It actually wasn't a surprise that people weren't booking rooms because you couldn't even really see what it is that you were paying for.” People were using their camera phones or using their images from classified sites. The similarity is that the photos sucked. There's some similarity between all these 40 listings.

After spending time on the site using the product, Gebbia had a realization. One afternoon, the team was poring over their search results for New York City listings with Paul Graham, trying to figure out what wasn’t working, why they weren’t growing. It's Okay to Do Things That Don’t ScaleĪt the time, Airbnb was part of Y Combinator. The team was forced to max out their credit cards. As everyone knows, venture investors look for companies that show hockey stick graphs, and according to co-founder Joe Gebbia, his company had a horizontal drumstick graph. Split between three young founders living in San Francisco, this meant near indefinite losses on zero growth.

The company’s revenue was flatlined at $200 per week. Like so many startups, they had launched but barely anyone noticed.

Airbnb business