How Did Airbnb Build Trust Between Strangers?

Joe Gebbia says design was the conduit for the Olympic-sized trust Airbnb had to build between two people who had never met, and he thinks the company succeeded over competitors over time because the people at the core were designers.

The early pitch asked people to take pictures of a home, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a bedroom, the most intimate parts of a home, and post the pictures publicly online for strangers to look at and book a stay. The pitch to VCs was improbable. The product had to let comfort develop and let a connection develop between people in the brand or between people and their hosts.

Competitors were plentiful, and each tried to angle the others out. The others were marketers or technologists. In difficult times the team relied on design: how to apply it, how to make the experience fun and friendly, how to make it inviting, and how to make it crisp, instead of a website where things really do not line up.