Airbnb

[0] I took Tanny's collar offer, so that we don't have the same problem.

[1] That'll save us some time in post.

[2] Welcome to Season 7, Episode 8, the season finale.

[3] I've acquired, the podcast about great technology companies and the stories and playbooks behind them.

[4] I'm Ben Gilbert, and I'm the co -founder of Pioneer Square Labs, a startup studio and venture capital firm in Seattle.

[5] And I'm David Rosenthal, and I am an angel investor and startup advisor based in San Francisco.

[6] And we are your hosts.

[7] Today, we cover the hottest and most anticipated company to IPO in 2020.

[8] And oddly, in a year marred by the global pandemic, and just this month, an all -time high number of stay -at -home orders, this hot IPO is a travel company.

[9] Airbnb, originally known as Air, Bed and Breakfast Incorporated, is going public today, raising over $3 .5 billion and initially valued at over $47 billion.

[10] The company is insanely impressive.

[11] They operate in 220 countries and 100 ,000 cities.

[12] Last year, there were $38 billion of bookings made on the platform.

[13] There are over 50 million active guests who book nights to stay at over 7 million listings.

[14] And unlike other companies that we've covered recently, well, yesterday, like DoorDash, this is truly a global company with 86 % of hosts outside.

[15] of the United States.

[16] And yet, while this company has changed the world and how a meaningful fraction of the human race travels, their growth has been slowing more severely than any of the other unicorn IPOs we've covered.

[17] And that's before even looking at the effects of the global pandemic.

[18] Now, of course, David and I did our usual deep homework on the company, but this is one where we've been doing our research for years, not just as guests on the platform since 2010, but actually as hosts too, starting in 2015 for David and 2017 for me. So, does Airbnb see its market saturation on the horizon, or is this a global community movement that's still getting started?

[19] Today, we dive in.

[20] Indeed, we do.

[21] Well, as always, if you love Acquired and you want to hone your own craft of company building, you should join the community of Acquired Limited Partners.

[22] On our LP show last week, David and I did a first for us and had our own actual limited partners, investors in our current and former funds on the show.

[23] Jacqueline Hester and Lyndall Ekman from Foundry Group joined us for part four of our VC Fundamentals series, where we went seriously deep on the topic of portfolio construction for a venture capitalist.

[24] Sure, this is a useful thing for aspiring VCs, current VCs, to sort of hone their thinking on that.

[25] But if you're a founder or an employee at a startup, I think understanding the incentives and strategy of your investors, you know, big stakeholders in your customers, you know, big stakeholders company and your potential future investors, it's just insanely valuable.

[26] So really awesome to have them on, fun to be diving so deep on this topic and sharing a lot of these conversations with so many of you.

[27] If you aren't already an Acquired Limited Partner, you can click the link in the show notes or go to Acquired .fm slash LP and all new listeners get a seven -day free trial.

[28] Okay, listeners now is a great time to thank one of our big partners here at Acquired, ServiceNow.

[29] Yes.

[30] Service Now is the AI platform for business.

[31] transformation, helping automate processes, improve service delivery, and increase efficiency.

[32] 85 % of the Fortune 500 runs on them, and they have quickly joined the Microsoft's at the NVIDias as one of the most important enterprise technology vendors in the world.

[33] And, just like them, ServiceNow has AI baked in everywhere in their platform.

[34] They're also a major partner of both Microsoft and NVIDIA.

[35] I was at NVIDIA's GTC earlier this year, and Jensen brought up Service Now and their partnership many times throughout the keynote.

[36] So why is ServiceNow so important to both NVIDIA and Microsoft companies we've explored deeply in the last year on the show?

[37] Well, AI in the real world is only as good as the bedrock platform it's built into.

[38] So whether you're looking for AI to supercharge developers in IT, empower and streamline customer service, or enable HR to deliver better employee experiences, Service Now is the platform that can make it possible.

[39] Interestingly, employees can not only get answers to their questions, but they're offered actions that they can take immediately.

[40] For example, smarter self -service for changing 401k contributions directly through AI -powered chat, or developers building apps faster with AI -powered code generation, or service agents that can use AI to notify you of a product that needs replacement before people even chat with you.

[41] With ServiceNow's platform, your business can put AI to work today.

[42] It's pretty incredible that ServiceNow built AI directly into their platform.

[43] So all the integration work to prepare for it that otherwise would have taken you years is already done.

[44] So if you want to learn more about the ServiceNow platform and how it can turbocharge the time to deploy AI for your business, go over to servicenow .com slash acquired.

[45] And when you get in touch, just tell them Ben and David sent you.

[46] Thanks, service now.

[47] All right, David, Air, B, and B, take us in.

[48] It's Time.

[49] It's at every time.

[50] This company is 13 years old.

[51] Come on.

[52] Well, it looks like a teenager.

[53] We've thought it was going to be time for a while now.

[54] And, you know, here on the bar mitzvah of Airbnb, it goes public.

[55] That's right.

[56] One quick disclaimer before we get going.

[57] In this case, with Airbnb, I actually know and have worked with several people who are involved in this story in my past history at my previous venture capital firm.

[58] I haven't talked to any of them about the IPO or about this episode.

[59] they're all great and I'm sure they're very, very happy today.

[60] But just so everyone knows, I don't own any Airbnb stock or any stock in any of its competitors.

[61] And I'm not planning to buy any.

[62] Yeah, as always, this show is not investment advice, but we thought it was sort of extra important for us to highlight that neither of us are our shareholders going into recording.

[63] Indeed, indeed.

[64] We do have a very big thank you to shout out, though, again, has so often on this show, Brad Stone and his wonderful book The Upstarts, where he chronicled much of this history that we're going to borrow from.

[65] And Brad is wonderful past guest here of us on Acquired.

[66] So with that, let's dive in.

[67] Let's do it.

[68] Okay.

[69] So Ben, stop me if you've heard this one before.

[70] Wait, the story of Airbnb's founding?

[71] I never heard of it.

[72] Well, okay.

[73] So a group of friends from New England, one of whom is from Harvard, and the other two with a kind of design and adventurous background, start a company in the early 2000s with a mission to connect people and facilitate interesting experiences.

[74] And they're going to accomplish that mission by having people stay in other people on the site's homes.

[75] Yada yada yada.

[76] RISD design conference, South by Southwest.

[77] I think I know where this is going.

[78] So they do this.

[79] Yep, yep.

[80] They build trust.

[81] on the site with reviews.

[82] You can review each other.

[83] You, you have, they discover that photos are really important of the listings.

[84] They add photos.

[85] They figure out how to authenticate real identities.

[86] It starts to take off.

[87] People start using it.

[88] Like going through this way faster than I would have expected.

[89] I know.

[90] I know.

[91] We're like, we've got to get through a lot here.

[92] And it seems totally crazy at the time to everyone, including Silicon Valley.

[93] They raise money from one of the very best venture capital firms.

[94] Storyed venture capital firm in Silicon.

[95] and Valley.

[96] Of course, I'm not talking about Airbnb.

[97] I am talking about Casey Fenton, Daniel Hoffer, and the crew at Couchsurfing .com.

[98] And the venture firm that I'm talking about is benchmark, and the partner who led that deal was Matt Kohler of, you know, little companies like Facebook and Instagram fam.

[99] Wow.

[100] Couch surfing had that many similarities with Airbnb.

[101] They had a lot of similarities.

[102] But there was, there was one thing that was missing.

[103] And it turns out that that was one of the key things that made couch surfing, roughly the equivalent for those who have listened to our Uber episode of the, I can remember if it was Uber or Lyft or both.

[104] I think it was Uber, the homeobiles story.

[105] Ooh, I think Uber.

[106] Good question.

[107] I don't know.

[108] I think it was Uber where we did homeobiles, which of course pioneered ride sharing.

[109] Couch surfing didn't have a way to pay money.

[110] it was you just stayed in other people's they didn't facilitate the payments and the idea was everybody was just going to do this out of the goodness of their heart for their community and I think for a long time the only monetization that happened on couch surfing was you paid essentially like a verification fee to have your identity verified and I think the way they did that was they took a credit card payment and then matched your your name with the name on the credit card and that was the only way they made it.

[111] made money, I think.

[112] And actually, the similarities to homobiles don't end there.

[113] Couch surfing was for a long time actually a registered 501C3 nonprofit.

[114] And then they had to convert from a nonprofit into a seacorp when they raised money.

[115] It was a whole mess.

[116] Oh, wow.

[117] I mean, it makes sense it was a nonprofit because in my head the way I always thought about couch surfing.

[118] And I think when I first heard about Airbnb, I sort of equated it with the same thing of like literally a stranger who just lets you crash well, you're, I don't know.

[119] At this time, I was like a college student.

[120] So I was like, oh, I see it's for like other college students or interns or whatever who don't have money.

[121] And like you can just stay on some stranger's couch.

[122] Yep, which I think was how cat surfing started.

[123] I think, uh, I think Casey was a college student and going on a trip.

[124] Did you ever use it?

[125] I know.

[126] I know, I looked at it, but I never used it.

[127] Yeah, but it always felt a little bit too like, can I just get a cheap hotel or do I know anyone in that city that I actually know?

[128] Yeah.

[129] It's kind of crazy to stay on it.

[130] Strangers.

[131] couch.

[132] The really crazy part, and this is getting ahead of ourselves, but it turns out Brian and Joe actually had dinner with Casey and Daniel right before they applied to YC and talked to them about what they were doing.

[133] After, of course, they had already started and we're working on Airbnb.

[134] Yeah, of course.

[135] And they talked about the two sites.

[136] Anyway, okay, onto the real story of Airbnb.

[137] So the year is 2000.

[138] We are back in New England, specifically in Providence, Rhode Island, where a scrappy freshman from Georgia named Joe shows up at the famous Rhode Island School of Design, RISD, wonderful place.

[139] I didn't realize I actually was in Providence last year.

[140] Risney and Brown are basically, they're like co -located.

[141] Like Providence is a very small town.

[142] So Brown and Rizda, like all the buildings are kind of interspersed.

[143] And it's actually very, very pretty, very cute little place.

[144] So Joe shows up as freshman and he meets and befriends a sophomore there.

[145] now Joe's kind of like a scrappy.

[146] He's like a, you know, I don't know if skinny's the right way.

[147] He's not, he's not like a, he's slight a frame.

[148] Let's put it that way.

[149] His friend who he meets is a beefy hockey player.

[150] And I think at this, I don't know if it was this, at this time or after college, aspiring bodybuilder.

[151] And he would go around and compete in bodybuilding competitions.

[152] Sophomar from upstate New York.

[153] Of course, we're talking about the one and only Brian Chesky here.

[154] So they're both at RISD.

[155] But, I don't know other than my one visit to Providence.

[156] I haven't spent a ton of time at RISD or with people from RISD, but my impression is it's like a very artsy kind of place.

[157] Whether that was the case or not, that certainly was not the mold that Joe and Brian fit at RISD.

[158] They become fast friends and get into all sorts of hijinks.

[159] They're always talking about doing different projects, starting businesses together.

[160] And they must have stood out because they became super popular.

[161] Joe actually becomes student body.

[162] president of RISD.

[163] He's a year behind Brian.

[164] And Brian at graduation is elected by the class to give the graduation speech when they graduate.

[165] So the story goes when Brian is graduating after this speech, Joe still there is another year at RISD.

[166] He takes Brian out to dinner before he leaves and says, hey, we've got this thing.

[167] One day, I predict that we're going to start a company together, you and me, and somebody's going to write a book about this.

[168] Now, of course, they're telling this to the author who is writing the book about them.

[169] Yeah, prove it.

[170] Whether it's true or not, we will never know, but it becomes very apt.

[171] So after Brian graduates in 2004, he moves to the West Coast, he moves to Los Angeles, and he gets a job working for a design consultancy.

[172] They're called 3D ID, but it's kind of not the fit for him.

[173] He's much more...

[174] Isn't he like designing chairs or something?

[175] Yeah, he's designing chairs and medical products.

[176] And, like, you know, they're like a product design consultancy, and he's a junior designer they're there.

[177] It's not very glamorous and he doesn't think this is the life for him.

[178] At the same time, so this is going into 2005, 2006, YouTube get started.

[179] I remember I was in college when YouTube got started and like this site is amazing.

[180] This thing is happening on the internet.

[181] You can watch video and movies and anybody can post them and the guys you started it came out of PayPal, young guys backed by Sequoia.

[182] Brian starts like, researching that becomes obsessed, like, oh, this is like a great idea.

[183] That's what I want my life to be like.

[184] Meanwhile, Joe, the next year in 2005, he graduates from RISD.

[185] He's not sure what he wants to do with his life either.

[186] He hangs around and he actually starts a company.

[187] I guess you could call it a company.

[188] It still exists today.

[189] It's called a crit buns.

[190] And Joe's talked about this a lot.

[191] If you listen, we went back and listened to the How I Built this episode.

[192] He talks about this.

[193] So I guess the story is, as part of the curriculum at RISD, one of the key things that you do is you have these critiques, like design critiques in your classes.

[194] Like you design something and everybody in the class and the professors, you know, I'll critique and you sit around.

[195] And I guess these go on for a long time and there's not comfortable chairs.

[196] And so Joe has this idea that he makes literally butt -shaped foam cushions that you can carry around with you and you can put down on the floor or on a bench or whatever and then be more comfortable.

[197] during crittons, hence crit buttons.

[198] Amazing.

[199] And this is still up, right?

[200] Still up.

[201] Yep.

[202] You can go to, I don't have it written down with the website.

[203] We'll link to it in the show notes.

[204] You can go online and order a critpun.

[205] It's critbuns .com.

[206] And it is in its full web 1 .5 glory.

[207] Yes.

[208] In fact, I think it was on the front page of the USA Today, and they have a big area of their site dedicated to letting you know that.

[209] obviously and of course by they we mean Joe Joe yeah because it's not really a company per se Joe goes around Providence and tries to get the the bookstore in town to carry them I don't know if he actually succeeds but if he does like this is not he's not moving a lot of product let's put it that way so in 2006 he finally gives in and he moves out to San Francisco apparently he always wanted to move to San Francisco.

[210] He gets an internship and then a full -time job at Chronicle Books, the book publisher, a famous book publisher here in San Francisco.

[211] And he's working.

[212] He's designing book packaging and marketing materials for them.

[213] And he, with a couple roommates, rents a apartment in the then.

[214] This is crazy to remember now.

[215] Up and sort of up and coming, but mostly still incredibly sketchy area in the south of market neighborhood.

[216] San Francisco, better known today as Soma.

[217] And, you know, I remember at the time, I had friends out here in San Francisco and my wife Jenny was from here and I come out and visit and, you know, you didn't go to Soma.

[218] It was, it was a real sketchy place.

[219] It's still kind of a sketchy place, but has transformed incredibly since then, of which Airbnb is a big part of.

[220] Joe's now living in San Francisco.

[221] Brian's in L .A. Remember, he's not super happy.

[222] They're still in really good touch.

[223] One day in 2007, sends Brian a package down to LA with an object in it with a message behind it.

[224] And Brian opens up the package.

[225] There's a Crip button in the package.

[226] And as the story goes, at least I told to Brad, the point of the Crip Bun, other than I'm sure just to be hijinky and ironic, was, hey, let's take another shot at this.

[227] It's time to do this together.

[228] Start a company.

[229] We're not meant to be employees.

[230] Let's go do this.

[231] So Brian comes up to San Francisco after receiving the grip on to visit and stay with Joe.

[232] And when he's there, it turns out one of Joe's roommates, this tall programmer guy named Nate, who went to Harvard, but he's working at this kind of like really weird language tutoring company at the time called Batique and doesn't really seem to be going anywhere.

[233] Nate's moving out of the apartment.

[234] And so Joe's like, hey, we need another roommate.

[235] Why don't you just, why don't you just leave your job down in LA, come up here and move in with us.

[236] And so Brian's up there visiting.

[237] He has a great time.

[238] He kind of wants to do it, but he's not sure.

[239] So he goes back to L .A. Thanks about it for a while.

[240] And then finally in the beginning of September in 2007, when Nate finally moves out that month, Brian's like, okay, I'm going to do it.

[241] So he quits his job.

[242] He moves up to San Francisco.

[243] He moves into the apartment.

[244] But there's a problem.

[245] You know, you've replaced, you know, Nate, this programmer who, you know, had a job who's making money.

[246] But this guy, Brian, who's a designer who doesn't have a job.

[247] So our roommate is kind of only as good as they are for the rent money.

[248] And Brian and Joe need to make the rent.

[249] So they're casting about, they're thinking about something to do.

[250] And it turns out the next month, one of the big design international design conferences is happening in San Francisco, the world design Congress.

[251] And anybody who's traveled to San Francisco for all the big conferences that happen nowadays, they're all tech conferences that happen at the Moscone Center.

[252] the hotel situation in this city is nuts.

[253] It is completely awful.

[254] WWDC has since moved down to the South Bay and now online, but like I remember looking at hotel rooms for the week of WWDC before it got announced because people were speculating on what week it would be and rates were still like 5X what you would expect them to be because people were pre -anticipating that just clearly not enough hotel rooms.

[255] And the thing that you figure out if you live here and you don't have family and friends who want to visit, is that that's not just WWDC.

[256] That's literally every week.

[257] Every week there is a big event going on at the Moscone Center or elsewhere in the city.

[258] And there just aren't enough hotels here for demand.

[259] And so, you know, hotel rates can be like $1 ,000 plus a night during the week because there's always a big conference going on in some type.

[260] So they start cooking up an idea.

[261] And Joe sends Brian an email.

[262] Why he sent this over email when they're living together?

[263] I don't know.

[264] But he sends him a very famous email.

[265] They knew that we were going to be doing a podcast one day and they wanted to leave a paper trail.

[266] Well, they were thinking about, you know, an author writing the book.

[267] So there we go.

[268] So the subject of the email is subletter.

[269] And it reads, Brian, I thought of a way to make a few bucks, turning our place into a designer's bed and breakfast, offering young designers who come into town a place to crash during the four -day event, complete with wireless internet, a small desk space, sleeping mat and breakfast each morning.

[270] ha joe ha ha ha indeed i'm gonna start ending my emails with that and see if uh see if that is the magic that made it all work you know yeah i i never really liked you know like best or cheers like all the standard you know yeah just end with ha i like that ha exclamation point great well it was a pretty good ha so they take three days they put together www.

[271] www.

[272] airbed and breakfast dot com on wordpress then they email out a bunch of design blogs to get some publicity and say like, hey, you know, all the people that read your site, they're coming to town for the conference, can't afford hotels, especially, you know, young broke designers like us, come stay with us on mats in the, uh, uh, I don't know where the mats came from, maybe like yoga mats or something in the, uh, in this apartment.

[273] I mean, like I knew air beds, right, like Airbnb, but like, well, they called it air bed and breakfast.

[274] Yeah, so what's it?

[275] Do they mean air beds or do they mean mats?

[276] I assume maybe they meant, as they were working on the idea and came up with airbed and breakfast, maybe they went out and got some air beds.

[277] So they email us out in the surprise.

[278] They, you know, people are like, oh, this is cool.

[279] What a novel idea.

[280] And they write about it.

[281] And they get a few takers.

[282] So they have, it was either two or three.

[283] I can't recall how many guests stay with them that weekend.

[284] But one, in particular, a young recent Arizona state grad from India named a mall survey, rents one of these airbeds and or mats for $80 a night, comes and stays with them, and they become friends.

[285] Like they attend the conference together, they hang out, Joe gives him a tour of the city.

[286] It's really a great experience.

[287] And at the end of this day, 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.

[288] Now, not yet famous for having helped produce DoorDash, as we talked about in our episode.

[289] episode yesterday, but still pretty famous nonetheless, and especially in the, uh, in the design circles.

[290] And there's this famous tie between the D -School and IDEO, the design agency.

[291] So they all drive down together to Stanford.

[292] And, uh, they attend a lecture by Bill Mogridge, who is one of the IDEO founders.

[293] And, uh, this is cool experience.

[294] And then afterwards, Brian goes up to Bill and just starts pitching him on, hey, got them all here.

[295] He's staying with it.

[296] We're designers.

[297] Um, you know, uh, we have really hard for young, you know, starving designers to go to conferences.

[298] Do you think, I think Bill might have been like 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?

[299] Unclear what Bill's reaction was, but airbed and breakfast did not become the official accommodations provider.

[300] Hey, I love it.

[301] Always pitching, always selling.

[302] It's good CEO.

[303] Always be hustling.

[304] Yeah, indeed.

[305] so this happens the conference ends and you know they have this amazing experience and so you'd think right like oh okay great like this is the thing this is what we're going to do no they don't uh they're like oh well that was good way to make some money during the conference what else what are we actually going to do so they start brainstorming some ideas they rope Nate who you know they were still friends with even though he'd left the apartment back in to start working with them on this since he's actually you know a developer he's left boutique at this point and he's free Lansing.

[306] He's working on side projects, thinking about what his next gig is going to be.

[307] They start brainstorming ideas.

[308] One thing that they think about is roommate matching, because they're like, maybe inspired by Air Bed and Breakfast.

[309] Like, this was so cool.

[310] Well, obviously temporary roommates, that's not very big.

[311] Maybe permanent roommates.

[312] That's what we need.

[313] And to be totally clear, was AirBad and Breakfast like a website that they stood up for their apartment or was it like a platform for any designer with an apartment to have other designers stay with them?

[314] That's a good question.

[315] I think it was only their apartment.

[316] I'm not 100 % sure on that.

[317] If it was others to, there were no other hosts during that design conference.

[318] Got it.

[319] It was a platform of one.

[320] So Nate, we've talked about Nate a little bit.

[321] Turns out he has a pretty interesting and very relevant background too.

[322] So he had majored in computer science at Harvard right around the same time.

[323] as Brian and Joe were at RISD, but that wasn't really all that he was bringing to the table or even really probably the most important thing that he was bringing to the table.

[324] So in high school, it turns out, Nate had not only taught himself to code, but he put the code that he was writing to, so I say highly profitable commercial use.

[325] So he started...

[326] No. He started writing AOL bots and programs and communication stuff, and first he was selling them as shareware, and he kind of stumbles into this nascent field, this is in the 90s, of email marketing and perhaps the unregulated parts of the email marketing industry where he operates as a consultant during high school and even through college, he ends up making, he would tell Bradstone, almost a million dollars in...

[327] And when you say early unregulated email marketing, do you mean he was a spammer?

[328] I mean, he was a spammer.

[329] So the can -spam act was not passed until 2003, it turns out, at which point then I think sophomore at Harvard and Nate closed his consultancy business for reasons that have never been discussed.

[330] But before that, yeah, he made about a million dollars and put himself through Harvard and much more.

[331] Pretty amazing.

[332] So in other words, like not only is he a Harvard -trained computer scientist who knows how to code and develop and he can stand up, you know, internet products all on his own.

[333] He also knows how to market online.

[334] So this is a pretty potent combination here.

[335] They were smart to rope him back in.

[336] So they're jamming on these ideas.

[337] They're thinking about the roommate thing.

[338] Turns out roommates .com already exists.

[339] A couple months go by.

[340] It's January 2008.

[341] They're out of other ideas.

[342] So Joe and Brian decide, maybe we'll dust off this airbed and breakfast thing.

[343] Give it another, give it another go.

[344] So they pitch it to Nate.

[345] They actually hadn't pitched neat until January on working with them on this.

[346] It was just this side project thing.

[347] So this is like attempt number two at starting Airbnb.

[348] Attempt number two.

[349] Yeah.

[350] And so the idea is South by Southwest is coming up in March and people are starting to make their bookings for going to Austin and lots of people from San Francisco go to go to go to Austin still.

[351] Well, not this year.

[352] We were supposed to go do a live show there this year, but maybe next year.

[353] And as anybody who's been to South by or Austin knows once when these festivals happen, whether it's Austin City Limits or South by, you can't get a hotel room like it's thousand bucks two thousand bucks a night it's crazy the first time i went in 2010 i couldn't get a hotel room and i booked an Airbnb yeah i think uh i think every time i've gone i've done an Airbnb i've never stayed in a hotel for south by so like okay great uh this is this is where we're going to launch it's going to be big they go on Craigslist and uh say okay like who's hosting rooms uh and who's who's in the looking section looking for rooms they start pitching everybody on using Airbnb Breakfast .com, they get a huge success.

[354] They get two actual bookings, like two, like one more than one for the festival.

[355] And one of those bookings growth rate over their previous attempt to start the company.

[356] Exactly.

[357] I guess a 100 % growth rate.

[358] One of those bookings is Brian.

[359] So they have only one, they still only have one non -founder booking.

[360] Brian shows up and this is just amazing.

[361] Like, you know, we talk on this show about how the internet it back in the day was like 12 people.

[362] Well, it turns out in the mid 2000s, it was still only like 12 people.

[363] So Brian shows up and he's hanging out there and he meets up at Joe's suggestion with another one of Joe's former roommates.

[364] It's just a little guy named Michael Seibel.

[365] No way.

[366] Yeah.

[367] Guy named Michael Seibel, of course, of Justin