Speaker 1: The heart and soul of the company isn't about houses,
Speaker 1: It's about people. I always want to be a tech
Speaker 1: company that had like heart at the center of the
Speaker 1: company and creativity, not bits and bites. During your travels,
Speaker 1: I'm sure many of you listeners have booked an Airbnb,
Speaker 1: one of those residential properties made available for short term rental.
Speaker 1: Officially launched in March of two thousand and eight, Airbnb
Speaker 1: has become a major player in the hospitality business around
Speaker 1: the world. Brian Chesky is the co founder and CEO
Speaker 1: of the wildly popular and successful San Francisco based company.
Speaker 1: Although under his picture in his high school yearbook, Brian
Speaker 1: wrote the caption I'm sure I'll amount to nothing. Brian
Speaker 1: sure has. In two and fifteen he was named one
Speaker 1: of Times one hundred most Influential People Alive, and today
Speaker 1: his publicly traded company is worth close to how much
Speaker 1: Brian I guess eighty billion dollars and continues to grow
Speaker 1: and at the ripe old age of forty one, I
Speaker 1: hope that you are taking advantage of your vast success
Speaker 1: and enjoying your life. Yes, thank you very much. So.
Speaker 1: He's joining me today from my farm in Bedford New York.
Speaker 1: He just flew in from Boston and we want to
Speaker 1: talk about his road to success with Airbnb. The business
Speaker 1: of being in business is Brian Chesky, thanks very much
Speaker 1: for joining me today. Brian, Well, thank you Martha for
Speaker 1: having me. I've looked forward to meeting you for a
Speaker 1: long time. You went to Rhode Island School of Design.
Speaker 1: Many At one time when I started my company, about
Speaker 1: ten years into the development of Martha Stewart Living, I
Speaker 1: was the largest employer of Rhode Island School of Design graduates.
Speaker 1: I remember that when I was at Risdie. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was a big theater program. Yeah, it was. It was
Speaker 1: so great. We and we still have many of the
Speaker 1: graduates working for us. Kevin Sharkey, Hodzan a house there,
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of my employees went to
Speaker 1: Rhode Island. Why why Risdy Well, Um, it was just
Speaker 1: it was just and I don't want to say factory,
Speaker 1: but it was the It was a fabulous school for
Speaker 1: the developing of the crafty, the artistic, the photo graphic on.
Speaker 1: So many different fields are studied at Rhode Island School
Speaker 1: of Design, and the school attracts the most talented of
Speaker 1: people interested in all of that yeah, and so we
Speaker 1: found lots and lots and lots of great employees and
Speaker 1: I'm in touch with lots of them. And oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh and you did you what did you study there? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So I, um, well, I'll just go back. My I'm
Speaker 1: from by the way. Um being on your Being on
Speaker 1: your podcast today is definitely a highlight for me, and
Speaker 1: highlight even maybe more for my mom because I have
Speaker 1: a lot of memories growing up of you being on
Speaker 1: television and like all your magazines in our house and
Speaker 1: and then yeah, so I got to Risdy. I'm from
Speaker 1: upstate New York. Just a little bit of background my
Speaker 1: social workers growing up. I remember my mom like, tell
Speaker 1: me one time I was like in high school. I
Speaker 1: think it was like thirteen four maybe I was fourteen
Speaker 1: years old, and she said she told me something I
Speaker 1: was stay in the backyard of her house. She said,
Speaker 1: I chose a job for the love as a social worker,
Speaker 1: and I ended up making no money. So you should
Speaker 1: choose a job that pays you a lot of money.
Speaker 1: And one day I tell my mom, I said, I've
Speaker 1: realized what I'm want to do in my life. I
Speaker 1: want to be an artist. And she's, oh, my God,
Speaker 1: you managed to pick the only field that will pay
Speaker 1: less than a social worker. Like, You're gonna literally get
Speaker 1: paid nothing and live in my basement. I said, no, Mom,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna like get a job. And she goes, if
Speaker 1: you get a job, has to be a real job.
Speaker 1: And I go, what's a real job. She goes, A
Speaker 1: real job's a job with health insurance. So anyways, I'm
Speaker 1: in high school and I discover, like you know that,
Speaker 1: like I just have this passion for art and design,
Speaker 1: and so I go to Risdie and I get to
Speaker 1: Risdy and by the time I get to campus, I
Speaker 1: kind of I'm really like an fine artist at the point,
Speaker 1: I'm like an a drawer, a painter, and I come
Speaker 1: to inclusion, I'm almost like born a hundred years too
Speaker 1: late for what I want to do because the oldestration
Speaker 1: I'm doing is starting to be replaced by photography. And
Speaker 1: freshman year, you have to pick this major. And so
Speaker 1: I'm like seventeen years old. Maybe I just turned eighteen.
Speaker 1: I already decided I was going to be an artist
Speaker 1: or designer. Now you got to pick what type of
Speaker 1: thing I'm going to do the rest of my life.
Speaker 1: I don't even know and every you know, as you know,
Speaker 1: there were eighteen majors. Every department head at pitches to
Speaker 1: like go into the department. You know, there's architect surecraftic design,
Speaker 1: there's furniture, there's jewelry, there's you know, you can kind
Speaker 1: of textile, textile, ceramics. And then there was this field
Speaker 1: called industrial design. And before risde I never heard of it.
Speaker 1: And I remember the department heads something said something like
Speaker 1: industrial design is the design of everything from a toothbrush
Speaker 1: to a spaceship and kind of everything in between. And
Speaker 1: when I heard that, I realized, that is exactly what
Speaker 1: I want to do. You know, you can zoe like,
Speaker 1: you can do like you can work for you Martha
Speaker 1: Stewart living, you can do medical design, you can toy design,
Speaker 1: you can do fashion, you can do like equipment you
Speaker 1: computer design, computer. I mean like the design like everything
Speaker 1: Apple design was industrial design, and it was really the
Speaker 1: intersection of technology and like kind of crafts and materials manufacturing.
Speaker 1: It's one of the few design fields where you're responsible
Speaker 1: for whether the thing you make sells. If you're an architect,
Speaker 1: it's really not your problem with the building's not least
Speaker 1: if you're a designer, Your practicesn't sell, it's a real problem.
Speaker 1: What was your big project over So I did a
Speaker 1: couple of things, probably two. One. I spent a semester
Speaker 1: at MIT, so they had this product development program MIT Sloan,
Speaker 1: and you basically had got assigned like an everyday household
Speaker 1: item and you had to reinvent it. You're on a
Speaker 1: team with electrical and mechanical engineers from MIT, and of
Speaker 1: course you're the designer. And we came up with this
Speaker 1: like thing for Starbucks. It was never a manufacturer, was
Speaker 1: like a sugar dispenser, but it was really cool and
Speaker 1: it was a teaspoon sugar comes out. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: probably half a teaspoon, so you could get a little
Speaker 1: bit more precision. And it was just like I thought,
Speaker 1: really nice, beautiful, like kind of elegant solution. But it
Speaker 1: was the first time I had worked really closely with
Speaker 1: like mechanical engineers and you know, and they were electrical engineers,
Speaker 1: but we didn't we did not make our product like
Speaker 1: electric electricity based, and so that was cool. And then
Speaker 1: my senior year, I was very interested in like health
Speaker 1: and this is like you know, obviously way before the iPhone,
Speaker 1: and I had this idea of, like, we know all
Speaker 1: this information about our stocks, we know all these information
Speaker 1: about our personal finances, we know this information about like
Speaker 1: the sports teams. Why don't we know the information about
Speaker 1: the most important thing we have, which is our own bodies.
Speaker 1: And so I try to design this like health and
Speaker 1: fitness program where it could basically track your like biometrics,
Speaker 1: and it could basically be like a virtual personal trainer.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of apps now in the app
Speaker 1: store that kind of do this stuff. But this was
Speaker 1: two thousand and four, way before any of this technology revolution.
Speaker 1: So I graduate Risdy, I'm like, I don't know what
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do in my life. I want to go
Speaker 1: to California. I couldn't tell you different between LA and SF.
Speaker 1: Never been either place. I vaguely knew there might have
Speaker 1: been a different but California represented a frontier. It represented
Speaker 1: a place where like kind of I guess dreams come
Speaker 1: true and you could like make anything in your life.
Speaker 1: And I always thought, look, California, it's not what you've done,
Speaker 1: but what you will do. And I'm like, well, I
Speaker 1: haven't done anything. And I go to LA and I
Speaker 1: get a job as an industrial designer. It's this little firm,
Speaker 1: and you know, because we're a small firm, it turned
Speaker 1: out to be a blessing in disguise because we had
Speaker 1: we worked with clients with small budgets. So basically we
Speaker 1: worked with startups we weren't. We weren't working with like
Speaker 1: we weren't like Ideo, working with like Procter and Gamble,
Speaker 1: which would have been prestigious but would not have prepared
Speaker 1: me for entrepreneur show. I remember one time I got
Speaker 1: assigned a project to be on a reality TV show.
Speaker 1: Was the craziest thing. Like Simon Cowell had just done
Speaker 1: American Idol. He did a spinoff called American Inventor, which
Speaker 1: is basically a precursor to Shark Tank. And my boss
Speaker 1: one day comes in to me in my office. He said,
Speaker 1: you're going to be on a reality TV show and
Speaker 1: I'm like I am. He goes, yes, you are, because
Speaker 1: ABC has like hired us, and you're going to be
Speaker 1: assigned a contestant and you have to design this product
Speaker 1: for this contestant. And so they were competing with the apprentices.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, oh yeah, yes exactly. So I got assigned
Speaker 1: a magician who had an idea for a better toilet seat,
Speaker 1: and so that's that's like what I'm like. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I remember, I'm like twenty four now, maybe twenty five
Speaker 1: years old. I'm designing this toilet seat for a magician
Speaker 1: on reality television. It was just a toilet seat that
Speaker 1: was meant to be more hygienic by like when you
Speaker 1: flush it, it seals everything, so everything's more sanitary. It's
Speaker 1: probably maybe it's a good idea, um, but I just
Speaker 1: kind of thought like, wow, like I gotta this is
Speaker 1: this is you gotta start somewhere. But I remember at
Speaker 1: this point my life was like I'm in a car
Speaker 1: and the road in front of me looks exactly the
Speaker 1: road behind me, and I'm like, this is not my life.
Speaker 1: I've got to make a change. So I'm in La.
Speaker 1: The tech revolution is basically happening. Facebook is taking off.
Speaker 1: YouTube was just sold to Google, and I kind of
Speaker 1: felt like the gears of the world are turning. In
Speaker 1: San Francisco, my friend from Risdy named Joe was living
Speaker 1: in San Francisco and he's been telling me for like
Speaker 1: a year or now, like come to San Francisco where
Speaker 1: it's happening. It's where it's happening. So finally I'm like
Speaker 1: all right, by the way, Like I was, I was
Speaker 1: making forty thousand dollars a year entry level designer. I
Speaker 1: had no savings. I think I had like a thousand
Speaker 1: dollars of the bank. So one day, this is now
Speaker 1: October two thousand and seven, I packed everything in a
Speaker 1: back of old Honda Civic and I drive up to
Speaker 1: San Francisco. I even had like rolled up like a
Speaker 1: foam mattress into my backseat with duct tape. I get
Speaker 1: to San Francisco and my now roommate, Joe Gebbia, who's
Speaker 1: not my co founder, tells me that our rent is
Speaker 1: check is due and the rent check is one one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty dollars, so I don't have enough money
Speaker 1: to pay rent. Well, it turns out that weekend and
Speaker 1: international Design conference was coming to San Francisco and all
Speaker 1: the hotels were sold out, and we had this idea.
Speaker 1: We said, well, what if we just turned our house
Speaker 1: into a bed and breakfast for the design conference. Unfortunately
Speaker 1: I didn't have any beds, just literally moved up there,
Speaker 1: but Joe had three airbeds in his closet, so we
Speaker 1: pulled the airbeds out of the closet. We inflated them
Speaker 1: and we called the Airbed and Breakfast dot com and
Speaker 1: that's where the name comes from. And if you told
Speaker 1: me back then, I'd be telling the story like a
Speaker 1: thousand times. I'd be like, you're crazy. But we ended
Speaker 1: up hosting three people that weekend, a thirty five year
Speaker 1: old woman from Boston, a forty five father or five
Speaker 1: from Utah, and the third year old from India, and
Speaker 1: something Martha kind of crazy happened. The expected thing that
Speaker 1: happen is we were able to pay a rent. But
Speaker 1: the unexpected thing to happen is when three people live
Speaker 1: you for a week, it's not unusual for you to
Speaker 1: become friends with them. And I wasn't expecting to make friends,
Speaker 1: but you took like a two year relationship and we
Speaker 1: compressed it. And the thing about hosting, and I had like,
Speaker 1: I had no idea what you were saying in the house.
Speaker 1: Also I was there with him and basically I didn't
Speaker 1: just like, like, we made them breakfast. It was not
Speaker 1: a fancy breakfast. It was like pop tarts and like
Speaker 1: orange juice, and we gave them like a map to
Speaker 1: the city. But we actually like took them around the city.
Speaker 1: They got to feel like there were a local designer
Speaker 1: San Francisco. So unlike staying at a hotel, this was
Speaker 1: kind of like staying with a friend from out of town.
Speaker 1: And we basically took them around the city, hung out
Speaker 1: with them. And by the way, the thing I realized
Speaker 1: is I had fun too. And there's something about hosting,
Speaker 1: and I didn't know anything about this, that when you're hosting,
Speaker 1: it's like this really sacred relationship you have where a traveler,
Speaker 1: where a guest is like, you know, they're kind of
Speaker 1: they're they're vulnerable, they're putting themselves into your trust and
Speaker 1: you feel that and you also feel like your life
Speaker 1: is on display and you want to like show your
Speaker 1: best foot forward. You're like, this is my life, this
Speaker 1: is my house. And so there's this really like deep
Speaker 1: bond when you're hosting somebody that I took for granted
Speaker 1: and that was the genesis of airbnb. So whould you
Speaker 1: do for sheets and towels? It was. It was rough.
Speaker 1: We weren't the best. I mean, I'm gonna be honest.
Speaker 1: We were good hosts in so far that it was fun.
Speaker 1: You were hanging out, but but we were broke twenty
Speaker 1: four year old. So yeah, we like we had a
Speaker 1: bunch of we had sheets laid out on an airbed,
Speaker 1: we had a stack of towels because I wanted to
Speaker 1: feel like I was like a real hospitality company. But
Speaker 1: we were also renting air beds on a floor, so
Speaker 1: it was a nice stucta position. I remember one point,
Speaker 1: I see a forty five year old father five. He's
Speaker 1: like a Mormon from Utah, and he's sleeping on an
Speaker 1: air bed in our living room and it was just
Speaker 1: like a funny image. You know, it's like, wow, this
Speaker 1: is funny. But they had a good experience. A well,
Speaker 1: that's the important thing. So did you know then that
Speaker 1: that was going to evolve into Airbnb. I remember Martha
Speaker 1: saying this is going to be huge. One day, a
Speaker 1: thousand people are going to do this, And that was
Speaker 1: my idea of huge. So no, I mean I thought
Speaker 1: we were always one or two steps ahead, but not
Speaker 1: like a thousand steps ahead. And how could you ever
Speaker 1: have imagined that inflating three air mattresses one weekend to
Speaker 1: make rent would lead to what it is today. It's
Speaker 1: now been used a billion a half times is a
Speaker 1: billion a half. We have the equivalent of the population
Speaker 1: of Los Angeles living together every single night. Never in
Speaker 1: human history has nearly every country in the world lived
Speaker 1: together like today. And obviously the lot happened between then
Speaker 1: and now. How is that a lot lot more than
Speaker 1: staying in hotels or how what's the equivalent. I don't
Speaker 1: know what the total inventory of a Hilton or Marriott is.
Speaker 1: Maybe they can house like a million people a night,
Speaker 1: so and we can house you know, up to four
Speaker 1: million people a night or million a night on a
Speaker 1: big night wide worldwide. Where aren't you in the world,
Speaker 1: That's a great question. It's easier to say where we aren't.
Speaker 1: We're not in North Korea. They have no internet. We're
Speaker 1: not in Iran for regulations. We're not in I don't
Speaker 1: think we're in Crimea. We pulled out of Russian Belarus
Speaker 1: and we're not in I don't think we're in South Sudan.
Speaker 1: We were and still are one of the most global
Speaker 1: companies in the world. We're one of the biggest businesses
Speaker 1: in Cuba. We're one of the biggest American businesses in Brazil.
Speaker 1: We have a robust business in Japan, Korea. You know,
Speaker 1: kind of nearly My Ecuadorian driver has four Airbnb's in
Speaker 1: his hometown in Ecuador. They run it via the internet
Speaker 1: and they live here. They run it there and they
Speaker 1: go back down every so often to check on everything
Speaker 1: and make sure it's all up to part. But it's
Speaker 1: so interesting to see young entrepreneurs developing inside your company.
Speaker 1: You know, it's kind of crazy, Marth that we have
Speaker 1: nearly four and a half million host that are hosting.
Speaker 1: Last year, our host earn more than sixty billion dollars. Wow.
Speaker 1: In the majority of them, we're women, which is also
Speaker 1: pretty cool. So it's a nice way to make a
Speaker 1: second income. It's a nice way to a first income.
Speaker 1: Some people do a first income. And the cool thing
Speaker 1: is like if you start hosting, like people are shocked
Speaker 1: to how well it works. The average person who gets
Speaker 1: a booking book gets a book and within three days
Speaker 1: of listing, And I think it gives people a lot
Speaker 1: of pride. I mean, there's something about, like, in this
Speaker 1: world where we're spending more and more time online, it
Speaker 1: feels like the more time we spend online, the internet
Speaker 1: had this promise to bring us all together and build community.
Speaker 1: But there's something about like face to face connection that
Speaker 1: I I think airbomy brings. It gets us offline from
Speaker 1: the Internet. It's a very like old fashioned idea with
Speaker 1: new technology. It kind of brings out the best in
Speaker 1: everyone because I think to be a host, you know
Speaker 1: better than anyone, is to care for someone else, to
Speaker 1: anticipate their needs, to put your life on display, and
Speaker 1: to be able to democratize that idea to get millions
Speaker 1: of people, you know, for every like eleven dollars spent
Speaker 1: in the world, I think the last I saw about
Speaker 1: a dollar spent on Airbnb. So it's a very ubiquitous
Speaker 1: idea now. But people thought this idea was crazy. I remember,
Speaker 1: I remember when it first came out. I thought, I
Speaker 1: wonder would I ever do that? I've never I have
Speaker 1: never actually rented any of my properties. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: just I guess I just think, uh, you know, first
Speaker 1: of all, I don't have much time to do that, yes,
Speaker 1: but oh should I really do that? But every one
Speaker 1: of my family members is stayed in an Airbi ever
Speaker 1: stayed in one yet though no I have not. My
Speaker 1: daughter is avid airbnber and they're they're going back on Airbnb.
Speaker 1: There you go. Yeah, it's really well. I think that
Speaker 1: like you are the quintessential host. Yeah, and and there's
Speaker 1: something actually it is funny, like I I started hosting
Speaker 1: recently and again because that was the first host in Airbnb,
Speaker 1: and it hadn't occurred to me at a like host
Speaker 1: for the last few years. But I started hosting again
Speaker 1: last year. I decided, I'm gonna put my home on
Speaker 1: Airbnb for fun. Now, where's your home? My home is
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, so I live right near Dolores Park
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, lovely, and I was gonna, like, you know,
Speaker 1: how do you charge a night at your home? I
Speaker 1: charged zero dollars a night. I couldn't figure out what
Speaker 1: to charge, and I thought, well, I'm not doing this
Speaker 1: for money, so how do you get it? How do
Speaker 1: you get your home? It's more like it's more like
Speaker 1: you have to be online at the right time and
Speaker 1: then it's available. But he pops up and then you
Speaker 1: book it. I've had three guests stay with me and
Speaker 1: and um, so you know, I would think every pretty
Speaker 1: eligible girl in America would be putting in for that.
Speaker 1: I'm still waiting for those guests, but but I had
Speaker 1: it was mostly guys. It's been guys. Book Ban is
Speaker 1: not married, girls, and he is forty one years old,
Speaker 1: and he is a multi billionaire. And actually he's really
Speaker 1: cute and he is beautiful teeth and a nice smile.
Speaker 1: Oh girls, oh my god. Well let me tell you
Speaker 1: about Mike. You never got to airbnb your house again?
Speaker 1: I know, now I gotta now embarrass um. No, but
Speaker 1: when I when people stay with me, Um, the theme
Speaker 1: is beyond the airbed because I basically it's a theme
Speaker 1: of the original Airbnb. So you come into my house
Speaker 1: and I decorated my guest room with old photos when
Speaker 1: I started the company, you know, like I basically give
Speaker 1: him on a tour at the original Airbnb. We make
Speaker 1: dinner together the first night. I think it's really cool
Speaker 1: to like sharon meal together and cook. But I can't
Speaker 1: actually cook. So um, but I make cookies. I make
Speaker 1: this special chocook cookies. I call him Chesky's chips. They've
Speaker 1: been a family recipe for um. You know, send me
Speaker 1: the recipe I would, Oh, I got off Google. It's
Speaker 1: a great recipe. So um, I should have made you
Speaker 1: some cookies. But that's a high standard. And so and
Speaker 1: then the next day I take them on a tour
Speaker 1: of the office. When you step into someone's home or
Speaker 1: their office, you kind of step into their mind, into
Speaker 1: like a thousands of decisions that they made, and like,
Speaker 1: I could talk to you for hours, but I don't
Speaker 1: quite understand you to the extent that I step into
Speaker 1: your space because I see your books, your designed decisions,
Speaker 1: like everything, and it's really cool. Oh this is our studio.
Speaker 1: You're sitting in my TV studio. Okay, well I like it,
Speaker 1: which is used for some of our cooking SHOWSS and
Speaker 1: some of our gardening shows. But it is it is
Speaker 1: interesting that you actually let the guests stay in your
Speaker 1: own home. It's not like you've gone away for the weekend. Now.
Speaker 1: People thought it was kind of crazy. Good to my mom,
Speaker 1: She's like, what you're gonna like? I feel like she
Speaker 1: was trying to stage an intervention quietly with my team,
Speaker 1: like are you serious you're gonna have strangers in your house?
Speaker 1: But it actually, I know it sounds crazy, but the
Speaker 1: whole point of airbnb is it's not crazy because they're
Speaker 1: not strangers. But are most people renting out extra rooms
Speaker 1: or are they renting out an additional room in an
Speaker 1: addition on their house. What's the most used scenario. Is
Speaker 1: it like the apartment over the garage. What is the
Speaker 1: most used scenario is somebody renting the house they're living
Speaker 1: and when they're not there, or a second home that
Speaker 1: they live in some of the time. Okay, so that's
Speaker 1: the most common use. Yes, Now we started as a
Speaker 1: raid to rent a room in your house while you're there.
Speaker 1: That's kind of the original Airbnb idea. And now you've
Speaker 1: got more enterprising people that are managing multiple properties like
Speaker 1: this gentleman equator. Right, Yeah, if you own three or
Speaker 1: four properties and you can make more money renting them
Speaker 1: day to day than to by the month or a year.
Speaker 1: And the basic idea of airbnb is you get to
Speaker 1: like travel and live like a local. So when you've
Speaker 1: got this this, this light bulb went off. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you were having these people sleeping on air mattresses. How
Speaker 1: long from that moment to raising the first funds for
Speaker 1: actually starting up your company? And along the way, of course,
Speaker 1: you said your partner that traveled with you to San
Speaker 1: Francisco as your first founding partner. Yeah, do you have
Speaker 1: other two founders? So it was the other one. So
Speaker 1: Joe is my first one. And then only a few
Speaker 1: months later. We didn't really do much for the first
Speaker 1: few months, and then Joe and I are realizing we're
Speaker 1: ordinary guys. So I bet you there's a lot of
Speaker 1: other ordinary people like us. They want to make some
Speaker 1: extra money. Me cool people. So I asked Joe, I said,
Speaker 1: who's the best engineer you know, software engineer, because we're
Speaker 1: both designers from Risty, And he said, well, my old
Speaker 1: roommate in Serviancisco, Nate Is, And Nate joined us, and
Speaker 1: the three of us got together and we said, what
Speaker 1: if we can build a website where you can book
Speaker 1: someone's home the way you can book a hotel anywhere
Speaker 1: in the world. And I remember telling somebody about this idea.
Speaker 1: The first person I told this idea idea, he said Brian.
Speaker 1: I said, yes, He goes, I hope that's not the
Speaker 1: only idea you're working on. And I go why, He goes,
Speaker 1: this is crazy. Strangers are never going to stay with
Speaker 1: other strangers. And I remember saying, they're not going to
Speaker 1: be strangers, right. The whole point is you're going to
Speaker 1: be able to virtually meet them because we're going to
Speaker 1: design a system of trust where both sides have profiles,
Speaker 1: both sides will review each other. We're gonna verify people's
Speaker 1: in't at any we're gonna have twenty four seven support,
Speaker 1: and we have all these different safety protocols. And that's
Speaker 1: really the secret sauce of Arabia. And you thought about
Speaker 1: that from the very beginning, because this was the objection.
Speaker 1: And I think the idea is like, it's actually not
Speaker 1: that crazy once you get used to it. Like an
Speaker 1: hour ago, we didn't know each other, and now we do,
Speaker 1: and you can get to know somebody pretty quickly, and
Speaker 1: you can bring a lot of signals online about people
Speaker 1: and really bring them to life. And I think that's
Speaker 1: one of my missions is to make sure that like,
Speaker 1: like there aren't strange in the world, just people you
Speaker 1: haven't met yet. And I think that you know, we're
Speaker 1: more alike than we are different. If we can use
Speaker 1: hosting to remind people that, I think the world will
Speaker 1: be a lot smarter place. So you developed the concept,
Speaker 1: you hit one engineer and two designers. So now it's
Speaker 1: March two thousand and eight. We found the company basically,
Speaker 1: and we launch for south By Southwest in two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight, and we get two bookings, and I was
Speaker 1: one of the two bookings. So at this point we're like,
Speaker 1: all right, this is not really taking off. It's still
Speaker 1: not working. So we try one more time using a
Speaker 1: mat if we remember summer two thousand and eight, what's
Speaker 1: happening presidential election? Barack Obama, John McCain, There's a Democratic
Speaker 1: National Convention coming up, and I remember there was like
Speaker 1: a CNN article it was like DNC housing crisis because
Speaker 1: they were gonna see Obama was in the keynote in
Speaker 1: the football stadium in Vasco Field, and everyone's like where
Speaker 1: all these people gonna stay? And we're like arabd and breakfast.
Speaker 1: So we launched for the Democratic National Convention with an
Speaker 1: advertising campaign. I had like fifty dollars to my name,
Speaker 1: So no, there was no advertising campaign. Well how did
Speaker 1: you launch? How did you so? For the internet? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah basically, so you like we'll call like producers at CNN.
Speaker 1: They're like, who are you? We're not talking to you.
Speaker 1: So eventually we started with like local bloggers, like at
Speaker 1: some point it's probably like like like emailing in college
Speaker 1: kids that had like little blogs and they would start
Speaker 1: talking about it, and then Denver Rocky Mountain News and
Speaker 1: then Denver Post would start talking about it. And then
Speaker 1: the local TV news stations. I remember there's a TV station.
Speaker 1: They did a story about a person trying to make
Speaker 1: money on the DNC and I had said, I have
Speaker 1: one hundred stories like that, so I call the producers.
Speaker 1: We were just relentless, We were shameless. And then if finally,
Speaker 1: you know, when Denver you have like CNN, New York
Speaker 1: Times and all these outposts, all these people stationed and
Speaker 1: they they started talking about the company, and so finally
Speaker 1: we were launched. We got the word out. We were
Speaker 1: in all this press, and we provided housing for like
Speaker 1: eighty people during a Democratic National convention. And Mark, at
Speaker 1: this point I thought we were like massive, We're huge,
Speaker 1: We've made it. But the Beatles attached V eighty bookings.
Speaker 1: I have no sense of scale. Then the next weekend
Speaker 1: we have like no bookings, and I realized, if only
Speaker 1: there were political interventions every week, we'd have a business.
Speaker 1: So we tried to raise money for investors. We were
Speaker 1: trying to raise one hundred and fifty thousand dollars at
Speaker 1: a one play five million dollars valuation. If you had
Speaker 1: given us a hundred thousand dollars back then, predolution, you
Speaker 1: would have today eight billion dollars. Maybe post delution, you
Speaker 1: stole a few billion and nobody wanted that deal. I
Speaker 1: remember somebody saying, I like everything, but you and your
Speaker 1: idea meaning the idea. Strangers aren't going to study together.
Speaker 1: And here's the other thing. They said, designers don't start
Speaker 1: tech companies. Did you go to people like Kleiner Perkins? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they said no. Actually, I don't know if we
Speaker 1: went to Planet Perkins. The early days, we went to
Speaker 1: like all sorts of angel investors, and most of them
Speaker 1: said no, and so we're totally broke. I remember this point,
Speaker 1: like you know those binders that like those plastics leaves
Speaker 1: of kids used to put baseball cards growing up, we
Speaker 1: put credit cards on them. As we fund the company.
Speaker 1: We were just like taking out credit cards. They would
Speaker 1: give us five thousand dollars limits and we'd take out
Speaker 1: another card, and we were fund in the company that way.
Speaker 1: So now we're like thirty forty k credit card debt.
Speaker 1: I don't recommend doing this. And we were called the
Speaker 1: Airbend and Breakfast. The airbeds weren't selling, so we said,
Speaker 1: well what about breakfast, And so we ended up with
Speaker 1: this kind of hairbrained idea which turned out to be
Speaker 1: kind of funny, where we made collectible breakfast cereal Barack Obama,
Speaker 1: John McCain theme cereal. We called it Obama os the
Speaker 1: Breakfast of Change, the little cheerios and Captain McCain's were
Speaker 1: Captain Crash and Crunches. Yeah, a Maverick and everybody. And
Speaker 1: we've been ended up like making like thirty thousand dollars
Speaker 1: I think selling colletable breakfast cereal. At this point though,
Speaker 1: we're still like not no traction. We've been doing for
Speaker 1: a year. No one thinks this is a good idea.
Speaker 1: So we enter this program called Why Combinator. You might
Speaker 1: have heard Why Comminator like a basically a seed incubation fund.
Speaker 1: And that's when everything took off. And the reason why
Speaker 1: was because now it's late two thousand and eight, early
Speaker 1: two nine, there's a recession. People are losing their homes.
Speaker 1: And then suddenly I remember Paul Graham used to say,
Speaker 1: make something people want, and we said, well, what if
Speaker 1: we make some many people really need, like desperately need.
Speaker 1: And that's two keywords, want and need. That's we tried
Speaker 1: to do it, wants and needs. And I think that like,
Speaker 1: it's a very important lesson because so many entrepreneurs that
Speaker 1: are ambitious make things that people don't really want or
Speaker 1: don't really need. And I think a great way to
Speaker 1: make some people need is to make something that you
Speaker 1: need for yourself in your life. So then it took off.
Speaker 1: During y Combinator, we focused on New York City. I
Speaker 1: mean I was crazy. I would fly to New York
Speaker 1: every single week, but my co founder, Joe, and because
Speaker 1: that's New York City, was the only place we had
Speaker 1: any business. And we literally go knocking on doors, like
Speaker 1: getting people to sign up, or we literally like meet
Speaker 1: users that would host on Airbnb. And I remember I
Speaker 1: would knock on the door and I'd say hey, like
Speaker 1: I'm the founder of the company, and they're like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, you must be a really small company if
Speaker 1: you're like knocking on my door. I mean literally the
Speaker 1: way you would get paid back then, as I would
Speaker 1: carry a bank ledger or my backpack and I would
Speaker 1: just hand checks to people. There was like there was
Speaker 1: just like a complete free frill. All the bookings were
Speaker 1: done by you and you then reimburse the owner. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the whole thing, I mean, we did have all
Speaker 1: the bookings done through the platform, but a lot of
Speaker 1: people you could elect to get paid by PayPal or
Speaker 1: by having your money paid through a bank account. We
Speaker 1: eventually did online ACH, but for like a month or
Speaker 1: two I just literally was mailing checks to people before
Speaker 1: we automated ACH. And you know, eventually it got much
Speaker 1: more automated. So you've gone through multiple hurdles. What was
Speaker 1: the What was the biggest hurdle? I mean good or bad?
Speaker 1: I mean there's in the whole history of the company. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would say I would say there's three. The first
Speaker 1: hurdle was just getting this idea going. People thought this
Speaker 1: thing was crazy, and it took about a year pushing
Speaker 1: it up a hill, and in hinds of the years,
Speaker 1: not a long time, but it felt like an eternity
Speaker 1: because we didn't know this would ever work, and eventually
Speaker 1: like it just started working. The second hurdle was twenty eleven,
Speaker 1: we become a billion dollar company. Now we felt like
Speaker 1: we've made it, and all of a sudden, a woman's
Speaker 1: house is trashed on Airbnb, and everyone was like waiting
Speaker 1: for the moment that someone's house is trashed to be
Speaker 1: able to say, like, I told you this was a
Speaker 1: bad idea, and that was the first moment of a
Speaker 1: crisis and confidence. What was the trashing I don't remember.
Speaker 1: It was in twenty eleven. A woman in San Francisco
Speaker 1: named EJ had our apartment trashed, and we had no
Speaker 1: protections back then for people like it was a kind
Speaker 1: of a leap of faith. So out of this dark
Speaker 1: hour lossing trust and confidence in the company, we had
Speaker 1: this idea, what if we had an Airbnb guarantee against
Speaker 1: property damage? And I was going to guarantee everyone's home
Speaker 1: against five thousand dollars of property damage. And the last
Speaker 1: second before I'm about to announce it, an investor, mind
Speaker 1: Mark and Reason, came to my office is like midnight
Speaker 1: and he's like, adds a zero to the end. He
Speaker 1: goes make a fifty thousand, and I'm like, well, you're
Speaker 1: the one that gave me any money, so if you
Speaker 1: think we should do this, we'll do this. That is
Speaker 1: today a three million dollar guarantee against theft and property damage.
Speaker 1: And that really was one of the things that actually
Speaker 1: catapulled us to restore a trust. But I think the
Speaker 1: hardest thing I've ever done in my life was probably
Speaker 1: managing the crisis of the pandemic. I mean that was
Speaker 1: totally crazy. People stopped traveling. I mean, think about this, Martha.
Speaker 1: So I remember it's late two nineteen and like many
Speaker 1: of us, we go away for the holidays thinking our
Speaker 1: life is like going in one direction, and I have
Speaker 1: no idea that my life is about to change. It's
Speaker 1: early twenty twenty. We're preparing to go public. Airbnb is
Speaker 1: one of the companies the two thousand tents, like it
Speaker 1: was like a hot company, and the IPO was going
Speaker 1: to be this culmination of this obviously momentum in this success.
Speaker 1: So we're working on our IPO. Then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: we start seeing our bookings precipitously fall in China. This
Speaker 1: is late January early February twenty twenty, because obviously it
Speaker 1: starts in China, and we're one of the only American
Speaker 1: businesses in China, like there are very few internet companies.
Speaker 1: We were there, I was there with my family great
Speaker 1: on January twenty twenty, Are you seriously yes? And we
Speaker 1: got out. I mean, I probably buy the skin of
Speaker 1: our teeth, you know, can you imagine? And when we
Speaker 1: came home then you know, the s hit the fan,
Speaker 1: but I can see that your business was so I
Speaker 1: remember remember saying this like kind of naive combat time Martha.
Speaker 1: I said, Wow, if this thing spreads outside of China,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be really bad. I had no idea what
Speaker 1: was about to happen. We lost eighty percent of our
Speaker 1: business in eight weeks. And we were doing probably like
Speaker 1: thirty five billion dollars a year and book end at
Speaker 1: that point, that's like the gross sales more than Starbucks does.
Speaker 1: And so when you're a business like ours and you're
Speaker 1: doing sales like that and you drop, it's like you're
Speaker 1: an eighteen wheeler and you slam in the brakes and
Speaker 1: you were filing for an IPO with it was at
Speaker 1: that time we were preparing to file for an IPO,
Speaker 1: we had written the s one. All of a sudden,
Speaker 1: we went from preparing to file an IPO to have
Speaker 1: the biggest IPO of twenty twenty two within eight weeks,
Speaker 1: Journalists writing is this the end of Airbnb? Will Airbnb exist?
Speaker 1: The bankers saying, I don't think you have to worry
Speaker 1: about your IPO for a couple of years, and so
Speaker 1: we went into crisis. Moke, I have a board member
Speaker 1: named Ken Chenal. He was c of American Expressed during
Speaker 1: nine to eleven and two thousand and eight, and he
Speaker 1: calls me up and he says, this is your defining
Speaker 1: moment as a CEO, and like rang in my head
Speaker 1: like a bell, and we all came into action. A
Speaker 1: bunch of us kind of basically got into a duxhall
Speaker 1: And this was like a door die situation for us, right,
Speaker 1: It was like so crazy, and we basically had to
Speaker 1: rebuild a company from the ground up. And along the
Speaker 1: way we tried to take care of every stakeholder guest.
Speaker 1: We issued more than one billion dollars or refunds for
Speaker 1: people who felt unsafe traveling. Host had a major economic
Speaker 1: shore falls. We took two hundred fifty million dollars out
Speaker 1: of our bank account and sent it to Host, even
Speaker 1: though like that money was kind of precarious at the time.
Speaker 1: People needed housing on the front lines. I said, even
Speaker 1: if we're the companies on the brink, we're still going
Speaker 1: to help others. So we provided housing for frontline workers
Speaker 1: like nurses, firefighters. We had to do a layoff, one
Speaker 1: of the big first tech layoffs of the pandemic, but
Speaker 1: we tried to do with compassion, and I was employee.
Speaker 1: Did you have at that time we had seven thousand,
Speaker 1: We went down to five thousand, so you know, we
Speaker 1: laid off like two thousand, Yeah, two thousand, probably twenty
Speaker 1: five percent places or so. So it was obviously, you know,
Speaker 1: obviously that is a Lafts. The hardest thing is CEO
Speaker 1: usually ever has to do. And I always warned about
Speaker 1: how difficult was, but I wasn't prepared all. And you know,
Speaker 1: when you lose that much of your business, it's like
Speaker 1: your house is on fire and you're like going into
Speaker 1: a burning house and somebody tells you can only keep
Speaker 1: half your things. What are you going to take? And
Speaker 1: then suddenly everything becomes really clear to you. And I
Speaker 1: realized that not everything we did was as important as
Speaker 1: everything else, and that we had to get back to
Speaker 1: the roots of Airbnb, back to connection, back to everyday
Speaker 1: people bringing them together. And so we hunkered down, remade
Speaker 1: the company from the ground up, and something remarkable happens.
Speaker 1: People start traveling again. They're not crossing borders, they're not
Speaker 1: going to cities, but they're like sequest in their homes
Speaker 1: and they're like getting store crazy. So they start booking
Speaker 1: airbnbs like the town over or like within a tank
Speaker 1: of gas away. And then suddenly yeah, and then our
Speaker 1: business comes back, but a different kind of business. People
Speaker 1: are now staying airbbies, not just for a night, but
Speaker 1: for a week or for a month. They're living in
Speaker 1: Airbnb's and they're living with other people. And so our
Speaker 1: business comes back, but without a lot of the cost base.
Speaker 1: And then so then we prepared to go public, like
Speaker 1: all these bankers said, we weren't. We never have to
Speaker 1: go public, but we have. Now we have to like
Speaker 1: redo the everything because like the s one we had
Speaker 1: written was like for a company didn't exist anymore. It
Speaker 1: was now a different business. So we do an IPO
Speaker 1: on Zoom and it becomes one of the biggest IPOs ever.
Speaker 1: We prepared. At the depth of the crisis, we were
Speaker 1: probably a value to eighteen billion dollars. We go public
Speaker 1: at forty seven billion, and the day it closes was
Speaker 1: one hundred billion dollars company. And Mike, it's like my
Speaker 1: whole life like now flashes before my eyes again. That
Speaker 1: was the craziest year in my life. And it was
Speaker 1: a very different company than what you had envisioned in
Speaker 1: the first place. It was a very different company, you know,
Speaker 1: weirdly and now and now what is it? How close
Speaker 1: to your original vision is that company? Now? It's kind
Speaker 1: of going back full circle. I mean, to be honest,
Speaker 1: like everyone, by start is the way to meet people.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a way just to stay in a house.
Speaker 1: There's a way to meet people that's like a social club.
Speaker 1: It was like a social club. It was like it
Speaker 1: was like a social network in the physical world, even
Speaker 1: though that was a total loaded worm, but it was
Speaker 1: like way to bring people together. It was the idea
Speaker 1: that what if you could walk in someone else's shoes?
Speaker 1: And then it grew and it grew to the point
Speaker 1: where people started getting more investment properties, and then you
Speaker 1: wouldn't meet the host and there was a keypad, and
Speaker 1: there's a real merit to a service like that. But
Speaker 1: the heart and soul of the company isn't about houses.
Speaker 1: It's about people. It's about connection. I always wanted to
Speaker 1: be a tech company that had like heart at the
Speaker 1: center of the company and creativity. I mean, a designer
Speaker 1: from Risdy starting a tech company, how could a company
Speaker 1: not be about people in connection, not bits and bites.
Speaker 1: And so that's what it is now where we have
Speaker 1: like new products we're launching and it's all about bringing
Speaker 1: people together. Like what, well, it's launching in a month.
Speaker 1: You're going to great news on your podcast. Let's just
Speaker 1: say that the original idea of Airbnb. We're going back
Speaker 1: to the original idea of Airbnb of bringing people back together,
Speaker 1: people staying with each other's homes. And that's a really
Speaker 1: big focus of ours. It's not a dating appe no, no, no, no.
Speaker 1: Although I am very interested in new ways to like
Speaker 1: bring people together. I don't think dating is the right
Speaker 1: thing for a BMB. But any idea is to help
Speaker 1: connect people and bring them together, is I think something
Speaker 1: we're gonna need in this new world. I can see
Speaker 1: I'm good at advertising. Um, you want to go to
Speaker 1: an odd place, and how many who wants to go to? Yeah?
Speaker 1: This place? And you put that, yeah, and you put
Speaker 1: that out there. Who wants to go to let's just
Speaker 1: say Tasmania Yeah, And and so you could also become
Speaker 1: a giant travel company totally. Yeah. I mean you could
Speaker 1: be better than better than the kind of travel companies
Speaker 1: that exist now, which are tours or something with unrelated people.
Speaker 1: They could be all related. Yes, you could basically fine
Speaker 1: people to travel with because there are people you don't know,
Speaker 1: or it could be a reason to reconvene with people
Speaker 1: that you know but you live in different cities from
Speaker 1: all brainstorm with you. I love to love doing that.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, And then I mean think about it like today,
Speaker 1: how do people meet one another? It's getting more and
Speaker 1: more difficult. And the Internet was supposed to be this
Speaker 1: way to meet people, but what is really like Your
Speaker 1: Instagram followers aren't coming to your funeral. No one changed
Speaker 1: someone else's mind on a YouTube comment section. Social network
Speaker 1: is now social media and we're not really connecting. People
Speaker 1: were performing in front of other people. And so I
Speaker 1: think that there's a real need for a way for
Speaker 1: people to still connect, to still meet. Where one of
Speaker 1: the largest providers of housing in the world, It's been
Speaker 1: used a billion a half times. But yeah, where I'm
Speaker 1: really interested in is things that bring it back to
Speaker 1: the magic of hosting, creativity and bringing people together. I
Speaker 1: also want to show people that a creative person can
Speaker 1: run a Fortune five hundred company. I mean, think about
Speaker 1: how many Fortune five hundred companies are run by CFOs
Speaker 1: or coos or engineers or super analytical people how many
Speaker 1: creative people are designers run fort enphundred companies? How many
Speaker 1: creative people are on the board of fort environment company?
Speaker 1: How many creative people report to the CEO of a
Speaker 1: creative company by an extraor neighbor. Who's your next? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there you go. Okay, I wish I'm surrounded. I
Speaker 1: wish there were more of them. Yeah, there are a lot.
Speaker 1: There's you, there's Ralph, but there should be more. How
Speaker 1: many are in tech? Not many, not in the big companies.
Speaker 1: And I kind of remember I remember when as there
Speaker 1: is d there was obsession about how did you get
Speaker 1: designers in the boardroom? And I always remembered, well, why
Speaker 1: can't designers run the boardroom? We're really like design Obviously,
Speaker 1: it's not just how something looks, it's how it works.
Speaker 1: But you're not just a designer, and you have to
Speaker 1: face that fact. Now you are also a very important
Speaker 1: tech guy. He's built a company around technology with a
Speaker 1: base basis of a of a creative idea. But but
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs did the same thing, you know, really deep
Speaker 1: Jobs I think probably thought of himself in a larger
Speaker 1: way as a design or he just how he did
Speaker 1: he did? He said design is the fundamental soul of
Speaker 1: a man made creation that reveals itself through subsequent layers.
Speaker 1: Johnny I've now works with us and like and he's
Speaker 1: taught me a lot about design. And I thought I
Speaker 1: knew about design that I started working with Johnny. And
Speaker 1: it's like, design isn't just how it looks, that's how
Speaker 1: it fundamentally works. And I thought, what if it Like, Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm a business person, I'm a technologist in some kind
Speaker 1: of way, I still approach every problem like a designer.
Speaker 1: It's certainly paid off. Yes, So Airbnb offers lots of
Speaker 1: things that hotels. Ju notch Right just lists five things.
Speaker 1: Number One, Airbnbs are in basically every neighborhood in the world,
Speaker 1: So hotels and hotel district, you go to Airbnb, it's
Speaker 1: in a neighborhood. Number Two, it's usually that more affordable
Speaker 1: than a hotel because you're sharing space and people that
Speaker 1: need of a profit. Three, you're getting a local and
Speaker 1: authentic experience. Four, you can potentially have a connection with
Speaker 1: people in Five. When you're a real home, the home
Speaker 1: is usually equipped so you can cook. There's like things
Speaker 1: in the kitchen. There might be a backyard or a barbecue,
Speaker 1: there might be a pool, and you're not the question
Speaker 1: as hotel. So these are five examples of things you
Speaker 1: get not a hotel. Now, hotels are great if you're
Speaker 1: like staying for a night, you're in for a midnight,
Speaker 1: you leave at at am. But basically, Martha, I think
Speaker 1: the longer you're away from home, the more you want
Speaker 1: to be at home. And a lot of our business
Speaker 1: half of it's more than a week. That's a great
Speaker 1: use case. If you're going there for a few nights,
Speaker 1: averybody's still great. What's the cheapest Airbnb? I mean, we
Speaker 1: have airbnbs that are like ten bucks a night around
Speaker 1: the world, and then we have verbs that are like
Speaker 1: fifty thousand dollars, Like what I mean. We have an
Speaker 1: entire collection of castle so you do is it all
Speaker 1: stationary real estate? We have boats. We do have a
Speaker 1: collection of boats, so anyone can list anything on Airbnb.
Speaker 1: But we have a lot of remote screening to make
Speaker 1: sure like they people have like an authenticated address, um,
Speaker 1: you know, and the whole the whole thing works on
Speaker 1: a reputation system. So that's the real key. When somebody
Speaker 1: stays in Airbnb, they leave the guest review and then
Speaker 1: they leave a host review, and the host leaves the
Speaker 1: guest review. Seventy percent of the time people review each other,
Speaker 1: and that's really the major currency. We also verify every
Speaker 1: guest in every host, so we have one hundred million
Speaker 1: authenticated verifications, and we do a lot of remote screening
Speaker 1: as well to detect for prior parties to really make
Speaker 1: people feel safe. How did the hotel industry react to
Speaker 1: Airbnb and how are they reacting now. I think they
Speaker 1: ignored it, then they didn't like it, then they probably
Speaker 1: try to stop it, And I think now they've come
Speaker 1: to conclusion that we can co exist together, and actually
Speaker 1: maybe they've also come to the realization that they have
Speaker 1: record revenue and record profits even as we grow, and
Speaker 1: that we can both live together. That a hotel is
Speaker 1: great if you need to go for a night or
Speaker 1: two you're in and out, or if you're like staying
Speaker 1: in a conference, and if you want to have a
Speaker 1: local experience, really authentic experience, and live in a home,
Speaker 1: then Airbnb is great. And these are kind of, frankly
Speaker 1: slightly different use cases. Oh, it's the least time you
Speaker 1: stayed in a hotel. I actually stayed in a hotel
Speaker 1: very recently for an investor conference, and we own a
Speaker 1: hotel app called hotel Tonight. So I'm a primarily airbnb person,
Speaker 1: a home person, but hotels are great for some use cases.
Speaker 1: If I get in at midnight, I leave at eight am,
Speaker 1: I think a hotel is probably better. I don't want
Speaker 1: to wake up the host at midnight and let them
Speaker 1: like host me and then I'm out in the morning.
Speaker 1: And which country is your biggest market? United States? Probably
Speaker 1: followed by like France and then UK. Well on average,
Speaker 1: you said it, but I just want to reiterate. How
Speaker 1: many guests do you host a night? Up to four
Speaker 1: million a night, depends on the night and not crazy,
Speaker 1: that's like, that's basically the size of LA But so
Speaker 1: imagine we built a community basically the size of a
Speaker 1: living together every night, but from nearly every country in
Speaker 1: the world. People from the Middle East are staying at
Speaker 1: homes and people in Texas, you know, these cultures that
Speaker 1: have not really lived together in this way before. It's
Speaker 1: really interesting to hear your enthusiasm, of which only seems
Speaker 1: to grow and not wane with this amazing company, and
Speaker 1: your opportunities are vast. Is there one one area that
Speaker 1: you want to go into that you just haven't broached yet.
Speaker 1: We did launch a product called Airbnb Experiences, where you
Speaker 1: can basically not just staying at home, but have an
Speaker 1: experience with somebody, so you can do like you can
Speaker 1: do like a cooking class. I'll give an example. There
Speaker 1: was a grandmother in Tuscany and she put a cooking
Speaker 1: class in Airbnb, Pasta with Grandma. She Now, she became
Speaker 1: so popular that all the other all these other grandmothers
Speaker 1: in Tuscany started putting their own pasta class up. And
Speaker 1: basically the way it works, you book a class, you
Speaker 1: go to her house, she teaches you pasta with other guests,
Speaker 1: you make the pasta, you eat it, and you tell
Speaker 1: stories about growing up. It's so popular that grandma's around
Speaker 1: the world are now doing Pasta with Grandma, dumplings for Grandma,
Speaker 1: and they're making a hundreds of thousand dollars a year.
Speaker 1: So I think there's a major opportunity with experiences, and
Speaker 1: then beyond that, I think there's just so many other
Speaker 1: ways to bring people together. I've had ideas for Airbnb.
Speaker 1: You know, many of my family members use airbnda. My
Speaker 1: Nie Sophie is on her way to India, and she's
Speaker 1: debating whether she use Airbnb in India, which is newish
Speaker 1: in India. But she's thinking maybe she's gonna stay with
Speaker 1: friends first where they'll feed her. Yeah. Yeah, and feeding
Speaker 1: is one of the things that she's always brought up
Speaker 1: to me. You know, you get into a city she was.
Speaker 1: She got into the outskirts of Berlin and she had
Speaker 1: nothing to eat, and it was late at night and
Speaker 1: she had nothing to eat. Yeah, but we have a solution.
Speaker 1: We have Martha and Marley Spoon, which happens to be
Speaker 1: a German company. Do you have you thought about putting
Speaker 1: food in the refrigerator pre ordered by the guests. I
Speaker 1: think it's that's a great idea, you know. I think
Speaker 1: it's food is a key part of hospitality and being
Speaker 1: a good host. You would know that as well as anyone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And we have these meal kids which you just can
Speaker 1: order and for two or four people or six people
Speaker 1: if you want. I just thought it would be a
Speaker 1: good idea for airbing. I like that a lot. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And also, Martha, I'm going to continue to host people
Speaker 1: my home. You have an open invitation. If you're Evan
Speaker 1: San Francisco, you hosted me in your home. I got
Speaker 1: host you in my home outside of Airbnb. You've done
Speaker 1: work with the Obama Foundation, yes, so tell me a
Speaker 1: little bit about that. Well. President Obama crazy enough became
Speaker 1: a bit of a mentor to me. I met him
Speaker 1: the last year of his press him and see and
Speaker 1: then when he left office, we kept in touch and
Speaker 1: we had like a standing phone call where he kind
Speaker 1: of really took an interest in helping me, like, and
Speaker 1: you know, it was a very important time in my life,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to help him and help his foundation.
Speaker 1: And I was thinking about philanthropy, like I wasn't prepared
Speaker 1: to have a lot of money. And the one day
Speaker 1: I wake up and you know, before you know, it
Speaker 1: was like the flash of that you have billions of dollars.
Speaker 1: I joined the Giving Pledge to commit to giving the
Speaker 1: majority of my wealth away before I die or upon
Speaker 1: my death. And I hadn't really done anything yet. I
Speaker 1: hadn't really thought about it. And I had a brainstorm
Speaker 1: with President Obama and I said, the first thing I
Speaker 1: want to do is I want to help high school kids.
Speaker 1: And I want to do some kind of scholarship too.
Speaker 1: I want to help kids that don't have any other
Speaker 1: means to get help, you know, if you're going to
Speaker 1: tack of this venture capitalist And I was brainstorm of him,
Speaker 1: and President Obama told me a story about you know,
Speaker 1: he wanted to go into public service when he was
Speaker 1: in college, but he felt like he almost couldn't afford
Speaker 1: to because college is expensive and public services and teach
Speaker 1: you a lot. And I thought to myself, can you
Speaker 1: imagine a present bomb it didn't go into public service,
Speaker 1: didn't become a community organize, you probably would have been
Speaker 1: president if you went to corporate law. And so I thought,
Speaker 1: we thought we had this idea, would if we create
Speaker 1: a scholarship for college students that want to have a
Speaker 1: career in public service, there's no venture capitalists for them.
Speaker 1: And then I had the other idea. I said, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know a lot of education, but I know
Speaker 1: quite a lot about travel. So we're gonna have a
Speaker 1: travel component because I want people to go to polk
Speaker 1: service to also take the best ideas around the world
Speaker 1: and bring it back to the United States or for
Speaker 1: wherever they're going to do service. And so now there's
Speaker 1: they not only do we pay for the last dollar education,
Speaker 1: So like you know, fifty thousand dollars or so. We
Speaker 1: also pay for ten years of travel so they can
Speaker 1: travel the world. And you know, I think the basic
Speaker 1: idea in marth I have is the world is getting
Speaker 1: more and more divided, but it's hard to hate someone
Speaker 1: else when you meet them up close. It seems like
Speaker 1: the people's strongest opinions of other people than ones without passports.
Speaker 1: And I think that it's real risk that we get really,
Speaker 1: really insular. And so you could basically have a generation
Speaker 1: of bridge builders. The world will be a lot more healthy.
Speaker 1: But you can't build a bridge unless you've ever been
Speaker 1: on the other side of the river. So you're funding
Speaker 1: education for these people, yep. So one hundred scholarships a
Speaker 1: year will probably eventually scaled the two hundred. I took
Speaker 1: one hundred million dollars put it into this scholarship fund
Speaker 1: that the Obama Foundation of Ministers. Oh, great congratulation, Thank you,
Speaker 1: very important. Education is all important in my mind, Yes, totally. Well,
Speaker 1: we could talk and talk and talk into you are
Speaker 1: you are fantastic, But I just wanted to say it's
Speaker 1: been a pleasure to meet you, Thank you very much,
Speaker 1: and to learn more about Airbnb. Keep up with Brian
Speaker 1: and his travels with his adorable dog, Sophie Yes, a
Speaker 1: Golden Retriever Yes, And you can follow him on Instagram.
Speaker 1: His handle is at b cheskycche sky and of course,
Speaker 1: to learn more about Airbnb, visit airbnb dot com or
Speaker 1: download the Airbnb app. Thank you Brian, Thank you Martha
Speaker 1: for having a pleasure. Thank you for hosting. Now I'm
Speaker 1: so reved up. I'm gonna look. I think I'm first
Speaker 1: gonna look for not a castle. I don't want to castle.
Speaker 1: I think maybe a boat. We have a thousands of those. Okay.
Speaker 1: Both are fun. Love to host. You will help