YouSaid · the spoken record

Joe Gebbia

lines on the record: 218
first: 2018-03-08
most recent: 2018-03-08
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“That was my first experience. Of course, you get used to that, it's no big deal at a certain point. So I'm in the NBA, and I did it for three seasons. I got to work alongside Lenny Wilkins, the head coach, Dakembe Mutumbo, Steve Smith, some of these NBA greats. And there were some really incredible moments that happened. One of them One of them was when the Hawks played the Chicago Bulls. Jordan's still playing. This is 1999. One of his last seasons. I'll never forget this. So you have to imagine the scene We're in Phillips Arena, and the Hawks are actually winning Which is amazing”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was my first experience of being around some amiable grades. Marcus Camby, I remember, was on the team at the time. This guy watched play at UMass in college and really admired. It was my first exposure to professional sports locker room, too. Everybody comes in and they just take the clothes off to get changed and nobody gives a shit. It doesn't matter at the end of the day. But for me, it was like, whoa, whoa, where am I?”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is back to the bus. Yeah, it was pretty cool. And so they threw me, my very first game, they threw me to the visitor's side.”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When they sit down, give them the towel, get them their warm up, their jacket, their hoodie. And then the highest level was doing that for the visiting team. And so And whatever they needed, you set up the locker room before the game, you'd run the errands that need to get done, you'd break the locker room down at the end of the game, the whole thing. So you get through the game like three hours early to do all this. End up running errands for the players sometimes give you like a nice tip. Remember Horace Grant one time gave me a hundred dollar bill.”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's different tiers, right? The entry level tier is you're wiping the sweat on the fore when a player falls down in the middle of a game. Right, you've seen this. People go out with the mop. The towel, and you're swiping up the sweat so the player doesn't slip on the court. Like the entry level position. And I did plenty of that as you work your way up the tier, then you work on the side of the court and you'd actually run and grab the player's warm-up pants and jacket when they went to check into the game. So you'd be sitting on half court with them. And you'd hand them a towel when they came in, sit back down on the bench. And then the next here was you'd work behind the bench and actually assist the trainer. And so you'd be handing the gatorade over their shoulder.”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I'm like a freshman in high school, right? I'm like barely 16, maybe 15, 15 years old. And I start working in the locker rooms of Atlanta Hawks. Actually, my very first game, I'll never forget this, was the Hawks versus the Toronto Raptors. And they threw me onto the visitors, because they're ball boys for the home team and the visiting”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Months had passed, and I sent them the day of the deadline, and I kind of forgot about it until next summer. I get a phone call. This guy introduced himself as Chris Tucker, the strength coach of the Lana Hawks. And he goes, Yeah, we got your letter, we really liked it, we want you to come down and interview for one of our ball boy positions. I go, this is awesome. I'll be there. So we go down to, at the time it was the Omni before they had Phillips Arena, and I'm interviewing with them, telling about my life and my love for basketball and these things. And I get a call back a few days later that I got the job.”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My job. I had a high school job where I worked as a ball boy in the NBA for the Atlanta Hawks. That was my job in high school I love basketball. I played my whole life And I was reading the newspaper. I used to read the newspaper every morning when I was growing up. Over breakfast, whatever I just consume the newspaper. And so One day I'm in the sports section, and there's an article about being Batboys for the Atlanta Braves and being ball boys for the Atlanta Hawks. At the very end of the article, it said, if you're interested in becoming one, send a letter about yourself to this address. And I'm like, oh my God. Yes, like that would be so cool, right? So I send a letter, but actually I sent it on the day of the deadline.”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Healed over quite yet. The moods are definitely not healed. They definitely had a grudge. Because if anything, we just embarrass them. Right. They had no idea how to turn it off. Again, there's no damage or anything that was really done. It's permanent. And so they declined reenacting at school. So ironically, we went to one of my rival high schools and refilmed the whole thing there. And even more ironic is that the principal, the new principal there, was a former administrator when I pulled the prank at my other school. So he was intimately familiar with what had happened. At that point, he could laugh about it. So that summer we reenacted the whole thing. Chelsea and Mark and got a couple of their friends to be extras in the background. And it aired later that year on MTV.”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That summer we got to go back to Georgia and reenact the whole thing. Now, however, this is only two years later. The same administration in principle was still there. And they did not have a lot of forgiveness.”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“NYC, and I get on the phone with this producer, and he's like, I'm really intrigued by your email. Are we always looking for good stories? What do you got? And I told him the abbreviated version of what you just heard. And he's like, oh, I love this. I'm going to pitch this to my executive producer. We're going to get back to you. It's about three, four days later, get another phone call from a 212. Hey, this is Leslie from MTV. I'm the executive producer here. Really loved your story. Want to hear more about it from you. So by the end of the call, she's in love with the story and she's like, you know what we're going to do? We're going to send a crew down to Georgia. We want you to come back this summer. We're going to reenact the whole thing and include it in the next season.”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“MTV's making a show about high school pranks and they're doing a super glue in the lock prank. I'm like, I have to get in touch with the producer. So I get online and I track down the producer of the show. And I sent them an email that was a teaser of the story, but not the full one, and basically said, if you want to hear the rest of it, here's my phone number. Probably about 30 minutes later, my phone rings with a 212 area code.”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Part two of the story I'm in college. This is about two years later. One of my roommates comes home one day. And he says, Hey, have you heard of that show? It's on MTV. It's called High School Stories Pranks and Controversies. And I go, no, no, what's it about? He's like, yeah, I was just watching. It's like, they showed some high school, they had this high school prank. I was like, I sat up in my chair. I go, really? Tell me about that. And he goes, yeah, they filmed these guys who get this. They super glued the locks in the doors of this high school. And I'm like, you have to be kidding me.”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Mark and I are like, what? Like, how did they hear about it? Like, all the bus drivers in the county that we live in. So it was just an incredible moment of having an idea, having this ambition to do something that was original. In this case, there was no property damage, nobody got hurt. Me, the essence of a great prank That was part one of the story.”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we go through graduation. One little funny stunt that we do is that you had your honors chords and different club chords that you wear around your neck. Mark and I wore phone chords to honor the senior prank. People were raving about it. And we came back two weeks later to do wipe computer screens in the library. And I'll never forget we're outside underneath the same overhang, like dusting off our rags. And all these buses pull up. And all these bus drivers start pouring into the school past us. He has some bus driver end-of-year celebration or something. And one of the bus drivers actually walks over to us and she goes, Are you the two boys that pulled that prank with the intercom system? And Mark and I look at each other and we're like, yeah? She goes, You know y'all are, you two are legends in this county.”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, ma'am, he's right here He hands me the phone, and I heard this tone of voice from my mom. I've never heard since, I never want to hear again. She goes, you get right home after school. I can't believe you. Click. I'm like, mom, but wait, we're going to graduate. So she thinks her son's not graduating high school. I'm like, thanks, Officer House, and that was really kind of you. And does the same thing with the mark. And we're walking out of his office, and this is the best part. He pulls us to the side and he goes, Mark, Joey. Been at the school for over 20 years, and you need to know that was the best damn prank I've ever seen.”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This guy, yeah, right? This guy had the deepest kind of grisly voice that you could imagine, Officer Harrelson here at Brooklyn High School. So we're in the office and he calls our parents. And this is like probably where the worst part of the whole story. He did not know the update that we opted in to do the manual labor He thinks that we're not graduating high school So he calls my mom. He goes, Miss Gary, this is Officer Harrelson here at Brookwood High School. Yes, ma'am, I've got your son in custody here. Yes, right, ma'am. It doesn't look like he's graduating this year.”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And at that point, I was like, there's no way you're getting in the way of either of our dreams. Because we tapped into the high school intercom system So she made an offer. She goes, we could press charges for breaking the entering and tampering school property and some other things. Or you can do this list of things, which included wiping down computer screens in the library during the summertime, ironically setting up and taking down the sound equipment for graduation. Like a few other chores and manual labor, basically. And so Mark and I... Obviously, we say, well, we'll do the chores in the main labor so that we can graduate. Pressing charges somehow equated to not being able to graduate, get your diploma. And so from there, we go into the school police officers office. His name was Officer Harrelson.”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was this long wooden table with these leather chairs around the whole side, principal quarries at the head of the table, Mark and I are now sitting across from each other. We've got administrators standing over us with their arms crossed like we're going to make a run for it or something. And she starts negotiating with us. And this is the part that actually pissed me off the most, is that she started to threaten our scholarships. And she looked at Mark, she goes, Mark, you know, I know you've got a basketball scholarship to the school in Georgia that you're going to. I'd hate to have to call the coach and tell him about this incident. She goes, Joey, I know you're going to that art school in Rhode Island. I hate to have to call their admissions office and tell them about this incident”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I'm like, oh fuck, my heart's racing. I'm like. What is going on here? Every one of them took a turn at me just to yell at me about something. Connie Koi starts yelling at me. How did you get in the office? You broke an entering. And she's like really angry. And I'm like, like, I'm starting to feel a little bit bad about this. I'm not sure where this is going to go. Am I going to get off on this? Or are there some consequences here? I have no idea And so from that, they lead us into this other negotiation room, which I've never seen before.”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we get through the Secretary's Office into the principal's office, Connie Corley. I'll never forget her name. They slammed the door and I'm standing there with my backpack wearing a green eyes shirt. I'll never forget this. I'm in my brown khaki pants, my green eyes odd shirt with my backpack. And there's Connie Corley at her desk with her arms like this, kind of huffing and puffing. Her face is bright red. She's got the phone and the tape player and the phone cord and the phone bass on her desk. And around her are the 20 administrators, including the school police officer. It's the biggest school in the state of Georgia. We had her own police officer. And so they're all like this.”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, he was a good buddy and a good friend, and I appreciate his help in this endeavor. And so he's down like this. He's totally crushed. And he sees me, and he looks at me and he goes, And I couldn't tell what he was saying.”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Administrator comes by my desk, she goes, Joey, get your stuff. You're coming with me. And I'm like sinking in my desk. I'm like, oh no. She gets outside. She slams the door. We're in the hallway. And she goes, you want to tell me what just happened back there? I go, I don't know what you're talking about. She's like, we've got Mark in the office. We know it happened. I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about. She goes, you can make this hard, you can make this easier on yourself. I was like So we walk all the way back to the front of the campus, and the whole way she's berating me, chewing my head off of all the damages that I cause and all the issues that were created with the phone system. And we go to the Secretary's office and we walk through, and I see Mark there, and he's got his head in his hands.”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I get there right as the tape ends, I open the door, people are standing on top of their desk, people are dancing, the teacher's at her desks with her head in her hands, like totally lost control of her class. And it's like the record stops. I walk in, everybody turns and looks at me and goes, Joey, was that you? I'm like, no, I don't know what that was. Finally, the teacher gets control of the class again. We sit down, and everyone's looking at me like, Joe, that was awesome. What was that? I don't know. I don't know. And so not two minutes later. Knock on the door An administrator walks in. She walks over to the teacher. The class goes dead, silent. They whisper something to each other, and then they both turn and look at me.”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I'm walking through my classes in the very back of the campus. I'm walking through the halls. I'm totally by myself while the music's playing. And every time I walk past a classroom, there's a little skinny glass window, and you can kind of get a glimpse into it. And as I walk past these classes, I take these double looks. And people are like on top of their chairs and on top of their desks, and people are dancing. And I get to my classroom. Right as the tape ends. And look, I thought for sure they're going to shut this off in like 20 seconds. Right. So I didn't make a tape very long. It was a couple minutes. Maybe 20 minute tape, I probably would have played for 20 minutes”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The phone trying to shut it off, they had no idea where the heck it was coming from. And so as I'm walking past these sequence of offices, I catch a glimpse into the principal secretary office and then into the principal's office, which is even a deeper layer. And I see, I catch her face, and it's bright red. And she's yelling at somebody. While this music's still playing, right now we're on to Pink Floyd at this point. We don't need no.”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And when you get to school late, you had to go to like a check-in line to sign in. And so I'm in the check-in line. There's like two people in front of me. And this is a scene. I'm in this kind of high school lobby. To my left are all the offices, including the one where the phone is. To my right is the gymnasium. Add them gymnasium. Two of my buddies combusting out while this music's blasting. They're laughing so hard because they realize that it was me. The coach comes out of the gym, starts yelling him, you get back in here. We don't know what's going on, but you got to get back in here. I'm just sitting there with a straight face, I'm not cracking a smile. I sign in and then to get to my class, I have to walk past all these offices, right? And so while I'm doing that, I hear what's going on. They're yelling at each other. People are sticking their head out of the office. Is it coming from in there? No, I don't know where it's coming from. I got the phone in their hands. You can hear of an intercom them hitting numbers on the...”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm like thinking to myself, all right, I gotta do this right now. So play in the tape player, I set the two down next to each other. And as I'm doing it, I flick the volume all the way just to be safe because I'm thinking to myself, I don't want to come across as too soft in the volume. So I'm like, I got to throw the volume all the way up. So I set the two down next to each other and I walk into the building and that's when all hell broke loose. I opened the lobby, I go into the lobby doors, and the music is blasting out of the intercom system. Schools out for summer. It's like the speakers are about to explode. It's like so freaking loud.”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Around the column, you could see into the glass doors and end where the office is, where the phone base is. So I pull the phone out, I pull out the tape player, my hands are shaking. I'm like, I'm just thinking to myself, all right, let's go time. I turned the phone on, get the dial tone. I hit pound zero zero. My hands are shaking even more. I take this deep breath and actually this beep comes over the whole school to signal there's an announcement. And I can actually hear myself breathing.”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay. So I walked to the front of the school and there's like this overhang area where the bus is pulled up and there's these benches and then these glass doors before you go into the main lobby. And so everything's cleared out except for this one kid. He must have been like a freshman or a sophomore or something. And he's sitting there and I'm like waiting for him to leave because I didn't want anybody to see what I was about to do. And he's not going anywhere and I'm thinking to myself, I have to do this now. Like I can't wait any longer. So I just run up to him. I get right in his face and I go, look, you can't say anything about what you're about to see. And he was just totally freaked out. And he goes, okay. And so I go behind one of these brick columns that was holding up the overhang.”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And as he's getting closer, my heart's racing faster. And I'm like, oh my God, I've got the bulges in my pocket of the phone and the tape player. And he makes eye contact at me and the golf cart goes by.”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I woke up that morning and I was nervous. I'm like, got to do this today. All right. Prank is happening. So I go to school a little bit late on purpose. So as it works, I park my car in the parking lot. And in one pocket, I've got the phone. In the other pocket, I've got this tape player, like a handheld, like a Sony Walkman. And I'm walking through the parking lot. It's just... Just me. There's nobody else. And then all of a sudden, Our school police officer shows up on his golf cart and he turns the corner and he's coming straight towards me. And there's nobody else around. It's just him and me and he's coming at me and I'm staring at him and I'm like, just be cool, just be cool. He doesn't know.”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I even got so detailed about this that I had my mom help out at home. She didn't know she was helping me. But we had two phone lines in the house, one for the business, one for personal use. And I would call one phone line to the other and have the tape player next to it to figure out the right volume on it, the right distance from the phone, and have my mom, on the other end, telling me if it was loud enough or not. So she helped me calibrate the right. The phone is embedded. The tape mix is made. It's now the last day of school.”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My heart jumps. I turn around. It's Mark hovering over me. He goes, Joey, we gotta go. Mr. Choko's on his way. And I'm like, all right, I'm done. So we push the desk back. We go at the back entrance into the parking lot. We meet up with Chelsea. I pull the cordless phone out of my bag. I turn it on and we get a dial tone. We have access to the intercom. The next question is what do you do with that axis? So the next day I decided that I was going to make a tape mix Different songs deploy over the intercom system. I put together a mix of Pink Floyd. We don't need no education. Alice Cooper schools out for summer.”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I go running in through the lobby of the school, right into this community director's office, and then it's pitch black, and I'm like going through all the doors that's like chamber by chamber until you get to the main office, the front desk. I'm there and I move the desk to the side. And there's this giant jumble of cords underneath it. I'm trying to figure out what the hell is the phone line. And then I trace it back to the wall. I pull out the splitter piece. I put it in. And then I plug in the cordless phone and the phone from the desk into the same line. And I'm trying to bury the cord base underneath the pile of cords. And at this point, I'm sweating. My heart is racing. In the darkness of this office, definitely not supposed to be there. And all of a sudden, there's a tap on my shoulder.”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I employed another friend. Her name is Chelsea Hughes. And so the three of us came up with a better plan that we'd go up on a weekend. And there was a community school office that we knew would be open on weekends. And that office connected like these inner chambers to the main office. And if we could just get into that one, the thought was you could go through the sequence of other doors to get into the main office. And so Chelsea went up and tried to figure out where that principle was, that community school director. And so she identified him on the far side of campus. She signaled to Mark, Mark signaled to me, and I'm outside in like a black hoodie with my backpack full of the phone, a flashlight, and Mark gave me the signal.”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Inconspicuous at all. And so we go to the school that weekend. And we have this grand plan that will maybe trick one of the janitors into letting us into the main office. And when he leaves, somehow we'll plug in this cordless phone into the school. It definitely was not a well thought out plan at this point, but we didn't have a lot of time, so we just went for it. And so we went to the school. It was on a Sunday afternoon. I think the janitor saw right through us. He did not let us in the office, and so we left a bit empty-handed. We weren't giving up. This was too good.”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Get one of those splitter jacks, plug it into the same phone line, and then I can run a cord of another phone somewhere else in the closet or something, and then I could call in and have access to the whole intercom system. So for a week, I'm toiling on this. I'm like, how am I going to route a phone cord without anybody noticing it? And then finally, it dawns on me. Just get a cordless phone. You could be anywhere in the school and have access to the intercon. So at this point, I recruit one of my buddies, Mark Eisenhower, who, looking back, probably wasn't the best accomplished for this mission because he played on the basketball team, he was about six foot four with bright blonde hair.”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thought that to access the intercom would be some, you go in some room, there'd be some big system, it'd be super complicated. So I'm in the front office and I'm looking at the secretary and I go, hey, I'm just trying to find my sister Kim, can you page over the intercom? And the Secretary goes, oh, sure, just a minute. She picks up the phone and she hits pound zero zero on the dial pad, and then she talks into the phone, hey Kim, Kim Gebia, your brother's here, please come to the front of the building, and everything she said into the phone came out over the intercom system. And I'm watching this and I'm going, it's that easy to get into the intercom system of the largest high school in the state of Georgia. All you have to do is have access to the phone line and hit pound zero zero. I'm like, oh my God. It was this big aha moment as I'm watching this unfold in front of me and I go, all I have to do is...”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're now like three weeks until graduation. Don't have any prank. I haven't figured it out yet. And my sister was a cheerleader, and so she'd have this chewing practice after school. And normally I'd have to hang around and take her home. And so I'm outside after school one day and she's nowhere to be found. This is before cell phones. And the way that you track somebody down at that time was to, they'd make some announcement over the intercom system and they call their name. So I go into the front office. And by the way, I went to the high school in Georgia that was one of the largest. We had over 4,000 people in our high school, right? So this is one of the biggest high schools in the state.”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I search high school senior pranks just to see what else is out there. Because I'm still committed to figuring something out. And so I keep coming across the same stuff. You've got super glue the locks, the doors, you've got Phillip cups with water in the gym and put them all next to each other. They knock over. And then you've got three pigs out into the school and label them one, two, four. So if everyone thinks there's the third pig running around somewhere. You know, it was like the repetition of how many sites were covering these pranks is like, these are not original. And that was one of my criteria. This needs to be something original. I'm not going to just copy another prank. And so”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I want to outdo that. I've got four years to think of something. Surely I can come up with something better than the horse on top of the school. So I set myself a challenge of figuring out a prank by senior year. So the years go by. Now, senior year, and we have about four months to go, and I still haven't thought of anything. That the clock's ticking. It's now three months to go. I still haven't thought of anything. Now, two months to go, and I get onto Google.”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, so before I leave high school, there's another story about... Entrepreneurial I haven't told the story in a while. So when I got to high school as a freshman The senior class right before me had pulled off this amazing senior prank. So at our high school, the mascot is a Bronco horse. So it's the Brookwood Broncos. And they went down the street to this, like a country western store where you get cowboy boots and cowboy hats. It's called Horstown East. And on the top of their sign, which was pretty tall, is a couple stories tall, was this giant full-size plastic horse. And somehow the senior class figured out how to get the horse down from the sign, and then they put it on top of our school. And so the last day of class, everyone came in. There's a giant full-size plastic horse on top of Brookwood. And so when I showed up as a freshman, everybody was talking about it. Everyone was like, yeah, did you hear what the senior class did last year before they graduated? Yeah. And I just started to think to myself.”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Being challenged, being surrounded by other creatives. And really, that's what triggered me to say, huh, this rhetoric school design thing. So the next summer I did their high school program and got to spend six weeks on campus basically as like a, you really act like a freshman. They give you, again, college-level courses. At Rizy, I fell in love with the campus, fell in love with the people, and as a junior high school, I'm like, I got to go here. This is where I feel challenged.”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think probably the environment a little bit more because the medium could have been anything. I mean, we did raccoo pottery and firing. We did figure drawing, painting. We were exposed to all kinds of different mediums and materials. I think the environment is what I fell in love with.”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“She put RISD on the map for me. And I was during that program, during that summer, I really dove into painting. I did this painting that was about eight feet by four feet wide, stretched my own canvas, and really threw myself into understanding materials and paint better than ever before. And we had this show at the end of the program. So everyone in art, the discipline got to a gallery show. And there was my painting on the main wall when you walked in. It was really like, it was a moment for me to realize that A, people were appreciated the images that I made and my art in seconds. I loved it. I really felt challenged. I felt creative. It was allowing me to fulfill all these desires that I had to create things.”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And she's like, there's one school you have to go to. It's the Rhode Island School Design. And I'm like, the what? Where's that?”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I had an incredible time. Here I was surrounded by some of the best artists in the state of Georgia and other high school students. And I had teachers who were collegiate level, challenging us the same way they would a college student. And I freaking loved it. And there was one woman in particular, her name was Donna, and she was like one of those people in life that you have along your journey who helped you see something else about yourself that maybe you don't quite realize yet. And so she sat me down one day during this program and really kind of laid out What it might look like if I pursued art after high school. And she was one of the first persons that got me really excited about, she made it realistic for me to even think about, is that even a practical idea?”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So every year from elementary, middle, and high school, the art teacher would tell me you need to take more art classes because it was a talent that I had that stood out and they recognized it and were telling me about it. And so year over year, I would invest more into art classes. And at one point, I was driving downtown to the Atlanta College of Art on weekends to take figure drawing classes, sometimes on weeknights I drive down for painting classes. And then something really incredible happened. I applied for this program called the Governor's Honors Program in high school, where they take students from around the state of Georgia across all disciplines, math and science and languages and art. And they pick about 30 students out of the state for each discipline. And then if you get in, you go to a college campus for the summer and you actually study college-level coursework in whatever the discipline is. So I went for art.”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah, it was fun to learn how to use some of the graphics programs like Photoshop and then also figure out how do you turn that into something? How does it leave your screen and become something physical? So it was a great lesson, if anything.”
2018-03-08 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #301: Joe Gebbia – Co-Founder of Airbnb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT