Airbnb Pitch Deck

Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, and Nathan Blecharczyk launched Airbnb in 2008. It began with a smart idea and inadequate resources, just like many other tech startups. This journey started on an inflatable mattress, not in a garage.

Brian and Joe converted their SF flat into a B&B and had three paying customers in no time. They had market acceptance!

They created airbedandbreakfast.com in August 2008 and began to recruit hosts and travellers to their platform, but circumstances were rough. The creators devised an interesting method of raising funds for their business.

The journey of how founders funded the firm by selling Obama and McCain cereal boxes throughout the 2008 campaign has become part of the brand’s history, and it’s worth reading.

Following a $600,000 seed financing headed by Sequoia in 2009 and a $7.2 million Series-A led by Sequoia and Greylock in 2010, Airbnb began its incredible success path.

Airbnb was estimated at $31 billion at the start of 2020, however the COVID affected the travel and tourism industry was perhaps the worst damage done. Airbnb is passing through a difficult period, needing to lay off 25% of its workers and seeing unprecedented revenue declines.

Airbnb Pitch Deck Structure

Problem Slide

This is one of my all-time favourite problem-solving slides: Three statements that are clear, straightforward, and irrefutable.

Generating a problem presentation is a frequent difficulty; founders who are aware of the current quo tend to pack too much information on this slide. Keep in mind that the investor reviewing your deck may be unfamiliar with the inner workings of a certain industry segment.

Because travel is by no way a speciality, the goal here would be to merely demonstrate the truth of travel and three main issues that Airbnb was attempting to address. This is the first slide as well. You would not want to begin your pitch deck with a claim that makes investors doubt your industry experience.
Remember to make statements that aren’t arguable.

Solution

On the next slide, the SOLUTION, the issues highlighted on the previous slide must be addressed. I normally place the item display on this slide, but some people chose to move it further in the deck.

Instead, they concentrated on three assertions to solve the questions. Again, take note of how straightforward the title is: A website that allows individuals to rent out their room to travellers. So. Simple. There is no technical jargon.

It’s not easy to describe how the product performs in ten words or fewer in such basic terms. Prepare to iterate on this slogan several times until you discover it— you’ll know when you’ve found it.

Market Validation

This slide also isn’t required across every pitch deck.

Nevertheless, market validation is required to illustrate how consumers are wanting to transition away from the hotel paradigm. Craigslist is a listings website that is not built for travellers or events (in fact, it’s not really suited for anything with that Interface). Nonetheless, it demonstrates how often individuals are wanting to lease out their apartments.

Furthermore, over 500,000 Couchsurfers show the issue statement once more: individuals are seeking for inexpensive travel choices and are ready to sleep in a common area.

Airbnb supplied a novel concept, but CouchSurfing offered the necessary confirmation, which is why this slide was essential.

Market Size

It is not my favourite slide in this set. The creators were attempting to illustrate how many trips they might possibly reach if they possessed 20% of the Budget/Online travel industry. Clearly, claiming 20% of the Total Addressable Market is a big claim. Nevertheless, with over 2 million visitors staying at an Airbnb site each night, we can confidently claim they’ve surpassed that number.

When I’m writing pitch decks, I try to use phrases like “if we can just acquire 1% of this marketplace.” I’d rather prefer present a more in-depth analysis of the market potential, concentrating on industry statistics from comparable firms.

Product

There isn’t much else to say. Display your item. You’re obviously not able to pitch investors if you don’t really have product screen captures to display.

Business Model

This presentation, once more, believes a brave and optimistic portion of the travel industry. The most important value on this slide, in my opinion, is simplicity:

Per each transaction, we charge a ten percent commission. That’s direct and uncomplicated, and it offers a number which can be used to approximate business measurements.

Take note of how they use both an average fee per night and actual data on their standard room fee. This is not made-up figures: Whenever this pitch deck was formed, Airbnb already had an operational MVP.

Adoption Strategy

Also known as a Go-To-Market slide, this should outline a strategy for growing the firm and customer base.

Go-to-market slides are, without a doubt, pure speculation. As a marketer, I realise how well a plan could indeed screw up or how easily a company’s marketing/sales strategy can transition to breakthroughs.

Still, the goal of this slide is to demonstrate there is a strategy, that the crew can generate decent ideas for organisational success, and that they’ll be capable of executing them without a bigger team or an outer organisation. One of Airbnb’s most well-known marketing strategies was the dual posting feature on Craigslist.

Competition

I like B school 101 graphs, particularly if they demonstrate how the product differs from the competition. They will indeed be willing to chop out a portion of the market for themselves by differentiating themselves on affordability and online purchases.