Airbnb Co-Founder Joe Gebbia on early “a-ha” moments, elite design + his new startup Samara | E1675

This Week in Startups

Jason Calacanis

Technology

4.2 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 8 February 2023

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Joe Gebbia joins Jason to discuss the early days of Airbnb, gaining traction, persevering through the “no’s,” and functional design. (2:09) They also discuss gaining customer trust and Airbnb’s incredible COVID turnaround. (21:17) Joe wraps the show by breaking down his new venture, Samara. (45:05)

(0:00) Jason kicks off the show

(2:09) Airbnb’s first sign of traction

(9:05) Vanta - Get $1000 off your SOC 2 at https://vanta.com/twist

(10:04) Persevering through the “no’s,” and functional design

(19:48) Squarespace - Use offer code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain at https://Squarespace.com/TWIST

(21:17) Gaining customer trust

(30:46) Lemon.io - Get 15% off your first 4 weeks of developer time at https://Lemon.io/twist

(32:17) Airbnb’s incredible COVID turnaround

(45:05) Joe’s new startup Samara

Check out: https://www.samara.com/backyard

FOLLOW Joe: https://twitter.com/jgebbia

FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis

FOLLOW Molly: https://twitter.com/mollywood

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey, everybody. We have an incredible, incredible episode of this week in startups for you.
0:04.0	This is one you're going to listen to twice. You're going to listen to it your team. You're
0:06.6	going to share with your friends because one of the three co-founders of Airbnb is on the program.
0:11.9	Today, Joe, Jebija is with us to talk about all of the amazing things they learned building
0:17.6	one of the most important companies in the history of capitalism, in the history of hospitality,
0:22.0	Airbnb. We all know it. We all love the product. But venture capitalists said no to Airbnb over
0:28.6	and over and over again. This company struggled and then they had near-death experiences with
0:33.2	COVID, with people trashing apartments. All of these challenges, Joe goes into all the details
0:38.0	about how they overcome all of the obstacles and they remained resilient and he's a brilliant
0:43.9	designer. So he talks about the power of design and experience, which we all know if you've
0:48.8	used Airbnb, it is one of the elite experiences you can have working with any business product
0:55.2	or service. Then he talks about his new company, Samara, which is building ADUs, accessory dwelling
1:00.4	units, fancy term for what they call nanny units or backyard small homes. These things are sweeping
1:07.1	the nation and he's got one of the best ones in the world delivered to your backyard. We'll talk
1:13.0	about the vision for that company as well. Stick with us. It's going to be a legendary top 10
1:18.7	episode of This Week in startups. This week in startups is brought to you by Vanta. Compliance
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1:44.4	slash twist for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, use offer code twists to save 10% off
1:50.9	your first purchase of a website or domain and lemon.io. Need to speed up your product development
1:57.9	without draining your budget? Higher vetted engineers from Europe and lemon.io. Go to lemon.io
	...

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