4.5 KiB
Airbnb Seed Deck — Design Notes
Intent
A premium remake of Airbnb's 2009 seed pitch deck using current Airbnb brand language. The composition should feel warm, human, and tasteful — the opposite of a tech startup dark-mode deck. White canvas, generous space, soft coral accents. Three.js backgrounds are elegant mood-setters, never distracting.
Color Palette
| Token | Value | Use |
|---|---|---|
| Rausch (primary) | #FF385C |
CTAs, logo, accent bars, highlights |
| Coral warm | #FF5A5F |
Gradient partner to Rausch |
| Babu dark | #E61E4D |
Hover / emphasis gradient endpoint |
| Off-white | #FFFFFF |
Slide background on light slides |
| Hof dark | #222222 |
Primary text; dramatic dark slide bg |
| Foggy gray | #717171 |
Body copy, captions, secondary text |
| Arches light | #F7F7F7 |
Card backgrounds, subtle panel fills |
| Arches pink | #FFF1F1 |
Soft pink tint for card areas |
Do not introduce blue, purple, or green accents. The palette is warm coral + neutral.
Typography
Font: "Nunito Sans" from Google Fonts — geometric, rounded, friendly.
Fallback stack: "Nunito Sans", "Montserrat", system-ui, sans-serif.
| Role | Size (1920×1080) | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Headline | 80–96px | 800 |
| Subhead | 48px | 400 |
| Body | 40–44px | 400–600 |
| Eyebrow | 28–32px | 700, letterspaced |
| Numbers | 96–120px | 900 |
Minimum readable size: 40px. Never go below that for audience-facing text.
The Bélo Logo
The Bélo is Airbnb's universal belonging mark — a rounded loop that is simultaneously
a heart, a location pin, and a letter A. Reproduce it as inline SVG in Rausch #FF385C.
Use on: cover slide (large, centered), corner mark on every slide (48×48px, top-left).
Do NOT stretch or recolor the Bélo. Pair with lowercase "airbnb" wordmark in #222222.
Layout Language
- Generous whitespace: 120px top/bottom padding, 160px left/right on 1920px canvas.
- Rounded corners: 16–24px on all cards and stat blocks.
- Soft shadows:
box-shadow: 0 4px 24px rgba(0,0,0,0.08)for cards. - White or very light slide backgrounds for most slides (readable and clean).
- Dark background (
#222222) for: Cover (optional dramatic variant), Team, Ask. - Keep layouts left-aligned or centered — never right-heavy.
Three.js Background Moods (per-slide)
Backgrounds run on a persistent WebGL canvas behind all slide content.
All animations use a fixed seed (no Math.random()); seeded using a deterministic LCG.
Particle counts, positions, and velocities are computed from seeded values.
| Slide | Mood |
|---|---|
| cover | Soft floating coral particles, slow upward drift, warm pink fog |
| problem | Desaturated gray particles, slower/heavier motion, cooler hue |
| solution | Coral bloom: particles converge inward, warm pulse |
| market | Low-poly globe outline with soft arc routes in coral, gentle rotate |
| product | Clean minimal — very subtle grid of pale dots, nearly static |
| business | Same as product — minimal |
| adoption | Sparse warm nodes with thin connecting lines (network graph feel) |
| competition | Cool gray minimal — positioning matrix backdrop |
| team | Soft bokeh: large blurred coral orbs, slow parallax |
| ask | Coral gradient swell — warm radial from center, slow pulse |
| market-sizing | Same globe as market, camera zoomed in, arcs highlighted |
Do's
- Large, single-stat slides for numbers ($2.1B, $500K) — let the number breathe.
- Bottom-up math shown explicitly: trips × take-rate = revenue.
- Complete-sentence headlines that make a claim, not a label.
- SVG Bélo mark consistent across slides.
Don'ts
- No dark purple, electric blue, neon green.
- No hero imagery or stock photos (pure typography + Three.js + SVG).
- No glassmorphism, frosted panels, or gamer-aesthetic effects.
- No unseeded random values — all Three.js positions must be deterministic.
- No font below 40px for any audience-visible text.