How I Built This: The Unexpected Paths to Success from the World’s Most Inspiring Entrepreneurs

"“It is the difference in life between things that are scary and things that are dangerous. There are plenty of things that are scary but aren’t dangerous. And there are things that are dangerous but not scary. And those are the things that get you,”"

"“Maybe we give our hosts some breakfast cereal to give to their guests,” Joe said, recapitulating his conversation with Brian. “Wouldn’t it be funny if it was politically themed? We could call it ‘Obama O’s: The Breakfast of Change.’ Or maybe ‘Captain McCain’s: A Maverick in Every Bite.’ ” If you think that sounds more like the product of a 2 a.m. pity party than a focused brainstorming session, you’re right. “We were just trying to keep each other’s spirits up at this point,” Joe said. Except for one small detail: they actually went forth and made the breakfast cereal! They didn’t just make the cereal either. They merchandised and promoted it. Brian went out and bought 500 bags of generic cereal. Joe art-directed and hired an illustrator, again from their network — a RISD alum who would work on commission as a favor. Realizing that they had a limited edition series on their hands now, they built a website for each brand of cereal; sent 100 boxes to every media outlet they had contact information for, including the ones they’d gotten press coverage from during the Democratic National Convention a month earlier; numbered the boxes 1 to 500; and then sold them online for $40 apiece. The idea worked. They got a ton of press and they sold all the cereal. I was absolutely blown away by this part of the Airbnb story. But it triggered a question: What was the point? How was this really going to help Airbedandbreakfast.com? Joe’s answer was that it wasn’t. Or, more precisely, that it didn’t really matter. “At $40 a box times 500 boxes, we made $20,000 in breakfast cereal,” Joe explained, “which was just enough to pay off our credit cards.”"

"in fact, the founders of Instagram, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, figured out a way to get people talking about their photo-sharing app prior to its launch — not through public billboards but through private invitations. “One of the things we had was 100 invites for people to try Instagram out before we launched through the Apple Store,” Mike Krieger explained to me. “And we had this intuition that if you’re going to throw a party, which is kind of what an app launch really is, you want people to sort of know how they should act and who else is there, so we had to figure out how are we going to use these hundred people?” Essentially, they had to determine who would be best suited to telling the world about their new photo-sharing app. They decided to spread the invitations out among two groups: journalists and designers. Journalists are a no-brainer, right? They’re writers with platforms that reach thousands and sometimes millions of people. But designers? Wouldn’t photographers make more sense? Not really, according to Mike. “We figured photographers might not instantly take to Instagram because they want super high resolution when they have other constraints,” he said, “and designers love photography, but it’s not their main job.” Basically, professional photographers are kind of snobby about photos, and Instagram, which was developed to democratize the ability to take cool photos, allowed designers to pretend to be photographers."

"And yet, nine years later, Gary paid off the entire debt. Nine years after that, Clif Bar did more than $6 billion in sales. And today, it’s the leading energy bar in the United States. For Gary, none of this was about the money, or even the control. “There was something deeper about wanting to grow this business. The power of a business done the right way is way more powerful than two rich people,” Gary said."

"From a strategic perspective, what is so underappreciated about treating your employees well and creating a kind work environment is that people pay attention. Employees feel it, obviously, as do their families, which makes talent retention appreciably easier. People looking for better job opportunities or something they can make a career out of see it, too, which is great for recruiting. And customers notice, which is excellent for brand loyalty and word of mouth."

"The point is, you can do everything right, you can make all the plays, and still you can lose the game. Convincingly so. In fact, most people do lose. Most businesses fail within a year or two. The cards are generally stacked against anyone thinking about starting a business. And yet, at the same time, if one or two bounces go your way, all of a sudden you can come out of the game as the big winner. That is luck."

"it inspired Jen and Steph to create a small, glossy, four-color coffee-table book about the world of travel that featured exotic travel stories about and photos of forty tastemakers. They would print only 2,000 copies of the book, the number of suitcases in Away’s first production run, and price it at $225, the retail price of Away’s first suitcase. Each book was essentially a coupon redeemable for one free Away suitcase. “When the books got delivered in these huge boxes,” Jen recalled, “Steph and I looked at each other and we were like, ‘This is either a great idea or we’re going to have these books in this office for eternity.’ ” The idea to publish an expensive travel book as a way to get attention for a company that sells suitcases was certainly a gamble, but it was one built on a smart strategy for building buzz. “With the tastemakers in the book or with the editors that we reached out to through the PR agency or the social media influencers that I would send messages to asking them to post about us,” Jen said, “all of our efforts in the beginning were trying to get other people to simply talk about us — so that we didn’t have to talk about ourselves as much.”"