Airbnb is the tale of how three men went from renting mattresses to a $30 billion company.

In 2007, two housemates who were both designers, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia were struggling to pay the rent on their San Francisco apartment. They devised the idea to sell their living room as a bed and breakfast, putting up three people on air mattresses and cooking them breakfast in the morning. After realising that they might have a very good idea on their hands, they brought in ex-housemate Nathan Blecharczyk who was a technical architect, to build a website. All three became co-founders of AirBed & Breakfast and the website launched in August 2008 focusing on high-profile events where places to stay were scarce.

To raise money to fund the site, the founders created some breakfast cereal themed with the presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain. They got $30,000 from this endeavour and it was an example of a start-up doing everything necessary to get off the ground. After being ignored or rejected by 15 venture capitalists, they were invited to a start-up accelerator program. They received further funds there and spent three months perfecting their product.

In 2009, they simplified the name of the company to Airbnb. They noticed that their growth was very slow and travelled to New York to see why many Airbnb properties there were not being purchased. They discovered that the photos of the properties on the listings were of a low quality, so they hired an expensive camera and took professional quality photos. Sales revenue instantly doubled because people could better see what they were buying. An official photography program where hosts could schedule a professional photographer to photograph their place was introduced in 2010.

A year later growth had accelerated quickly and Airbnb was established in 89 countries with over a million nights booked on the platform. The same year they received $112 million from venture capitalists and were valued at $1 billion. The growth has continued to the point where Airbnb is now worth over $30 billion.