Speaker 1: One of the most important companies in the travel industry
Speaker 1: today is Airbnb. It started less than two decades ago
Speaker 1: as a concept of renting out one's room to make
Speaker 1: some extra money. Now all over the world people are
Speaker 1: renting out their homes their apartments to other people. I
Speaker 1: actually used an Airbnb recently in Alaska and found to
Speaker 1: be quite good experience. I sat down with Brian Schofsky,
Speaker 1: who conceived of Airbnb has now built it into one
Speaker 1: of the largest travel companies in the world. You came
Speaker 1: up with the idea with your partners of starting this
Speaker 1: company around two thousand seven two thousand eight. Did anybody
Speaker 1: tell you it was a good idea? No? I mean
Speaker 1: it was pretty universally considered a terrible idea. I um.
Speaker 1: I remember the first person I told the idea to.
Speaker 1: I said, Hey, we've got this idea. We're gonna build
Speaker 1: this website where you like strangers could other strangers in
Speaker 1: their homes. And the person who was kind of somebody
Speaker 1: I looked up to in Los Angeles, he looks at
Speaker 1: me in the straight face. I said yes. He said, Brian,
Speaker 1: I hope that's not the only idea you're working on.
Speaker 1: And that was by the way one the nicer things
Speaker 1: people said. But the reason I think it worked was
Speaker 1: because I stumbled into this idea of my roommate. I mean,
Speaker 1: there was this design conference coming to San Francisco in
Speaker 1: October two seven. I couldn't afford to pay rent this
Speaker 1: design conference conference service to go. All the hotels were
Speaker 1: sold out. And we have this idea, we said, when
Speaker 1: we just turned our house into a bed and breakfast
Speaker 1: for the design conference. I didn't have any beds, but
Speaker 1: Joe had three our beds. We pulled them out of
Speaker 1: the closet. We called the air bed and Breakfast dot com.
Speaker 1: We made enough money pay our rent, But more importantly,
Speaker 1: we actually ended up making friends of these three people
Speaker 1: because they live with us for a week. And at
Speaker 1: that point, I think we realized if people could experience
Speaker 1: what we experienced, that this would be an idea that
Speaker 1: would spread around the world. But little did I know
Speaker 1: that it was going to be a very difficult uphill road.
Speaker 1: Where did you get your initial money? Was that the
Speaker 1: y combinator from Paul Graham? Well, actually, um, there's kind
Speaker 1: of a weird story about how we raised money. So
Speaker 1: we had this kind of quirky idea to sell collectible
Speaker 1: breakfast cereal. Um So, Barack Obama John Keane are both
Speaker 1: running for president, and we thought, you know, the breakfast
Speaker 1: isn't selling the bet that we're bet and we're a
Speaker 1: bet and breakfast. We're not selling beds. Maybe we can
Speaker 1: sell breakfast. And so we started selling collectible breakfast cereal,
Speaker 1: a Barack Obama theme cereal called Obama Ohs, which is
Speaker 1: like cheerios, and we called it the Breakfast a Change.
Speaker 1: And we learned about John McCain was a captain the Navy,
Speaker 1: so we called it Captain McCain's a Maverick Entervy Bite.
Speaker 1: And we made these really funny like looking cereal boxes.
Speaker 1: We actually ended up selling thirty thousand dollars with a
Speaker 1: collectible breakfast cereal and that was actually originally how we
Speaker 1: funded a company. So now it's late two thousand eight,
Speaker 1: we're like desperate. We've launched three times, no one's using it.
Speaker 1: I'm hockling cereal boxes in my kitchen. I'm thinking to myself,
Speaker 1: I wonder if Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs ever had
Speaker 1: to hock blue cereal boxes in their living room. The
Speaker 1: answer was no, they hadn't done it. This was a
Speaker 1: foreboding sign. And I'm going out to dinner at a
Speaker 1: tire restaurant in San Francisco with the founders of Justin
Speaker 1: That TV, who are Ye Combinator, and they said, you
Speaker 1: should join Why Combinator because you guys are dying and
Speaker 1: I thought, well, it's probably too late. We already launched,
Speaker 1: but Paul Graham eventually allowed us to apply. We actually
Speaker 1: missed the deadline, but he allowed us to apply after
Speaker 1: the deadline and we got an interview, and that's when
Speaker 1: Paul Graham said, like in our first question, people actually
Speaker 1: doing this? And I said yes, and he goes, what's
Speaker 1: wrong with them? So the interview kind of went downhill
Speaker 1: from there. He didn't He's the admitted he hated the
Speaker 1: idea of airbnb at first. Who didn't get it? But
Speaker 1: as we're leaving the interview, my roommate Joe, hands him
Speaker 1: a box of Barack Obama cereal that we made and
Speaker 1: he looks at it and he goes, what what is this?
Speaker 1: Why am I getting this? And we said this is
Speaker 1: how we funded the company, and he looks to us.
Speaker 1: He said, if you can figure out how to get
Speaker 1: people to pay forty dollars for a four dour box
Speaker 1: of cereal. Maybe you will convince them how to sleep
Speaker 1: in each other's homes. So why commentator let us in
Speaker 1: the program? I think we barely I don't know if
Speaker 1: we got in barely got in. And the moment we
Speaker 1: got into the program, you know, the recession is occurring.
Speaker 1: People are desperate to save their homes, and lot of
Speaker 1: people started trying to Airbnb to save their homes by
Speaker 1: renting them out. At the same time, you have a
Speaker 1: great recession which is causing a lot of young people
Speaker 1: to feel like, well, I need to save money. You know,
Speaker 1: Facebook and social media is growing, so people are comfortable
Speaker 1: meeting people on the internet, and it was kind of
Speaker 1: the supernova forces that led to an opening for everybody
Speaker 1: to finally take off. So traditionally people might build a
Speaker 1: company like yours and five or six years later they
Speaker 1: would take a public and liquefy for the employees, the
Speaker 1: founders and also the investors. But you were resisting pressure
Speaker 1: to do that. Why didn't you go public sooner? And
Speaker 1: you have any regrets about not going public sooner than
Speaker 1: you did. I just didn't feel like we were ready
Speaker 1: to go public sooner. And I think in hindsight, maybe
Speaker 1: we could have gone public sooner. I mean, just so
Speaker 1: it's important. Remember when we were growing really quickly, there
Speaker 1: were not regulations on the books for Airbnb, and a
Speaker 1: lot of people are wondering was this business going to
Speaker 1: get regulated out of existence? That to me was one
Speaker 1: of many existential questions. Eventually, we able that we were
Speaker 1: able to get law as in the books and nearly
Speaker 1: every big city in the world we were able to
Speaker 1: collect four billion dollars. Hotel tax became legitimate. We expanded
Speaker 1: a nationally, We built an executive team. But I felt
Speaker 1: like going public was a big stage. It was almost
Speaker 1: like it's almost like, you know, if you're I don't know,
Speaker 1: there's a kind of a weird analogy, but if you're
Speaker 1: like baking a cake, going public is putting in the oven.
Speaker 1: You know, It's it's hard to change the ingredients after
Speaker 1: you go public, right, And so I wanted to make
Speaker 1: sure that everything was kind of baked before we went public. Now,
Speaker 1: once the pandemic hit, that was more than a decade
Speaker 1: after we started, I was accused of having waited too
Speaker 1: long and having missed the I P O window. I
Speaker 1: would have never imagined what had transpired over the course
Speaker 1: of but I think looking back, it worked out really
Speaker 1: well for everyone. Well, you went public in December after
Speaker 1: the pandemic, but you obviously were probably you had to
Speaker 1: lay off some people during that period of time, Is
Speaker 1: that right? You know? Like when the pandemic hit, I
Speaker 1: was working on our S one, and like many people,
Speaker 1: I came back from the holidays and twenty team thinking
Speaker 1: my life was going to go in one direction, not
Speaker 1: realizing our entire world was about to get rocked. I
Speaker 1: felt like a captain of a ship and a torpedo
Speaker 1: hit the side. We lost eighty percent of our business
Speaker 1: in eight weeks, and we were doing tens of billions
Speaker 1: dollars a year in bookings and then suddenly go from
Speaker 1: high flying to people predicting is this the end of Airbnb.
Speaker 1: I mean there were multiple mainstream journalists predicting that we
Speaker 1: were going to go out of business. It was almost
Speaker 1: like our business flash before our eyes, and I ended
Speaker 1: up having to confront this reality David that I realized
Speaker 1: we're gonna lose half our business. And so it's like
Speaker 1: running into a burning house if you can only save
Speaker 1: half your furniture, Like and half your stuff, what do
Speaker 1: you take with you? And I said, we're going to
Speaker 1: get back to the original idea of Airbnb, the individual people.
Speaker 1: They are sharing their homes and experiences all over the world.
Speaker 1: We had to make the hard decision I've ever made,
Speaker 1: which we had to lay off of our workforce nearly
Speaker 1: two thousand employees. But I wanted to make sure even
Speaker 1: in a layoff, we could show compassion, to be really principled,
Speaker 1: So we end up giving people a year of healthcare.
Speaker 1: We're I think very chivers our severance. So when you
Speaker 1: went public in December, you priced the I p O
Speaker 1: or the underwriters did at half of the price that
Speaker 1: ultimately ended up that day. So some people might say
Speaker 1: you left twenty three or four billion dollars on the table.
Speaker 1: Do you look at it that way where you think
Speaker 1: it was miss price or you're okay with it. We
Speaker 1: came back from nineteen as a somewhere between on the
Speaker 1: private markets a thirty to forty billion dollar valuation at
Speaker 1: the depth of the pandemic. Our valuation was below eighteen
Speaker 1: billion dollars. I mean, we probably would have struggled to
Speaker 1: raise money at eighteen billion dollar evaluation. We had warrants
Speaker 1: and to be able to be a hundred billion dollar
Speaker 1: company eight months or seven months after that low point.
Speaker 1: It was really hard to imagine any of that was
Speaker 1: going to happen. And I think part of the reason
Speaker 1: our stock popped was I believe we had hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of people in retail trying to buy our stocks.
Speaker 1: So I don't feel bad. I never took the highest
Speaker 1: price in any round. We totally could have priced to hire.
Speaker 1: But it was pretty hard, I think at the time
Speaker 1: to foresee that this was going to be a company
Speaker 1: that was going to reach evaluation like that. Now as
Speaker 1: we talk, you've just reported your earnings for last quarter
Speaker 1: and last year, and they were record earnings, record revenues,
Speaker 1: and so forth. And you said, I think at the
Speaker 1: release that Covid has changed everything. People are changing the
Speaker 1: way they work and the way they travel. Can you
Speaker 1: explain what you mean. I think the world is never
Speaker 1: going back to the way it was fully before the pandemic,
Speaker 1: and one of the changes I think, David, it's been
Speaker 1: a change in how we work. You know, for many people,
Speaker 1: not all, but many people had a job at the office.
Speaker 1: They're not going to be required to come back to
Speaker 1: the office five days a week, and I think that
Speaker 1: I don't think CEOs per se are going to determine
Speaker 1: these policies. I think workers will because all of us CEOs,
Speaker 1: I think, want the best talent, and I think flexibility
Speaker 1: is going to be the second most important benefit after compensation.
Speaker 1: So I think we're now living in a world where
Speaker 1: many people are gonna work remotely. They might go into office,
Speaker 1: but not five days a week. If you don't have
Speaker 1: to go in office five days a week, you're more flexible,
Speaker 1: You're less tethered to anyone's city. And so I think
Speaker 1: what that means is that for millions of people, they
Speaker 1: can now live anywhere. Some people that don't have kids,
Speaker 1: like me, can literally live nomadically. You can stay city
Speaker 1: to city, hopping around. I think a lot of young
Speaker 1: people and retires to do that. All of this, David
Speaker 1: has culminated AIRBB not just being a company about traveling,
Speaker 1: but now a company about living. Half of people don't
Speaker 1: realize is half of our nights booked are for stays
Speaker 1: a longer than a week. A fifth of our knights
Speaker 1: booked are for stays are longer than a month. So
Speaker 1: there's this whole new category of travel that's not classic too.
Speaker 1: Three nights in a city, it's not long term housing,
Speaker 1: and it's completely emerged because of the pandemic. So let's
Speaker 1: go back to your background. For those who don't know
Speaker 1: your background, what part of the United States are you from.
Speaker 1: I'm from a small town in upstate New York called
Speaker 1: Niskey and which is a suburb of Schenectady outside Albany.
Speaker 1: And your parents they were social workers. My mom and
Speaker 1: dad were social workers. Both my grandfather's worked for General Electric,
Speaker 1: but my my mom and dad were kind of lived
Speaker 1: normal lives of social workers. And when you're growing up,
Speaker 1: I understand you wanted to be a hockey play or
Speaker 1: when you were young, Is that true? Yeah? When I
Speaker 1: was five years old that would have been nine six,
Speaker 1: Wayne Gretzky was the greatest hockey player in the world,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to be just like him. I had
Speaker 1: posters and Wayne Gretzky in my wall. The problem with
Speaker 1: athletics is your dreams come crashing down pretty quickly. By
Speaker 1: the age of six, I realized I wasn't gonna be
Speaker 1: Wayne Gretzky. Hey, when that dream went away, you decided
Speaker 1: you might want to be an artist because you had
Speaker 1: good skills in that area exactly. I ended up getting
Speaker 1: a scholarship to go to Ronald School Design, and they
Speaker 1: only gave away a few scholarships, so it was kind
Speaker 1: of a big deal to get the scholarship. And my
Speaker 1: mom said like, well, you know, my mom, Dad, you
Speaker 1: can go to art school, but you've got to promise
Speaker 1: me that you one day get a real job. And
Speaker 1: I said, well, what's a real job. She said, A
Speaker 1: real job is a job that gives you health insurance.
Speaker 1: And I said, okay, I promise I'm gonna go to
Speaker 1: Risdy and one day I'm gonna a real job with
Speaker 1: health insurance. That was kind of my ambition. I mean,
Speaker 1: my high school yearbook quote literally was I'm sure I'll
Speaker 1: amount to nothing. I don't. I think I was being
Speaker 1: kind of sarcastic, but I didn't really think I was
Speaker 1: going to be a tech founder. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't really see very much beyond my small town.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about it. You graduate from Rhode Island
Speaker 1: School Design and then you moved to California, Los Angeles
Speaker 1: to become a designer, So then you ultimately didn't like
Speaker 1: it that much and decided to move to San Francisco.
Speaker 1: Was that right? I liked it for like three months,
Speaker 1: because there's like a thrill when you're a student. Nothing
Speaker 1: you make is real, and you just have this yearning
Speaker 1: that you want to make something that's real, that's not
Speaker 1: a shelf and people pay money for. But then after
Speaker 1: a few months of doing that, maybe a year, I
Speaker 1: kind of remember thinking my I was like twenty four,
Speaker 1: maybe twenty five years old. I remember like feeling like
Speaker 1: I could see the rest of my life and the
Speaker 1: rest of my life look like a road that disappeared
Speaker 1: in the horizon and exactly look exactly like the road
Speaker 1: behind me, and it kind of terrified me. I was like,
Speaker 1: I don't really want to just be a designer. I
Speaker 1: at this point realized, I think I want to be
Speaker 1: an entrepreneur, but I don't know what I'm gonna build
Speaker 1: or what I'm gonna start. And this is now two
Speaker 1: thousand seven, and so I think like the Internet revolution
Speaker 1: was really taking hold. You know, YouTube was just sold
Speaker 1: to Google, it was kind of the biggest company. Facebook
Speaker 1: was rising, the tech had come out, the ashes, the
Speaker 1: dot com crash, and it just felt like the gears
Speaker 1: of the world we're starting to turn in San Francisco,
Speaker 1: and so I just had this premonition that, like, I
Speaker 1: have to come to San Francisco. It's pulling me. Right.
Speaker 1: So you started the company with your roommate Joe, right, yep,
Speaker 1: you brought a third partner in. Yeah, so really not
Speaker 1: long after it was just Joe and I were both designers,
Speaker 1: so we can design a website, but we can't actually
Speaker 1: code and build a website. You need a software engineer
Speaker 1: to do that. And so after we host the three guests,
Speaker 1: I looked at Joe and I said, like, who's the
Speaker 1: best engineer you know? And Joe said, well, it's funny
Speaker 1: you ask, because there was an engineer who used to
Speaker 1: live with me before you moved in the house of
Speaker 1: me named Nate. And so the three of us got
Speaker 1: together and we said, you know what if you could
Speaker 1: build a website where you can book someone's home the
Speaker 1: way you can book a hotel anywhere in the world.
Speaker 1: And that was the original vision. Um, little did I
Speaker 1: know how hard it was going to be to get
Speaker 1: it off the ground, but that was a pretty simple idea.
Speaker 1: So as you look back on what you've built, what
Speaker 1: would you say is the best decision you made, and
Speaker 1: what was the biggest regret you had have so far,
Speaker 1: and what you do, what you built. The most important
Speaker 1: piece of advice I ever got was when I first
Speaker 1: started Airbnb. It was actually Paul Graham. He told me something.
Speaker 1: He said, it's better to have a hundred people love
Speaker 1: your service then have a million people that are kind
Speaker 1: of like your service but a little apathetic. He should
Speaker 1: start with a small group and perfect your product. Do
Speaker 1: things that don't scale, turn them to advocates. Because of
Speaker 1: those hundred people love your service, they're gonna tell everyone
Speaker 1: about them. They're gonna become your marketing And it's easy
Speaker 1: to improve your service when you only have a hundred customers.
Speaker 1: When you have a million customers, really hard to change it.
Speaker 1: And so do things that don't scale, go above and beyond.
Speaker 1: And that was something we did, and I think that
Speaker 1: really helped explain why we're so successful. I think the
Speaker 1: biggest mistake I made was when you're in your twenties
Speaker 1: and you never imagine being an entrepreneur and suddenly you're
Speaker 1: a multibillion dollar company and somebody gives you billions of
Speaker 1: dollars and you hit on something that's hugely successful. You
Speaker 1: tend to start to believe that you can do anything,
Speaker 1: and you try to do everything, and you try to
Speaker 1: do everything at the same time. And before the pandemic,
Speaker 1: we had like ten divisions and we were extending all
Speaker 1: different places. And in hindsight, I think having too much
Speaker 1: money is sometimes worse than having not enough money, because
Speaker 1: I think not having enough money creates constraints, It creates discipline,
Speaker 1: it creates focus, It forces you to create trade offs.
Speaker 1: I think when corporations and start ups to get over capitalized,
Speaker 1: they can avoid making tough decisions. The accountability goes down.
Speaker 1: There's a real sense of complacency that goes into the company.
Speaker 1: And I think a little that lack of focus happened
Speaker 1: Airbnb before the pandemic. So you have a lot of
Speaker 1: mentors that have helped you over the years. How did
Speaker 1: you get to know Barack Obama? Is he's staying at
Speaker 1: airbnbach he has stayed in the Airbnb is actually um.
Speaker 1: You might recall that UM we lifted the embargo in
Speaker 1: Cuba when he was president. President Obama end up going
Speaker 1: to Havana, Cuba, and he wanted to bring American businesses
Speaker 1: with him to show that business is now open between
Speaker 1: US and Cuba. Well, the problem is there weren't really
Speaker 1: any of US businesses in Cuba except for Airbnb. So
Speaker 1: I went with him to Havannah. I got to know
Speaker 1: him and we kept in touch, and so I think
Speaker 1: it was just helpful to have somebody who could help
Speaker 1: me see the world in a broader away and just
Speaker 1: think a little more systematically about my decisions and the
Speaker 1: consequences that we would have on society. So that's where
Speaker 1: how he became very helpful to me. Now, as I
Speaker 1: understand that you're spending a year or so going to Airbnb,
Speaker 1: is around the United States, Yeah, most of the United
Speaker 1: States kind of reasonable time zone. So when you want
Speaker 1: to book an Airbnb, do you have a trouble getting
Speaker 1: a place where you want to go or no? I
Speaker 1: you know, there's six million homes to choose from, so
Speaker 1: I've got more than enough options. I don't really say
Speaker 1: who I am, Um, I you know, and I think
Speaker 1: sometimes they find out, sometimes they don't, but um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I kind of his book last minute. I was in Atlanta, Nashville, UM, Charleston,
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, now Miami. I need ideas for where to
Speaker 1: go next. So when you book when an Airbnb, do
Speaker 1: you do it yourself or you have a team of
Speaker 1: people that pick it for you. I do it myself.
Speaker 1: I I gotta I gotta see whatever else is doing.
Speaker 1: I mean, I always feel like people who build great
Speaker 1: products ideally are building products they themselves want to use.
Speaker 1: I also think there's only so many things you see
Speaker 1: in the data. You have to like just have a
Speaker 1: feel for the product, and so I try to use
Speaker 1: it as much as I can. I always wonder who
Speaker 1: sets the rate? Do you set the rate and airbnbad
Speaker 1: or is they host set the rate? And do you
Speaker 1: negotiate rates? No? No, no host sets rate. They can
Speaker 1: charge whatever they want from ten dollars a ten thousand
Speaker 1: dollars a night or beyond. And you know, we have
Speaker 1: people renting luxury villas that are incredible, like Luxy villas,
Speaker 1: and then we people renting like, you know, little spaces
Speaker 1: in their backyard. I mean we had in two thousand
Speaker 1: nine a member when we first launched, we had people
Speaker 1: renting spaces under their kitchen table because they kind of thought, oh,
Speaker 1: it's space. I can rent any kind of space. So
Speaker 1: it's kind of everything from a couch to a castle
Speaker 1: and everything in between. And they set the rate and
Speaker 1: we basically take So when you stay at a place,
Speaker 1: do you ever call up the host and say, by
Speaker 1: the way, you're charging too much or charging not enough.
Speaker 1: I try to give feedback less on the value, but
Speaker 1: more on the kind of hospitality. Like sometimes like a
Speaker 1: host will want me to like, you know, like go
Speaker 1: through some like they'll give me like a rental contract
Speaker 1: because we used to doing on other websites, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: Airbnb is a contract. You don't need to do this, um,
Speaker 1: But it would be pretty weird to be a tech
Speaker 1: founder of Airbnb and saying, hey, I think you're overcharging me.
Speaker 1: It would just kind of send a slightly weird message.
Speaker 1: But I try to give them feedback. And we have
Speaker 1: a review system. Guest and host review each other at
Speaker 1: the end of day. So I've tried to write a
Speaker 1: pretty detailed review for every host. I I try to
Speaker 1: be positive but honest about the reviews. But you signed
Speaker 1: b C or Brian Ky, Brian Sewsky, so they know
Speaker 1: by the time I leave review who I am. I'd
Speaker 1: say half the time they know who I am when
Speaker 1: I book either half of I don't like I don't
Speaker 1: want to be a secret shopper where I'm like lying
Speaker 1: to them and then booking under a pseudonym. But I
Speaker 1: also don't want to tell them who I am, like
Speaker 1: I'm expecting special treatment, because then I'm not going to
Speaker 1: get the real experience. So be half the time I
Speaker 1: know they know who I am. Half they don't. But
Speaker 1: it's a pretty fun experience. You're forty years old. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so at forty you've already achieved more wealth and almost
Speaker 1: anybody could possibly imagine. Have you thought about stepping back
Speaker 1: and smelling the roses or doing something else with all
Speaker 1: the money you have? No, I I feel like I'm
Speaker 1: just it's really just getting fun now. I mean it
Speaker 1: was fun when I started, and then like there was
Speaker 1: this like corporate adolescence was it was kind of painful,
Speaker 1: the growing of the company. But I'm having so much
Speaker 1: fun right now. And if I were to step back,
Speaker 1: I'd probably only do that to start another company, to
Speaker 1: spend another ten years just to get back to this place.
Speaker 1: So when you've got a good thing going, you want
Speaker 1: to keep going. And I just feel like, you know,
Speaker 1: I have so much I still want to do with
Speaker 1: the company. I think there's like a lot of loneliness
Speaker 1: in the world, and I think part of our bigger
Speaker 1: contributions to help try to bring people together around the
Speaker 1: world living communities. So that's what I'm focused on now.
Speaker 1: The company that I started and built had to partners
Speaker 1: with me for the entire thirty plus years and we're
Speaker 1: still together. It's hard to have three people work together
Speaker 1: for a long time. You've had three people working together
Speaker 1: for quite some time as well. Don't you ever have
Speaker 1: fights with each other or get jealousies or how do
Speaker 1: you work together? So so well, it's a great question, David. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're one of the only companies in the
Speaker 1: world as valuable as we are intact to have three
Speaker 1: founders have been together for fourteen years. I think it's
Speaker 1: a couple of things. Number One, I'm really lucky because
Speaker 1: I had the gift of having two incredible co founders
Speaker 1: that are really high integrit and you always put the
Speaker 1: company before themselves, and they were very supportive of me
Speaker 1: as CEO. But the other thing is we had a
Speaker 1: principle we said we're never gonna allow being right to
Speaker 1: get in front of the relationship, like if you try
Speaker 1: to be so principal that you try to win every
Speaker 1: single argument, you'll kind of see the trees and lose
Speaker 1: the forest, Which is say that we knew this company
Speaker 1: would only survive. It had a really strong founding team
Speaker 1: attack and that mean that occasionally each of us are
Speaker 1: going to have to kind of make compromises. So we
Speaker 1: tried to never let debates go so far that winning
Speaker 1: an argument got in the way of the relationship. I
Speaker 1: think that made a big difference. So on philanthropy, giving
Speaker 1: away money sounds like it's easy, but it takes time
Speaker 1: to do it. Well, so how are you thinking about that?
Speaker 1: Are there certain areas you to give away some of
Speaker 1: the money you've committed to the the given way half of
Speaker 1: your net worth, but you you know you have to
Speaker 1: take time to do it. So for me, I wanted
Speaker 1: to join the Giving Pledge in my thirties because I thought,
Speaker 1: you know, the main reason was even though it wasn't
Speaker 1: at that point ready to give away all my money,
Speaker 1: I did want to send an example if if it
Speaker 1: takestent that I could for the next intern entrepreneurs. You
Speaker 1: know that, like you know, it's it's like redistribute the
Speaker 1: majority of wealth back to society seemed like a reasonable
Speaker 1: thing to do was better for everyone, But I didn't
Speaker 1: know what I wanted to focus on. I did write
Speaker 1: in my giving pledge letter, though, that one of the
Speaker 1: issues that I want to focus on is just helping
Speaker 1: maybe create scholarship programs helping young kids like me. You know,
Speaker 1: I wasn't I wasn't poor, I wasn't underprivileged. I was
Speaker 1: just kind of obscure middle class. But had it not
Speaker 1: been for a series of people in my lifetime, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be here talking to you today. You would have
Speaker 1: just never met herd of me, and I would have
Speaker 1: never left my town. And so I think that so
Speaker 1: many kids have untapped potential like me that their teachers
Speaker 1: would have never probably get predicted, would have had the
Speaker 1: journey that I've had. And I want to help kids
Speaker 1: see their unrealized potential and maybe help them change reject
Speaker 1: their lives. So that's maybe one area I'm passionate about,
Speaker 1: but make no mistake, there's a lot of other things
Speaker 1: I like to learn about and be able to help.
Speaker 1: The final question for somebody that's young, younger than you,
Speaker 1: if they want to be the next Brian Schowsky, what
Speaker 1: is the advice about how you would recommend they build
Speaker 1: a company. I would say a couple of things. The
Speaker 1: first thing I'd say is, don't listen to your parents.
Speaker 1: Don't take career advice and your parents. I love my parents.
Speaker 1: They want what's best for me. But you know, like
Speaker 1: your parents, um, and when I use parents or proxy
Speaker 1: for anyone, and when wise and old, most of them
Speaker 1: are gonna try to talk you out of crazy things.
Speaker 1: But sometimes the crazy ideas are the ones that do
Speaker 1: kind of spread around the world. The second thing I'd
Speaker 1: say is probably solve your own problem. A lot of
Speaker 1: people are looking for markets. We weren't looking to go
Speaker 1: into a good market. We were just trying to solve
Speaker 1: our own problem. If you solve your own problem, you
Speaker 1: may have just solved the problem for millions of other people.
Speaker 1: And it might be quite marketable and monetize herble, you know.
Speaker 1: I think last thing I'd say is just like, focus
Speaker 1: on on on, focus on love. It sounds like a
Speaker 1: weird thing, but I think a business is really simple.
Speaker 1: And build a prop company people love working for that
Speaker 1: creates something people love consuming or using. I just think
Speaker 1: it's I don't want to say it's so simple, but
Speaker 1: it kind of is all comes back to passion. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening to hear more of my interviews. You can
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Speaker 1: you listen