brianchesky

That is correct. His words, not mine.

Fun facts (directly quoted) from Adam Lisagor, who made the video:

* All the locations are real Airbnb places.

* The pretty lady in the video is Venetia Pristavec, who does all the in-house video content for Airbnb, traveling around to different countries and interviewing hosts. She’s great.

* Where you see people, those are real Airbnb hosts.

* The site is neat, but you should download the iPhone app. It’s one of the best-designed, most beautiful and functional apps I’ve ever used.

* The cinematographer is my friend Rachel Morrison. She’s great.

* That villa with the credit card logos in the pool? It’s in Puerto Vallarta. The crew stayed there for a few days. It’s great.

* My side of the Scrabble board spells out “COOTYS RAT SEMEN”. Venetia’s spells “BEANS”. I won.

More than half of these positions are product, design, or engineering.

An iPhone app was the most requested product.

Yes, for now :)

We applied 1 hour before the deadline. The Justin.tv guys convinced us to apply that night at dinner but we were worried we might have missed the deadline. I asked Justin Kan to ask PG if it was too late. Below is the original email thread. Once he gave the go-ahead, we applied, and the rest is history.

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Paul Graham <##########> Date: Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 5:57 PM Subject: Re: yc applicant To: Justin <########>, Jessica Livingston <##########>

Tell them to go to http://news.ycombinator.com/apply2 and apply. They literally have to do it tonight though because we are deciding tomorrow.

Tell them to be concise and to explain how they'll make money; the former is always rare and the latter we're looking more closely at these days.

--pg

On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 8:30 PM, Justin <########> wrote: Hey PG,

Are the YC applications for the next round completely, 100% closed? There's a company that Mike, Emmett and I have been advising for months that I think would add a lot of value: Airbed and Breakfast (http://airbedandbreakfast.com/). They are basically a CouchSurfing.com for money, where users can list rooms in their houses/apartments for rent to travelers. All of us at JTV are big believers in their business and they've proven that they can knock stuff out and are well on their way to product-market fit (and are making money). Any chance you want to take a look?

Justin

To followup on the blog post, we have about 20 technical and product openings at the moment, though this number keeps increasing, not decreasing. Some of them are posted here: http://news.ycombinator.com/jobs

One month, I will probably set a budget of what my old rent was and test this.

"If you don't have to work, it's probably a better experience."

My hypothesis is that a founder of a startup can do this and still manage to run a company. In a few months, I will likely draw some conclusions.

"Non-engineers are not 'designers' by default." Amen to that. This would be a great subject for its own post.

UPDATE #2: We are at 850 RSVPs. I am going to cap it soon, so last call.

UPDATE: 614 RSVPs

In attendance will be YC alumni, Airbnb users, and various people from the tech scene. We already have 589 RSVPs, so free tickets will be gone soon. Click register if you would like to come.

Keep in mind this list is only for domestic. While many films on this list came out before international distribution, Avatar has been particularly successful internationally.

One year ago, I met Dan when we were applying to Y-Combinator. We were contemplating entering YC, and reached out to Dan for advice. After a few conversations, we were convinced.

Part of our decision to join YC was because of the community, and this was in no small measure influenced by our experiences with Dan. Since then, we have kept in touch, sharing ideas and war stories.

Dan played a brief but influential role in the Airbnb story, and an even greater influence in my life as one of the warmest introductions to the startup community one could ever imagine.

"Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works." Steve Jobs

PG's last line in the article is amazing.

Hey Sachin, thanks for the comments. The street address is hidden until the host accepts the reservation. I think the other things you have pointed out need to be better optimized. We will be expanding the 15 character limit and updating the calendar, for example. Thank you for posting your room. More feedback is welcome.

A number of our hosts are also involved in startups, so it may also be a great way to meet people in the bay area. http://airbnb.com/travel/san-francisco/ca

Estimated to be 4-5 million people, and the city is keeping bars open until 5am.

Try www.AirBedandBreakfast.com. I am one of the co-founders, and we are offering a 50% for all YC applicants. My listing is the first one listed in SF, and its a great place to practice your pitch.

yes we encourage you to use the site. My listing is the first one in SF.