In 2008, friends Brian Cesky and Joe Gebia founded the Airbnb (Air Bed & Breakfast) travel service to make it easier for people to find accommodation, wherever they are in the world. Airbnb is intended for people who want to rent out their properties, but also rent out others' properties. The offer is not hotels and hostels, but private apartments, rooms, houses, flats, boats...
When they started the project, Česki and Gebia even considered giving up everything, because they didn't have any croists. Nevertheless, the project became popular over time, and Natan Blečarzik joined them. By 2012, Airbnb had over five million booked nights.
Two years ago, the Russian DST Global and several other investment funds invested as much as 112 million dollars in the company from San Francisco, which was followed by even faster growth.
Numerous users from Montenegro rent out their apartments and houses through this service.
The site functions like a social network, where users leave messages and recommendations, registered members have an overview of their reservations, and those who rent apartments give ratings to guests in order to recommend them to others who rent apartments and indicate what kind of guest they were.
The founders of Airbnb, as Forbes writes, are currently negotiating new investments, and after the agreement is reached, their company will be worth more than 10 billion dollars. Each of them will thus have more than 1,5 billion dollars in their account and will retain a 15 percent stake in the company.
Three friends even now, although they have money, they live very modestly.
Česki and Gebia live together in the apartment where they founded the company, while 30-year-old Blečarzik, who will be the fourth youngest billionaire in the world, still comes to work on a bicycle.
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