David Rosenthal: prediction

Transcript context

…Do they mean airbeds, or do they mean mats? I assume maybe they meant as they were working on the idea came up with AirBed and Breakfast, maybe they went out and got some airbeds. They mail this out in surprise. People were like, this is cool. What a novel idea? They're right about it. They get a few takers. They have either two or three, I can't recall how many guests stayed with them that weekend. One, in particular, a young recent Arizona state grad from India named Amal [...] rents one of these airbeds and/or mats for $80 a night. He comes and stays with them, and they become friends. They attend the conference together, they hang out. Joe gives him a tour of the city. It's really a great experience. At the end of the stay, Amal is staying for an extra day after the conference, and he really wants to go down and see the famous d.school at Stanford, not yet famous for having helped produce DoorDash as we talked about in our episode yesterday, but still pretty famous nonetheless especially in the design circles. There's this famous tie between the d.school and IDEO—the design agency. They all drive down together to Stanford and they attend a lecture by Bill Moggridge who is one of IDEO’s founders, and this is a cool experience. Afterward, Brian goes up to Bill and just starts pitching him. We got Amal here. We’re designers. We have airbedandbreakfast.com. It's really hard for young starving designers to go to conferences. I think Bill might have been on the board of the Industrial Designer Society of America or something like this. Do you think we could become the official accommodation provider for the Industry Association? It’s unclear what Bill's reaction was but AirBed and Breakfast did not become the official accommodations provider. I love it, always pitching, always selling.…

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