Joe Gebbia | The Creative Force Behind Airbnb and Samara

**Patrick Tanahan** (0:00)
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Joe Gebbia, welcome to the show. Welcome to The Founder.

**Joe Gebbia** (1:03)
Thank you, Patrick, for having me.

**Patrick Tanahan** (1:05)
Excited to dive in. I always like starting from the beginning because I want to learn a little bit about Joe, the person, the human, and then we can talk about all the business stuff after that. And so I know you grew up in Georgia, and it seems like you were a kid with many interests. You had interest in art or design and music and sports. Where do you think that came from? Like what inspired those various interests for you?

**Joe Gebbia** (1:31)
Yeah, I did grow up in Georgia in a suburb outside Atlanta. It was just close enough to get to the city and get the action with the Atlanta Braves and the Atlanta Hawks and the Atlanta Falcons and Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. And we went too far away from University of Georgia. So there was like, I think, a lot of connections to sports early on growing up. Atlanta's a big sports town. Yeah.

**Patrick Tanahan** (1:56)
I read you were a ball boy for the Hawks.

**Joe Gebbia** (1:58)
I did. I got this. Man, what a crazy job in high school. It was the wildest thing actually. I was reading the newspaper, which I normally did before I went off to school in the morning. And the second page of the sports section, there was this article about Bat Boys for the Braves and all boys for the Hawks. And I read through it. I'm like, wow, I didn't even know these things existed. Wow. These are like kids my age.

**Patrick Tanahan** (2:30)
Yeah.

**Joe Gebbia** (2:33)
On the field, on the court. And at the very bottom of the article, it listed an address and it said, if you want to become one, write a letter about yourself and mail it here. I made the same thing. And I go, huh, that seems pretty easy.

**Patrick Tanahan** (2:50)
What did you write? What did you say?

**Joe Gebbia** (2:52)
I wish I had a copy of that. So I wrote a letter and I'm like, well, I have nothing to lose. Why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't I? I remember I mailed the letter on the last day that it was supposed to be postmarked, where we're going off for spring break. And on the road trip with my family, I said, we got to stop by the post office. And I put the letter in the mail.
Now, I forgot about it a couple of months ago by. It's now summertime. I get a phone call, and on the caller ID, which we used to have back in the day, it said on the landline, it said Atlanta Hawks. I go, what is that? I pick up the phone.

**Patrick Tanahan** (3:32)
Spam call.

**Joe Gebbia** (3:33)
Yeah, right.

**Patrick Tanahan** (3:35)
Selling me tickets, fake tickets.

**Joe Gebbia** (3:37)
All right, I don't need your season tickets. But in fact, it was the head trainer who said, they got my letter and they wanted to meet me for a potential role as a ball boy for the Atlanta Hawks. So a week later, I found myself going down to Atlanta. And I met with the team down there. And before I knew it, I had a job as a ball boy.

**Patrick Tanahan** (4:02)
That's awesome. What's the, tell me like an experience from that? Like who was on that team?

**Joe Gebbia** (4:06)
Oh man, this is like 1997 to 1999, 2000 So this is like Dikembe Mutombo, Steve Smith, Mookie Blaylock, Christian Leitner, a couple other guys that came through. It was a great time in the NBA though. I mean, it was Shaq and Jordan. Oh yeah.