The stories of the early days of Airbnb, who recently filed to go public, are the stuff of legend including how the founders turned to selling themed cereal to survive.
The cereals were called “Obama O’s, the Cereal of Change,” and “Cap’n McCain’s, a Maverick in Every Box.” – a throwback to their first success housing delegates of the Democratic National Convention in 2008. It was also what got them a spot on Y Combinator.
Really good long read from Guardian on the state of the airline industry.
What it takes to store planes at Schipol is fascinating:
Fuel tanks were emptied, although not entirely: “You still need some weight in the plane, for the bursting wind we get here in Amsterdam.” The blades of the engine fans were locked into place with straps, so that, on gusty days, they didn’t whirl around endlessly and wear their parts out.
Every seven days, someone would climb into the plane and run the engines for 15 minutes to keep them functional. The air conditioning was switched on to keep the humidity at bay. “And the tyres – well, it’s the same as a car. If you keep a car parked for more than a month, you get flat tires,” Dortmans said. So a tug pulled the plane forward and back every month, to keep the wheels and axles in shape.
Still, there were some surprises. In the absence of the roar of jets, birds began to appear around Schiphol again, and one day, a ground engineer told Dortmans that he’d found a bird starting to nest in a cavity in the auxiliary power unit. “I’m hearing all these birds and now I find this,” he told Dortmans. “It feels like I’m out in the woods.”
“Airbnb spending is running a whopping 75% higher than this time last year according to Edison Trends, based on a panel of spending data including more than 65,000 Airbnb transactions.“
