In 2008, Brian Chesky, co-founder and CEO of Airbnb, had an inbox full of rejections. At the time, he was trying to raise money for his fledgeling start-up, Chesky said in a recent interview on the “The Diary of a CEO” podcast.
“We’ve had a chance to discuss internally, and unfortunately don’t think that it’s right for ‘fill in the blank investment firm’ from an investment perspective,” Chesky read during the interview, noting that the email was from August 1, 2008. “The potential market opportunity did not seem large enough for a required model.”
Chesky was, to the best of his memory, trying to raise $150,000 at a $1.5 million post-money valuation. Now, nearly 17 years later, Airbnb has a market cap of nearly $80 billion.
“That’s a pretty large market,” Chesky said. “And our business is pretty much the same idea as the idea that we proposed to that person who said our market opportunity wasn’t large enough.”
Airbnb has recently implemented some changes, like launching a “services” option for booking things like private chefs and personal trainers, and a new “experiences” feature.
Chesky said that there are many lessons to be found in this early rejection email.
“It’s a reminder that the world doesn’t just change. Or at least it doesn’t just transform towards our dreams, ideals, and ambitions,” Chesky said. “That requires certain types of people — we might call them entrepreneurs, inventors, all sorts of people in different domains — that believe the world can be a little different than the one that they live in.”
Most people listening to the podcast, he said, have the skills to be an entrepreneur, at least on a small scale.
Chesky said all this as the job market remains dire, including for young people in the tech sector.
Axel Springer, Insider Inc.’s parent company, is an investor in Airbnb.
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