Agung Purnomo, Alan Okadenan, Widyawan Widarto Founding the Airbnb Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, and Nathan

Blecharczyk are two of the three founders of Airbnb. Prior establishment of Airbnb, they had already lived the hard way of being an entrepreneur. Both Chesky and Gebbia, are the campus hot shot, running campuses two biggest clubs, the RISD Balls and the RISD Nads. Both get a lot of experience and the most fundamental education in running a business, building an organization from ground up into momentous existence. After graduation, Chesky running into a job that made him designing dozens of products for industries: figuring who the customer, what they need, and how would it sellthe work of an entrepreneurand Gebbia developed CritBuns (a seating cushion to ease pain) that persistently made it as a class gift for graduation day, although at first it seems impossible to be done. Nathan Blecharczyk, have a great credentials of coding and had a track record of success that had staretd at an early age. The partnerships of Airbnb began with Chesky and Gebbia, which being close old friends and have been through hardships together. Later on, Blecharzyk joined in. On Blecharzyk perspective, both Chesky and Gebbia are individuals with dazzling skill that complements his skills. Blecharzyk addition to the team is a proof that founders are earned. The first problem of Airbnb is searching their customers and made the demand stable. They almost try everything that came up in their mind. Their first business model proved to be unsustainable, because theyre not talking with the users, the very customer they should hear their voice to cope up with their languish rents. Unsettlement of Nathan Bleacharczyk when Airbnb experiencing turbulent times, shouldnt make him went out from Airbnb. Chesky and Gebbia should convinced Bleacharzyk that Airbnb would be better, only if they could cope with the current problem, and they will. In early days, Airbnb only using traditional marketing campaign that leads to failure: advertisement followed with no valid listings, press stuffs with no direct results, and cereal sales for presidential campaign. Cereal sales is also their last stand to extend the team bond before broken by financial troubleto few more month. Traditional advertise-room listingrenting proved to be a dire business model to keep sustainable demand. Following the end of November, credit card debt had swollen too big for Chesky and Gebbia, where Blecharchzyk continued his job in east.

Agung Purnomo, Alan Okadenan, Widyawan Widarto Airbnb at Y Combinator (YC) Airbnb was accepted in YC. YCs founder Paul Graham interested with persistency and creativity of Airbnbs founders in search for creating sustainable business model. Also, the basic idea of Airbnb had worked. YCwas top notch incubator and turned out to be auspiciously drive startup teams to be successful, way better than the previous incubator. The key success is YC provide no ofices for stratups, mass production techniques to venture funding, their motto of make something people want, common advice of go talk to users, and small venture capital firm structure. On the other hand, most Indonesian incubators have an early intention of creating CSRs project from their obligation to the community. Indonesian incubators also didnt have a team that previously a full-fledged entrepreneurs. YC seeded Airbnb for $20,000 and demanded a 6% of common stock exchange from Airbnb. This is a win-win scenario where YC also provided advice, networking, community of founders, and top venture capitals and investors exposure. YCs seed funding of $20,000 should be primarily used for building their first 100,000 customers community by listening to what their customers exact want and finding their needs. This would build a strong base of first adopter and could leveraging demand, also a good research for sustainable business model. Airbnb exposure to YCs financing lead them to a speaking with Sequoia Capital team. Sequoia Capital was also in a quest of investments in the vacation rentals space for more than two years. The vacation rentals were an $18 Billion market, which is humongous. Airbnb also unique in front of Sequoia Capital, which could enable people to list excess space in their existing homes, which means a lot more units will go online. Sequoia Capitals $610,000 investment for 20% of Airbnbs shares is interesting. Airbnbs team should accept the offer because another VCs might not giving the same amount of money and a lot of non-monetary benefits, a benefits that rarely found. Benefits such as the name of Sequoia Capital itselfindicating that Airbnb is already a world class companyseeing from the history of Sequoia Capital investment portfolio, valuable board member, and Airbnb team itself is feel aligned with Greg McAdoo, Sequoias lead partner with solid cultural and skill set.