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60 free Airbnb trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Airbnb trivia quiz covers the company that turned a spare air mattress in San Francisco into a marketplace hosting two million people a night. The easy questions ask what the name originally stood for, which city it started in, who the three founders are, what the guests were fed for breakfast and how the company finally went public. Then it works through the startup legend: the design conference that filled every hotel, the presidential-election cereal boxes, Paul Graham's Y Combinator, the New York trip to meet users and the name change to end confusion over air mattresses. The hard end is for people who follow tech and travel closely: the seed round at a penny a share, Ashton Kutcher's investment, the $10 billion and $31 billion valuations, Eric Holder's anti-discrimination policy, the Charlottesville cancellations, the pandemic layoffs and host payouts, the exit from China, the permanent party ban, the 55,081-word terms of service, the founders' side careers from the San Antonio Spurs to DOGE, and the rental limits in Paris, London, New York and Japan. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries on Airbnb and its three founders before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our tech companies, startups and travel quizzes are natural next stops.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Airbnb is an abbreviation of the company's original name. What was it?
Airbed and Breakfast
The founders shortened it in March 2009 to end confusion over air mattresses.
Q 02In which city did Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia first rent out air mattresses in October 2007?
San Francisco
They needed help paying rent, and a design conference had filled every hotel in town.
Q 03Which event, which had filled the city's hotels, prompted the founders' first air-mattress guests?
IDSA design conference
Both founders were industrial designers, so the attendees were their own tribe.
Q 04Who joined Chesky and Gebbia in February 2008 as chief technology officer and third co-founder?
Nathan Blecharczyk
He was Chesky's former roommate and is now the company's chief strategy officer.
Q 05What did the founders serve their first air-mattress guests for breakfast?
Pop-Tarts
Chesky had just moved in with his RISD classmate Gebbia and could not cover his share of the rent.
Q 06On what date did the site Airbedandbreakfast.com launch?
August 11, 2008
It offered short-term rooms and breakfast to people who could not find a hotel.
Q 07To raise $30,000 in 2008, the founders sold boxes of cereal named after which two people?
Barack Obama and John McCain
Most of it sold at the Democratic National Convention, and the stunt caught Paul Graham's eye.
Q 08Which startup incubator took Airbnb into its winter 2009 session?
Y Combinator
Founder Paul Graham gave them $20,000 for a 6% stake, which they spent flying to New York to meet users.
Q 09What stake did the incubator receive for its $20,000 investment?
6%
By March 2009 the site had 10,000 users and 2,500 listings.
Q 10Why was the company name shortened to Airbnb.com in March 2009?
To end confusion over air mattresses
By then guests were renting whole rooms and homes, not just airbeds.
Q 11Which venture firm provided Airbnb's $600,000 seed round in April 2009?
Sequoia Capital
Shares went for one cent each; Greylock and Sequoia followed with a $7.2 million Series A in 2010.
Q 12Which actor invested in Airbnb's $112 million round in July 2011 through A Grade Investments?
Ashton Kutcher
His partner Guy Oseary joined him alongside Andreessen Horowitz and Digital Sky Technologies.
Q 13TPG Capital's $450 million investment in April 2014 valued Airbnb at how much?
$10 billion valuation
By March 2017 the valuation had reached $31 billion after more than $3 billion in total funding.
Q 21Airbnb's collection of quality-vetted homes, announced in 2018, was branded Airbnb ___?
Plus
Beyond by Airbnb, a luxury vacation-rental tier, launched at the same time.
Q 22By October 2019, roughly how many guests were staying with Airbnb each night?
About 2 million
That same year its film division produced the documentary Gay Chorus Deep South, later sold to MTV.
Q 23Roughly how many employees did Airbnb lay off during the COVID-19 pandemic?
About 1,900
That was about a quarter of the workforce; the company also pledged $250 million to hosts hit by cancellations.
Q 14On what date did Airbnb go public, raising $3.5 billion on Nasdaq?
December 10, 2020
Hosts were offered $238 million of shares at $68 apiece.
Q 15At what price per share were Airbnb hosts offered stock in the IPO?
$68
The company had been valued at just $18 billion in the pandemic-hit spring of 2020.
Q 16In April 2015 Airbnb became one of the first US companies to expand into which country after restrictions eased?
Cuba
The move followed the Obama-era thaw in relations.
Q 17Which former US Attorney General was hired in 2016 to help craft Airbnb's anti-discrimination policy?
Eric Holder
Guest photos are now hidden from hosts until a booking is accepted.
Q 18What did Airbnb call the product it launched in November 2016 for booking activities?
Experiences
Two months later it led a $13 million investment in the restaurant-booking app Resy.
Q 19Airbnb's 2017 magazine, Airbnbmag, was co-published with which media company?
Hearst
It launched in May 2017, the same year as the Resy investment.
Q 20In August 2017 Airbnb cancelled bookings and closed accounts of people attending which event?
The Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville
It cited terms of service requiring members to accept people regardless of race, religion or sexual orientation.
Q 24How much did Airbnb pledge to hosts to compensate for pandemic cancellations?
$250 million in payouts
Bookings fell as much as 96% in some cities but rose in many rural areas.
Q 25Airbnb was a leading sponsor of which Olympic Games, ignoring calls from human rights groups to withdraw?
Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics
Activists cited China's persecution of Uyghurs.
Q 26When Airbnb quit mainland China in May 2022, roughly what share of its revenue did China represent?
Less than 1%
Rules requiring detailed guest data to be sent to the government, plus lockdowns, drove the exit.
Q 27In June 2022 Airbnb made permanent a ban on what in its rentals?
Parties and events
It had been a temporary pandemic measure since August 2020, and enforcement technology followed that August.
Q 28Where did Airbnb open its first international office, in October 2011?
London
Paris, Milan, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Moscow and São Paulo followed in early 2012.
Q 29In which city did Airbnb establish its European headquarters in 2013?
Dublin
Its 11th office, opened in November 2012, was in Sydney.
Q 30What working policy did Airbnb adopt for almost all employees in April 2022?
Unlimited remote work
The company had cut a quarter of its staff two years earlier.