This 28-year-old turned his college side hustle into a $1.3 billion start-up backed by Jeff Bezos

This 28-year-old turned his college side hustle into a $1.3 billion start-up backed by Jeff Bezos

When Francis Davidson was wrapping up his first year of college at McGill University in 2012, the then 19-year-old philosophy and economics major wanted to make some extra cash, so he rented out his apartment for the summer.By subletting his and his roommates' three-bedroom downtown Montreal apartment to vacationers on rental sites like Home Away and Airbnb, Davidson was able to bring in over $14,000, while paying around $5,000 in total rent for the apartment for the summer, he tells CNBC Make It. Then Davidson kept going. He started managing the empty apartments of other students at McGill, and then students in other cities. After three years, he dropped out of college to continue building the business into a global hospitality tech start-up.Davidson's company, Sonder, now leases and owns properties with over 5,000 listings in 35 cities around the world. Sonder is currently valued at $1.3 billion after raising a total of more than $550 million from venture capital firms as well as investors like former baseball player Alex Rodriguez and funds backed by Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.Now 28, Davidson is Sonder's co-founder and CEO. Looking back, he tells CNBC Make It that he "had no idea I would want to