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Upstarts Start

In January 2009, close to two million people attended the inauguration of Barack Obama as president. Some of those in attendance were entrepreneurs from San Francisco who had recently started a company called Airbnb and another one called Uber.

Many people were excited about the changes in their world. They thought that Facebook and iPhones would change how they lived. Jobs introduced the iPhone, which was a mobile phone with apps for everyday use. It had changed many lives already.

The First Airbnb Rental

In 2007, two former students from Rhode Island School of Design started AirBed & Breakfast. They were looking for ways to pay the rent and buy time as they brainstormed other projects. Their first guest rented a room in their apartment in San Francisco’s trendy South of Market district.

A couple of guys, who were interested in design and wanted to meet other people with similar interests, started AirBed & Breakfast. They invited the first guest from a conference that was going on nearby and gave him some helpful information about the city. Little did they know that their small gesture would spark an idea for a big business and change how people travel around the world today.

In the beginning, Chesky and Gebbia set up a website for Airbnb using WordPress. They later created another version of the site with their former roommate, Nathan Blecharczyk. He was an engineer who graduated from Harvard University. Their third iteration was made much easier to use than previous versions thanks to advice from Justin.tv CEO Michael Seibel. However, they didn’t receive any significant funding: Most people thought that it wouldn’t work because they didn’t believe in what Chesky and Gebbia were doing at first.

After gaining admission to the Y Combinator start-up school, Chesky, Gebbia and Blecharczyk got their first real break. They were able to gain access to experienced mentors that helped them move forward with Airbnb.

Hailing Uber

In 2008, Canadian entrepreneur Garrett Camp was frustrated with the difficulty of getting a cab in San Francisco. He decided to create an on-demand car service that passengers could access and follow using maps on their cellphones. The iPhone had just been introduced, so he used it for this purpose.

In 2009, Camp met up with his friend and fellow entrepreneur Kalanick at the LeWeb conference in Paris. One night, they decided to create a company that would make it easier for people to get around town. Their idea was soon attacked by taxi drivers who claimed that Uber wasn’t following the same rules as taxi companies.

In San Francisco, Uber faced a lot of obstacles. They had to get drivers on board with the idea and figure out how to program their app. After some trial and error, they settled on an iPhone app that worked well for both passengers and drivers.

After 2010, Uber was ready to fully utilize the smartphone revolution. This led to a new phase of the Internet revolution that came after Google and Facebook.

Airbnb Gets Booked

Paul Graham introduced the Airbnb founders to Greg McAdoo, and after a lot of meetings, he influenced him to invest $500k in the company. This showed that there was huge potential for Airbnb as it’s now worth more than 4 billion dollars.

When Airbnb was first starting out, it had a small staff working out of an apartment and trying to grow. The company’s CTO stayed in the San Francisco area while the CEO and another co-founder traveled around the world to recruit hosts. He created a payment system that would allow them to collect fees from hosts without having Airbnb take their cut.