爱彼迎传-1

在旧金山费尔蒙酒店的大堂酒吧，我和布莱恩·切斯基相对而坐，座椅的靠背较高，天鹅绒质地，颇显贵气。
BRIAN CHESKY AND I were sitting across from each other in the velvet, high-backed, regal-feeling chairs of the lobby bar of the Fairmont San Francisco hotel.

那是2015年11月初，我们在此会面，我把通过写书讲述其公司的故事的想法告诉了他。他把他的公司命名为“房屋共享”平台爱彼迎（Airbnb），我也打算以这个已家喻户晓的称谓作为书名。有些戏剧性的是，我们见面的酒店正好承办了2007年的国际设计大会。当时，旧金山市区的所有酒店住满了参会者，切斯基和他的联合创始人乔·杰比亚突发奇想，在自己位于市场南街的三居室公寓里出租充气床垫供房客住宿。
It was early November 2015, and we were there so that I could talk to him about the idea of writing a book about his company, the “home-sharing” platform Airbnb, to use the phrase the company has been so successful at popularizing. There was some irony in the fact that we were at a hotel, and not just any hotel: this was the exact venue that hosted the international design conference in 2007 that had maxed out San Francisco’s hotel supply and had given Chesky and his cofounder Joe Gebbia their goofy idea to rent out air mattresses on the floor of their three-bedroom apartment in the South of Market district.

事实上，切斯基曾在这里向一位仰慕已久的设计师讲述过这个新的商业创意，设计师认为这个创意荒唐可笑（设计师的原话是“我希望这不是你目前唯一的灵感”）。当时，他们交谈的地方距离我们现在的座位不到10米。这一评论虽饱含排斥与嘲笑，但未能阻止爱彼迎公司的创建。如今，切斯基主管的这家公司的估值已高达300亿美元，“入住房客”（公司用于追踪在线订购房客的说法）交易量高达1.4亿次，库存房源量为300万套。现在，切斯基出入酒店只是为了参会发言，他曾来这家酒店参加《财富》全球论坛，该论坛是由我所任职的公司组织的全球首席执行官年会。切斯基的发言被安排在美国国防部前部长莱昂·帕内塔和摩根大通首席执行官杰米·戴蒙之间。
Indeed, it was fewer than thirty feet from where we were sitting where Chesky had walked up to one of the designers he’d most revered to tell him about this new business idea, only to have him immediately dismiss it as ridiculous (“I hope that’s not the only idea you’re working on” were his words). That comment would mark the start of a long stretch of painful rejection and ridicule. But it also marked the start of Airbnb, the company that Chesky now commands, a juggernaut today with a $30 billion private-market valuation, some one hundred forty million “guest arrivals,” to use the company’s term for tracking the travelers who book on its platform, and an inventory that is three million listings strong. (A note on metrics: the phrase “guest arrivals” refers to the number of people who have arrived at an Airbnb listing for a new trip, a term the company uses to be consistent with international tourism standards; this book will henceforth refer to this number as either “guest arrivals” or “guests.”) At this point, Chesky frequents hotels only really for speaking engagements, and he had come to this one to address the Fortune Global Forum, my place of employ’s annual gathering of CEOs from around the world. Chesky’s speaking slot was in between former U.S. secretary of defense Leon Panetta and Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase.