twointwomillion
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EDIT: I’m gonna open this essay up with the caveat that there’s a lot of non-Airbnb stuff in here. That’s because I wanted to draw parallels between Airbnb and other startups. I’m less interested in lazily inspiring you with examples like most sites do, and more in what you should take away to increase your probability of success.
I’ve also decided to split the original essay up into 4 parts (shipping 1 part each day). It was almost half an hour long and I feel like that just would’ve been too cumbersome to consume.
Hope you enjoy.
RJ
Links to the rest of the good stuff:
The Dumbest Startup That Ever Worked — What You Can Learn From Airbnb — PART 1
The Dumbest Startup That Ever Worked — What You Can Learn From Airbnb — PART 2
The Dumbest Startup That Ever Worked — What You Can Learn From Airbnb — PART 3
The Dumbest Startup That Ever Worked — What You Can Learn From Airbnb — PART 4
TLDR: Lesson 1: It’s possible for you to make things better. Lesson 2: Solve your own tiny problem. Lesson 3: Validate quickly and double down when it works. Lesson 4: It’s easy to connect the dots ex-post-facto. Lesson 5: Finding product/market fit from day one is fiction.
We’ll cover lesson 1 today. Let’s get into it.
Both Brian Chesky as well as Joe Gebbia studied industrial design at the Rhode Island School Of Design (RISD).
Not exactly the typical Silicon Valley, Stanford/Harvard educated, been coding since age 7, template.
That makes their journey all the more interesting.
As they were going through RISD, a very important lesson got ingrained into their psyche: It’s possible for you to look at the world around you and change it for the better. Skimming over this sentence in this essay is one thing. But going through years of training and trying to improve things, really drills that into your DNA.
That’s something most of us simply do not believe deep down. You go through decades of education and creativity is simply beaten out of you. You have to conform. There’s 1 right answer. And that right answer is whatever is on the answer sheet. Most of the time, even if you’re technically right, you’re labeled as a wiseass. This isn’t just true in high school. Even in academia, you often can’t do the type of research you really want to do. [1]
This is something we talked about in: The Art Of Business, Where Science And Business Depart and Performance Doesn’t Equal Learning, Growth Doesn’t Equal Good Business.
This is true in areas that you would not expect such as math and physics. E.g. just thinking about the applications of quantum mechanics was, until the last maybe 5yrs, best done alone, in a dark room, with the appropriate levels of accompanying shame.
The only thing you can do is to try to approach that asymptote called perfection. A perfect GPA, perfect extracurriculars, perfect resumes with perfect internships… perfect, perfect, perfect.
That’s the downside of narrowly competing along a single axis.
But with their background in design, Brian and Joe knew that they didn’t have to follow a preexisting track and that they could help design tomorrow. This is not retrofitting because before they started Airbnb they were trying other startup ideas they hoped would have a big impact.
Look, I’m not hating on those people. The world needs them. Probably a good 80-90% of people should be like that. Where I push back is when society propagandizes that 100% of people should be like that and when you’re not, you’re a defective misfit. That’s clearly not true. We need 10-20% of people that try to make things better. People that aren’t following the narrow track everyone else is following. People that go left when everyone goes right because maybe, just maybe, ‘’right’’ has something that makes life a tiny bit better. [2] [3]
These 2 quotes from George Bernard Shaw come to mind:
and
But none of that can happen if first, you don’t believe it’s possible. And not just possible, but possible for you to make the lives of a handful of people a tiny bit better on your way to creating something that’s hard for them to live without.
More on this in: Create A Product That’s Hard To Live Without.
A very important piece of mental software my teacher and friend Noah Kagan (Founding member at Facebook and Mint, Founder of Sumo Group) taught me is:
So why can’t you be the one that makes change happen?
[1] From from Colin Percival (Tarsnap founder) in ‘’On the use of a life’’:
I hoped to continue that work. Having recently received my doctorate from Oxford University and returned home to Canada, I was eligible for a post-doctoral fellowship from Canada’s National Sciences and Engineering Research Council, so I applied, and… I didn’t get it.
My supervisor cautioned me of the risks of doing work which was overly novel as a young academic: Committees don’t know what to make of you, and they don’t have any reputational prior to fall back upon. Indeed, I ran into this issue with my side channel attack: Reviewers at the Journal of Cryptology didn’t understand why they were being asked to read a paper about CPU design, while reviewers at a computer hardware journal didn’t understand why they were being asked to read about cryptography. It became clear, both from my own experiences and from advice I received, that if I wanted to succeed in academia I would need to churn out incremental research papers every year — at very least until I had tenure.
[2] As I wrote in Your User Didn’t Fuck Up, You Did:
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Enjoyed today's essay? Sweet! I write about entrepreneurial science to help people like you grow their company. Want in? Go join The Younglings.
RJ
I’ve also decided to split the original essay up into 4 parts (shipping 1 part each day). It was almost half an hour long and I feel like that just would’ve been too cumbersome to consume.
Hope you enjoy.
RJ
Links to the rest of the good stuff:
The Dumbest Startup That Ever Worked — What You Can Learn From Airbnb — PART 1
The Dumbest Startup That Ever Worked — What You Can Learn From Airbnb — PART 2
The Dumbest Startup That Ever Worked — What You Can Learn From Airbnb — PART 3
The Dumbest Startup That Ever Worked — What You Can Learn From Airbnb — PART 4
TLDR: Lesson 1: It’s possible for you to make things better. Lesson 2: Solve your own tiny problem. Lesson 3: Validate quickly and double down when it works. Lesson 4: It’s easy to connect the dots ex-post-facto. Lesson 5: Finding product/market fit from day one is fiction.
We’ll cover lesson 1 today. Let’s get into it.
LESSON 1: IT’S POSSIBLE FOR YOU TO MAKE THINGS BETTER
Both Brian Chesky as well as Joe Gebbia studied industrial design at the Rhode Island School Of Design (RISD).
Not exactly the typical Silicon Valley, Stanford/Harvard educated, been coding since age 7, template.
That makes their journey all the more interesting.
As they were going through RISD, a very important lesson got ingrained into their psyche: It’s possible for you to look at the world around you and change it for the better. Skimming over this sentence in this essay is one thing. But going through years of training and trying to improve things, really drills that into your DNA.
That’s something most of us simply do not believe deep down. You go through decades of education and creativity is simply beaten out of you. You have to conform. There’s 1 right answer. And that right answer is whatever is on the answer sheet. Most of the time, even if you’re technically right, you’re labeled as a wiseass. This isn’t just true in high school. Even in academia, you often can’t do the type of research you really want to do. [1]
This is something we talked about in: The Art Of Business, Where Science And Business Depart and Performance Doesn’t Equal Learning, Growth Doesn’t Equal Good Business.
This is true in areas that you would not expect such as math and physics. E.g. just thinking about the applications of quantum mechanics was, until the last maybe 5yrs, best done alone, in a dark room, with the appropriate levels of accompanying shame.
The only thing you can do is to try to approach that asymptote called perfection. A perfect GPA, perfect extracurriculars, perfect resumes with perfect internships… perfect, perfect, perfect.
That’s the downside of narrowly competing along a single axis.
But with their background in design, Brian and Joe knew that they didn’t have to follow a preexisting track and that they could help design tomorrow. This is not retrofitting because before they started Airbnb they were trying other startup ideas they hoped would have a big impact.
WE NEED CONFORMISTS BUT WE ALSO NEED REBELS
Look, I’m not hating on those people. The world needs them. Probably a good 80-90% of people should be like that. Where I push back is when society propagandizes that 100% of people should be like that and when you’re not, you’re a defective misfit. That’s clearly not true. We need 10-20% of people that try to make things better. People that aren’t following the narrow track everyone else is following. People that go left when everyone goes right because maybe, just maybe, ‘’right’’ has something that makes life a tiny bit better. [2] [3]
These 2 quotes from George Bernard Shaw come to mind:
and
But none of that can happen if first, you don’t believe it’s possible. And not just possible, but possible for you to make the lives of a handful of people a tiny bit better on your way to creating something that’s hard for them to live without.
More on this in: Create A Product That’s Hard To Live Without.
A very important piece of mental software my teacher and friend Noah Kagan (Founding member at Facebook and Mint, Founder of Sumo Group) taught me is:
So why can’t you be the one that makes change happen?
NOTES
[1] From from Colin Percival (Tarsnap founder) in ‘’On the use of a life’’:
I hoped to continue that work. Having recently received my doctorate from Oxford University and returned home to Canada, I was eligible for a post-doctoral fellowship from Canada’s National Sciences and Engineering Research Council, so I applied, and… I didn’t get it.
My supervisor cautioned me of the risks of doing work which was overly novel as a young academic: Committees don’t know what to make of you, and they don’t have any reputational prior to fall back upon. Indeed, I ran into this issue with my side channel attack: Reviewers at the Journal of Cryptology didn’t understand why they were being asked to read a paper about CPU design, while reviewers at a computer hardware journal didn’t understand why they were being asked to read about cryptography. It became clear, both from my own experiences and from advice I received, that if I wanted to succeed in academia I would need to churn out incremental research papers every year — at very least until I had tenure.
[2] As I wrote in Your User Didn’t Fuck Up, You Did:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Enjoyed today's essay? Sweet! I write about entrepreneurial science to help people like you grow their company. Want in? Go join The Younglings.
RJ