Congratulations! You've unlocked a 50% discount.

Thanks for visiting sumizeit.com. As a new user, you can use coupon code WELCOME for a 50% discount off a premium subscription.

TIME TO CLAIM

Star

New Feature! Download infographics with key insights from bestselling non-fiction books.

Download Now

The Airbnb Story Book Summary

Book Summary

By Leigh Gallagher




15 min
Audio available

Brief Summary

Airbnb started out as a creative way for two poor designers to keep their expensive apartment, but it turned into a successful business adventure that has changed the hospitality industry forever. 

About the Author

Leigh Gallagher is a well-known speaker and business news commenter and the senior editor-at-large at Fortune. She serves as the host of Fortune Live. She is the co-chair of the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit and Most Powerful Women Next Gen Summit. She manages Fortune’s 40 Under 40 multi-platform editorial franchises. She appears as a guest on several known shows such as MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relationships. From 2012-2014, she was a visiting scholar at the Business and Economic Reporting Program at the Arthur L Carter Journalism Institute at New York University.

Topics

The Airbnb Story Book Summary Preview

Key Insights

Airbnb has completely changed the way people vacation. 

Instead of crashing in a fancy hotel room in a new city, people opt to take over or even share other people’s oftentimes eccentric pads for the night, a week, or a month. 

But, how did this concept come to be?

“It seemed silly to let a perfectly good apartment sit empty while I traveled when there were so many visitors to San Francisco in need of a place to stay, who wanted to experience a city as I preferred to: in a local’s home, outside the tourist bubble of a hotel.”-Leigh Gallagher

In “The Airbnb Story” by Leigh Gallagher you will learn the origin of this billion-dollar company that has reinvented the hospitality business. 

How It All Started

In 2007, two poor designers, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia were living in San Francisco struggling to pay rent on their $1,150 apartment. 

With some creative thinking that they had both learned from the Rhode Island School of Design, they decided to rent out space in their apartment for people who were traveling to attend the Industrial Designers Society of America conference happening in San Francisco. 

They created a deal that people could rent an air mattress in their apartment for $80 a night. They called this plan the AirBed and Breakfast. To gain the attention of attendees to the conference, they posted ads on design blogs. 

Within a few days, they were booked. With quick success, they started brainstorming how they could take this further by helping others use their apartments to make money as well. 

To get out the news of their project they first went to the South by Southwest festival in Austin and the DNC in Colorado in 2008.

In order to be taken seriously, the two designers hired Nathan Blecharczyk a coder and engineer.

Although they had a great team, it was hard for them to get people to open their homes to strangers. They decided to create ads on small local blogs in order to gain traction.

And, it worked! The ads fueled a buzz and a New York Times article was even written up. After that 800 people signed up for the service and 80 bookings were made.

The Cereal Marketing Stunt

The quick buzz suddenly died and the team knew they needed to do something in order to keep their success.

Because of their work at the DNC, they decided it would be clever to appeal voters by offering Obama O’s and Cap’n McCain cereals as breakfast at their bed and breakfasts. All they had to do was rebox cereal and sell their newly named product. They earned $30,000 with this cereal marketing stunt. 

Paul Graham, a tech billionaire, was intrigued by the designer duo after their clever marketing stunt. He personally didn’t like the idea of the AirBed and Breakfast, but he admired their determination and clever thinking. He decided to offer them a three-month mentor period.

Graham encouraged the two to temporarily move to NYC, which is where most of their clientele lived. While living there, the designers worked on...

Please login to access the full text and audio summary for FREE

Users get access to two FREE summaries. Become a pro user for unlimited access.

Login
Congrats! You've unlocked a 50% discount. Use coupon code WELCOME for 50% off Sumizeit Premium.

Save time with unlimited access to text, audio, and video summaries of the world's best-selling books.
Become a pro user

book summary - The Airbnb Story by Leigh Gallagher

The Airbnb Story

Book Summary

15 min
Read now Download PDF Take a Quiz

More Like This

Learn Something New Every Day with Sumizeit

Here’s Why Sumizeit Is Worth It

Try Sumizeit to get the key ideas from thousands of bestselling nonfiction titles. Listen, read, or watch in just 15 minutes.

High-Quality Titles

Highest quality content

Our book summaries are crafted to be unbiased, concise, and comprehensive, giving you the most valuable insights in the shortest amount of time.

New book summaries added constantly

New content added constantly

We add new content each week, including New York Times bestsellers.

Learn on the go while commuting, exercising, etc

Learn on the go

Learn anytime, anywhere - read, listen or watch summaries on IOS, tablet, laptop, and Kindle!

You can cancel your subscription anytime

Cancel anytime

Changed your mind? No problem. Cancel your subscription anytime.

Collect awards while learning

Collect Achievements

Learning just got more rewarding - track your progress and earn prizes using our mobile app.

Sumizeit provides other features as well

And much more!

Improve your retention with quizzes. Enjoy PDF summaries, infographics, offline access with our app and more.

Our users love Sumizeit

Join thousands of readers who learn faster than they ever thought possible.

4.6 out of 5

400 ratings on
Apple Store

Quality
As featured in
  • icon
  • icon
  • icon
  • icon

People ❤️ SumizeIt

Olga Z.

I love this app! As a busy executive, I don't have time to read entire books, but I still want to stay informed. This app provides me with concise summaries of the latest bestsellers, so I can stay up-to-date on the latest trends and ideas without sacrificing my precious time.

Chen L.

Very good development in last months. Content updates on a regular basis and UI is getting better and better.

Erica A.

Great product. Have used them for a long time. One of my favorite things about them is that they are able to summarize a whole book into just 10 minutes.

William H.

This app has been a lifesaver for my studies. Instead of struggling to finish textbooks, I can quickly get the key points from each chapter. It's helped me improve my grades and understand the material much better.