January 12, 2013

The Crazy Story Behind Airbnb’s Formation

I’ve heard a lot about Airbnb by now, like everyone else. Right? Well, this very long conversation with Airbnb’s CEO Brian Chesky just blew me away. The story of their company’s formation is just absolutely insanely crazy. Chesky and his cofounders kept opening credit cards and going into debt. They sold cereal to get out of debt, and with the leftovers, they didn’t have money for milk. Nearly 95% of every angel investor or VC they met passed on them. Even their moms thought they were crazy. Over 13 months later, Chesky’s life changed. For a company as big as Airbnb is and will be soon, this story is just tremendous, and I’d highly encourage everyone to listen to all of it.

Semil Shah

Semil founded Haystack, an early-stage investment firm now investing out of its sixth institutional fund, Haystack Ventures VI, with his colleagues Aashay Sanghvi and Divya Dhulipala. He is also a Venture Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners. Prior to investing, Semil held various product and operational roles at earl-stage startups, the most recent one being acquired by Apple. In 2017, Semil was named to Midas Brink List by Forbes, and in 2022 and 2023, he was named to the Midas List for seed investors by Forbes. While working and investing, he has also been a long-time consistent writer about technology and investing at outlets such as Harvard Business Review, TechCrunch, and Quora.