“Scheduled shipping is one of many inventions that has made New York a global capital of innovation and creativity – from Willis Carrier’s invention of air conditioning in Buffalo and George Eastman’s breakthrough film technology in Rochester to the rise of hip-hop in the South Bronx and the world’s first cell phone call in Midtown Manhattan.”
― Joe Gebbia
“Design helps shape our everyday interactions through products, furniture, objects, or experiences.”
― Joe Gebbia
“Digital communication is completely different from in-person, face-to-face conversations. One will give you surface insights, and the other really gives you depth.”
― Joe Gebbia
“Airbnb has proven that hospitality, generosity, and the simple act of trust between strangers can go a long way.”
― Joe Gebbia
“Ultimately, the power of the Airbnb platform is that it motivates guests to blend into communities, belong anywhere, and live like locals.”
― Joe Gebbia
“Airbnb is about the nexus of the online and offline to create the perfect customer experience.”
― Joe Gebbia
“You have to know what your users are experiencing.”
― Joe Gebbia
“Airbnb has grown thanks to our hosts creating memorable experiences and inspiring their guests to be hosts in their hometowns.”
― Joe Gebbia
“Design is an expression of one’s most deeply rooted internal values.”
― Joe Gebbia
“Sympathy relies on a common experience. If you’re clumsy, you might have sympathy for others who tend to bump into things. Empathy, on the other hand, is the ability to understand another person’s feelings even if you’ve never experienced them yourself.”
― Joe Gebbia
“From natural disasters to the refugee crises, the impact we can have as individuals might seem limited. But as many of our hosts know, sharing your home for even a few nights can make a tremendous difference in someone’s life.”
― Joe Gebbia
“It’s about more than making money; it’s about connecting people in countries all around the world. Our social mission is to get people meeting each other, and we need people who align with that purpose.”
― Joe Gebbia
“We didn’t invent anything new. Hospitality has been around forever.”
― Joe Gebbia
“What I’ve realized is that the joy of meeting and greeting people from all around the world is universal.”
― Joe Gebbia
“In art school, you learn that design is much more than the look and feel of something – it’s the whole experience.”
― Joe Gebbia
“We do believe in an inside-out culture. If we hold our hosts and guests to an expectation of acceptance and belonging, it has to start within our company. Otherwise, how on earth do we have the credibility to hold them accountable if we’re not doing it to ourselves?”
― Joe Gebbia
“Airbnb was born out of necessarity. Our rent went up. It was born out of a problem.”
― Joe Gebbia
“By helping New Yorkers turn their greatest expense – their home – into an asset, Airbnb is a vehicle that artists, entrepreneurs, and innovators can use to earn extra money to pursue their passion.”
― Joe Gebbia
“People assume that the smarter your home, the better your life, but in reality, technology so often gets in the way of leading a good life.”
― Joe Gebbia
“Airbnb is about travel.”
― Joe Gebbia
“High reputation beats high similarity.”
― Joe Gebbia
“Everything at Airbnb is a continuation of what it’s like to be a guest in somebody’s house. We think about how each stage makes people feel.”
― Joe Gebbia
“I feel triumphant when our moms can use Airbnb without their technically inclined kids.”
― Joe Gebbia
“A world-changing vision often necessitates a profound simplicity in the user experience.”
― Joe Gebbia
“To me, ‘design thinking’ is another way of saying empathize with the customer. It’s consideration for the person you’re designing for.”
― Joe Gebbia
“After World War II, communities and the trust they fostered began to erode in the United States. We moved away from dense city centers to fenced in suburban lots separated by broad highways.”
― Joe Gebbia
“While the Cold War had us questioning our next-door neighbors, big brands emerged to capture our trust. We became consumers.”
― Joe Gebbia
“To be truly empathetic, we have to acknowledge that we’re all human, we’re all flawed, and that life can be difficult.”
― Joe Gebbia
“I’ll never forget my first Art Basel.”
― Joe Gebbia
“Given Miami’s unique role in Airbnb’s roots, I’m particularly proud of how South Floridians have embraced home sharing as an opportunity to earn supplemental income and catalyze economic development in their communities.”
― Joe Gebbia
“As with any new and innovative industry, entrenched interests – particularly the hotel industry – have attempted to squash the home-sharing movement.”
― Joe Gebbia
“In New York, ingenuity goes hand-in-hand with the hustle to survive.”
― Joe Gebbia
“We started Airbnb because, like many across the U.S. and in New York, we were struggling to pay our rent and decided to open up our living room to fellow artists coming to town for a design conference. Sharing our apartment allowed us to stay in our home and start our company.”
― Joe Gebbia
“What if cities embraced a culture of sharing? I see a future of shared cities that bring us community and connection instead of isolation and separation.”
― Joe Gebbia
“What we’re doing with Airbnb feels like the nexus of everything that is right. We’re helping people be more resourceful with the space they already have, and we’re connecting people around the world.”
― Joe Gebbia
“I’ve experienced firsthand the disconnect between furniture, their environments, and the way people work.”
― Joe Gebbia
“There’s no reason any company should be limited by its physical environment.”
― Joe Gebbia
“Any time there is a new idea, it can take some time for policy to catch up to it.”
― Joe Gebbia
“We have seen things in the twentieth century like the ATM machine, the VCR, and even the car. The electric car was invented in 1920, and here we, 100 years later, it is only now becoming an actual thing. So it doesn’t surprise me that new ideas are met with a lot of questions.”
― Joe Gebbia
“When trust works out right, it can be absolutely magical.”
― Joe Gebbia
“We’re a community-driven brand, but at the same time, we want every host in every home to recognize that they’re all individuals, and to use Airbnb as an expression of their individuality.”
― Joe Gebbia
“Design can overcome our most deeply rooted stranger-danger bias.”
― Joe Gebbia
“At Airbnb, we’re trying to build a culture that supports details, celebrates them, and gives our teams creative license to pursue them.”
― Joe Gebbia
“In the post-war United States, you had this race to the suburbs. Cities shrank, the suburbs got bigger – and the notion of community changed drastically. You went from all being very close together to all being spaced apart and slightly suspicious of one another.”
― Joe Gebbia
“The hotel industry is a very modern invention – it only really started to become branded in the 1950s.”
― Joe Gebbia
“We expect Seoul to be one of our most important markets not only in Asia but around the world.”
― Joe Gebbia
“Staying at Airbnb listings gives me the opportunity to truly understand and experience the local culture of the countries I visit.”
― Joe Gebbia
“Dog-fooding is using your own products so that you understand from inside out what it is you’re providing the customers. It’s another way to gain insights and to gain intelligence. You use it yourself; you eat your own dog food. Every time we do that, we discover something that we can improve.”
― Joe Gebbia
“I think Pixar’s done an amazing job integrating art and science. They really get this idea that art and engineering work side by side.”
― Joe Gebbia
“I have the privilege of working with our in-house design studio, called Samara, and our humanitarian team, called Human. Samara is thinking about the future of Airbnb, and Human is working on ways to leverage our platform outside the cause of day-to-day business.”
― Joe Gebbia
“For me, one of my personal inspirations was designers in the mid-20th century named Charles and Ray Eames.”
― Joe Gebbia
“We built a basic website, and Air Bed and Breakfast was born. Three lucky guests got to stay on a $20 airbed on the hardwood floor. But they loved it. And so did we. We took them on adventures around the city.”
― Joe Gebbia
“Every apartment I’ve ever lived in has had a space to make, create, and get stuff done within eyesight of my bed.”
― Joe Gebbia
“When it comes to technology and the home, I really don’t want to see any of it.”
― Joe Gebbia
“Cities are a melting pot for different ideas, and diversity brings a high-energy rhythm that I don’t think we’d know was gone until it was too late.”
― Joe Gebbia
“The fear of mistakes is the fast track to irrelevance.”
― Joe Gebbia
“Of course Airbnb made mistakes the first year! Some came from our own preconceptions. When we started, we designed our interface for ourselves, Internet-savvy twentysomethings. We never considered the role of good eyesight in our interface – font size, vernacular; it all matters.”
― Joe Gebbia
“We encourage employees to ship new features on day one, which immediately encourages them to come up with something creative and different.”
― Joe Gebbia
“We hire people who are smarter than us.”
― Joe Gebbia
“We’ve invented a new marketplace. There was no easy way to rent a person’s bedroom over the Internet or book a vacation rental over the Internet. There was no guidebook for us to turn to as we defined this new marketplace.”
― Joe Gebbia
“You must have the ability to recognize good design and good user experience. These are core things at Airbnb. It doesn’t matter which department you’re in.”
― Joe Gebbia
“In general, we believe in regulation – just as long as it is fair and balanced.”
― Joe Gebbia
“The question that I can’t shake – it’s this question that keeps coming up for me – is What does the shared home of the future look like? People are sharing homes at a rate that no one ever predicted, but residences and homes weren’t designed for it. They were designed around ideas of privacy and separation.”
― Joe Gebbia
“In the future, we will see living experiences curated around a shared lifestyle.”
― Joe Gebbia
“How do you convince somebody to host a stranger for the weekend? That’s not a trivial thing. It’s not something I think you can throw technology at, marketing at, or sales at. We threw design at it because that’s all we knew, and in doing so, I feel like we brought a human touch to it, which is so needed.”
― Joe Gebbia
“Technology moves so quickly; you can’t get comfortable with the business you have today because technology will progress.”
― Joe Gebbia
“There’s this misconception globally that the platform is about property groups and big property owners renting out entire buildings full-time.”
― Joe Gebbia
“When we go city by city, country by country, the majority of our hosts, our owners, are simply renting out their spare bedroom.”
― Joe Gebbia
“I often stay in Tokyo’s Daikanyama neighbourhood. You can go for a peaceful morning run along the Meguro river, and it is particularly incredible during cherry blossom season.”
― Joe Gebbia
“What people demand is what the policies serve.”
― Joe Gebbia
“The sharing economy is about making use of any idle resource out there. We do love seeing other sharing-economy companies flourish.”
― Joe Gebbia
“In a lot of ways, the real learning at RISD happened after-hours when you’re working side by side with your colleagues.”
― Joe Gebbia
“The story of Airbnb is really the underdog story in many ways.”
― Joe Gebbia
“Since the very beginning, we wanted to create an experience for our guests: more than just a place to sleep. We wanted to cook breakfast in the morning; we wanted to provide a subway map for our guests. Pick them up from the airport.”
― Joe Gebbia
“For an international business such as ours, you can’t localise without a local. That was a hard lesson for us. We had to be closer, physically present, which is when we put teams on the ground.”
― Joe Gebbia
“When the car was introduced in 1908, people could experience a brand new way to travel that was more efficient than a horse and buggy. Can you believe that cities tried to outlaw cars in the United States? Can you imagine driving a car for a year then having to go back to a horse and buggy?”
― Joe Gebbia
“The sharing economy is out of the bag – and it’s not going to go back in.”
― Joe Gebbia
“We believe that the best solutions come from solving your own problem. If you have a real problem, there’s likely someone else who can relate. That’s how Airbnb was born.”
― Joe Gebbia
“Airbnb is a trusted online marketplace for people to list, discover, and book unique accommodations around the world. From a private room to a private island, we offer an entertaining and personal way for travelers to unlock local experiences and see their surroundings through the eyes of a local.”
― Joe Gebbia
“Everything we do, every decision we make, is to ensure the best possible Airbnb experience for our community and grow the love.”
― Joe Gebbia
“As Chief Product Officer, I lead our product team to create simple, intuitive user experiences.”
― Joe Gebbia
“Design has always been a driving force in my life: it’s the lens through which I experience the world.”
― Joe Gebbia
“Starting a company in San Francisco when we did usually meant it was destined to be a data-driven tech company. But that didn’t seem to fully encompass what we wanted with Airbnb. When we tried looking through a tech lens, it didn’t work. The humanity was missing.”
― Joe Gebbia
“As our company has grown, how we configure and design our offices has been a crucial part of how we foster connection and collaboration throughout our teams.”
― Joe Gebbia
“Bringing words to life, storyboards show you things that words can’t.”
― Joe Gebbia
“My role is to think about what the future could be for Airbnb – and that includes crafting an effortless and easy-to-use service on any platform, whether mobile, tablet, or Web.”
― Joe Gebbia
“Creating the future means having a global vision and an extreme focus on the approachability of what we’re creating.”
― Joe Gebbia
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