5 principles for early stage startup success from Airbnb Co-Founder

In a talk given at Stanford University, Brian Chesky, the co-founder of Airbnb went into detail about the company’s origin, operations and success. With the benefit of hindsight he said that succeeding in the early stage of a startup is simple if you follow some principles. He defined the early stage of the startup as surviving. If you fail at this stage you don’t die you just stop working on the project. If you get through this stage, the next stage is “growing”.

1. Solve your own problem

On Airbnb you are either a host or a guest. Hosts earn money from guest staying at their house. Airbnb co-founders didn’t have money for rent when they moved to San Francisco. They noticed that all rooms at the hotels listed on the website for an upcoming design conference were sold out. They decided to provide airbeds in their house for people attending the conference.

2. Do things that don’t scale, 3. Find 100 people that love it

If people love your product they will recommend it to their friends. If their experience with it was amazing they will mention it to someone. That’s how a startup grows its user base. To get those first people to love your product you can do things that don’t scale. You only need a small number of really satisfied customers to start a chain reaction.

Airbnb co-founders went to their first hosts (users of their platform) themselves to ensure that they had great photos taken of their apartments. The co-founders were also hosts themselves. When the Airbnb users had great experience they shared it via word of mouth.

4. Have great co-founders that you trust, 5. Make sure you are full stack designers and engineers in your founding team

When Airbnb co-founders were trying to get their company off the ground at some point they were thousands of dollars in debt. They succeeded because of their resourcefulness and ability. At one point they sold limited edition cereal, with unauthorized usage of presidential election candidates’ identities, just to get some funds to stay alive. In the early stages it’s crucial that you and your co-founders bring the most value to the company per the amount of ramen noodles you eat.

The whole 1.5 hour talk for the interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W608u6sBFpo