AirBed & Breakfast News

The following are the experiences of cofounder Brian Chesky’s adventures using AirBed & Breakfast December 17, 2008-January 6, 2009

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Imagine if once you bought an iPhone, Steve Jobs came over and slept on your couch. Silicon valley is filled with mantras like “listen to your users” and “know your customers.” But has anyone ever tried living with them? I decided to, and it all started with a trip I almost didn’t take.

I am cofounder, along with Joe Gebbia and Nathan Blecharczyk, of AirBed & Breakfast, a website that lets you crash with local residents when traveling. We had just launched Crash the Inauguration, a special site for people going to the Inauguration in Washington, DC, that still needed a place to stay. Our advisor encouraged me to go to the city prior to the Inauguration to promote the site. I believe his exact words were: “Why are you still here?”

And so the adventures began. Over the next three weeks I stayed with 3 DC hosts, went to 20 local bars, hosted 2 meet-ups, met over 50 of our website users, conducted 2 press interviews, made 6 close new friends, hung out with 1 white rapper, and eventually lost my voice.

I have to confess that before the trip, I really didn’t feel much of a connection with our users. They were just 320 pixel images on my laptop. But imagine living with someone in their space, meeting their friends, going to their favorite hangouts, listening to their stories. How could you not get close?

There was Chloe , a 25 year old George Washington University student whose homemade pumpkin pie and eclectic literature made her place a home away from home. Chloe was the first host I stayed with in DC (around $40 a night, which was about what I paid for all the places). We would talk until the wee hours of the night about AirBed & Breakfast, brainstorming different ideas for site. I even did a local interview for ABC-7 on her futon.

Interview on Chloe’s futon

While visiting Manhattan, I met the Rad brothers , two young entrepreneurs  and our top New York City hosts. They were using the money they made from our site to help fund their own clothing company. I met them in their East village loft, where they were hosting a brother and sister from Paris. They organized our New Year’s Eve meet-up, where they successfully managed to fit 9 of us into a photo-booth to capture the occasion. This also landed on the local news.

Rad brother’s interview

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9 people in a photobooth

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I met Jeremy , a 27 year old assistant manager of a restaurant/club in DC, for the first time when I came by his restaurant to pick up keys. It was around dinner time, and when I got there, I discovered he had literally told everyone he worked with about the site. The bartenders were renting out their extra bedrooms. The waitresses had put up airbeds in their living room. Even the coat check girl was renting out her couch. It was at Jeremy’s club that we held the DC meet-up.

DC Meet-up

And finally, there was Shawn and his girlfriend Cathy . When I first walked into the bedroom I was staying at, on the bed was a beautifully packaged host kit, complete with fresh towels, a welcome guide, mini bottle of soap and shampoo, hot chocolate, power bars, a map to the city, and homemade chocolate chip cookies. His roommate was a rapper who had performed with Wu-Tang, and managed to tell me his life story in the kitchen at five in the morning. He says he will give me rap lessons next time I am there.

Host kit

AirBed & Breakfast was originally conceived to solve our own problem. We needed money, so we decided to rent out our extra space. It wasn’t to make friends. But now, I have our users’ cell phone numbers in my pocket along with my other friends. The closeness with our users recently created an unexpected opportunity.

Last week, Good Morning America called out of the blue, wanting to do a story about cheap $20 listings that were kind of quirky in DC for Inauguration. The problem was we didn’t have any good $20 listings on the site yet, so we turned to our own users for help. I called Jeremy and Shawn, and asked them if they could rent out any extra space in their place.

Shawn had literally rented out every square inch of his place, so he decided to rent out the only space left: the floor under his kitchen table for $20. Jeremy decided to rent out his walk-in closet for $15.

Sleep under a kitchen table

This is where things get interesting. As soon as they put the listings up, demand went through the roof. They started getting more interest than I have ever seen for a listing on our site. They were bombarded with inquiries, along with some quite unusual ones. One person asked if they could camp out on a front lawn. Another person, after finding out all the floor space had been rented out, proposed sleeping upright in a kitchen chair!

But my favorite message is one that Jeremy told me he received:

Hi Jeremy, Is your 6×6 closet claimed yet? I’m bringing my mom out for inauguration and would love to crash there. I’m experienced in closet-sleeping… it’s my usual accommodations when I visit my sister!

A 19 year old college student eventually booked the walk-in closet for Inauguration. I would have never recognized this market had I not been so close to our users.

Hanging out at bar

There is a saying that the ultimate focus group allows a company to focus on its priorities. Before I left, I would sit in from of my computer worrying about the size of a font, or what merchant account we were going to use. But it was our users who reminded me what was truly important. I am now as excited as ever to work on our site. I want to help my new friends!

As you might expect, Joe, Nate, and I are going back to DC next week for the Inauguration. Bars will be open 24 hours a day, and people are comparing the event to the Woodstock of Washington. So we will do it all over again. I will probably hang out the 19 year old sleeping in the closet, as well as the guy sleeping in a chair. But I’m not too worried about them. I don’t think any of us will be doing much sleeping.