In the past couple of weeks, I’ve started to read more and more about Airbnb founder Brian Chesky. Airbnb is a company that allows people to offer their homes as a place to stay through an app. It’s like the bed and breakfast establishments that pre-date the huge hotel chains of today.

An art student who came up with the idea when he was broke and unemployed in San Francisco, Chesky has grown his company from a silly idea with a friend to one of the largest startups on the planet. Airbnb recently received a valuation of $24 billion, which is larger than the market value of apparent competitor Marriott. It seems insane to me how a person who wasn’t even really a technology guy before built a company to this size so quickly.

All of this seemed like an impossibility before I read this long piece on him…