Airbnb

Discuss about the Successful Entrepreneurs’ Ventures.

The concept of entrepreneurship is not an idea of management, but it can reside in the zeitgeist of contemporary culture as well. An entrepreneur is a person who manages an enterprise with an initiative of his/her own. The starting of entrepreneurship is not a sudden occurrence; it starts in their brain since long. The risk is an integral part of entrepreneurship as it is a brave venture against the financial security. The idea of business must be innovative and assessment of customers’ needs should be there. In this essay, three successful entrepreneurs’ ventures will be described and analysed. Moreover, the entrepreneurs’ success, failure, motivation, external and internal factors of doing a business will be explained.

Airbnb is an entrepreneurship venture started in the year 2008, August in San Francisco. This venture is now served globally dealing in hospitality and online marketplace. This is internet based venture and this can be accessed through the company website and mobile application system. Airbnb helps people to take a short-term lodging for holiday purposes, vacation rentals, hotels, home-stays and apartment rentals (Airbnb.com, 2017). However, Airbnb does not own any lodging; they just act as a broker or third party service between hosts and guests. This company takes a percentage or fees in each booking.

Airbnb business venture started with an email that was sent by Joe Gebbia to Brian Chesky. At that time, both of the founders had no job and they were unemployed. They were looking for extra cash. During this time, all hotel rooms were booked and no room was available in San Francisco. Both of them decided to buy a few airbeds and gave their rooms in rent. In the following morning, they made a website named ‘Air Bed and Breakfast’. They decided to charge the room $8p per night. One Indian man took the room with other three. Then, Harvard graduate Nathan Blecharczyk managed to join them. Three of them made another website at NXSW in the year 2008 (Businessinsider.in, 2017). However, in initial stage, they had only two users of the website. In the later stage, they went to meet investors; however, the investors were not convinced. Fifteen angel investors and eight other investors rejected their idea. They met Y Combinator and this startup accelerator invested with funding. The three guys started visiting places and took photographs of hosts. Lastly, in the year 2009, they launched Airbnb.

Zambrero

It was clear that Joe Gebbia and Brian Chesky followed their instinct to make money from the business. However, they did not want to do the job and started their own business and that could give them flexibility in working. Brian Chesky shared his academic background was industrial relation and it taught him to design the product. His learning in his academic life helped him to grow in the business.

The external factor of the political condition of U.S at that time was stable and people needed more hotels with cheap price. During Obama’s election campaign, the website was not getting popularity, so, they decided to sell cereal boxes in the street. This marketing strategy gave them $30,000 into their account. In later time, in Denver, people needed rooms for staying during election and they used their website to attract customers. Moreover, they did not have employment during the beginning phrase. They needed investors to invest in their ventures. Their great idea and proper timing to do business lastly became successful.  

In the previous time, this type of online platforms was there (such as Windu), however, they added their innovation that played a role to attract the hosts and guests. They developed an online mobile app that allowed the users to book their home stays at any places. They could not evade the law of market and they snatched success by serving the consumers. Creativity and innovation in product helped them to grab the success.

However, the venture faced challenges of invest funding and making the people aware of their business. Their activity of making the business was not easy as they need funding and information about hosts places.

 The first act of making the business in hospitality sector without having prior experience brought them success. The hospitality sector is always viable and people invest money in this sector for accommodation. The same product that lacked the people interest traditionally gave attributes with alternative benefits over time and it must create disequilibrium in the market, this concept of disruptive innovation gave success to Airbnb (Guttentag, 2015).

Secondly, they found investment, however, in a first few cases; they did not get any investment. They did not lose hope. Lastly, Sequoia Capital invested 0,000 in Airbnb. The founders had capabilities of human and social expertise with perception to use the creative resources and they used the market opportunity (Zolbanin & Zadeh, 2017). Later, in 2011, they expand the business in internal sector, first in Germany.

Patagonia

Creation of value is important and the founders started to click pictures of their host accommodation places of their own. They used smoke and carbon monoxide detectors in the rooms of hosts to ensure safety. Most importantly, their dedication, perseverance and hope played a major role. The founders of the Airbnb worked both for in engaging in arbitrage and innovation to add features in their venture.

Zambrero is an Australian based restaurant chain that served Mexican food to the consumers. This venture was first started in the year 2005 in Canberra (Zambrero.com, 2017). Sam Prince was the founder of the food chain and he himself is a medical practitioner. While he was studying as a medical student, he worked in a Mexican restaurant. At the age of 21, he started his new business venture for noble cause. He uses his business money to help the needy people, donate his money to good purposes. He has given 14 million meals to the developing world.

Sam Prince is an industrialist, humanitarian and his focal point is societal work. Sam Prince was an immigrant from Sri Lanka to Australia. Since his childhood, he has been feeling a sense of inspiration to help the poor and needy class. However, this must be the internal motivation for him to establish his start-up. His parents always inspired him to help the poor section and young people. Brother of Sam’s mother had died because they did not have money to cure him. Sam thought that he should do something for poverty stricken class as cultural impacts affect the entrepreneurial activities (News.com.au, 2017). As a doctor, he knows his roles as human beings and his fundamental responsibilities. Sam followed many successful people in his life in order to become one of them. He reads voraciously and kind of books

In addition, the external factor of the economic condition of developing countries, Sam feels pity for the poor people. Sam wanted to do something for the global economic condition of the poor and distress people. Apart from economic factors, sociocultural factors of immigrant people, Sam wanted to do something for the education of people, healthcare and human rights. Moreover, he started his business with $17,000 and now it’s net worth $294 million having stores in New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, Ireland and other places (Theaustralian.com.au, 2017).

First, Social-entrepreneurship is a type of busies where entrepreneurs use speedy method of using consumerism with meagre quality (Cullen, Johnson & Parboteeah, 2014). Helping-mentality for poor and needy class, he wanted to start his entrepreneurship and donated his money for creating reasonable employment and to provide standard living to people. Moreover, he worked in the emergency department in the hospital and understood the needs of the people in case of emergency. Sam believes that one must have the same rigour in running a business as an aid-organisation also.

Second, Sam believes that before doing any work, one must have an understanding of it. Thus, he met many people who are successful, he has read many books. Uses the help of scrutinising the statistics and computing helped Sam to analyse the data of marketing. As environmental factors and policymakers impact the entrepreneurial activities, he collected knowledge about the market and industry condition (Galindo & Méndez, 2014).

Third, as stated by Griffiths, Gundry & Kickul (2013), entrepreneurs are shown to give value on nonfinancial measures, these include job satisfaction, autonomy, social causes, work-life balance and these provide emphases on value creation and exploitation of market. Sam’s entrepreneur activities gave sustained competitive advantage and to enter market equilibrium.

Qantas Airways is Australia’s largest airline. However, it is the third oldest airlines in the world. This organisation was established in the year 1920; however, it started its operation in the year 1921 (Qantas.com, 2017). It was started by Hudson Fysh, Paul McGinness, Fergus McMaster and Arthur Baird. McGinness along with Fysh made understand McMaster about their plan of air service. They fired with enthusiasm and they started investment.

It was established after the World War I. Technological innovation of aeroplanes that time lured the founders to start an airline company. That time, the founders of the airlines found that growth of airlines has steady growth. The internal motivations of the founders were new emerging airlines industry. The organisation was founded in Queensland. The first aircraft of the organisation was Avro 540K. The first movement of aeroplane was from Longreach to Brisbane. External motivations of the founders were a political condition of the nation as the nations were that time under World War I (Chang, Park, Jeong & Lee, 2014).

The internal motivation of value creation and self-motivation to create something new aggravated their idea to open a business in the new industry. The founders had the motivation to do something out-of-box and exploring something new enthralled them. As stated by Sarina & Wright (2015), entrepreneurial value creation can be done through entrepreneurial understanding of micro-level (group and individual) and macro-level (strategy, theory and policy).

First, the activity of brainstorming the business plan made the successful as founders of Qantas made a tie up with Imperial Airways in Britain to form a new company. The founders of Qantas always started to explore another stone in business with new opportunity and new adventure (Galindo & Mendez, 2014).

Second, the entrepreneurs should know the concept of market opportunity and discovery of consumers’ perception (Cullen, Johnson & Parboteeah, 2014). Operation of changing the means of transport in the uncertain environment was the motto of the Qantas founders and they started to work under domestic network. In the beginning, Qantas provided the passenger services, mail courier services and doctors’ services. 

Third, the successful activity of next marketing move was fruitful for the business ventures of Qantas founders as innovation is necessary for any start-up. The founders started its business to work on the international basis. Venturing overseas was a fruitful result for Qantas.

Conclusion

Entrepreneurs have innovative mind and have background knowledge of service or products they offer. Successful entrepreneurs realise that focusing on specific services or goods is necessary to set the target market. Entrepreneur people have various kinds of external and internal factors that motivate them to start a venture. In case of Airbnb, need for money and employment made the start the venture. However, in case of Zambrero, Sam wanted to help the poor and needy people and started a million dollars organisation. Same is true for Qantas although this organisation was established in long ago.

References

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Zolbanin, H., & Zadeh, A. H. (2017). Data Analytics for Digital Entrepreneurship: A Case Study on Airbnb. International journal of entrepreneurship. 29(2), 23-34