After FlightCar, I joined Airbnb as a product manager to learn how successful companies operate and to gain insights into building a great product.

After FlightCar, I knew I was going to start another company, but this time I was going to be much more thoughtful about it.

In the early days of FlightCar, we launched without a parking lot by using a local BART station, which led to rapid growth but also caught the attention of the BART police due to the number of cars parked there.

The initial idea for Airbnb was to enhance the entire travel experience, not just provide a place to stay, by considering services like airport pickups and breakfast. We always intended to understand the operation of Airbnb from the inside out, including the timing and logistics of photographing apartments.

Connecting people with cars to those who need rides is a fundamental idea behind many successful startups.

We had to be scrappy at FlightCar, even resorting to undercover operations to meet customers and park their cars without drawing attention to our business.

Our previous company focused on pricing strategies for car sharing, and we decided to replicate that success in the car rental market, which is outdated.

The idea for Airbnb originated when my co-founders, Joe and Brian, decided to rent out their apartment to designers attending a conference, leading to the realization of a larger opportunity.

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