Joe Gebbia and Brian Chesky started Airbnb in 2007 by renting air mattresses to cover rent. When growth stalled, they built a system that automatically posted their listings to Craigslist and redirected clicks back to Airbnb, while emailing Craigslist sellers directly. The hack exploded their user growth.
Airbnb hacked Craigslist to save their company. In 2007, Joe Gebbia and Brian Chesky, the co-founders of Airbnb, were struggling to pay their rent in San Francisco. But a major conference left hotel rooms in short supply, so they had a crazy idea. They bought 3 air mattresses, rented them out for $80 apiece, and thus Airbnb was born. Fast forward a few years and the growth stalled out, but a smart growth hack propelled them to the $72 billion company that they are today. They recognized that most of their potential customers were browsing Craigslist, so they created that automatically cross-posted their listings to Craigslist. This meant that when people clicked on their listing in Craigslist, there was a link that automatically redirected them back to the Airbnb website to register and book. And if anyone posted a room for rent on Craigslist, they would automatically get an email from a stranger saying that they would make way more money from this new website called Airbnb.
