Good afternoon, everyone today I would like to talk about the success story Airbnb.

Earlier, we
were told to stay away from strangers, to never give out personal information on internet and
never go inside someone home you don’t know. Now we all connect with people have never met in
a person, get their address and sleep in their homes. All thanks to the way Airbnb changed how we
think about living and travelling.

The two founders of Airbnb are Brian Chesky and joe Gebbia were two design students who quitted
their jobs recently to work on something big which would impact the world. They were living in a
rented apartment. Moreover, rent was increasing by 25% from next month. So, it was moment
when they thought that they could be homeless and secondly, they were made aware of a
conference coming to San Francisco for designers. Although most of the hotels were sold out and
that point of time Joe suggested that they could offer to anybody who want to stay on airbeds they
had in the closet. In a short span of time, they launched their own website,
Airbedandbreakfast.com. For $80, they offered designers a place to stay for the weekend’s event.

4 th slide- In their initial stage they thought it’s a conference and festival business, so they targeted
events such as south by south Austion in Texas and 2008 conference of Obama. When it worked so
well in conference of San Francisco so they thought it would work in Texas too, but it didn’t work.
Only 6 listings were on their website and 2 bookings in which Brian was one of the people who
booked. So, after that they it isn’t a conference and festival business, and they expanded their
concept and concluded that it could be a travelling business. At that point they were ‘nt having
funds so they approached around 20 investors, 10 sent replies, 5 agreed to meet and none of them
invested. In 2008, elections were to be commenced so to clear their debt they thought to sell
simple cereals in box labelling one with Obama and another one McCain’s. Although, they were
having funds to buy limited cereal boxes. so, they labelled that they are limited edition and sold
more than 550 boxes out of 800 boxes and generated a profit of $32000 and then the Y
combinator’s co-founder was impressed by their tactics and ready to invest $20,000. In their first
funding they raised a fund of $600,000.

From its initial days they made a trust between their clients and customers by creating a perfect
mechanism between the host and travelers and give due emphasis to framing of policies. All the
travelers have to their identification and background checks are done. There is also an 24/7 global
assistance if any inconvenience occurs, and payments made by the travelers are 100% secured.

Airbnb made a good stride in rental business industry when it was hardship time for everyone in
2008. They helped the people to overcome that crisis by lending their homes to the travelers and
moreover, it made a property a means to earn. Although, Airbnb got in growth after the 2012 as it
had listed more than 90000 homes, a beach facing villa in Bali, and it was a surprising moment
when a 5-acre Fuji Island was listed on Airbnb. As of now, it has valuation of $38 billion dollars.

Airbnb has been booked by all age groups of people. moreover, dominantly booked by the young
adults who love travel and explore different places. Airbnb is the world leading hotel chain having
the total number rooms more than all its competitors combined. Market cap of Airbnb is $38 billion
which is far more than its any of its competitor. It was also providing rooms at a very lost cost
comparatively to other hotel chains.