Obama O’s and Cap’n McCain’s: the weird cereal that saved Airbnb from going broke

In 2008, Airbnb had almost no users, no investor interest, and founders who were rapidly running out of money. So they did something that had nothing to do with home rentals: they made cereal.

Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia and Nathan Blecharczyk created two limited-edition, election-themed breakfast cereals — Obama O’s and Cap’n McCain’s — and sold them for $40 a box during the 2008 presidential election season. Only 500 boxes of each were produced, each with actual cereal inside. As first reported by Yahoo Finance, the quirky campaign generated roughly $30,000, giving the struggling startup enough cash to keep operating while it searched for investors.

The idea wasn’t part of any original business plan. It came about because the founders had run out of other options: their short-term rental platform, then called AirBed & Breakfast, had generated very little revenue, and fundraising pitches had mostly ended in rejection. The election-themed cereal unexpectedly attracted widespread media attention, and according to Airbnb’s official company timeline, the roughly $30,000 it raised provided the runway that carried the founders to their acceptance into startup accelerator Y Combinator in early 2009.

The cereal boxes did more than raise cash — they demonstrated the founders’ creativity and persistence. Joe Gebbia reportedly brought one of the boxes to the Y Combinator interview, where it became an unexpected conversation starter. Investor Paul Graham, initially unconvinced by the business idea, changed his view after hearing the story, later describing the founders as “cockroaches” that simply refused to die, a compliment reflecting extraordinary resilience in startup circles.