3 friends started by renting an air mattress: A giant like Airbnb appeared!

Airbnb was originally a business idea that three friends came up with just to make some money and get their rent money. It all started with an email. In 2007, these two roommates living in San Francisco could not pay the rent of the house. Joe Gebbia e-mailed his roommate Brian Chesky and wrote that he had an idea where they could make money.

- “How about we rent out the double beds in the house with breakfast in the morning?”

Thus, they gave a bed to sleep in and promised a comfortable sleep, as well as breakfast in the morning.

Just then, there was a conference in San Francisco with a large number of participants, and the hotels were running out of space. They named the site they opened airbedandbreakfast.com.

The first guests to arrive were two men and a woman. Each guest paid $80 in rent. One of these three guests, Amol, was also a designer helping Joe and Brian with their presentations. “How does it feel to be one of the first Airbnb guests?” She humorously replied, “Being one of the first Airbnb guests is like being on The Tonight Show. But I didn't even realize I was on The Tonight Show that day."

Soon, Joe and Brian realized that Airbnb was a great idea. Their former roommate, Nathan Blecharczyk, was also involved. Then they realized that there is another site that does a similar job: Roommates.com. They immediately looked for a way to differentiate, but in the meantime, they lost about 4 months.

When they wanted to expand their business, they started looking for investors. After meeting with 15 angel investors, they received 8 rejections. The remaining 7 investors said not now, but let's see later.

In March 2009, they scrapped the complex-sounding Air Bed & Breakfast name and simplified it to “Airbnb.” In this way, they became more memorable. A month later, Airbnb finally received the sought-after core investment of $600,000 from Sequoia Capital in April 2009.

When 4 years have passed since they rented out the rooftop inflatable beds, that is, in 2011, the number of countries they serve increased to 89 and 1 million reservations were made on the platform.

In the same year, some investors in Silicon Valley invested $112 million in Airbnb, raising the company's value to over $1 billion. This makes Airbnb the "Unicorn" of Silicon Valley.

In the meantime, of course, they faced various crises. For example, in 2014, it was claimed that short-term rentals would be banned in New York and any landlord who rented would be fined. In later times, many city laws made it illegal to rent a house for less than 30 days.

2016 was a year of legal battles for the company. In August, Barcelona announced that it would impose penalties for illegally rented homes to tourists. This meant that Airbnb could face significant fines.

The bans didn't block Airbnb. In 2017, the company went on a second buying spree. Acquired Luxury Retreats, an Airbnb-like service for high-end properties, Accomable, a travel accessibility startup, and AdBasis, an adtech platform. Airbnb has also acquired social payments startup Tilt, which allows one payment to be split up to 16 users.

Airbnb launched its Chinese brand, which it calls Aibiying, in March that year. This word means “welcoming one another with love”. Airbnb's Chinese equivalent, Tujia, has more than 300,000 rental properties in the country, while Airbnb has 80,000.

Airbnb is expanding its services with additional features like Airbnb Plus. With the Plus service, only the houses whose quality has been examined are listed. According to the company's CEO, Chesky, Airbnb is currently eyeing the aviation industry and is considering opening its own airline.

Who is the owner of Airbnb?

Brian Chesky is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Airbnb and sets the vision and strategy for the company.

A graduate from the Rhode Island School of Design.

December 2020: Airbnb goes public, valued at $47 billion

The expected public offering of Airbnb, the home rental platform, which experienced significant decreases in its revenues due to the pandemic, took place. While the company earned $3.5 billion in revenue from the IPO, its valuation rose to $47 billion. With the IPO of Airbnb, the size of the public offerings in the USA in 2020 increased to 163 billion dollars.

Although international travel has declined during the pandemic, short-distance travel has made Airbnb more resilient than hotel chains. Airbnb revenues fell 18 percent in the third quarter, while Expedia and Marriott saw revenue declines close to 60 percent.

Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs acted as demand collectors in the Airbnb IPO.