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Airbnb sold cereal to survive
Building a startup is a long, painful, high-stakes game. Brian Chesky, who co-founded Airbnb, lived through those days, and the line he took from them is that the only way to fail is if you stop.
Every founder has stories about times when they could have, or arguably should have, given up. The difference between success and failure in a startup comes down to whether the founder has an unshakable commitment to keep going.
Cereal sales and ramen dinners were what that commitment looked like at Airbnb while money could not be raised.
How did cereal boxes help fund Airbnb?
During the 2008 US presidential campaign, Airbnb's founders designed limited-edition cereal boxes called Obama O's and Cap'n McCain's. They sold the boxes for around $40 each and raised roughly $30,000. The sales helped cover costs while they were trying to get investors interested. In 2009, the company joined the Y Combinator startup program.
How often do new businesses run out of road?
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks the survival of new business establishments through its Business Employment Dynamics data. Its figures show that roughly one in five new businesses closes within its first year. About half have closed by the fifth year. The pattern has held across many years of the agency's data.
What predicted who finished West Point's first summer?
Psychologist Angela Duckworth and colleagues studied cadets entering West Point in a 2007 paper. Their first test was the Beast Barracks, the academy's demanding summer training. Scores on a questionnaire measuring grit predicted who would complete it better than the academy's own Whole Candidate Score did. The questionnaire asked about perseverance of effort and consistency of interest.
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