The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan9 Aug 2024

524: In Retrospect - From Air Mattress to $31 Billion | The UNLIKELY Rise of Airbnb

Today, we're diving back into the Foundr Podcast archive to bring back a true highlight of an interview with Airbnb co-founder, Joe Gebbia. How do you raise capital for your startup? Well, if you ask the co-founder of Airbnb Joe Gebbia, he’ll tell you what worked for him: Cereal. That’s right, the company that started with a single air mattress and grew to a $100 billion empire was kept afloat by selling custom cereal boxes. It was bizarre but it worked. Gebbia muses in this episode of the Foundr podcast: “We made $20,000 in breakfast cereal, and we're able to basically pay off our credit card debt...The cereal, funnily enough, was how we were able to help keep the options open for us until eventually, the invitation came for Y Combinator.” In undoubtedly one of our most riveting episodes, Gebbia recounts his incredible journey from struggling to pay rent, to Airbnb’s first angel investor, to one of the biggest brands in the world and Gebbia’s incredible charity work. Gebbia is candid about how he overcame countless rejections and problems. Listen in as he shares specific advice for entrepreneurs looking to create the next industry disrupter: “You can see what’s hot. You can go after an emerging industry... Or you can solve a problem. Your own problem. Airbnb was our own problem. We had a rent check that we couldn’t pay. And it forced us to come up with a new way of making ends meet.” Click here to start your business for $1. You’ll get all-access foundr+, where you’ll find more in-depth, proven strategies from founders like our guest today and support and advice from our global community of 30,000 founders. If you loved this conversation and learned something new, rate and review this episode. Stay in touch with us, follow foundr on your favorite platform: Foundr.com Instagram YouTube Facebook X LinkedIn Magazine

Det här avsnittet är hämtat från ett öppet RSS-flöde och publiceras inte av Podme. Det kan innehålla reklam.

Avsnitt(690)

689: I Sold ONE Product in ONE Color - Then Exited for Half a Billion

Rob Ward exited Quad Lock last year for half a billion dollars. He never took a cent of outside investment to build it, was profitable every single month from day one, and ran the business with a sk...

30 Juli 54min

688: (Solo) I Lost Years Of My Life To This One Mistake (And You're Probably Making It Right Now)

I have never said this directly on the show before, but shiny object syndrome did not cost me months. It cost me years. Entire years where the Foundr team was spread across five or six initiatives ins...

27 Juli 11min

687: I Broke Every DTC Rule and Built a $1 Billion Brand From My Garage

Sandra Oh Lin walked away from running eBay's fashion business in 2011 to pack craft boxes in her garage. She raised just $11 million in total - and never needed another dollar. KiwiCo has now shipped...

23 Juli 52min

686: Claire Built The World's #1 Dachshund Brand From Home - Now Doing $140K/Month

Claire Wolfson got her first dachshund at 20, became completely obsessed, and watched him get paralysed by the spinal condition that affects almost every sausage dog. The original plan was to design a...

22 Juli 28min

685: (Solo) The $500,000 Lesson I Had to Learn the Hard Way

A few years ago I lost half a million dollars in 30 days. Not in crypto, not in a speculative bet. In the business I built from my parents' basement and launched on $3,000 from a credit card. And the ...

20 Juli 11min

684: She Bet Her House Deposit on Hair Gel - and Built an 8-Figure Brand

Yasmina Elmerkaoui had one shot - use the house deposit to buy a home, or bet it all on a hair gel she'd spent two years formulating. She chose the hair gel. On launch night she packed orders until 5a...

16 Juli 51min

683: (Solo) The Expense Audit That Could Save Your Brand Thousands This Year

This is not a growth hack. It is not going to go viral on a Twitter thread. But I genuinely believe it is one of the highest leverage things you can do for your brand right now, and most founders neve...

13 Juli 12min

682: From $2M in Debt to a $250M Gum Company | Pur Gum

Jay Klein lost $2 million on a gum nobody wanted. He sold the remaining stock to a pig feed company for $13,000 - then used every cent of it to launch Pur. Sixteen years later, Pur is the fastest-gr...

9 Juli 58min