The Airbnb Story: How Three Ordinary Guys Disrupted an Industry, Made Billions . . . and Created Plenty of Controversy

by Leigh Gallagher

Why did Airbnb succeed in popularizing short-term rentals while others did not? Much of the explanation lies in the product itself. “Product” is a vague and all-encompassing term in the tech world for everything after the idea: it’s the actual website or app; the way it looks, the way it works, the things it can do, the engineering that powers it, and the way you use it and interact with it (the “user experience”). The very first Airbnb product was simply the oddball idea and a WordPress website, but when it came time to get ready for the third launch, at the DNC in Denver, the founders had expanded their vision, going from a simple platform for housing supply for sold-out conferences to a website where you could book a room in someone’s home as easily as you could book a hotel room. But from the start, Chesky and Gebbia were emphatic about certain things regarding the website and the experience: specifically, it had to be frictionless, it had to be easy. The listings had to look beautiful. And, based on the famous three-click rule from Steve Jobs, a design hero of Chesky and Gebbia’s—when Jobs conceived the iPod, he wanted it to never be more than just three clicks away from a song—the founders wanted their users to never be more than three clicks away from a booking.