364: The $100B Cereal Entrepreneur: Joe Gebbia of Airbnb

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">How do you raise capital for your startup?</span> <span style="font-weight: 400;"><br /> </span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br /></span><span style= "font-weight: 400;">Well, if you ask the co-founder of Airbnb Joe Gebbia, he’ll tell you what worked for him: </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;"> </span></p> <p><em><span style= "font-weight: 400;">Cereal. </span></em></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;"> </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">That’s right, the company that started with a single air mattress and grew to a $100 billion empire was kept afloat by selling custom cereal boxes. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;"> </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">It was bizarre but it worked. Gebbia muses in this episode of the Foundr podcast:</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;"> </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“We made $20,000 in breakfast cereal, and we're able to basically pay off our credit card debt...The cereal, funnily enough, was how we were able to help keep the options open for us until eventually, the invitation came for Y Combinator.”</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;"> </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In undoubtedly one of our most riveting episodes, Gebbia recounts his incredible journey from struggling to pay rent, to Airbnb’s first angel investor, to one of the biggest brands in the world and Gebbia’s incredible charity work.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;"> </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Gebbia is candid about how he overcame countless rejections and problems. Listen in as he shares specific advice for entrepreneurs looking to create the next industry disrupter: </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;"> </span></p> <p><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">“You can see what’s hot. You can go after an emerging industry... Or you can solve a problem. Your own problem. Airbnb was our own problem. We had a rent check that we couldn’t pay. And