How Joe Gebbia Started Airbnb With Just 3 Air Mattresses

If I remember correctly, you didn't think that was your big idea.

We didn't.

How long did it take before you. What else did you do before you thought it was a big idea?

That weekend, we hosted the three people in the airbeds. You know, that was just a weekend experiment. That was just a way to make the rent check for the following month. And so we actually, afterwards, we said goodbye to them, and we moved on to something else. We tried to think of another big idea. And it wasn't until we went home for the holidays that it was 2007, and everyone, of course, I went back to Atlanta. Friends and family. Hey, how's it going out there in San Francisco? What are you entrepreneuring? He said, well, not a lot, but we did have this weekend where we hosted these three guests. And I also realized at the time there's a very thin line between entrepreneur and unemployed frame of mind, really. But people had a very visceral reaction to this concept. They're like, you took three strangers into your home, and they either said, wow, I'd love to travel that way, or they said, you're crazy. Brian had a similar experience. We thought, well, maybe that airbed thing, maybe that's something we should work more on. And we brought on Nate, our third co founder. We rebuilt it. Nobody knows this. We've launched four different times in the early days. Because when you launch and it doesn't work, who cares? You just keep launching. We launched, like, five times between 2007 and 2009. You know, you can just do that if it doesn't work.