This is an interview with Brian Chesky, founder and CEO of Airbnb. They survived years of challenges, brokeness and despair before they hit a growth phase on their way to a now $2 billion+ valued company. If you are not familar, Airbnb allows anyone to rent out a room or their entire home to a stranger. No one would do that, right?
Wrong. They are growing like crazy right now. Simply amazing. It’s a long interview but VERY worth it. A few things I took from the interview:
- Create something a hundred people will love, not something 1 million people will kind of like.
- Do whatever you can to survive. Just when you think it’s over your answer will present itself.
- Love what you do and do it world class. They chose to maximize their unique culture and be great at design. Doing that will attract the right people.
founderslivemedia.com 
Your timing could’t have been better, It’s crazy how i know that story but when time comes to apply the lessons your brain never reminds you of it. We were working on small project and we wanted to start it tiny. It has eager customers who are pinging us continuously frequently for when we will launch. I don’t know but there’s this thing that happens with ideas: Light bulb moment, the excited snickers, successful validation and drafts of an MVP. Then you say let’s build this thing and when you are 98% to a truly awesome & perfect lean MVP the mind tells you it has less features, it’s not ready, it must expand it’s provisions to cover a wider market etc and in the end the launch date(if it ever comes) is now eons down the road.
I started a small experiment: to record one or more videos about the idea in its early days before i start working on an MVP. looking back to them helps me get that excitement back and to re-assure myself that the MVP really is perfect. The habit then stopped after i mastered MVP discipline but it seems just recently i was about to start slipping back again, and i read this. Many thanks.
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Thanks Sam. Glad this hit home just at the right time. Keep rockin.
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