Brian Chesky
Appearances
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
The first five results are the only five results you need. If you're typing in Paris and you need a house, we have 150,000 homes. So suddenly this is a matching problem, not just a search relevancy problem where there's just one right answer. So it is a harder business than meets the eye. And that's just our core business.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
That doesn't involve taking this business and expanding this model to new categories and verticals.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
It's a cat and mouse game. It is so challenging. For example, I'll give you an example of something we found. There was an entire industry of companies that emerged that we caught and we stopped them that were basically advertising that they can get your bad reviews taken down. And they basically knew how to call customer service and what to say to get your negative reviews taken down.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
That became not only a fraudulent activity, it became an industry. There were entire companies built doing this. And now, of course, that's fraudulent. And so you have to stop that stuff. But The thing that makes Airbnb so difficult in this way and probably more difficult than, say, a video platform is its longer tail, right?
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
Like it's not like somebody – like on YouTube, people can be gaming things, but generally like a disproportionate number of views go to certain videos, right? It makes sense. In Airbnb, that's not possible. Only one person can stay at the house at a time or one family can stay at a time. So you really – it's a long tail, and it's in nearly every country.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
So there's a lot of different schemes that can occur.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
Yeah, I mean, basically, maybe to mildly oversimplify one of the entire trends that we're doing on Airbnb, we are basically managing more of the inventory and verifying more of the users at the simplest level. So if you think about, it's really important to understand the history of where Airbnb came from. The context of starting Airbnb was eBay and Craigslist.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
In fact, I think people should recall that I think when I started Airbnb with my two friends, eBay's market cap might even been higher than Amazon. It wasn't obvious Amazon was going to be the winner. It kind of really pulled away. But eBay was the marketplace. And Craigslist was how most people found housing. It was completely the Wild West. I mean, it pretty much still is today.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
There was really no management of inventory. And we thought... The internet is like an immune system. And what you should do is give community tools to moderate themselves. So flags, report suspicious behavior, but most importantly, a review system. And we built this really powerful review system where about two out of three people, after they book an Airbnb, leave a review.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
And two out of three hosts leave a review. And we thought, oh, this is great. And... it turns out that that is necessary but not sufficient. And so over time, we've been in the business of managing more and more of the quality ourselves. So we're very, very hands-on on quality control. Most new services, we're actually vetting and even certifying ourselves.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
And so we think reviews are important, but we don't want to put the entire burden on the user base. And again, there's a lot of ways to game things. So you've got to be very, very hands-on. But the more things you verify... The more things you inspect, the more things you certify, the fewer areas to exploit a company there is.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
I have a theory that I'll share. In our business, it's obvious what the customer wants. The customer wants more moderation. They just do. I never heard a customer say like, you are controlling the inventory too much. You are removing too many bad listings. You are penalizing hosts that are making me unhappy. they actually call and say the opposite. Like, how dare you?
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
They get very upset and personal when a home doesn't work out, even if it's not our home. We're just the platform. So we are consistently held responsible by the customer for the content on our platform. And so the customer is expecting this, number one. Number two, the economic incentives are very, very clear.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
This is not like an advertising platform where the product and the business model are pretty separate from an aligned interest standpoint. They're completely connected. So you can start to see a bad Airbnb, people then don't rebook on Airbnb, they don't come back. So it's a really clear economic incentive. And the last thing is Airbnbs are just not that politicized.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
Like people just want to have good vacations. And so you don't have the like kind of myriad of political issues and baggage. I think when it comes to platforms like Twitter or X, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok. It's not clear what the customer is asking for. I think in the one hand, customers, you know, users want veracity of information.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
But the other hand, I think they're very skeptical of the hand that platforms are putting on the product, and they're not in our case. But I do think that we're going to look back in history and And the platforms in the future that are gonna be most successful are gonna be the ones that have the greatest truth and veracity of information.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
And veracity of information starts with, are these people real? Are they not real? I remember emailing Elon when he first acquired Twitter. And I gave unsolicited advice, which was that you should verify 100% of the users on Twitter. They decided not to do that. And I didn't even really have a conversation. They did almost the opposite, actually. But I would have done that.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
And I would have done that. And then maybe you do. Yeah, I would have verified 100% of the users. I still think a platform that verifies every single person, it's a really, really good idea. And that's what we do right now.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
Now, there might be reasons not to verify, like you just want to, I don't know, maybe people are nervous about verification if they can't be whistleblowers on platforms. But again, a lot of the reason people don't want moderation is they distrust moderation.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
the companies and they believe the companies are politically motivated and they're putting their thumb on the scale politically for free speech this becomes like an attack vector for politics i think before you moderate content you should moderate people you should moderate not should they be kicked off the site or on the site but just are these real people are they who they say they are and are they allowed to use pseudonyms or not i think in the speech context there's a
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
I love how you think because it's good to take logical steps towards their conclusion and ask, where do you draw the line? I think we want to have almost all the benefits of a hotel while retaining the benefits of Airbnb. So let's just break them down. The benefits of an Airbnb is every room and every home is different. There's no skew. You go to a hotel.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
I mean, hotels are such commodities that you never see the room you're booking. You don't even know the floor you're booking. You book a hotel room, you don't know the even floor you're on, let alone what view you have. And by the way, it doesn't really matter because they're kind of all the same. Or at least the hotel kind of trains you not to care. That is the definition of commodity.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
It's such a commodity, you don't even have any choice. You just choose the hotel. You barely choose the room. Maybe you choose the tier of the room. But... So we want every space to be unique. We want every space to be one of a kind. We want our experience to be as personal as possible. Yes, there are more professional managers today than there were 10 years ago.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
But generally speaking, still 90% of our hosts are regular people. We want to feel like when you step into an Airbnb or you travel to a city, you're living like a local. So those are the things we want to retain. And we really want it to be their home. We don't want to create an Airbnb aesthetic, right? I've been asked like, hey, why don't you guys do a deal with Ikea and this and that?
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
And it's like, well, actually, that's not really what people want. They don't really want a standardization of design. They really want to feel like they're in Paris. They feel like they're in Paris. They don't feel like the same as they're in Kansas City or somewhere else. But hotels, they start to feel more similar, especially chain hotels.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
But what we do want to do is match the hotel service at least as much as we can. And so there isn't a front desk, but can we create a essentially like remote front desk? Can we have more 24-7 support? Can we use AI to basically level the playing field of front desk where AI can be like immediate? It can be multilingual. It can adjudicate.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
I mean, AI at least can be a front line that can better adjudicate disputes between guests. No, it's better than a real person. Because what it can do is you can train it on the corpus of like 100 policies. And then it can look at the last 100,000 times somebody complained about this. And what was the most likely resolution that led to satisfaction for both parties?
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
And you can actually train a model to spit out the right answer. And they can either directly spit out the answer as a front line through the app to the guest and host. Or if you do want to talk to a person, it can Help the customer service person.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
So I think we want to manage Airbnbs more and more and more before they become ours, because then not even that it would be a bad business model, but I think it would like start to cut into the ethos of feeling like you're living like a local and being truly authentic.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
Yeah, I mean, the step beyond this we haven't gone to is you have to apply to list an Airbnb. We have certain quality criteria. And if you don't meet that quality criteria, then you can't list an Airbnb. that's probably where we're going within our new verticals. Our new verticals, we're going to be launching starting next year.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
We're going to basically, you know, Amazon had this moment where they were just selling books. And then in like the late 90s, they decided to just, you know, go just outside books. What's adjacent to books back in the 90s? DVDs and CD players, right, CDs. And then they went further and further and further. So we're going to have the Amazon moment.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
For the new verticals and categories we're launching, I believe we're going to have a reply to list model where you have to apply. And so we're starting to have an opinion on quality. That is going to be the next step and probably the final step. The step beyond that is actually owned and operated.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
And we don't own or operate anything except for these promotional listings that people might know of, which are basically called icons. So we built like a 40-foot tall Polly Pocket clamshell. Yes, we own and operate that, but that's really marketing. And it generates a lot of views. We're not ridden the business of owning and operating anything.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
I think that what we're going to probably have in the future are more standardized quality tiers. And so there's going to be a standard to list on Airbnb. And then there's probably going to be like maybe, depending upon the vertical, different levels of certification or quality. And the quality could be based on their expertise in the real world.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
Or it could be based on what customers are saying in Airbnb. For example, we have this tag, this designation called Guest Favorite. It's 2 million of the best homes in Airbnb based on ratings, reviews, and customer service tickets. So I think we're going to do more and more of that. But yeah, that's probably where we're going to go.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
It's all going to play over the next 24 months.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
I think it's a little bit different because you don't have the consolidation of inventory in the same way, right? Like let's take YouTube. Mr. B's video can get one or 200 million views. You can't have an Airbnb, a single Airbnb be that popular. So the entire marketplace is significantly more long tail. We're in 100,000 cities. Not one city represents even 1% of our business in Airbnb.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
So I think generally there has been this move towards a little more consolidation of inventory via professional property managers, but it's not been that much. Again, for the last four years alone, 90% of our hosts are individuals. That number has remained pretty much unchanged.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
I think many of the new products and features we're launching are going to enable more and more people to allow more and more long-tail inventory onto the platform. That's generally where we're pushing. Does it benefit Airbnb to have less consolidated inventory on the platform? It probably does because they're less likely to cross list.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
But that would be a bummer if we did that and it was misaligned with a customer. But it turns out that there's a chart I've put out before. It literally shows the number of properties you manage in your five-star rating. And quite literally, it is a perfect curve downward slope. The highest rated Airbnb hosts manage one property. The second highest are managed two, down to 1,000.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
And it literally goes, and there is not one single deviation from one to 1,000. Wow. It's crazy. Now, it doesn't mean, therefore, all people managing 1,000 properties are bad. It just means that most people haven't figured out how to industrialize hospitality. And it's just, oh, here, let me give you one other argument for why regular people can sometimes work economically really well.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
If I'm a dedicated rental, I need to basically build a profit margin because I'm a business. So I have rent and I need to be very careful about any cost I incur. So if we're in a house, I might have like four books, but maybe I won't have 20 books because like book five through 20 is additional cost I'm putting onto my Airbnb.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
And so I might have six coffee mugs, but I'm not gonna have 10 coffee mugs. I might not have a KitchenAid mixer. These are all costs I have to bear. If it's your real house, you might have all the stuff anyway because you live there. And so you don't need to charge a daily rate that has a profit margin because this was unsold inventory that you weren't monetizing and now you're monetizing it.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
So it's another one of the economic dynamics where non-professionals sometimes have an economic advantage over professionals. This is just one example. In other words, their homes are equipped and the fixed cost is an investment they've already incurred. So this might be another way of saying it.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
I cannot wait. I love these conversations. And the thing I appreciate is the depth that you go into.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
I don't think so. Let me put it this way. It's not like I suddenly am running the company different than a year ago. It's just that now it has a label, and I think it just makes sense to everyone. Let me give a little bit of background on that talk.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
Yeah, yeah. And the Figma conference was kind of like maybe a quarter of what I said. So let me just go. I'll do like the short version because I know we have limited time. But let me just give a little background. As you know, over the last four years, like from 2009 to 2019, I ran Airbnb the way most tech companies run their companies. I didn't know how to run it.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
And so I hired people from Google and Amazon and Microsoft and different companies. And they brought their processes with them. And we kind of reverted towards the way everyone runs their company. So, you know, we basically, I remember at like a thousand employees, we were kind of a matrix organization, like almost all matrix organizations. It was hard to get work done.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
Basically, like I'll give you an example. There was like a creative marketing department that would have to create graphics for different teams. And then we kept hiring teams that I kept hiring sub teams that kept asking more and more for the graphics, right? The graphics team, it was called the creative group.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
And at some point, the creative group was like a deli and they had these like lines out the window and they just kind of threw their hands up. If you needed anything done, like let's say you're a team and you needed a button designed or like a graphic for a button designed, it would be like a three month waiting list because they were inundated.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
So then the team said, well, give us our own resources. Give me a dedicated creative person. And this could also be true for technology, for finance, for a legal team, like any function. And this is when you start to divisionalize the company. Quite literally, you're subdividing it. And this is where the general management structure comes from. It makes a lot of sense why this happens.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
The problem with that, though, is that once you subdivide the company, the company starts rolling in different directions. Now you have even more bureaucracy because the groups don't want to work together because they're incentivized to work on different things. And they might not be totally compatible anymore. Now 10 teams can have 10 different tech stacks. They don't actually fit together.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
A local decision that might make sense for your team might not make sense for the company, right? So this is a thing. The next thing is that these general managers are incentivized typically in output goals that you don't usually run on P&Ls. They run on like impact, growth. So they have to advocate for as many resources as possible. This is what we call politics. You're advocating for yourself.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
And so suddenly groups like, they start going in many different directions. And because the company's going in many different directions, oversight becomes more difficult. When oversight gets more difficult, now there's this sense there's less accountability. You have people that are crappy and there's no consequence. So that makes people feel like it doesn't matter. This sets in complacency.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
And this is, I think, what ends up happening at big companies. The big thing that I said about founder mode, and this is something I've said for four years, is it's not about... Paul Graham coined it founder mode. I think it's a good name. I think it's very catchy. I could not have made something as viral as Paul Graham. But there is a downside to the name. The downside name is now it's viewed.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
First of all, people don't know founder mode is they think it means swagger. I remember a tweet said, like, I'm going founder mode in this burrito. I don't know what that means. I think people think it means the founder swagger, I don't give a fuck, I'm going in, I'm kicking ass. That's kind of what it turned into. And only founders have that. And that wasn't the message.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
If I could summarize founder mode in a couple sentences... It's being in the details. It's that great leadership is presence, not absence. It's about a leader being in the details. And if you as a leader aren't in the details, guess what? Your leaders aren't in the details and their leaders aren't in the details.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
And one day you're going to wake up and you have 50-year-olds managing 40-year-olds, managing 30-year-olds, managing people two years out of college, doing all the work with no oversight. And you have these four unnecessary layers. You have no experts in the company. So the antidote to this is to try to be as functional as possible. We are a functional organization.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
Functional just means expertise-based, not general management-based. And so I'm the only non-functional person in the company. All functions roll up to me. I generally think the CEO should be the chief product officer of the company. And here's the heuristic. The most important thing a company does is make a product. If the CEO is not the expert in the product, then what? Why are they the CEO?
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
Said differently, I should not be the CEO of SpaceX because I couldn't be the chief product officer because I do not understand rocketry. So maybe I'm a good CEO, but I can't be the chief product officer. There may be some exceptions, but I generally think that's the case. And then your leaders shouldn't just be, quote, managers. And I put managers in quotes. They should be in the details.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
If we were a military, like a battalion, the cavalry general should know how to ride a horse. Like, it's crazy that they don't. And leaders shouldn't be fungible. So it's really about being in the details. Now, here's the problem with the narrative being in the details. There's a term for it, and it's a pejorative. It's called micromanager. And everyone's afraid to be accused to be a micromanager.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
So I had this thought because founder mode, a lot of it came from me studying Steve Jobs. Basically for 10 years, I was at wit's end. It wasn't my first instinct to copy Steve Jobs' leadership style. It was kind of a last resort. And I didn't copy everything, but I copied a lot of how he organized the company and ran the company.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
A few weeks ago, I had dinner with his son, Reed Jobs, and I remember asking him what Steve Jobs' opinion of micromanagement was. And he said he had such an interesting perspective. He said Steve Jobs was in the details. He would skip level, many levels to be in the details, which is something that like somebody who goes to HBS would like never do.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
He said he never felt like he was micromanaging because he was partnering with people on the details. And I asked like Johnny Ive and people like Hiroki who worked for Steve. And I said, do you feel like Steve Jobs micromanaged you? And they said, no, he didn't. I don't know. Maybe I'm a micromanager. Maybe I'm not.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
I think the distinction is I remember one time an executive on my team said, is this your decision or is this my decision? And I remember saying, it should never be either. And that's founder mode. It should never be either. It's never your decision. It's never my decision. We're in it together. If you're co-founders, whose decision is it? It's your decision together.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
It's the same thing hierarchically with the org chart. So that's really what it means. It means great leadership is presence, not absence. It's in the details. And what a lot of founders do is they let go of the product. And they abdicate responsibility. And they, you know, the CEO of the company should set, like Frank Slootman wrote a book called Amp It Up.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
He basically said to turn a company around, the CEO just needs to set the pace of the company. You set the vision. But more important than the vision, I think you set the pace. You set the standards. And that's what founder mode is really about. And by the way, you don't need to be a founder to do that. You can apply founder mode to government.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
You can apply founder mode to a nonprofit, to a volunteer organization, to being a sports coach. It just means leadership is presence in the details. And it's not about being so-called autocratic because you're not telling the experts what to do, but you know what they're doing and you're working through and you're challenging them. And you should do this because let's say you have 10 experts.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
They might disagree. Finance says this is the best outcome. That may conflict with legal, which might conflict with product marketing, which represents the customer, which might conflict with engineering, which is the schedule. So you have to weigh all these tradeoffs. That's why you have to be in the details.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
So that's a little bit of a – maybe one other thing before we wrap up is – Oh, we're far from wrapping up. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. One tidbit I'd like to say about hiring, just a thought. One of the most important things I do is I have an executive team. You could think of them as like C-level or SVPs. There's about like seven of them.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
And then I have probably the next level are VPs, and there's maybe like 30 of them or 40 of them. I don't really know how many there are. Something I do that's different than almost every other CEO in the Valley, but I think Jensen Huang basically does this, Steve Jobs did this, Walt Disney did this, and Elon Musk did this, is I treat all the VPs as direct reports.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
Jensen got rid of the executive team. He just has 40 directs. That's a little unwieldy for me. I've gone through that thought experiment of just having the VPs, and it's like I can't track everything. But all VPs do a report. They report to me and to their executive. And I am the co-hiring manager.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
So instead of me hiring an executive like a CFO, and the CFO hires their people, I am the co-hiring manager. I do the kickoff. I'm the second interview. And ultimately, I decide the final compensation for all the top people in the company, not the managers. The managers give recommendations, and I basically make the final decision.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
This is just a very practical version of founder mode of being in the details. You don't just hire and manage your executives. You skip level and manage as many people as possible in a dual reporting relationship.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
One thing about functional, and then I'll answer that question, is this. I don't think all companies should be functional, but I think they should be as functional as they can get away with. That's the rule. Ben Horowitz had this saying, give ground grudgingly. You should give ground grudgingly. All startups start as functional organizations.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
Steve Jobs said, I want to be the world's largest startup, but he wants to still operate like a startup. And so I think you should give ground grudgingly. And so that's the general philosophy. I just want to say one thing about being a functional organization. There is one very specific downside. The downside of a functional organization is you cannot do disparate things.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
But here's something I want to dispel. It's not true you can't do as many things. It's not true it's a slower-run organization. We've actually increased product development by being a functional organization, but we're like one flywheel, and we can't create three other flywheels that are disparate. So
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
You know, the only reason I believe a company should divisionalize is so that they could do truly disparate things that have disparate functional expertise. So like if we had like a jet engine business, like that's a different functional expertise. So now let's go to the business organization. At most companies, there is no function called business. Maybe we can also say call it revenue.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
Business, revenue, commercial. There's different names. Chief commercial officer, chief business officer, chief revenue officer. They all kind of mean the same thing. And the reason most companies don't have this is because they have general managers. And the general managers play that role. The general managers are ostensibly both the mini-CEO. And they own the business.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
Well, thank you for having me again.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
And they usually partner with a finance person. So somewhere between the general manager and the finance person, or maybe a data scientist, they're the business function. And we found that the problem with that is none of them are really experts in, quote, business. When I mean business, I mean kind of revenue.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
The business model, the market size, you know, what are the kind of dynamics of this market, you know, like co-hosts. Like, what should we charge? Should this be a free service? Do we take a commission? You know, how does this compare to the third-party property management services? Which countries do we roll out? What are the economics by country? Is it a standard rate?
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
Like, there's just a lot of detailed questions one's meant to answer. So we... decided to create a chief business organization. It has three functions. One is supply. Supply was always a function of Airbnb, but it was kind of conflated with international and general managers. So we said... No, no. There are experts in getting supply of homes, experiences, and other things.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
Then we have a business function. The business function is quite literally the counterpart, the business counterpart to product marketing. So if product marketing is basically nouveau product management, product marketing is basically product management minus program management plus some outbound marketing. And it's fewer people. That's all it is. And it's outbound, inbound in one role.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
Oh, wow. This is really good company.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
They are really thinking about what the customer wants, what the experience should be like, but they're not in spreadsheets. They're not business model people. So they have a counterpart called the business function. And so with co-host network, for example, we had a business person looking at the business model for co-host.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
We had a product marketing person that's understanding what's the product, how are we gonna market this, why do people actually want this? Those two people have to go together. One reports to Hiroki, it's product marketing, it's more creative. One reports to Dave Stevenson, the former CFO, now Chief Business Officer, and they're really the two parts of the continuum. Then you have a supply person.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
The supply person then, based on the business organization, the business model, and the product marketing brief, has to now go get supply. Then they work with International, the third group in the chief business officer at Weirach, to then take that playbook and bring it to all the different countries.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
The first time I've been in the studio with you. So thank you for having me here.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
And then, of course, the product marketing has their own three-legged stool with design and engineering. But different from other companies where product really directs design – and I don't like that, and I caused a bit of a storm – at a Figma conference. Basically, it got taken a lot of context, and it said I fired all the product managers.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
And what actually happened was I got rid of the classic product management function. I reassigned the most senior product managers to be product marketers, and I reclassified most of the other product managers as program managers. By the way, most product managers in Silicon Valley aren't actually product managers.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
They're glorified program managers, but they're not even experts at program management. That's all they're doing. They're making sure the thing ships. That's program management. That's not product management. So this is what we're doing. It's a very, very simple organization, and it's just a continuum of us being functional.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
Yeah, like I think it's really important to not be dogmatic and say functional is better than the divisional, and I think it really depends on industries. Yeah. I think in tech companies, functional is generally better because you can leverage shared technologies and everyone can row together and you would get economies of scale. And I don't know if in your business you're doing that.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
But there again, the major downs. OK, here's the here are the two things I said. One, there's really two. There's two benefits to divisional. The first benefit is you can do disparate things. We talked about that, right? So if I want to – I'm just thinking of like an absurd thing. We want to create a podcasting division.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
Oh, yeah. That's a sign of a good conversation. But we were remote. We were remote in the same city.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
Like it would be really hard for the people designing the app, the marketers like advertising homes to think about podcasting. And now we want to create like a TV series. That's like really, really disparate. So we would struggle to do super disparate things. Yeah. The second downside to a functional organization is it takes longer to start.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
Because if you want to just get something going, you need to get everyone organized. But everyone organized has a multi-year roadmap. So they need to now make room on the roadmap. So disparate things that you can start quickly A divisional structure is better. Those to me are the primary advantages of a divisional structure.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
There's a theoretical third advantage, which is you can hire so-called entrepreneurial type people that don't fit into a functional organization. But that one I kind of don't agree with. That's a bit of a rabbit hole. So I won't go there unless you want to ask about it.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
That being said, once you get rowing, think about a bunch of us in like a crew, like a boat, whatever you call those, you know, crew boat, and we're rowing together. If there's 10 people in 10 boats, they can get going faster and they can go in different directions. But the 10-person boat is going to row faster than 10 one-person boats.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
And so once you get going, the function organization, what I basically tell people is it's harder to get something on the roadmap, right? But if it gets on the roadmap, we put the weight of the company behind it. Now, I like that constraint. I like the constraint of anyone can't just do anything because now we're focused. Now we're prioritized. Now we only do things that are differentiated.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
And the governor is we only do as many things as I can focus on. That's what I do. And that's what Steve Jobs did at Apple. And that's what Walt Disney did at Disney. And that's what Elon Musk does at Tesla. You only do as many things as a CEO can focus on and manage. Now, this presumes a CEO is competent, intelligent, present. They understand the business.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
This doesn't work if you come from management consulting and you're a general manager and you don't really know the domain. That wouldn't work as well.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
Yeah. I have a lot to say in response to that. Exactly. Maybe Elon is a bit of a red herring because there's all the surface level things about him that are very idiosyncratic. And I'm certainly not going to endorse everything he does because I do a lot of things differently. But I think the commonality of him, Jensen, Steve Jobs... And Zuck kind of ebbs and flows. And I know Zuck very well.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
And I think he would say I was a big inspiration for his year of efficiency because I talked about what we did at Airbnb. But I think those people, they're pretty close to functional and they're pretty in the details. And they set the pace for the company and they generally really know what's going on at their companies.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
It means like a lot of swagger for better or worse. And I don't think that's really what it means.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
I totally, totally disagree with that. I think I've heard Jeff Bezos say that certainly more recently. He said, my job is to make as few high quality decisions as possible. And I could not disagree more with that. And so let's start by saying, it's not like I'm right and Jeff Bezos is wrong. By the way, when I say it, I'm also saying what Steve Jobs would have said. Was Steve Jobs right?
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
Was Jeff Bezos right? The truth is there's multiple ways to do something. I'm strongly advocating for this way. By the way, Funny enough, I've talked to many people that were early members of Amazon, and that's not how Jeff Bezos ran it early on. So here's the key thing. I believe you need to hire smart people. The paradox is I believe most smart people want you involved.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
They want your partnership. They don't want you to tell them what to do. But there's this assumption that like control is zero sum. Either I have the power or you have the power. And I think that's the flaw. There's a scenario where all of us are powerless. It's called most Fortune 500 companies. And there's a scenario where I have more power and therefore you have more power.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
It's not like zero sum and I've wrestled control. I found that the most talented people like my involvement as long as the involvement is constructive and involvement isn't telling them what to do. And involvement is pushing them. It's like, well, what about this? What about that? Steve Jobs went to Johnny Ives Design Studio every day. He wasn't telling Johnny Ive what to do.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
He was like discussing things and they were debating and brainstorming and it was partnership. And I think this is a really, really important framework. But let me give you one more.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
So somebody might ask, wait, you're in all the details. How can you be in all details forever? That seems like it's not going to scale and someday you're going to get tired. And the answer is they're right. Here's what most people do. They hire smart people. They give them operating freedom. They have no idea if they're good or not because they're not engaged enough.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
And then over time, they start getting signals that the person isn't good. And then they wrestle back control. And once they get involved, but they haven't been involved for months or years, suddenly the executive loses their confidence because they're only involved because they're not doing well. And that's the beginning of the end. And then you basically replace them.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
This happens every freaking company. So there's an inverse. And I'll use an analogy. I'm not a golfer. I'm terrible at golf. I don't think I've ever even shot a hole. I'm terrible. But I did a couple golf lessons once. And I had a golf instructor. The golf instructor literally coached me on every single swing.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
And thank God I had the golf instructor, because if I just went on the golf course on my own, and I swung a thousand times, by the time the golf instructor got involved, I would have had a really screwed up swing, and would take even more work to retrain my swing.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
So the golf instructor said, I'm gonna watch your swing thousands of times, and eventually this is muscle memory, and I won't need to watch your swing over time. And that's my philosophy. My philosophy is you start in the details. You're involved in every single thing. You hire great people, and you're in all their details.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
And over time, once they develop muscle memory and they prove that they understand the system, then you can gradually let go. Give you an example. Two years ago, I wanted to write perfect press releases. Not because I think anyone reads them, but because if you can't put your ideas down in a clear press release, then you don't have clear thinking. You don't know why you're doing something.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
Two years ago or three years ago when we did press releases, we'd do as many as 70 revisions. And people said, this is completely crazy. Are we going to like 10 years from now do 70 revisions of the press release? And the answer is no. The most recent press release for the Coast Network, I probably reviewed like three times. But it was the repetition in the details that was how people learned.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
Another thing is that's apprenticeship. You know, you learn. And even if you hire experts, they're not experts at your company. They're not experts at collaborating. They're not experts in your business. So it's about starting in the details and letting go. And by the way, that's what I think Jeff Bezos did, even though he said his job is to make only a few high quality decisions.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
That's not what he did in 1999. So that's kind of my philosophy.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
Two things. The first thing is we're introducing something that we call the co-host network. So what is this? Well, let's start and give some background. Airbnb, we're only as good as the number of homes we have. And the more homes we have, the more modulated the prices are on Airbnb. So we need to get a lot more homes.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
Pretty much. I mean, what I basically said is like, you want to make principled decisions, not business decisions. Principled decisions are if I don't understand the outcome or if I can't predict it, how do I be remembered? What do I think is the right thing to do? And the right thing to do, that can sound very subjective, but actually you would have thousands of inputs.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
So that's essentially what I do. And it's kind of interesting because it's kind of like somebody asking you, how do you do what you do? You might not even like consciously know how you do what you do. But what I'm doing is I'm basically making a decision. The reason it's the leadership so valuable is somebody once said the most important thing leaders do is make decisions. And it's probably true.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
Maybe the most important thing is they hire people and they assemble the right team. But probably day to day, the most important thing they do is make decisions. And It's really important that people understand the criteria for what you're making decisions.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
And so, yes, if you have clear principles, I mean, what I did is I went to my board and I said, I'm going to have to make like a thousand decisions. I can't run every decision by you. So let's agree on the principles and the framework for which I make all the decisions. And then I'm going to make all the decisions. And if something stands out, I will elevate to you.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
I will retroactively show you all the decisions I made and If there's something that's huge, bet the company and one-way door, I will tell you ahead of time. Otherwise, give me authority to make all these decisions. And that's what I did with the board. They really liked it because the key to a crisis is speed. And if I have to debate every decision, we're not moving quickly.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
It's like a car chase. It's like, you know, should you turn left or right? Well, most importantly, you should turn quickly. And so that's what I did. As far as just to go back to this, like the golf swing analogy,
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
what i do the way i run airbnb is i review all the work every week every two weeks every four weeks every eight weeks every 12 weeks you might ask like how do you do how do you have people do a report how do they like keep two people happy and the answer is we're all in the same meeting together and i usually have my direct talk first because if i talk you'll like just agree with me then i'll make the final decision most my final decisions are just agreeing 90 of time i'm agreeing what the team says
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
And frankly, we have more than 8 million homes today, but we'd love millions more in addition to the organic homes coming to Airbnb. So we went out to a lot of prospective hosts and we asked them, we do this periodically, you know, why aren't you hosting? Number one, people first say, you know, they had no idea the amount of money they can make.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
And 10% of the time, I'm disagreeing. And if I disagree, I always try to say why. And I try to go down, like, here's my thinking. And so challenge my first principles. So whenever I make a decision, I try to ask myself, like I did in this conversation, what are the first principles driving this decision? And don't challenge my decision. Challenge my first principle thinking.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
In other words, like, here's my answer. Check my math. And that's kind of what I do. So the principles are, I think, really, really important to get pre-authorization from a board. You need to make a lot of fast decisions. But then when you're in a meeting, I'm not like in a meeting review and co-host network with like a series of four principles. I'm just intuitively making a decision.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
I think we should do X. And here's why. And let me share with you my work, my thinking. What do you think? What about this did I get right or wrong? And so the most important thing is to debating the first principles, not the answer.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
I mean, there's not a single list. I mean, there's like core values. There's like strategic differentiators, like the things that you put in your S1 so people like know what you stand for. So there's those general things. But actually, here's another way of saying it. I don't push decision-making down. I pull decision-making in. I think of the company as one shared consciousness.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
I remember one time I called Ron Johnson. Ron Johnson worked for Steve Jobs. He ran Apple Retail. And I remember asking him how Steve Jobs ran Apple. And he said, even when Apple was like 20, 30, 40,000 people, he only ever thought of Apple as 100 employees. That's why he had this offsite called Top 100. And so he said his job was to only manage the top 100 people and they manage everyone else.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
And he never thought about the whole company. And that's kind of what I do. And maybe it's even fewer people. It's like 60 or 70. So I don't manage all of Airbnb. I manage the top 67 people, but I'm very engaged and I pull them in and I create one shared consciousness. And so.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
I would say those people, if you were to interview every single one of my senior people, I don't think they would have like pithy word for word by verbatim like principles, but they wouldn't be able to describe exactly how I think because we're in so many meetings together.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
I remember Scott Forstall one time, like right before he left Apple, I was at a group dinner with him and he said he used to spend 35 hours a week with Steve. Wow. Now, not one-on-one, but like he was in every meeting with Steve. So think about that, 35 hours a week, every single week, that's thousands of hours. So that's the equivalent.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
I don't spend 35 hours a week with most people, but there are many people that spend 10 to 20 hours a week in a room with me. It's the same few dozen people. going through different meetings, creating one shared consciousness, being able to finish each other's sentences. And that's another version of founder mode. It's one shared consciousness. And so you can imagine that's not disempowering.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
And it's a very compelling amount of money you can make. You can make tens of thousands of dollars with an asset you're already paying for. So we asked, well, why aren't you hosting? And the number one answer people gave us was they perceived it as being too much work. It's like, well, I have a job. I have kids. I have this. I have that.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
It requires collaboration. If you want to be a lone wolf or a cowboy, that's not going to work. But if you're willing to work with other people, you're actually pretty empowered in this way.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
That is absolutely not true.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
No, I'm not going to say what we pay, but that is so not true. That's not even close to true.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
Okay. I'll wrap up with my view on Apple.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
I think Tim Cook has done an extraordinary job. I think he's done an extraordinary job, especially given the cards he's dealt. Right. What alternative was there? Right. Like Steve died. I don't know the circumstances, but I don't think, you know, I think it was a little bit like, you know, he resigns in August, dies in October, only eight weeks later.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
So there's only eight week window between resignation and resignation. He's not even there. It's not like Bezos retired, but he's the executive chair. I think that Tim Cook basically took Apple from $300 million to whatever, $3 trillion, added more than 90% of the market cap, and it's done very, very well. He's a great operator. A couple things to say, though.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
Number one, just because Tim added $2.7 trillion in market cap and Steed added $300 billion doesn't mean that Tim did most of the work because he inherited the most valuable product of all time. And there was just really continuing momentum.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
The iPhone. Probably the most successful product in the history of capitalism, right? I don't think that any other product has generated more profit. Maybe not more revenue, but more profit than the iPhone. The most successful company probably in the history of capitalism or at least certainly last 25 years. It's crazy when you think about it. Then ask yourself a couple other questions.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
Let's imagine Steve Jobs didn't die in 2011. He died in 2005. right when the iPod video had just launched. Would they have come up with the iPhone? They might have. Would it have been the most successful consumer product of all time? Maybe not. I don't know who would have done it.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
I don't know if I can come home, check in guests, or maybe I live in New York City here. And I have a summer home in Florida, but I can't be in Florida to check in the guests. So I need help hosting. And we thought to ourselves, okay, so now if somebody doesn't have the time, they either make one or two decisions. They don't host.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
My general philosophy is that Tim was an incredible period where what they really needed to do was maybe not invent a new product, but take the most successful product of all time and scale it and manufacture it and make it a completely ubiquitous product. And he did that. But the technology industry, I mean, the word technology may as well be a synonym for the word change.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
We're in the change industry. And it is very, very dangerous to not be constantly changing. And if you're a company that makes devices, the most important thing you need to do are make new tools, make new devices. I saw a Bloomberg report that said they're moving away from launches. They're moving more towards services. They're going more divisional.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
I think that whenever Tim – my unsolicited advice is whenever Tim decides to retire – The next CEO should also be the chief product officer. I asked people who was the chief product officer at Apple when Steve was live, and everyone said Steve. It wasn't Phil Schiller. Phil Schiller was a great SVP of product marketing, but he wasn't the chief product officer.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
That is a product company, and you really want to make sure long-term that a product person is driving the company. This goes to the very awkward thing that no one wants to talk about. Succession planning is hard because the people that are great product visionaries are typically young. They're young, they're less mature.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
Who wants to put a young, not super mature person at the helm of a giant company managing... Founders are allowed to manage people older than them because they're the founders. But if you're not the founder, people just don't want to be managed by somebody younger than them who's maybe a virtuoso, a wunderkind, but they're a little immature. And the companies don't want to take that risk.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
So they bias towards senior, grown-up founders functional experts, and typically that function is not the product. And I think that's a problem. Satya is more technical. I think that has afforded them more, but he mostly just got them back to Bill Gates' primacy. So I think that Apple should go back to having a CEO that's the chief product officer.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
I think they should rein the company in and simplify how they operate. But that's just my opinion.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
I think Airbnb is the right job for me. They definitely need somebody who has hardware experience.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
Thank you. I love this. All right. Thank you, Nealey.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
Or they go on Google, and they type in Airbnb property management company, and they find this third-party property management company. And there's many, many companies that can manage your Airbnb. The challenge we've noticed is the average five-star rating for third-party property managers on Airbnb is about a 4.62. It is significantly below the median range review score.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
So we thought, well, what if we basically put together a whole collection of almost like Airbnb certified hosts that can manage your Airbnb for you? So we could basically create a marketplace where we match people with homes but don't have time with people. The best hosts in Airbnb don't want to expand, but they don't have a home.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
And these would be people that only manage a few properties, so they're not going to be managing you and 100 other homes, maybe three, four, or five other homes. And so that is what we built. We built a network of co-hosts who will host your property with you and take care of your home and your guests. The average rating of a co-host is a 4.86. 73% are super hosts. And we have...
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
10,000 of them today in 10 countries, including, of course, here in the United States. So if anyone's listening and they'd like to make $20,000 a year with a house they already have and do very minimal work, you can go online. You'll go to the co-host network. We'll match you to the very best person for you. You'll have some choices.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
It's basically like 80 different factors to match you to the right co-host. Most importantly, where are you located? We want somebody near you. And then you negotiate the rate. So how do you how do you pay them? They take a cut on your bookings and you decide that cut or you negotiate together and they give and it can be based on whatever service you want.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
They can do all the hosting for you or they can do just some of it. So it's totally in your control. So, again, just to bring it all back. I think this is going to lock hundreds of thousands, potentially even millions of homes in Airbnb. And I think most importantly, this is going to lock more real people, regular people,
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
renting the homes they live in, rather than more furnished, dedicated rentals, which is what more likely a third-party property manager would likely do. So that's the main thing we announced. But of course, that's not it. Because as you know, twice a year, we want to make these big upgrades.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
We can talk a little bit more, maybe, if you want to go into later, why we do these, because it's a different way. We develop software a little more like a hardware company. where instead of just doing this continuous development every hour of every day, we do some of that. We try to have these big single moments where we bring a lot of upgrades together.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
So we're also making more than 50 upgrades for guests. And the basic idea is to make Airbnb a more personalized experience. So for decades, if you went to a travel website, whether it's Expedia or this or that, you'd have the same exact search experience as someone else. It's not personalized to you. And we think travel should be more personalized.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
So we have a whole bunch of features and upgrades that really personalize the search experience based on the past bookings you've done and what we know about your profile. So those are the basic things we've done, 70 upgrades. And maybe the final thing I'll just say, These 70 upgrades are 70 out of 430 upgrades that we've made over the last two years.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
So this system of launching, I think, has really accelerated product development at Airbnb.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
No, actually, let me break this down. So there's a lot of third-party professional property management companies. If you're like a third-party company, you don't want to have a business with just managing five people and build your own website and build your own demand for five people for five properties. So you tend to need economies of scale. So you're going to be managing hundreds of properties.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
even thousands of properties. If you manage thousands of properties, now you have a whole bunch of employees. And then you probably have a company name and your employees probably wear a t-shirt with a company name on the t-shirt. This is basically just a little more of an industrial hospitality experience. Someone might argue it's a little more like a hotel.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
There can be pluses to that from a service standpoint, but a lot of people, the original ethos of Airbnb of like living like a local, this is a little bit different than that. So What this is, is number one, every single co-host is vetted by Airbnb. We go through everyone's profile. We only allow co-hosts to be people that have high ratings in Airbnb. So these are the very best hosts in Airbnb.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
Additionally, we bias towards people that manage only a few properties. And the reason why is we noticed the more properties you manage, the lower the five-star rating a guest leaves after a certain scale. There are some property managers that are amazing and defy this. But generally speaking, hospitality is a difficult thing to industrialize.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
And so people want a local feel as compared to Amazon or delivery or other types of businesses where scale makes the service better. In hospitality, scale often makes the service more challenging. And so I think this is maybe an alternative to the extremely professionalized third-party property managers. And in some ways, it kind of moves Airbnb a little more closely towards the roots.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
And again, I think we're going to bias towards more regular people putting up their real homes rather than more dedicated rentals. So that's where we're going. Now, just one caveat, if anyone's listening and they – work at or a third party property manager, we love the ones guests love.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
So though the average rating across the board isn't as high, there are some unbelievable property managers and we love them. The last point I'll just make is it is true that property managers are more likely to, you know, you might call it cross list. They'll cross list their inventory in many different platforms.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
And, you know, one of the core values of Airbnb is you come to Airbnb to find something you can't find anywhere else. If you can find it everywhere else, then we're just like another e-commerce platform, but not adding a lot of value. So the co-hosts in Airbnb are exclusive and those properties are exclusive to Airbnb.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
Here's the thing people don't realize. Airbnb is a harder business to run than it appears because the reason – Apple does not appear to be an easy business because one device is like a miracle in your hand. OpenAI doesn't appear to be an easy business. But Airbnb does. And the reason Airbnb appears to be an easy business is because at a subscale, it is an easy business.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
If you wanted to just find a home in Croatia, you don't even need a website. You can just get a friend. You can get a house. The part that makes Airbnb hard – is 4 million people a night from nearly every country in the world, more countries than Coca-Cola operates, living together. That's the part that makes it hard, the scale.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
And the scale is the only way you can actually do this profitably or very, very profitably as well. So that's the part that makes it really difficult. In other words, I remember we had, I think it was Doug Leone from Sequoia Capital. This is like 10 years ago. He comes to my office and he said, you have the hardest business ever. of any of the Sequoia portfolio companies to run.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
And he said, first of all, you have to have a mobile app, but you need a website. This is when Uber only had a mobile app. So you need to be on every platform. You need to be in every country in the world. But you need supply and demand, and they're not in the same city. Uber could go one city at a time. They can get riders and drivers in one city. We had to get...
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
like supply everywhere and demand everywhere and perfectly match the corridors. It is highly regulated, as regulated as Uber, probably even more regulated in many ways. And the hotel commissions and the hotel trade councils are significantly more powerful than the taxi union. So there is a very, very difficult business.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
We're handling a lot of money through the platform, over $90 billion a year, which is the GDP of Croatia. We have to deal with physical safety and more types of physical safety than even ride sharing because of all the myriad things. Obviously, there's a lot of accidental issues that can occur. You have to deal with some of the hardest customer service challenges you can imagine.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
Somebody checks in at 11 p.m. in Paris. They're from Tokyo. They don't speak French, and the host isn't responsive, and they have to call customer service. Yeah. You start to really think about – you have to manage the quality of supply that you don't actually own or control. But you have to influence the quality, and you're competing with an alternative supply that has a front desk.
Decoder with Nilay Patel
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
And by the way, I could keep going on and on and on or search problem. People think that like Google's got one of the hardest search problems. Airbnb's got a more pedestrian search problem. And I'm not saying we have any type of search technology like Google, but here's the difference. When you type something in Google, when's the last time you needed to ever look at the third page of Google?
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
And that's what I realized. When you're starting, it's mostly in your head until you manifest it and you make it real.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
I'm so excited about this because I never thought we'd get to this point. That very first weekend was about connection. It was about connecting with one another. And we always believed if we could build a platform for trust, that people don't want to host strangers, but they'll host Mike or Marsha who went to school here and we could bring the humanity out of everyone.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
And we thought, you know, what if you can Airbnb more than Airbnb? What if you can Airbnb a chef to come to your house? What if you can Airbnb a masseuse? What if you can Airbnb a makeup artist, a nail person, a personal trainer? And that's what we're doing. We've launched services and experiences. And I think this is just the beginning of the next chapter of Airbnb.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
I think there's this whole world just waiting for people. And imagine you can hit a button.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
And you can get anything you want in your life. And we vet everyone. And I think there's millions of people that can participate in this.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
And do you think we are spending way too much time online? There was a great saying at Apple in the 1980s when they developed the Macintosh. They said, never trust a computer you can't throw out the window. In fact, that's why they put a handle in the back of the computer. The reason why is they said a computer is a tool and it doesn't dominate us. We dominate it.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
As long as we're in control of technology, then it's going to be wonderful. But when the technology starts to overtake our lives and be in control of us, it ceases to be a tool. And I think there's a real risk that social media has ceased to be a tool to connect us. And it's now a destination. And it can potentially be replacing real in-person connections.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
I think that is potentially very dangerous. If social media is like a car... we're about to put a jet engine on the back of that car in the form of AI.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
Because what changed in the last 10 years, the 2030s are going to change so much more quickly. And the question becomes, should we be concerned or excited? And I guess it's in our hands. We have all the tools to solve all the problems that I could imagine us solving. We also have all the tools to further divide us. Now you do think,
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
a lot of the polarity and division and anger and resentment in the world, I think a lot of it comes from people feeling isolated, people feeling lonely, people feeling like they're falling behind, that the world's progressing without them. And I think we need to think these products as tools in service to us to make us happier, to make us more connected.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
I remember when I first started Airbnb, One investor told me, I pitched them and they said, I love everything but you and your idea. And I said, what does that mean? They said, well, strangers never stay with other strangers and designers don't start companies, tech companies. So the answer to why am I different is I'm a designer. I think technologists start with the technology.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
They start with a solution and they search for a problem. I think a designer starts with a problem. They start with a solution for the world and they work backwards to the technology. When I came to Silicon Valley, the word technology might as well have been a dictionary definition for the word good. That technology was progress and every release of technology was a forward step for humanity.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
And so what we need is more technology. I think we probably should think of technology not as good or bad. It's on balance good. But I think we should think of it as a tool. Are tools good? A hammer can build a house. It can be used as a weapon. It depends on how you use it.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
We're putting the most powerful tools ever devised in the history of humanity in the hands of young people and even children. Johnny Ive is the person who designed the iPhone.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
I got to become friends with him. I know his children. And he really did not allow his children to use the phone very much. I'm friends. I got to know Reed Jobs, Steve Jobs' son. And Steve limited the use of his device. The people who invented these devices limit the use of these devices, not because they think they're bad, but because so much of life must be experienced in the real world.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
Yeah, yeah. And I think it's really important. And I think I also share your concern.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
One of the conversations I had with President Obama when he was giving me advice, he told me something that I'll never forget. He said, you should institutionalize your intentions so that even when you're a public company, you can make sure not to compromise your vision.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
And what he meant by that, I think, was that you should be more thoughtful about what you're making, why you're making it, and the impact of what you're making is on people. And one of the things we talked about is a lot of leaders in power, I don't think they have bad intentions. They're more like self-driving cars. It's not that they are trying to go somewhere bad.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
It's that they're not really thinking about where they're going. And if you're not intentional, these tools, you cannot invent a tool. put it in the hands of a billion people, and it be used for reasons you totally intended, it's going to have unintended consequences. And it's not necessarily your fault that the consequences were unintended.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
But the question is, once it's used, what do you do with that information? Do you pivot or do you kind of like put your head in the sand? And I think it's really, really important for us to always take responsibility to imagine the kind of world we want to live in. Maybe imagine the kind of world you want your children to live in and say that like, we can design that world.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
And I think that's the role of a designer. The role of a designer is to assemble things, components, or technology to better suit the needs of society. And you're constantly in a state of redesigning based on getting more information. And it's easy to get defensive. Well, those people are just attacking me. So I'm going to defend.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
But at some point, you do have to look in the mirror and ask, well, is what they're saying true?
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
And if it is true, and sometimes usually what happens is some things are saying is true and then some things aren't and not take it personally and say, well, I'm going to address the part that is true. And I think that is just what we need.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
And I do think there's a new generation of technology leaders that I do think are just seeing the impact that their forebears had and they're starting to try and anticipate the needs a little bit more.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
He just got here.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
When I started Airbnb, there weren't a lot of billionaires in tech. There were hardly any. And I kind of joked that if I wanted to make money, the last thing I would have done is started a company called Airbed and Breakfast. So when we came to Silicon Valley, it was much more passion projects because there wasn't as much money.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
We assumed we weren't going to be successful and we just made something for ourselves that we loved. I think the values have changed a little bit because there's so much money that is so tempting. And I do think the money creates, as we talked about, this momentum, this pressure, this blinding magnet. And I think it can distort, yeah, a sense of people's priorities.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
And having gone through this now, it's like, it's really difficult, but sometimes you have to get to the top of the mountain to realize that was never about that mountaintop and you're not much higher than you ever were before. And I think it is true that like, I mean, why do people want money? I guess because they want status, they want happiness.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
And I think someone having made a lot of money in my mid-30s, I can now say it does provide a lot for you, but only to a point. And money just amplifies everything. And if you don't have a really great foundation, the money is going to actually potentially cause you big problems. And actually, I... I had a bit of a personal kind of crisis of my own in my mid to late 30s because I
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
My parents are social workers. I had more success than I ever thought. But the thing about being very successful in tech and making a lot of money and all this is no one ever told me how lonely it would become. And I started realizing, you know what's weird? I had old friends that were middle class. And I'll be honest, a lot of them seemed happier than me at that point in my life.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
And I was like, what is going on? And I realized, actually, President Obama helped me see this. I was just becoming really isolated. The more success you get, the more isolated you get. And I think people dream of success, but what they don't realize is a lot of what success comes disconnection. Disconnection to your past, to yourself, to your friends.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
And I think a lot of what I've tried to do the last handful of years is to reconnect, to not live a life of isolation. I think it's made me like a better friend, but also a better leader because how do you make things work? regular people when you're no longer one of those people yourself.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
Her husband has tried to set me up before, so.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
Exactly. It actually started kind of long ago where, um, I basically, if I just go back, when I came to Silicon Valley, I came to Silicon Valley in 2007. Mm-hmm. That was a very important year for Silicon Valley because two things happened. The first thing was the iPhone was created and announced. The second thing is that Facebook opened beyond schools.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
So 2007 was like this year of like a supernova energy because suddenly social media was about to be on phones. And we all felt like It was about to make the world connected. And what I noticed over the course of a decade or a decade and a half was that pretty soon people were living on devices. And I think the products were starting to be used the way we didn't intend.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
Social media may be the most successful product in the world that was invented and actually uninvented in the sense that at one point it was called social networking. then your friends pretty soon became your followers. And when your friends became your followers, it no longer meant it was about connection. It was about performing.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
And when you start performing for other people, you lose intimacy and you lose authenticity, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it's not meant to fill the void of connection in your life. And I started thinking to myself, I said, I want Airbnb. To be able to help combat loneliness because we were about connection in the real world.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
We weren't about devices. We spend our whole lives on devices. And I noticed I've never had a dream where a device is in my dream. There's something about that. The real world is the real world. Yeah.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I thought to myself, Airbnb is a community. who's the most famous committee organizer in the world? I had this unbelievable experience where I got to, like many entrepreneurs, meet President Obama. I spent some time with him. And then after he left the presidency, I just was really shameless about reaching out to him, asking for advice, asking for mentorship.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
And he would meet with me and he'd give me advice and I would take it. And I'd like do all this work. And I'd go and I'd like a teacher, I'd show him the assignment and said like, and then he'd give me another assignment. And I'd do it. And I'd give it to him and then he would do another assignment. And at one point in 2018, we had a standing one-hour call every week.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
And I basically had my day job during the day. And then I had my night school with the former president where I would get these assignments. But it changed my life. By the way, he's the one who told me to reach back out to my old friends. He said, I have a circle of 10 to 15 really close friends
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
And I thought to myself, I guess I technically have 15 friends, but if I texted any of them or called them, I have to get them up to speed in my life. So therefore, I'm not maintaining those relationships. But I think the thing that President Obama taught me was to be more intentional. He literally said like so many leaders are like self-driving cars. Use that analogy. They're not intentional.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
They're like a car, but they never put the destination in. So they're just driving somewhere. And he made me really be intentional about like, what do I want out of my life, out of the company? I ended up writing down a whole bunch of principles. I tried to institutionalize them for the company. I think it made a really, really big difference.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
And he kind of taught me a little bit how to think more deeply. Because I think As an entrepreneur, there's an element of impulsiveness, spontaneity that's important.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
Yeah. You need to like have an idea and you need to do things. It's actually important when you first have an idea not to overthink things. And so you just go and you go and you don't overthink. Because if you overthink and you're like get stuck in business plans, nothing ever happens. An entrepreneur has to do a thousand things a thousand times. The problem is when you never make the shift.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
And at some point you have to go from an entrepreneur to a CEO.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
And a CEO can't operate that way. A CEO has to realize, like, I'm responsible. I'm a steward for a community of hundreds of millions of people. Thousands of people's jobs depend on me. I got to actually think, like, if I do this, what are the second or third order consequences? We as entrepreneurs and tech folk, we're not trained to do that. Yeah. And so I think it's hard to make that shift.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
That's actually profoundly student insight. And I would... Excuse me. Did you hear what he said?
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
And it's because being a founder is kind of a single player sport to some extent. And being a CEO is almost the definition of a team sport. And you also have stakeholders. Right. Beyond your team, you have investors and shareholders. You have the public goods society. You have your... your guests, your host, or your buyers or sellers. You got to be a player. You got to be a player coach.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
You got to be a player coach. And also you got to teach people. You got to like your jobs to make other people around you better. You stand on the shoulders of others. I think that's really important. I mean, my dad, by the way, he never, you know, it's funny, my dad, never rewarded me for being talented, which I think was a good thing in hindsight.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
He only rewarded me for putting my best effort forward and being a good team player.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
I mean, obviously, this is evolving week to week. As of last week, and I know entrepreneurs, what they were telling me was that a lot of fundraising for all intents and purposes was kind of on hold.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
So there was a whole bunch of people that were raising money. The deals are kind of on hold. A lot of limited partners and investors are just like hunkering down. And what we know about investors, they don't like uncertainty. I think people are going to sit this one out until things stabilize. And if they don't stabilize, we're going to be in for a very prolonged kind of
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
dry spell for fundraising. If you did not go to a prestigious school, if you weren't like purely a team of technical engineers, if you're not trying to create an AI company, just trying to create a business, that will be more difficult.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
And so I think that environment wants a good economy. Now there is a silver lining. The economy was initially good when we started Airbnb, but then when we went to raise money, it was 2009 during the financial crisis. And a lot of great companies have been started in a recession. And the one... I don't want to say it's a good thing, but what it does is it teaches you a certain type of discipline.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
A tough economy teaches you a discipline that gets institutionalized into your culture. That a great economy, an economy of abundance, overabundance can kind of help you perpetuate like bad strategies and be a little less disciplined. So I think the good news is a lot of great entrepreneurs are incredibly resourceful and they will find a way to work.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
Thank you.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
But we absolutely need like a very stable economy. And I do think that, you know, I had the privilege of having a tech company and I had a lot of connections and my co-founder went to Harvard, was a computer scientist. And so we probably got some opportunities that now everyone will get. And so the question is, how do we make sure more people have economic opportunity?
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
And I think we're going to need a very healthy economy for that.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
Yeah, yeah.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
Somebody once told me a metaphor for where we are right now in the world, especially maybe in part the technology. That technology was like a train. And all you had to do was get on the train of progress and you can ride it into the promised land. And now a lot of people feel like they're on the train tracks and the train is coming for them. I think there's a lot of fear.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
There's a lot of concern in the world. My advice to young people is to dash into the future, to use these tools, to lean in, to not brace. Seek out mentors. And maybe your mentor won't be a former president, but like my first mentors weren't either. They were people that were three years ahead of me in my career. It is going to be profoundly different.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
And whether or not that different is better or not depends not on, I don't think it's depending on people like me. I think it's dependent on people in their 20s. The next generation is going to decide what happens. And so it is this generation. There is cause to be afraid, but there's also cause to be hopeful. This is their world.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
They're about to take it over or they're going to contribute to this world. And I think that new technology is going to level the playing field and allow a door to open for a new generation to step in.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
Yes, that's critical.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
Yeah, guests come and they can book on Airbnb and-
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
It might be one of the defining things for the next generation is what is our relationship with these devices, with social media? How do we use it? And how do we use technology to lift people up, to make sure that it helps parents, it helps young people, and that people in positions of power like us, that we're not closing the door behind us. That we're keeping the door open.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
Yeah, they definitely know it's me.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
And we're encouraging the next generation to walk through that door.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
It's actually free. It's free, so it's kind of like if you kind of get lucky enough, you can stay with me. And I have some really cool people I've had stay with me. And when they come and stay, they stay. I have a two-bedroom house. It's not a big house, so they stay in the guest room. And the first night, I'll have a dinner made for them. I'm not much of a cook, but I am a little bit of a baker.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
I come on podcasts. That's what I do.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
I've not had a lot of success with the tools, if I'm being honest. The best success I've had with meeting people is the old-fashioned way, through other friends. Or just meeting someone in the real world. And that has still been, or having friends make introductions at dinner tables. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
One time I was like, I met somebody and I was about to go on a date with, I went on a date with them. And I remember telling him like, oh my God, like she checks all the boxes and like this, this, this, this, this. And I remember him saying something. He said, it's not a checklist.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
And I said, Oh, interesting. And I'm like, yeah, it kind of makes a lot of sense. He's like, the right person is someone where they've got this like weird laugh or snort and you find it really funny. And it's like, in other words, it's not necessarily what you think you're looking for.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
And you're not dating a checklist. You're dating a real person. And the real person makes you feel a certain way. And I think that was... I think it was a really, really important piece of advice. Because I think this also is a bit of a problem with dating in the world today. One of my best friends is a woman named Whitney Wolfe. She started a dating app, Bumble.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
And one of the things that we've discussed, and I think where she's taken the company is... Online dating especially has become a world of judgment. You literally swipe right within milliseconds, swipe right, swipe left, swipe right, swipe left. If people say have a type, the question I'd have back is you've met enough people in the world to know there's a type. There you go.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
And I think your type is your predisposition based on the limited people and experiences you've already had. So many people end up with people that aren't quote their type. And I think that we need to, and this is similar to social media. We probably need to live in a world of curiosity, not judgment. Instead of swiping, we need to discover and find what's really interesting to people.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
And so I think that that's probably one of the things that we need to do more of.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
So I make Chesky's chips.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
Yeah, these are chashu cookies. They've been in the family, old family recipe I got off Google two years ago.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
I think on a personal front, I think I would just say like maybe two things. And there are two things that I learned in part from President Obama, which is number one, I think seek out mentors. And by the way, seeking out a mentor doesn't have to be like, can you be my mentor? It's just somebody doing something interesting and you are proactive in reaching out to them.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
Well, you know, you can book on Airbnb. Oh, man, I got to go. Okay. And then like Sophie, my golden retriever, may jump in bed with you. So if you're okay with dogs, leave the door open. She'll get in there. And I actually love hosting. My roommate and I were the first host on Airbnb. And there's something wonderful about opening your home to the world.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
Because I think for young people, the number one thing they need to learn how to do is how to learn.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
In the real world. And one of the most important things you can do, like one of the simple life hacks to make your life happy is to basically just rekindle old relationships. And if all that time you spent on social media to the point if you trade some of that with in-person connection, with people from your past. And then maybe meeting new people is going to have a huge impact on your life.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
And also when it comes to mentors, like a lot of people are afraid to ask other people for advice or help. What I've realized as a huge surprise I've had is so many people feel deeply honored when someone asks them to help or ask them for advice. And I never, even before I was the founder of Airbnb, when I was totally broke, obscure 25-year-old,
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
People wanted to help me when I reached out to them because it made them feel good and it gave them a sense of purpose. I think the vast majority of people, if they reach out to someone, someone will want to help them. They reach out to an old friend, the old friend will want to reach back out to them. And that is the path for reconnection.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
It's a path for relationships and it's a path for purpose.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
Thank you.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
I can't wait to see the summer. Can't wait.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
Yes. That's a good call. Here we go.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
I can get a plus one? You can get a plus one. Man.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
Everyone is absolutely on their best behavior, but... One guest did tell me that they wanted to stay with me so bad. I only found this out after they stayed with me, that they were reloading my page like thousands of times.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
And I thought to myself- I don't think it's a good sign, but maybe a little bit much. But he turned out to be an amazing person. Like concert tickets, right? Yeah, like reload, reload. And I'm like, these chips are not worth it. I got to be honest with you. They're pretty average bacon. That's great.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
No, I haven't. Most of the people who have stayed are couples, actually. Oh, that's sweet.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
We'll see, I guess. Remains to be seen. But yeah, no, he's definitely very invested and he's provided a lot of relationship advice to me, actually.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
Yeah, I'll tell the story. I'm from upstate New York. My parents are social workers. My mom once told me growing up, like, I chose a job for the love and I paid no money. So you should make sure that you get a job that pays you a lot of money. And one day I said, mom, I want to be an artist. And she said, oh my God, you picked the only job that's going to pay you less than a social worker.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
And I said, oh, I promise I'm going to get a real job. I ended up going to the Rhode Island School of Design. RISD. RISD. Yes. In Providence. And we have a Providence connection. We do. We do.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
And it was a wonderful place. I love RISD. I love Providence. It was such an amazing place because I always grew up thinking like you had to sit in class, sit still, like follow the rules. Mm-hmm. And then at RISD, they said, you're a designer. Everything around you was designed by someone else. You can design the world you want to live in. It made us very idealistic.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
I graduate RISD and I'm living actually here in Los Angeles. And my friend from RISD, Joe, tells me one day, Brian, come to San Francisco. Let's start a company. I'm 25 years old. And my life is like I'm in a car and the road in front of me looks like the road behind me. That's the rest of my life if I stay on this track. And so I quit my job.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
I pack everything back of old Honda Civic and I drive up to San Francisco. I get to San Francisco and Joe tells me we have one problem. I said, what's that problem? He said, well, remember how I told you the rent is $1,000? Well, now it's been raised and it's now $1,150. And I'm like, oh, I couldn't even afford the old rent check. Right.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
It turns out that weekend, a design conference was coming to San Francisco. And we went on the conference website for this conference. All the hotels are sold out. We had this idea. We said, what if we just turned our house into a bed and breakfast for a design conference? No way. I didn't have any beds though, because I just moved there. I didn't even bring a bed with me.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
Joe had three air mattresses in the closet. So we pulled the air beds out of the closet. We inflated them. We called it airbedandbreakfast.com. And that's where the name Airbnb comes from.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
And we ended up having three people stay with us. Basically what happened was we were able to pay our rent But something I never expected happened, which is these three strangers came as strangers and they left as friends, which is not surprising when somebody lives with you for a week, you take them around the city. And Joe and I realized maybe there's a bigger idea here.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
I asked Joe, I said, who's the best engineer you know? He said, my old roommate Nate is. And this leads to how I got to know President Obama. Well, that's before, but 2008, summer of 2008, we're trying to figure out how to launch Airbnb. And we got this chicken and egg problem they use in the marketplace. How do you get people to list their homes when there's no people traveling?
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
How do you get people to travel when there's no homes? So we needed a big event. The biggest thing happening in the summer of 2008 was the election. And then Senator Obama was just nominated as you remember. And I remember sitting at home with my roommate Joe, and there was like the CNN on TV, DNC housing crisis. They move him from the basketball arena to the football stadium.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
And they're like, wait, where are all these extra people gonna stay? That's how we launched. We launched the Democratic National Convention. We got like 80 bookings. I thought we were huge. And then next weekend for Senator McCain, we had two bookings, not as popular. And then the following week, no bookings. And I realized if only there were political conventions every week, we'd have a business.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
So we're now totally broke. We're like worse than broke. We're actually in debt. We don't know what to do. And our name is Airbed and Breakfast. And I'm like, the airbeds aren't selling. Maybe there's money in breakfast because not everyone sleeps on airbags, but everyone eats breakfast. And this is where even the next step of the connection to President Obama comes in.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
We came up with a Barack Obama themed cereal. Yeah, that's right. And it was this box. We were like, well, what would a box of Barack Obama cereal? It was so obvious. He had the iconic O, like Cheerios. Yes. We called it Obama O's, the breakfast of change. And then we said, well, we got to be nonpartisan.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
So we created Captain McCain's because he was a captain in the Navy, a maverick in every bite. So we make these cereal boxes. And that actually is how we funded the company. So the breakfast took off.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
You know what's funny? No one wanted the airbeds. They were like, I'm not staying at a stranger's house. That's crazy. I'm not sleeping on an airbed.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
Well, funny enough, years later, President Obama said, yeah, I don't think we ever gave you permission for our likeness. And I was like, I was 26. Yeah.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
But we basically, I remember once I was pitching a producer about our website, like a TV producer. And I remember him saying, send me, he says, I can't take this call right now. And I said, can I send you an email? And he goes, I get like 800 emails a day. And I remember that in my mind, like these are producers, they get all these emails. And I said, you know what you don't get?
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
800 boxes of Obama O's a day. So I basically got a media list. Media lists are, I don't know if they still have them, but you can basically get the addresses of all the reporters, the mailing address. And we got a hundred boxes. We mailed them to these reporters. They had opened the boxes. They were like, what is this?
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
They put them on their desk in the newsroom and then it spread all over the news. And that's how we funded the company. It's a joke. We were like serial entrepreneurs.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
To fund the company.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
Where true artistic integrity mattered to me. So we actually had the exact cereal that was photographed on the box inside. Inside.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
Wow. Wow. So it only took $35,000.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
We joined this incubator called Y Combinator. We raised another $20,000. I mean, back then, that was a lot of money. Now, 26-year-olds are raising $100 million for AI companies. They have five employees. Back then, we were like, $20,000 is enough money to get us to ramen profitable. This was the thing.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
Ramen profitable means your company is profitable if everyone in the company only lives on ramen. So that was our goal.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
We slept on air mattresses. We lived the product. We only ate ramen. And eventually we got the company going. It was during the financial crisis. 2009, people are losing their homes. Paul Graham, our first advisor and investor said, make something people want. And we thought, what's better than making something people want? Making something they need.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
People need to make money because their home is about to get taken from them.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
And it happened during this new generation, the same generation that were the community mobilizers during President Obama's campaign. We were a new generation. And we wanted to connect and travel different than our parents. And we wanted to have a more authentic way of traveling. We wanted to live like a local. And so this feel totally new to us, even though it was weird to others.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
It was actually probably at RISD. The school was like very much like self-directed. You would like, I mean, first of all, like artists are all entrepreneurs, basically. I mean, they're sole proprietors, but you don't really work for somebody. There was this great quote at RISD. Art is a question of the problem of the world and design is the answer.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
I started in art because I wanted to ask interesting questions about the world. And I kind of moved to design because I thought I really want to help people and try to design answers. And I thought to myself... I think this is for me. Like I kind of knew. And funny enough, my mom said, you got to get a real job one day. And I said, what's a real job?
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
She's like, a real job is one that has health insurance. That sounds like a parent. That sounds like our mom. So I ended up getting a real job of health insurance in Los Angeles. I'm like a designer. We have all these like little clients. Like my first project was like designing a toilet seat. So you got to start somewhere.
IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Be a Different Kind of Leader with Brian Chesky
And then one day, you know, when I quit my job, I remember going home for Christmas and one of our family members asked, what are you doing? And I remember telling them, oh, I'm an entrepreneur. And I could hear my mom cross the room saying, he's actually unemployed.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
CEO Diaries: Airbnb’s Founder Brian Chesky on Brutal Rejection, Great Leadership, and The Biggest Mistake Founders Make!
Airbnb handles nearly as much money as the entire GDP of the country of Croatia today. One in about every $1,500 spent in the world, about $1 spent on Airbnb. That's a pretty large market. And our business is pretty much the same idea as the idea that we proposed that person who said our market opportunity wasn't large enough. So there's probably a myriad of lessons in that, aren't there?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
CEO Diaries: Airbnb’s Founder Brian Chesky on Brutal Rejection, Great Leadership, and The Biggest Mistake Founders Make!
And I think that It's a reminder that the world doesn't just change, or at least it doesn't just transform towards our dreams, ideals, and ambitions that require certain types of people. We might call them entrepreneurs, inventors, all sorts of people in different domains, that believe the world could be a little different than the one that they live in.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
CEO Diaries: Airbnb’s Founder Brian Chesky on Brutal Rejection, Great Leadership, and The Biggest Mistake Founders Make!
They have the audacity to believe that they can do it. And they have the ability to convince other people to go on that journey with them. But along that journey, everything's going to be different. You're going to get lost. You're going to be cold. You're going to have like obstacles. Things are going to attack you. You're going to fall down pits.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
CEO Diaries: Airbnb’s Founder Brian Chesky on Brutal Rejection, Great Leadership, and The Biggest Mistake Founders Make!
And the question is when people are cold and they're shivering and they're not sure what to do and you're running out of resources and rations, can you find your way up that mountain? Do you know why you're going? Can you invent all these different apparatus? Like there's a stream you can't figure out. You can build a bridge to cross the stream with the limited resources you have.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
CEO Diaries: Airbnb’s Founder Brian Chesky on Brutal Rejection, Great Leadership, and The Biggest Mistake Founders Make!
Can you recruit people along the way? And can you beat the drum? And when people are tired and they say, I want to sleep, you say, yes, we're going to rest, but we got to go just 500 more steps. I know it's right over the edge. I think we can do a little bit better. And can you push people outside their comfort zone? Not enough to hate you, but enough to feel like a trainer.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
CEO Diaries: Airbnb’s Founder Brian Chesky on Brutal Rejection, Great Leadership, and The Biggest Mistake Founders Make!
You're like three more reps and you don't want to do it. And then that very moment, they're not your friend, but at the end of the workout, you're like – Thank you for pushing me that hard. This is that kind of person. And can you take divergent ideas that no one's ever seen before and just continue to reformulate them? Could you store these ideas in your head, a thousand competing ideas,
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
CEO Diaries: Airbnb’s Founder Brian Chesky on Brutal Rejection, Great Leadership, and The Biggest Mistake Founders Make!
and just reformulate them in your mind. It turns out this stuff is difficult, but you can work your way up there. Most people watching this have the skillset to be an entrepreneur. Not everyone has the skillset or the desire to run a giant company. I don't think everyone needs to do that, but a lot of people have the skill set to do something, to start something.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
CEO Diaries: Airbnb’s Founder Brian Chesky on Brutal Rejection, Great Leadership, and The Biggest Mistake Founders Make!
This is what you need to get up the mountain. And the problem is, imagine we got up the mountain and then somebody was dropped from a helicopter, having never walked up the mountain, and you tell them, okay, now you lead this group up the next mountain. Can you imagine how hard it'd be for that person to drop from the sky?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
CEO Diaries: Airbnb’s Founder Brian Chesky on Brutal Rejection, Great Leadership, and The Biggest Mistake Founders Make!
Or maybe they joined a third of the way up the mountain, but they weren't there at the very beginning. You see, a founder brings three things that a professional manager doesn't have. The first thing a founder has is they're the biological parent. So you can love something, but when you're the biological parent of something, like it came from you, it is you, there is a deep passion in love.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
CEO Diaries: Airbnb’s Founder Brian Chesky on Brutal Rejection, Great Leadership, and The Biggest Mistake Founders Make!
The second thing a founder has is they have the permission, right? Like I can't tell another child what to do, but if they were my child, I probably could. I have the permission. And so you have a permission. I could rename the, I could rebrand the company and a professional manager would probably come and say, I can't do that, but I know how we named it. I know how we branded it.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
CEO Diaries: Airbnb’s Founder Brian Chesky on Brutal Rejection, Great Leadership, and The Biggest Mistake Founders Make!
So you know what you can change. The third thing that a founder brings is you built it so you know how to rebuild it. You know the freezing temperature of a company. You know what temperature it melts. You know what this looked like before it was tooled, where it came from, the alloys, where they were sourced from. You're not just managing it, you're building it.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
CEO Diaries: Airbnb’s Founder Brian Chesky on Brutal Rejection, Great Leadership, and The Biggest Mistake Founders Make!
The problem is professional managers typically don't have any of those three, at least not in the abundance of founders. But the problem with founders, there's two problems. The first is most of them cannot scale to run a giant company. And even if they do, the last problem is they don't live forever. And companies, great companies, usually want to live longer than humans do.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
CEO Diaries: Airbnb’s Founder Brian Chesky on Brutal Rejection, Great Leadership, and The Biggest Mistake Founders Make!
And so therefore, you end up with the inevitable challenge that Disney and Steve Jobs had, which is succession planning. Actually, both of them died prematurely. And maybe Steve prepared more than Walt did. And that's the last step of the journey. But I think there's something really special about founders and founder-led companies.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
CEO Diaries: Airbnb’s Founder Brian Chesky on Brutal Rejection, Great Leadership, and The Biggest Mistake Founders Make!
And I think that if you want the world to change, we need more entrepreneurs. We need more founders. If you want to empower more women, you should make more women entrepreneurs. If you want to lift up more economies around the world, you should lift up entrepreneurs in those economies. It's one of the greatest ways to create wealth, to change the world, and to just change the trajectory of society.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
CEO Diaries: Airbnb’s Founder Brian Chesky on Brutal Rejection, Great Leadership, and The Biggest Mistake Founders Make!
It's funny you ask this question because last week I sent an email to the entire company, to all 6,000 people. And my email was about culture and why it's important and what it is. Can I read you a portion of it?
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
CEO Diaries: Airbnb’s Founder Brian Chesky on Brutal Rejection, Great Leadership, and The Biggest Mistake Founders Make!
For the context of the email is I hired a head of people and culture, like a different name for HR. Joni and I have always believed that you must design the culture you want. Otherwise, it will be designed for you, and you might not like what emerges. The people and the culture they create at the heart of Airbnb. Simply put, culture is what creates the foundation for all future innovation.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
CEO Diaries: Airbnb’s Founder Brian Chesky on Brutal Rejection, Great Leadership, and The Biggest Mistake Founders Make!
In the long run, the culture... is the most important thing you will ever design because it's the engine that designs everything else. All good designs start with a vision. And I want working at Airbnb to feel like working at the world's largest startup. I believe we can grow into one of the largest companies in the world without feeling large. A company that's still run like a startup.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
CEO Diaries: Airbnb’s Founder Brian Chesky on Brutal Rejection, Great Leadership, and The Biggest Mistake Founders Make!
With the best people in every discipline collaborating at high speeds with intense focus, all while maintaining minimal bureaucracy and communication layers. And to make this happen, we're going to reimagine HR function. Because too many companies have lost sight of what HR was originally designed to do, reducing it to merely an administrative function.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
CEO Diaries: Airbnb’s Founder Brian Chesky on Brutal Rejection, Great Leadership, and The Biggest Mistake Founders Make!
Yet at its core, HR is about people and culture, and it's one of the most strategic functions within a company. That's why we don't call it HR, because it should be about bringing out the very best in people. Most of all, I want us to feel like we're building one of the most creative places on earth.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
CEO Diaries: Airbnb’s Founder Brian Chesky on Brutal Rejection, Great Leadership, and The Biggest Mistake Founders Make!
A company that brings together some of the best people of our generation to dream up new products and services that capture the world's imagination. A place where years from now, people would say, if I was alive during that time, that's where I would have wanted to work. I literally wrote that email last week about culture.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
CEO Diaries: Airbnb’s Founder Brian Chesky on Brutal Rejection, Great Leadership, and The Biggest Mistake Founders Make!
This is from August 1st, 2008. By the way, so let me give the context of this email. So Joe Nate and I were trying to raise money. For everyone trying to raise money, I want you to know that Airbnb was trying to raise $150,000 at a $1.5 million, I think, post-money valuation.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
CEO Diaries: Airbnb’s Founder Brian Chesky on Brutal Rejection, Great Leadership, and The Biggest Mistake Founders Make!
It's so great. So big, huge insight here. Okay. I used to think you talk about the culture and you talk about how important it is and you write out a list of, well, what is your culture? Well, our culture are a bunch of principles or values we live by. So what makes us most unique? Let's do a session. Let's write out a list of our values. Now let's tell everyone the values.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
CEO Diaries: Airbnb’s Founder Brian Chesky on Brutal Rejection, Great Leadership, and The Biggest Mistake Founders Make!
Let's print them on the walls. Let's have people repeat them. Let's keep telling people culture is important. And that stuff can help a little bit, but it's not how you build culture. So let me give you a few thoughts. Your culture is the shared way you do things. And often they're based on lessons you've learned. And the lessons you tend to remember the most are the ones that are seared in you.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
CEO Diaries: Airbnb’s Founder Brian Chesky on Brutal Rejection, Great Leadership, and The Biggest Mistake Founders Make!
They come from trials and tribulations, from your most difficult times. It's the way you rise the occasion in the face of adversity. Your culture is the behaviors of the leaders that get mimicked all the way down every single person. Your culture is every time you choose to hire someone, every time you choose to fire someone, every time you choose to promote somebody.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
CEO Diaries: Airbnb’s Founder Brian Chesky on Brutal Rejection, Great Leadership, and The Biggest Mistake Founders Make!
It's the way everyone does everything. And the way a leader designs the culture is not by writing out a list of values. It's by basically leading by example every single day and taking a survey of every single thing happening and constantly shaping it, pruning it. Like a gardener, you don't just allow the culture to happen. You design the culture. You have an idea of what you want to do.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
CEO Diaries: Airbnb’s Founder Brian Chesky on Brutal Rejection, Great Leadership, and The Biggest Mistake Founders Make!
And you're just constantly getting this group together. You might have a culture of excellence. And a culture of excellence means I review all the work and I say, not good enough, not good enough, not good enough. And eventually I could not join the meeting, but people know what I'd say. They'd say, it's not good enough. This is our standard.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
CEO Diaries: Airbnb’s Founder Brian Chesky on Brutal Rejection, Great Leadership, and The Biggest Mistake Founders Make!
And the moment I can not be in the room and the same action happens as if I was in the room, that's the moment it goes from management to culture. So it's like a golf swing. To teach a golf swing, you've got to like, probably I don't play golf, but the instructor has to watch the person. And at some point, the person learns how to swing a golf swing without the instructor there.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
CEO Diaries: Airbnb’s Founder Brian Chesky on Brutal Rejection, Great Leadership, and The Biggest Mistake Founders Make!
That's the difference between management and culture. And culture is something that people learn to develop these shared instincts. And it's so important because it's your ultimate intellectual property, not your technology, not your recipes, not your exclusive contract vendor relationships. the way you know how to do something.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
CEO Diaries: Airbnb’s Founder Brian Chesky on Brutal Rejection, Great Leadership, and The Biggest Mistake Founders Make!
That is the most important thing a company has because all a company is, is a bunch of people, a bunch of money, and a direction that those people are using those resources to go towards. People, resources, strategy. And the culture is the thing that bonds those things together.
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
CEO Diaries: Airbnb’s Founder Brian Chesky on Brutal Rejection, Great Leadership, and The Biggest Mistake Founders Make!
Exactly. And here's one of many rejection letters. Hi, Brian. Apologies for the delayed response. We've had a chance to discuss internally and unfortunately don't think that it's right for fill-in-the-blank investment firm from an investment perspective. The potential market opportunity did not seem large enough for a required model. Now, I want you to just put this perspective.