Admit it. When you first heard about people renting rooms in one another's homes over the internet, without much more than a friendly email exchange to break the ice, you thought it was a crazy idea. Maybe a little creepy. After all, it's one thing to participate in the so-called sharing economy by pushing some buttons on your phone and watching a sleek black Uber vehicle roll up. It's another to show up at a stranger's home and nestle in for a few days--or hand your house keys to some guy from the internet.
And yet the founders of Airbnb--Brian Chesky, 33; Nathan Blecharczyk, 31; and Joe Gebbia, 33--have convinced many, many strangers to do just that. So far, about 20 million of them; 10 million in 2014 alone. This year, their website surpassed 800,000 listings worldwide, which means they now offer more lodging than Hilton Worldwide or InterContinental Hotels Group or any other hotel chain in the world.
Seven years ago, they were guys with a website, three air mattresses, and ambitions that to many people sounded silly, naive, and reckless. Since then, they have revolutionized the way people think about travel, displaced the hospitality industry's established players, and generated billions in revenue for themselves and their hosts.
Airbnb has changed many people's lives for the better, as entrepreneurs have long tried to do. What makes this company so noteworthy this year is that it has moved beyond building a disruptive business to battling entrenched interests. Airbnb is hardly alone; after all, this is the year that the U.S. Supreme Court declared internet television startup Aereo's business model illegal, and regulators from Dallas to Germany slapped back at car service operator Uber. Airbnb has also repeatedly found itself and its hosts on the wrong side of the law.