We were the first site to allow users to book accommodations and pay online through the app, which was a significant innovation at the time.

The pandemic hit just as we were launching our travel app, which was designed to allow users to easily discover and book hotels. Despite the shutdown of hotels worldwide, I focused on the future, believing that people would want to travel again.

I started with a simple tech stack using free tools to test my idea, which led to my first bookings and rapid growth in my service.

Airbnb's founders initially launched the service to solve their own financial problem of making rent during a major conference in San Francisco.

We created a bed and breakfast for a design conference because we had no money for rent, leading to the birth of Airbnb.

After our initial launch, we didn't see immediate success and even explored creating a roommate matching website before pivoting back to Airbnb.

The first version of Airbnb lacked essential features like payment processing and a map view, highlighting that early products can be very basic yet still serve a purpose for a small user base. It operated only during conferences, where they would rent out rooms and shut down the service when the event ended, which was their minimum viable product (MVP).

Airbnb's first product lacked payments and a map view, demonstrating that successful startups often begin with very basic versions of their products.

After selling my first startup, I lost a suitcase on a trip to Argentina, which inspired my next idea for a suitcase that could be tracked.