Rental housing as networking for startups



    Almost all startups, investors and mentors know what the additional benefits of participating in various specialized conferences are. This, of course, is networking . The opportunity to meet and chat with the authors of business ideas, exchange experiences and information on innovations, make new acquaintances with other entrepreneurs are all excellent opportunities for expanding your business.

    In some cases, networking is more useful than the speeches of the main speakers of the event. And almost every startup who has ever come to an international conference, regretted the time spent on not the most successful master classes. At such moments, the thought comes, they say, great, I killed so much time for complete nonsense, but at least I met interesting people.

    So, you took a business card and shook hands - not a lot for the first time. But what if you do not stop there and move on? The idea of ​​establishing cross-cultural communication at conferences for innovators is close to us in spirit. Therefore, we at Airbnb once thought about starting a program that allows entrepreneurs to establish new relationships with potential business partners.


    Or Ofer, founder of SimilarWeb, offers an apartment with such a view from the window. Inspires?

    If you do not confine yourself to a standard acquaintance, you can try something really unexpected: what about sharing breakfast with the founder of Gett (formerly GetTaxi)? Or city tours with SimilarWeb director? These are not abstract examples, but real proposals that appeared in our project aimed at developing hospitable relations between entrepreneurs: http://entrepreneurhostsentrepreneur.com/ehe/ .


    Photos from the conference in Munich.

    In a month, the next DLD (Digital - Life - Design) technology and innovation conference starts in Tel Aviv . In Moscow , by the way, a similar event is taking place in the fall, the Open Innovations forum.where innovation leaders discuss issues of innovative development, seeking to find a platform for investment or to make valuable acquaintances.

    The DLD conference was first held in 2005. Since then, the event has been held several times a year in different countries of the world, including Russia, attracting the attention of entrepreneurs, investors, scientists, inventors, designers and just fans of new technologies.

    Why is Israel chosen now? This country was able to take the second position in the world ranking in terms of the development of the startup industry and the first place in the number of research centers of large companies per capita. Here you can find out why startups should not be afraid of failures, and the number of failed startups is considered only an indicator of experience.



    Israel’s IT industry employs more than 200,000 people. According to some reports, there are more than 5,000 startups in the country. In general, Israeli startups have a lot to learn, it is not for nothing that Google bought the Israeli service Waze for a billion dollars, and two more companies in the field of high technologies were sold for 900 and 800 million.

    Going on a business trip, you need to ask yourself a question not only about which conferences, lectures, receptions and other events you should attend, but also how to get additional experience . Hundreds of motley people who come annually to DLD are puzzled by exactly the same thoughts.

    And we thought: if you want additional experience from communicating with entrepreneurs, so why not rent an apartment from an entrepreneur? We have already said that for us renting is not only communicating with the service and checking into a room. Communication with the owners is the emotional advantage, the value of which is difficult to measure in numbers, but it is difficult to underestimate.

    With Aitbnb, some entrepreneurs can provide housing (and live chat) to other entrepreneurs. The initiative allows local entrepreneurs to expand their international relations, receive valuable ideas and advice from business leaders and guests who come to the conference from around the world.

    For us, this is not the first experience of holding such an event. A similar initiative has been carried out over the past two years onWorld Congress of Mobile Communications in Barcelona. The experiment, in our opinion, was a success.

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