CC BY-NC 2.0 ↗
Obama O's Cereal Box
- Year
- 2008
- Creator
- Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, Nathan Blecharczyk
- Company
- AirBed & Breakfast (later Airbnb)
- Location
- San Francisco, California
Description
This is one of the Obama O's cereal boxes that the founders of AirBed & Breakfast designed in 2008. They filled the boxes with ordinary cereal and sold each box for $40.
Importance
After investors refused the home rental startup, the cereal sales earned approximately $30,000 for the company. The boxes also persuaded Paul Graham to fund the company in the Winter 2009 batch of Y Combinator. The company later became Airbnb, which had a value of approximately $75 billion in 2023.
Interesting fact
Graham told the founders that people who could sell $4 boxes of cereal for $40 could probably persuade strangers to share homes.
Sources
- Airbnb CEO says his $75 billion company was rejected by investors, until a $40 box of cereal turned things around ↗CNBC · 2023-04-18
- Airbnb ↗Acquired (podcast) · 2020
- About Us ↗Airbnb Newsroom