Joe Gebbia is an American businessman and internet entrepreneur who is the Chief Product Officer of Airbnb. The company was founded by himself and his friend Brian Chesky in 2007 which is an online marketplace and a hospitality service provider. From a man who was unable to pay his rent to a billionaire, let us have a brief look at the life, career, and net worth of Joe Gebbia in 2019.
Early Life & Biography
Joseph Gebbia was born to Joseph Gebbia Sr. and Eileen on August 21, 1981, in Atlanta, Georgia, the United States. He had a sister named Kimberly and attended the Brookwood High School. He studied Fine Arts in Graphic Design and Industrial Design at the Rhode Island School of Design where he met his future roommate and co-founder of Airbnb Brian Chesky.
Personal Life
Joe Gebbia is still single and unmarried. He currently resides at his luxury house in San Francisco with his dog. His house is decorated with beautiful artworks which were bought by him on his travels.
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Career, Awards & Nominations
After graduation, Gebbia joined Chronicle Books in San Francisco and overstayed at one of his friend’s place. He convinced Chesky who was at Los Angeles to come back to San Francisco with an idea of starting a business together. The duo quit their jobs with an idea of starting a business and was unable to pay their rent as their landlord raised the rent.
All this happened in 2007 at the time of the Industrial Design Society of America Conference. As people from most parts of the country were at San Francisco at that time, most of the hotels were booked, and Gebbia got the idea of renting their airbeds to conference goers as it would temporarily solve their financial crisis.
They created the website Airbed & Breakfast and marketed their idea which later became Airbnb. In February 2008, they were joined by another roommate Nathan Blecharczyk who became the company’s third co-founder.
They could not get funding for their company and began to design cereal boxes with Obama and John McCain themes. Paul Graham, the founder of Y Combinator, was impressed with their work and provided them their first round of seed funding in 2009. The company’s current worth is around $31 billion.
Gebbia was named in BusinessWeek’s Top 20 Best Young Tech Entrepreneurs list in 2009 and Inc. Magazine’s Thirty under Thirty list in 2010. In 2013 he was included in Fortune’s Forty-under-Forty list.
Net Worth & Earnings
His company has become highly successful since its inception which has made all of its three co-founders billionaires. As of now, his current net worth is $4 billion.
Joe Gebbia is an active philanthropist who donated $300,000 to RISD in 2014. He joined The Giving Pledge in 2016 and committed to giving away the majority of his wealth to philanthropic causes.
