Nate Blecharczyk at Startup School 2013

TL;DR

Airbnb's growth (73x in three years, 150,000 guests/night) appears as a smooth hockey-stick chart, but the reality was years of hardship: failed pitches, a co-founder in Boston, a "trough of sorrow" after launch, and near-quitting before Y Combinator. Perseverance through every setback, plus advice to "do things that don't scale" and build for a few users who love you, turned the company around.

Key insights

• The hockey-stick growth graph hides the brutal grind: it took four years to serve the first four million guests, but the next five million came in nine months.
• Choosing co-founders is the most important decision because you can change ideas or pivot but cannot change partners without starting over.
• Every prior experience (hobbies, failed projects, a bad startup job) builds toward success if you treat them as additive.