères. Brian Cheski, Joe Gebbia et Nathan Blecharczyk ont mangé des céréales desséchées pendant 2 mois. Et ce sont ces mêmes céréales qui leur ont permis d'intégrer Y Combinator. Vous êtes des cafards, leur dit Paul Graham, c'est pour ça que vous convaincrez les gens de dormir sur des matelas pneumatiques. Dans ce 1er épisode, je vous parle de cette création difficile, de la croissance mais aussi des 1ères difficultés qui ont failli tuer Airbnb dans l'œuf. Retrouvez toute l'histoire => https://inspire-media.fr/airbnb-1-la-creation-cereales-et-galeres/ L'histoire commence en 2007 après des études de Design pour Brian Cheski et Joe Gebbia. Ils louent leur appartement pour se faire des sous avec un matelas pneumatique. Mais ils ont du mal à trouver le succès. Il faudra attendre la rencontre avec un mentor puis celle avec Paul Graham pour voir le concept décollé. Inspire Média, le média des histoires d'entreprises et d'entrepreneurs. Les extraits audio: https://youtu.be/qjzr7RmFhwI https://youtu.be/Sxdq-4cWbrU
As Airbnb makes its public debut, Greylock general partner Reid Hoffman looks back on the past decade of working with the company. Greylock led Airbnb's Series A in 2010. Hoffman initially heard the company described as "renting couches," so he passed at the first opportunity to invest. But later conversations with early investors prompted Hoffman to meet with Airbnb founders Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia and Nathan Blecharczyk. Within two minutes, he decided to partner with the company.
Bellissimo - registrazione obbligatoria su: https://go2mkt.us14.list-manage.com/track/click?u=1d8f7e497fe7b2b6d36bb0068&id=ae40636135&e=891f3992adVisione da https://www.companiestalks.com/dieta-formativa/storie/airbnbDesidero invitarti al nostro primo evento online:La Storia di AirbnbLunedì 30 Marzo 2020 alle ore 17:00 (il contenuto è disponibile fino alle 23:00).EVENTO GRATUITO CON REGISTRAZIONE OBBLIGATORIAPER REGISTRARTI CLICCA QUIUn materasso ad aria. Tanto è bastato per dare vita ad un business milionario.Stiamo parlando di Airbnb, il portale che permette a tutti noi di trovare un alloggio in qualsiasi posto. Non sembra così originale, vero? Come hanno fatto Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia e Nathan Blecharczyk a trasformare una stanza con qualche materasso ad aria in un’impresa di così grande successo? Per permetterci di dormire sonni tranquilli in Brasile o in Norvegia, ci sono voluti occhi molto vigili. Sarà un racconto di fallimenti, rivincite e nuovi modi di pensare il viaggio. Alla fine ci troveremo, valige alla mano, sulla soglia di un Airbnb.Con Alessandro BlasioliRegia di Tiziana SensiScritto da Tiziana RagniIllustrazioni, Francesco Colombohttps://www.companiestalks.com
Today we're going to talk through the history of Airbnb. But more importantly, we're going to look at what brought the hospitality industry to a place so ripe to be disrupted. The ancient Greeks, Romans, Persians, and many other cultures provided for putting travelers up while visiting other cities in one way or another. Then inns begins to rise from roads connecting medieval Europe, complete with stables and supplies to get to your next town. The rise of stagecoaches gave way to a steady flow of mail and a rise in travel over longer distances for business gave way to much larger and fancier hotels in the later 1700s and 1800s. In 1888 Cesare Ritz became the first manager of the Savoy hotel in London, after time at the Hotel Splendide in Paris and other hotels. He would open the Paris Ritz in 1898 and expand with properties in Rome, Frankfurt, Palermo, Madrid, Cairo, Johannesburg, Monte Carlo, and of course London. His hotels were in fact so fancy that he gave us the term ritzy. Ritz is one of the most lasting names but this era was the first boom in the hotel industry, with luxury hotels popping up all over the world. Like the Astor, the Waldorf Astoria, the Plaza, the Taj Mahal, and the list goes on. The rise of the hotel industry was on its way when Conrad Hilton bought the Mobley Hotel in Cisco Texas in 1919. By 1925 he would open the Dallas Hilton and while opening further hotels nearly ruined him in the Great Depression he emerged into the post World War II boom times establishing a juggernaut now boasting 568 hotels. Best Western would start in 1946 and now has 4,200 locations. After World War II we saw the rise of the American middle class and the great American road trip. Chains exploded. Choice Hotels which acts as more of a franchiseier established in 1939 sits with 7,000 locations but that's spread across Extended Stay, MainStay, Quality Inn, Cambria Hotels, Comfort Inn, and other brands. Holiday Inn was founded 1952 in the growing post-war boom time by Kemmons Wilson and named after the movie by the same name. The chain began with that first hotel in 1952 and within 20 years hit 1,400 Holiday Inns landing Wilson on the cover of Time as “The Nation's Innkeeper.' They would end up owning Harrah's Entertainment, Embassy Suites Hotels, Crowne Plaza, Homewood Suites, and Hampton Inn now sitting with 1,173 hotels. The Ramada would start the next year by Marion Isbell and has now grown to 811 locations. Both of them started their companies due to the crappy hotels that were found on the sides of roads, barely a step above those founded in the medieval days. Howard Johnson took a different path, starting with soda shops then restaurants and opening his first hotel in 1954, expanding to 338 at this point, and now owned by Wyndham Hotels, a much later entrant into the hotel business. Wyndham also now owns Ramada. The 1980s led to a third boom in hotels with globalization, much like it was the age of globalization for other brands and industries. The oil boom in the Middle East, the rising European Union, the opening up of Asian markets. And as they grew, they used computers to build software to help and cut costs and enable loyalty programs. It was an explosion of money and profits and as the 80s gave way to the 90s, the Internet gave customers the ability to comparison shop and the rise of various sites that aggregated hotel information, with Expedia, Travelocity, American Express, even Concur rising - sites came and went quickly and made it easy for AccorHotels to research and then buy Raffles, Sofitel, Novotel and for Intercontinental and others to user in the era of acquisitions and mergers. Meanwhile the Internet wasn't just about booking hotels at chains easily. VRBO began in 1995 when David Clouse wanted to rent his condo in Breckenridge and got sick of classifieds. Seeing the web on the rise, he built a website and offered subscriptions to rent properties for vacations, letting owners and renters deal directly with one another to process payments. Vacation Rentals By Owner, or VRBO would expand through the 90s. And then Paris Hilton happened. Her show The Simple Life in 2003 led to a 5 year career that seemed to fizzle at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2008 with the release of a critical documentary of her called Paris, Not France. The mergers and acquisitions and globalization and being packed in stale smokey rooms like sardines seemed to have run its course. Boutique hotels were opening, a trend that started in the 90s and by 2008 W Hotels was expanding into Europe, now with 55 properties around the world. And that exemplifies what some of this backlash was against big chains that was starting to brew. In 2004, CEH Holdings bought a few websites to start HomeAway.com and in 2006 raised $160 million in capital to buy VRBO and gain access to their then 65,000 properties. homeaway.com would be acquired by Expedia in 2015 for $3.9 billion, but not before a revolution in the hospitality industry began. That revolution started with 2 industrial design students. Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia had come from the Rhode Island School of Design. After graduation Gebbia would move to San Francisco and Chesky would move to Los Angeles. They had worked on projects together in college and Gebbia bugged Chesky about moving to San Francisco to start a company together for a few years. By 2007 Chesky gave in and made the move, becoming one of Gebbia's two roommates. It was the beginning of the Great Recession. They were having trouble making rent. The summer of 2008 brought the Industrial Designers Society of America's Industrial Design Conference to San Francisco. They had the idea to take a few air beds from a recent camping trip and rent them out in their apartment. Paris Hilton would never have done that. They reached out to a former roommate of theirs, Nathan Blecharczyk. He's a Harvard alum and pretty rock solid programmer and signed on to be a co-founder, building them a website in Ruby on Rails. They rented those three airbeds out and called their little business airbedandbreakfast.com. They thought they were on to something. I mean, who wouldn't want to rent an airbed and crash on someone's kitchen floor?!?! But reality was about to come calling. Venture capital was drying up due to the deepening recession. They tried to raise funding and failed. And so far their story seems pretty standard. But this is where I start really liking them. They bought a few hundred boxes of cereal and made '"Obama O's" and "Cap'n McCain's" to sell at the Democratic National Convention in 2008 for $40 per box. They sold $30,000 worth, enough to bootstrap the company. They would go to South By South West and visit events, growing slowly in New York and San Francisco. The money would last them long enough to make it into Y Combinator in 2009. Paul Graham and the others at Y Combinator has helped launch 2,000 companies, including Docker, DoorDash, Dropbox, GitLab, Gusto, Instacart, Reddit, Stripe, Twitch, and Zapier. They got $20,000 from Y Combinator. They changed the site to airbnb.com and a people started to book more and more stays - and not just with airbeds, but rending their full homes out. They charged 3% of the booking as a fee - a number that hasn't really changed in all these years. They would get $600,000 in funding from Sequoia Capital in 2009 when they finally got up to 2,500 listings and had 10,000 users. Nothing close to what homeaway.com had, but they would get more funding from Sequoia and added Greylock to the investors and by the close of 2010 they were approaching a million nights booked. From here, the growth got meteoric. They won the app award during a triumphant return to South By South West in 2011 and went international, opening an office in London and expanding bookings to 89 countries. The investments, the advertising, the word of mouth, the media coverage. So much buzz and so much talk about innovation and disruption. The growth was explosive. They would iterate the website and raised another $112 million dollars in venture capital. And by 2012 they hit 10 million nights booked. And that international's expansion paid off with well over half being outside of the United States. Growth of course led to problems. A few guests trashed their lodgings and Airbnb responded with a million dollar policy to help react to those kinds of things in the future. Some of the worse aspects of humanity can be seen on the web. They also encountered renters trying to discriminate based on race. So they updated their policies and took a zero tolerance approach. More importantly, they responded that they didn't have to think of such things given the privilege of having a company founded by three white guys. They didn't react with anger or displacement. They said we need to be better, with every problem that came up. And the growth continued. Doubling every year. They released a new logo and branding in 2014 and by 2016 were valued at $30 billion dollars. They added Trips, which seems to still be trying to catch up to what Groupon started doing for booking excursions years ago. During the rise of AirBNB we saw an actual increase in hotel profits. Customers are often millennials who are traveling more and more, given the way that the friction and some of the cost has been taken out of travel. The average age of a host is 43. And of the hosts I know, I can wager that Airbnb rentals have pumped plenty of cash back into local economies based on people taking better care of their homes, keeping fresh paint, and the added tourism spend when customers are exploring new cities. And not just visiting chains. After all, you stay at Airbnb for the adventure, not to go to shop for the same stuff at Forever 21. Even if you take out the issues with guests trashing places and racism, it still hasn't all been sunshine and unicorns. AirBNB has been in legal battles with New York and a few other cities for years. Turns out that speculators and investors cause extra strain on an already over-burdened housing market. If you want to see the future of living in any dense population center, just look to New York. As the largest city in the US, it's also the largest landlord of any public institution with over 400,000 tenants. And rent is rising almost twice as fast as incomes with lower income rents going up faster than those of the wealth. Independent auditors claim that AirBNB is actually accountable for 9.2 percent of that. But 79 percent of hosts use their Airbnb earnings to afford their apartments.And if many of the people that count on AirBNB to make their rent can't afford their apartments. AirBNB argues their goal is to have “one host, one home” which is to say they don't want a lot of investors. After all, will most investors want to sit around the kitchen table and talk about the history of the city or cool tidbits about neighborhoods. Probably not. AirBNB was started to offer networking opportunities and a cool place to stay that isn't quite so… sterile. Almost the opposite of Paris Hilton's life, at least according to TMZ and MTV shows. San Francisco and a number of other cities have passed ordinances as well, requiring permits to rent homes through AirBNB and maximizing the number of days a home can be rented through the service, often to about two thirds of a year. But remember, AirBNB is just the most visible but not the only game in town. Most category leaders have pre-existing competition, like VRBO and HomeAway. And given the valuation and insane growth of AirBNB, it's also got a slew of specialized competitors. This isn't to say that they don't contribute to the problems with skyrocketing housing costs. They certainly do. As is often the case with true disruptors, Pandora's Box is open and can't be closed again. Regulation will help to limit the negative impacts of the disruption but local governments will alienate a generation that grew up with a disruption if they are overly-punitive. And most of the limits in place are easily subverted anyways. For example, if there's a limit on the number of nights you can rent, just do half on VRBO and the other half on Airbnb. But no matter the problems, AirBNB continues to grow. They react well. Gebbia, now the CEO, has a deep pipeline of advisors he can call on in times of crisis. Whether corporate finance, issues with corporate infighting, crisis management, or whatever the world throws at them, the founders and the team they've surrounded themselves with have proven capable of doing almost anything. Today, AirBNB handles over half a million transactions per night. They are strongest with millineals, but get better and better at expanding out of their core market. One adjacency would be corporate bookings through a partnership with Concur and others, something we saw with Uber as well. Another adjacency. They now make more money than the Hilton and Hilton subsidiaries. Having said that, the major hotel chains are all doing better financially today than ever before and continue to thrive maybe despite, or maybe because AirBNB. That might be misleading though, revenue per room is actually decreasing correlative to the rise of AirBNB. And of course that's amplified at the bottom tier of hotels. Just think of what would have happened had they not noticed that rooms were selling out for a conference in 2007. Would what we now call the “sharing” economy be as much a thing? Probably. Would someone else have seized the opportunity? Probably. But maybe not. And hopefully the future will net a more understanding and better connected society once we've all get such intimate perspectives on different neighborhoods and the amazing little ecosystems that humanity has constructed all over the world. That is the true disruption: in an age of global sterility, offering the most human of connections. As someone who loves staying in quirky homes on Airbnb, a very special thanks to Chesky, Gebbia, Blecharczyk, and the many, many amazing people at Airbnb. Thank you for reacting the way you do to problems when they arise. Thank you for caring. Thank you for further democratizing and innovating hospitality and experiences. And most importantly, thank you for that cabin by the lake a few months ago. That was awesome! And thanks to the listeners who tuned in to this episode, of the History of Computing Podcast. Have a great day!
Andy is a German serial entrepreneur. He is currently Founder and Managing Director of Ryte and Co-Founder & Host of the Founder Festival Bits & Pretzels and Co-Founder and Chairman of the performance marketing agency EPHNY. Andy Bruckschlögl started his first business at the age of 12, selling backpacks on eBay. A year later he founded his first online shop. In order to promote the online store better, Andreas began to learn how to optimize websites for search engines. Four years later he started another online shop for fashion, which unfortunately failed due to the high return rate. In 2008, Andy was hired as a super trainee by online marketing expert Marcus Tandler. With the merge to Tandler.Doerje.Partner, Andreas Bruckschlögl became Head of Inbound Marketing at age 21, taking responsibility for a team of 10 employees. In July 2012 Andy co-founded Ryte (former OnPage.org) – an innovative software for website quality management and -optimization. Today, the bootstrapped company with 42 employees is generating over 3 million € in revenue and is being used by over 500.000 users worldwide. Together with Dr. Bernd Storm van's Gravesande, he started the first Bits & Pretzels event in September 2014 as a small and cozy founders breakfast. In only two years the event has grown rapidly to a 3-day festival taking place at Munich's famous Oktoberfest with more than 5.000 attendees from around the world. Speakers at this year's event were academy award winning actor and tech investor Sir Kevin Spacey, Founder of Virgin-Group Sir Richard Branson, Airbnb Co-Founder and CTO Nathan Blecharczyk and many more. In this episode we will talk with Andy about growing the founder festival Bits & Pretzels from 70 to 5000 attendees as well as growing Ryte's user base to over 500.000 users worldwide and the marketing tactics, which supported this growth.
GGV Capital's Hans Tung and Zara Zhang interview Tao Peng (彭韬), the president of Airbnb China. Prior to joining Airbnb in Sept 2018, Tao has founded a number of companies in the travel space including Breadtrip, a social app for recording and sharing trips, and more recently, CityHome, a management platform for short-terms rentals across China. Before founding Breadtrip, Tao has worked at the network security provider IntelliGuard and has also worked for McKinsey for two years as a management consultant. Tao graduated from the University of Melbourne with Ph.D degree in computer networks and the Huazhong University of Science and Technology with a bachelor's degree in communication engineering. He is also an avid traveler and has been to over 50 countries across seven continents. Earlier on the 996 Podcast, we have interviewed Nathan Blecharczyk, Airbnb's co-founder and chief strategy officer as well as the chairman of Airbnb China. If you haven't listened to that episode, we highly recommend checking it out; it was released around exactly a year ago on April 11th, 2018. Airbnb is a GGV portfolio company and our managing partners Hans Tung and Glenn Solomon actively works with the company especially with regards to its China strategy. Join our listeners' community via WeChat/Slack at 996.ggvc.com/community. The 996 Podcast is brought to you by GGV Capital, a global venture capital firm that invests in local founders. As a multi-stage, sector-focused firm, GGV focuses on seed-to-growth stage investments across Consumer/New Retail, Social/Digital & Internet, Enterprise/Cloud and Frontier Tech sectors. The firm was founded in 2000 and manages $6.2 billion in capital across 13 funds. Past and present portfolio companies include Affirm, Airbnb, Alibaba, Bitsight, ByteDance, Ctrip, Didi Chuxing, Grab, Gladly, Hello Chuxing, HashiCorp, Houzz, Keep, LingoChamp, Namely, Niu, Nozomi Networks, Opendoor, Peloton, Poshmark, Slack, Square, Wish, Xauto, Xiaohongshu, Yellow, YY, Zhaoyou and more. The firm has offices in Beijing, San Francisco, Shanghai and Silicon Valley. Learn more at ggvc.com, or “GGVCapital” on WeChat.
GGV Capital’s Hans Tung and Zara Zhang interview Tao Peng (彭韬), the president of Airbnb China. Prior to joining Airbnb in Sept 2018, Tao has founded a number of companies in the travel space including Breadtrip, a social app for recording and sharing trips, and more recently, CityHome, a management platform for short-terms rentals across China. Before founding Breadtrip, Tao has worked at the network security provider IntelliGuard and has also worked for McKinsey for two years as a management consultant. Tao graduated from the University of Melbourne with Ph.D degree in computer networks and the Huazhong University of Science and Technology with a bachelor’s degree in communication engineering. He is also an avid traveler and has been to over 50 countries across seven continents. Earlier on the 996 Podcast, we have interviewed Nathan Blecharczyk, Airbnb’s co-founder and chief strategy officer as well as the chairman of Airbnb China. If you haven’t listened to that episode, we highly recommend checking it out; it was released around exactly a year ago on April 11th, 2018. Airbnb is a GGV portfolio company and our managing partners Hans Tung and Glenn Solomon actively works with the company especially with regards to its China strategy. Join our listeners' community via WeChat/Slack at 996.ggvc.com/community. The 996 Podcast is brought to you by GGV Capital, a global venture capital firm that invests in local founders. As a multi-stage, sector-focused firm, GGV focuses on seed-to-growth stage investments across Consumer/New Retail, Social/Digital & Internet, Enterprise/Cloud and Frontier Tech sectors. The firm was founded in 2000 and manages $6.2 billion in capital across 13 funds. Past and present portfolio companies include Affirm, Airbnb, Alibaba, Bitsight, ByteDance, Ctrip, Didi Chuxing, Grab, Gladly, Hello Chuxing, HashiCorp, Houzz, Keep, LingoChamp, Namely, Niu, Nozomi Networks, Opendoor, Peloton, Poshmark, Slack, Square, Wish, Xauto, Xiaohongshu, Yellow, YY, Zhaoyou and more. The firm has offices in Beijing, San Francisco, Shanghai and Silicon Valley. Learn more at ggvc.com, or “GGVCapital” on WeChat.
This is the first ever episode of Contrary Radio, a series of conversations for university-based founders. Airbnb co-founder Nate Blecharczyk tells us how he learned to code, why he shutdown his successful business in college, and some lessons learned from holding diverse responsibilities at Airbnb!
The robots are here and one company, Starship Technologies, has raised $25 million to bring even more to the mainstream. This latest round of funding includes a follow-on investment from Matrix Partners and Morpheus Ventures. New investors include Airbnb co-founder Nathan Blecharczyk, Skype founding engineer Jaan Tallinn and others. These autonomous robots can carry items, like groceries or packages, within a two-mile radius.
On the first live show of the 996 Podcast, GGV Capital's Hans Tung and Zara Zhang interviewed Nathan Blecharczyk, the co-founder and chief strategy officer of Airbnb, and the chairman of Airbnb China. In front of 150 audience members gathered at Airbnb's San Francisco headquarters, Nathan discussed Airbnb's China strategy, how it has evolved over the years, and what lessons he has learned through working with China. He also explained how to build relationships in China, how the company thinks about local competitors, and why Chinese authorities might actually be more open-minded than those elsewhere. GGV Capital is an investor in Airbnb, and managing partner Hans Tung and Glenn Solomon have been advising the company's China strategy. Join our listeners' community via WeChat/Slack at 996.ggvc.com/community. GGV Capital also produces a biweekly email newsletter in English, also called "996," which has a roundup of the week's most important happenings in tech in China. Subscribe at 996.ggvc.com. The 996 Podcast is brought to you by GGV Capital, a multi-stage venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley, Shanghai, and Beijing. We have been partnering with leading technology entrepreneurs for the past 18 years from seed to pre-IPO. With $3.8 billion in capital under management across eight funds, GGV invests in globally minded entrepreneurs in consumer internet, e-commerce, frontier tech, and enterprise. GGV has invested in over 280 companies, with 30 companies valued at over $1 billion. Portfolio companies include Airbnb, Alibaba, Bytedance (Toutiao), Ctrip, Didi Chuxing, DOMO, Hashicorp, Hellobike, Houzz, Keep, Musical.ly, Slack, Square, Wish, Xiaohongshu, YY, and others. Find out more at ggvc.com.
On the first live show of the 996 Podcast, GGV Capital’s Hans Tung and Zara Zhang interviewed Nathan Blecharczyk, the co-founder and chief strategy officer of Airbnb, and the chairman of Airbnb China. In front of 150 audience members gathered at Airbnb’s San Francisco headquarters, Nathan discussed Airbnb’s China strategy, how it has evolved over the years, and what lessons he has learned through working with China. He also explained how to build relationships in China, how the company thinks about local competitors, and why Chinese authorities might actually be more open-minded than those elsewhere. GGV Capital is an investor in Airbnb, and managing partner Hans Tung and Glenn Solomon have been advising the company’s China strategy. Join our listeners' community via WeChat/Slack at 996.ggvc.com/community. GGV Capital also produces a biweekly email newsletter in English, also called "996," which has a roundup of the week's most important happenings in tech in China. Subscribe at 996.ggvc.com. The 996 Podcast is brought to you by GGV Capital, a multi-stage venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley, Shanghai, and Beijing. We have been partnering with leading technology entrepreneurs for the past 18 years from seed to pre-IPO. With $3.8 billion in capital under management across eight funds, GGV invests in globally minded entrepreneurs in consumer internet, e-commerce, frontier tech, and enterprise. GGV has invested in over 280 companies, with 30 companies valued at over $1 billion. Portfolio companies include Airbnb, Alibaba, Bytedance (Toutiao), Ctrip, Didi Chuxing, DOMO, Hashicorp, Hellobike, Houzz, Keep, Musical.ly, Slack, Square, Wish, Xiaohongshu, YY, and others. Find out more at ggvc.com.
Get Paid For Your Pad | Airbnb Hosting | Vacation Rentals | Apartment Sharing
Airbnb Experiences has not quite lived up to the fanfare that accompanied its launch a year ago, and this week Leigh Gallagher, author of The Airbnb Story, interviewed CEO Brian Chesky to ask about its slow growth.Jasper is joined by Hostfully VP of Strategic Partnerships, Nicole Prentice Williams, to discuss whether it’s fair to compare the growth of the platform itself with the progress of Experiences. They also cover Chesky’s response to the #metoo campaign and the new responsibilities of another Airbnb co-founder, Nathan Blecharczyk as he takes over operations in China.While business may be rocky for Airbnb in China, it is booming in Africa, and headlines this week applaud the growth on the continent and the platform’s partnership with leadership in Cape Town. Nicole and Jasper also share the heartening story of a guest who painted an epic mural in a host’s apartment in Tokyo in exchange for a free stay!Topics CoveredArticle #1: Airbnb CEO: Here’s How ‘Experiences’ are Doing So Far•Airbnb Experiences launch one year ago•Only 3K experiences vs. 4M homes•Unfair comparison, keeping small on purpose•Earned 500K from social impact experiences•Homes business had no traction one year in•Experiences has 3K hosts, tens of thousands on wait list•Difference between new marketplace and established media machine•‘Experiences’ is buzzword in industry•Certain Experience hosts earning six figures (most earn 7K)•Chesky expecting Experiences to be big•Ultimate goal to become one-stop shop for travelersArticle #2: Airbnb’s China Chief Departs Abruptly Just Months Into the Job•Head of China business gone after four months•Search lasted longer than held post•Unclear why, seems to have been his decision•Airbnb not commentingArticle #3: Airbnb Head of China Operations Departs as Co-Founder Settles into New Role•Co-founder Nathan overseeing operations•Shows importance of Chinese market to Airbnb•China is difficult market for startupsArticle #4: This Airbnb Guest Left Behind an Incredible Mural on the Host’s Walls•Host in Tokyo learned guest was artist•Asked to create mural on white wall•Epic resultsAirbnb could do coffee table book of unique storiesArticle #5: Airbnb CEO: ‘We Need More Women Leaders’•Chesky commented on #metoo campaign•Proposed solution of having more women in leadership•No women on board of Airbnb (6 of 8 members are white men)Article #6: Airbnb Enjoys Spectacular Growth in Africa•Africa is fastest growing market•100K listings•Cape Town most popular (17K listings)•Mayor working with Airbnb•2M guests in last five years•Hosts earned $139M last year•South Africa has most listings•Morocco comes in second•325% growth in Nigeria•Airbnb conscious of social issuesResources MentionedArticle #1: fortune.com/2017/10/23/airbnb-ceo-experiences-new-york/VRMAArticle #2: bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-24/airbnb-s-china-chief-departs-abruptly-just-months-into-the-jobArticle #3: skift.com/2017/10/24/airbnb-head-of-china-operations-departs-as-co-founder-settles-into-new-role/Article #4: lonelyplanet.com/news/2017/10/23/airbnb-guest-leaves-murals/Article #5: fortune.com/2017/10/24/airbnb-ceo-no-more-hands-off-approach-on-techs-impact/Article #6: cnn.com/2017/10/24/africa/airbnb-growth-africa/index.htmlConnect with JasperEmail: jasper@getpaidforyourpad.comTwitter: @GetPaidForUrPadInstagram: @GetPaidForYourPad Facebook: www.facebook.com/getpaidforyourpad See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
In this episode of the Tony Robbins Podcast, we are bringing back to Business Mastery one more time, where Tony recently led a panel discussion with the business leaders behind some of today’s fastest growing companies. And for this episode, you’re going to hear from one of the founders of a company that change the travel industry forever. When is the last time you booked a trip somewhere? Where did you stay? Was it a hotel? Or did you opt for the alternative and rent a room, or maybe an entire house, from a local? The idea of staying in a stranger’s home may have blown your mind a few years ago, but today it’s not just a standard practice, it’s actually the preferred accommodation for tens of millions of travelers across the world. And there’s one company to thank for that – Airbnb. Airbnb started as a simple solution to a pressing problem; co-founders Joe Gebbia and Brian Chesky couldn’t afford rent, so they opened up their San Francisco apartment for guests to stay in. They soon realized they may be onto something bigger than just a way to avoid being evicted. So, along with their old roommate, Nathan Blecharczyk, they started to build it into a business. But that was nearly 10 years ago. Airbnb has evolved substantially since then, though it was by no means a straight path to success. In fact, they launched and relaunched a number of times. They found themselves up to their ears in debt, rejected by investors over and over and were very close to flatlining on more than one occasion. You will hear their story of perseverance, and how they were able to find opportunities for massive growth where there were seemingly none. You will also hear about the importance their design background played in creating trust amidst strangers and giving customers the experience they wanted. And you will hear how they transcended cultural boundaries and were ultimately able to turn a floundering idea into a global business that operates in more than 34,000 cities in 91 countries, and is now estimated to be worth $30 billion.
In this episode of Shift Dialogs Podcast, Nathan Blecharczyk shares his views on Airbnb’s rise, its frequent tangles with local, state, and national governments, and its mission of helping “anyone feel like they belong anywhere.”
Nathan Blecharczyk, co-founder and chief technology officer of Airbnb, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about Airbnb, one of the earliest companies to use technology to allow individuals to share underused resources, and in the case of Airbnb, housing. Blecharczyk and Roberts discuss how a design conference and the Democratic National Convention got Airbnb started, how the company aligns incentives to overcome the trust problem of house-sharing, and the rise of technology and online social networks to make a new business model possible. Along the way, Blecharczyk gives his take on the role of luck vs. skill in entrepreneurial success and how Airbnb plans to expand its product offerings in the future.
Nathan Blecharczyk, co-founder and chief technology officer of Airbnb, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about Airbnb, one of the earliest companies to use technology to allow individuals to share underused resources, and in the case of Airbnb, housing. Blecharczyk and Roberts discuss how a design conference and the Democratic National Convention got Airbnb started, how the company aligns incentives to overcome the trust problem of house-sharing, and the rise of technology and online social networks to make a new business model possible. Along the way, Blecharczyk gives his take on the role of luck vs. skill in entrepreneurial success and how Airbnb plans to expand its product offerings in the future.