The Origin of Airbnb

在2007年冬季,两位住在旧金山的室友In the winter of 2007, two roommates living in San Francisco他们是设计师Joe Gebbia和工程师Brian CheskyThey were designer Joe Gebbia and engineer Brian Chesky他们发现自己无法负担高昂的房租。They found themselves unable to afford the high rent.
一次大型设计会议让城市里的旅馆一房难求。During a large design conference, hotels in the city were fully booked.他们便突发奇想,在小小的客厅里放了三张充气床垫They had a sudden idea to place three air mattresses in their small living room.
并提供自制早餐,向旅客出租空间,取名AirBed & Breakfast。They provided homemade breakfast and rented the space to travelers, naming it 'AirBed & Breakfast'.这次原型实验吸引了三位客人,也让他们意识到:This prototype experiment attracted three guests and made them realize:人们渴望的不只是睡一晚的地方,而是真诚的连结与在地体验。People crave not just a place to sleep for a night, but genuine connections and local experiences.
为了实现更完善的平台,他们邀请好友Nathan Blecharczyk一起,开始编写网站。To build a more complete platform, they invited their friend Nathan Blecharczyk to join them and began coding the website.创业初期并不顺利:他们不断重写程序码,投资人一次又一次地拒绝他们。The early days of the startup were not smooth: they kept rewriting code, and investors rejected them time and again.
甚至为了筹集种子资金,还设计了幽默的「Obama O's」谷物包装。They even designed humorous 'Obama O's' cereal boxes to raise seed funding.
Want to read along with audio? Every story in the Literate Chinese app is narrated by a native speaker — in Mainland or Taiwan Mandarin — so you can listen while you read, and tap any word to save it as a flashcard. See what's in the app.
