The Upstarts
How Uber, Airbnb and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley are Changing the World
Brad Stone
Bantam Press
372 pages; £13.99
The first guest to use Airbnb was an Indian, Amol Surve, who arrived at the company’s first rental while attending the World Design Congress in October 2007 in San Francisco. At that time, no one knew, least of all its founders, how Airbnb would one day become more valuable than some of the biggest hotel chains in the world combined.
But the founders of Airbnb, led by Brian Chesky & Joe Gebbia, were clear about one one thing: They had to