Joe Gebbia Quotes

When I learned about Airbnb, I was like, 'Wow, this is an amazing, new way to travel; it's about community, and there's a lot to figure out to clear the way,' so I was really drawn to that.

Airbnb was born out of necessarity. Our rent went up. It was born out of a problem.

Airbnb is undervalued.

People don't use Airbnb overtly to trust people more. They use it because they want to get a better sense of the culture and to save money. A by-product was that they live in someone else's shoes.

When we started Airbnb, I had no idea about the people we would meet or the friendships I would make.

Airbnb is a company with values around hospitality.

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.

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.

No hotels have gone out of business because of Airbnb... Airbnb is not a perfect substitute for a hotel. We excel at different things.

As with any new and innovative industry, entrenched interests - particularly the hotel industry - have attempted to squash the home-sharing movement.

When we founded Airbnb in 2008, our dream was to help create a world where you could belong anywhere, and that vision has taken root in almost every country in the world.

Talking to hosts and asking them, 'What does Airbnb mean to you?'... I get amazingly heartfelt stories about the people that they met, about the money that they earned, about the mindset of empowerment they got through this and how they then applied that to their own business.

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.

We need more imagination, more innovation and more public financing for projects and programmes that harness the positive energy of young men.

When we go city by city, country by country, the majority of our hosts, our owners, are simply renting out their spare bedroom.

Walking the streets of Porto and speaking with the top engineers at Veniam, I am struck by the passion that they bring to the world with their designs.

I am an entrepreneur in the entertainment industry. Somewhere early on when I couldn't get something I wanted through the system, I threw up my hands and tried to figure a way to get it done myself. A lot of it came from my upbringing. My dad was an entrepreneur.

There's a perception out there that Airbnb doesn't want there to be rules. We think rules would be fantastic. We think rules would help our community, but not necessarily the rules that have simply existed for decades.

Risk is the essence of any reward - to try the thing that no one else is willing to try.

I'm going to keep innovating.

The only rollercoasters I get on are startups.

There is nothing more powerful than a new idea in the hands of a social entrepreneur

If you want swashbuckling action in your life, become an entrepreneur and give it a go.

A house may draw visitors, but it is the possessor alone that can detain them.

Launching a business is essentially an adventure in problem-solving.