From debts to billion-dollars company: Airbnb
By: Sena Samur
Tags: Success Story, Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneur, Determination, Airbnb

As everyone knows, no one is born as an entrepreneur, they become entrepreneurs by observing, learning, manufacturing and selling with the experiences. However, what do they need to commence their entrepreneur? This is a really tough question that requires to answer for individuals who are interested in these topics. The first thing that you want to know is, do you have creative thoughts about anything or can you produce new ideas regarding drawbacks that you see in your around? On condition that your answer to the first question is yes, you are in the right way. Unfortunately, this feature will not be enough for plans alone. The second thing is the team which includes a good team leader and teammates knowing to work perfectly.

When it comes to marketing and sales tasks, you should have a good extrovert team member who has self-confidence and know online and B2B sales technique, which is the most crucial part of start-ups. Although many companies have perfect ideas, they do not enhance themselves and declare bankruptcy since they do not have a good business development and marketing team. Last but not least, the perfect timing term is a crucial topic that needs to indicate and elaborate on. If we get what the main requirements are, we are ready to read a real entrepreneurship story!

When I mentioned a story from air bed and breakfast to Airbnb, someone may say “what are you talking about?”. But, you heard it correctly. The name of Airbnb is coming from Air bed and breakfast.

Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia who are the founder of Airbnb had been just moved to New York and they had no job and enough money to pay their home rent. Regarding these issues, they have tried to find solutions. On a special day in New York, they have realized that people were looking for a place to stay and all hotel rooms were full. They have decided to accept guests to their home which has no extra rooms. As a solution, they offered air beds and breakfast for guests and many people accepted to pay $80 to stay for the night. The plan was working but many people did not like and believe them.

After a while, Nathan Blecharcsyk who graduated from Harvard University joined their team. Their internet site which had just two-member, one of them was Brain Chesky, was developed and released again so as to pay attention. Afterwards, they have decided to show themself to the 15 investors but 7 of them ignored them and the other 8 investors rejected their entrepreneur.

Determination is one of the best features that should be in entrepreneurs, like this, because they were not demolarized. Moreover, more than 600 air beds were rented for Obama’s political meeting but this success was not enough for a long duration.

Then, they changed perspectives by using their marketing skills. It could be seen different, however, they commenced to sell cornflakes packets transformed different designs such as Obama’s and McCain’s figures. Also, they did not forget to use selling strategies like “limited availability”. This ability was discovered by Paul Graham, who tried to find them an investment later. The logo of the company has been altered and “bed” term has been removed from the name of the company.

These ups and downs are totally achievement stories thanks to including determination, perfect timing, team and, of course, marketing skills. Provided that they had not to attend renting bed when they saw the problem, there would not have had Airbnb today.

Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia who had a lot of debts reached a huge company known globally and their value is $31 billion right now.

If you desire to become an entrepreneur, do not give up!