Speaker 1: Let's just say this isn't your typical Airbnb.
Speaker 2: Hello.
Speaker 1: I'm Emily Chang, and this is the circuit. When Brian
Speaker 1: Chesky said he was going to start renting his own
Speaker 1: home on Airbnb, I gotta be honest, I didn't quite
Speaker 1: believe it. Turns out he meant it, at least for now.
Speaker 1: This is the first time me or any journalist set
Speaker 1: foot in Cheskey's.
Speaker 2: Home, and I had some questions.
Speaker 1: Just what can a guest expect from a stay with
Speaker 1: the CEO of Airbnb Warriors game check? These are ten
Speaker 1: of stark cookies?
Speaker 2: Really ten Stark cookies.
Speaker 1: I was skeptical.
Speaker 2: I know, chocolate chip cookies.
Speaker 1: Check. But we also go deep on his journey from
Speaker 1: young art student to multi billion dollar entrepreneur to hoping
Speaker 1: for a family of his own, the exhilarating highs of
Speaker 1: it all, and the lonely lows. He says Airbnb's darkest
Speaker 1: moment may well be what saved it and him. Here's
Speaker 1: my conversation with Airbnb CEO Brian Cheskey, with a few
Speaker 1: cameos from Sophie, his favorite golden retriever. What's it been
Speaker 1: like playing host so far?
Speaker 2: Oh my god, it's been it's been a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: I'm a co host. I got Sophie Supermo, she's a
Speaker 2: nearly two year old Golden Retriever, and it's been cool
Speaker 2: because I haven't really hosted that much since the early days.
Speaker 2: I was one of the first two hosts in two
Speaker 2: thousand and seven, and for the last maybe five years,
Speaker 2: I hadn't hosted. And last year I started living in
Speaker 2: Airbnb because I wanted to show people you can live
Speaker 2: and work anywhere. And so the first six months of
Speaker 2: the year, I'm living on Airbnb, I'm traveling, I'm staying
Speaker 2: home to home. And I had a goal in my mind.
Speaker 2: I said before the end of the year, I want
Speaker 2: to be a host. And I only have this house.
Speaker 1: This is like your primary house, it isn't your extra house.
Speaker 2: I don't have a second house. And so if I
Speaker 2: had a second house, my instinct would have been to
Speaker 2: rent that one and not this one. But I had
Speaker 2: no other house, and I thought a little initially, oh
Speaker 2: this is a little crazy, like you, a little crazy.
Speaker 2: I'm a stranger in my house. And then I realized,
Speaker 2: wait a second, that's what like millions of people have
Speaker 2: to go through. And I put myself back in the
Speaker 2: shoes of my old self or a host, and I
Speaker 2: had to go through the journey of what's it going
Speaker 2: to be like to let someone in my house? And
Speaker 2: what am I gonna what I'm going to ask them?
Speaker 2: How are going to my screen guest? And I started
Speaker 2: really looking at our verification program and our reservation screening
Speaker 2: and like is this really And I felt really good
Speaker 2: about it, And so then I started hosting.
Speaker 1: Well thanks for having us our best behavior. But you
Speaker 1: know you're kind of busy. You're running a multi billion
Speaker 1: dollar company. Like what made you want to make time
Speaker 1: for this?
Speaker 2: I think two things. I think number one again, I
Speaker 2: never wanted to be one of those CEOs that's kind
Speaker 2: of an ivory tower, just looking at data and spreadsheets
Speaker 2: all day. You know, when you build a product, When
Speaker 2: you first build a company, you make something, usually for yourself,
Speaker 2: you don't have any users, you talk to them, you're
Speaker 2: looking the product every day, and the one day you
Speaker 2: wake up and you're running a giant corporation. If this happens,
Speaker 2: if you're so lucky, and the company becomes a series
Speaker 2: of numbers, And I think it's really important for business
Speaker 2: leaders to never reduce their customers to a number. You
Speaker 2: don't want to get emotionally detached. People aren't just numbers.
Speaker 2: They're people, and they make decisions, and they have to
Speaker 2: love your service. And if they love your service, they're
Speaker 2: gonna tell other people about it. And that means that
Speaker 2: you need to be emotionally connected to what you're doing.
Speaker 2: I understand when hosts are complaining about something, or your
Speaker 2: customers complaining, what do they mean? Do you have a
Speaker 2: deep intuitive understanding what they're talking about. So that's that
Speaker 2: was like the main reason I did it. But then
Speaker 2: there was another reason I wasn't expecting, which is as
Speaker 2: fun is it really?
Speaker 1: I mean, it's fun to you. You're giving people the
Speaker 1: full court press, like I feel, you're staying a couple
Speaker 1: of days, taking them out in the city.
Speaker 2: And I'll be honest, I wouldn't intuitively have thought it
Speaker 2: would be fun. I didn't like grow up wanting to
Speaker 2: be a host. It was one weekend I I, you know,
Speaker 2: and so I kind of discovered hosting, and I guess
Speaker 2: this whole experience reminded me of how much fun it was.
Speaker 2: And if I wasn't the coo or bingb I would
Speaker 2: still host. That's how much. I've decided it's really fun.
Speaker 2: It's like, you have this nice house, don't you want
Speaker 2: to share it with people?
Speaker 1: But these are strangers, right, These are people you don't know.
Speaker 2: They arrive as strangers, and I'm really proud that they
Speaker 2: do usually leave as friends. I'm actually one of the
Speaker 2: guests I'm taking to a warrior's game because he's actually local.
Speaker 2: But wow, yeah, so I try to stay in touch
Speaker 2: with my guests.
Speaker 1: Okay, it was crazy to think you were going to
Speaker 1: rent your house to a stranger, or that you were
Speaker 1: going to stay in some stranger's house, and now it's
Speaker 1: just what we do. Does the level of human openness
Speaker 1: to that idea still surprise you?
Speaker 2: A lot of people ask me, like, what did you
Speaker 2: know that no one else knew in the early days,
Speaker 2: Like Paul Graham, er first investor, said, a founder usually
Speaker 2: has to have some insight that no one else has. Otherwise,
Speaker 2: why are you doing this? What do you know that
Speaker 2: no one else knows? Because if it's nothing, then someone
Speaker 2: would have already done this. And what I like to
Speaker 2: tell people is I think I'm less a visionary than expeditionary,
Speaker 2: in the sense that I didn't have a vision I
Speaker 2: discovered something one week and I couldn't pay rent. I
Speaker 2: decided to let people in my house only to make money.
Speaker 2: For the most part, I thought it'd be fun, and
Speaker 2: I end up becoming friends these people, and it made
Speaker 2: me realize that like these homes are these private spaces
Speaker 2: that you'd never let anyone in. And if you were
Speaker 2: like an alien looking down on Earth and you realize
Speaker 2: all these there's all these houses that people live in,
Speaker 2: but then all these other people travel, but they don't
Speaker 2: stand those things. They stay in these other spaces in
Speaker 2: these one district and they all stay together. You kind
Speaker 2: of look at that model and say, it seems a
Speaker 2: little inefficient, but you understand why there's no trust. And
Speaker 2: we thought, well, if we could solve a system of
Speaker 2: trust and make them not feel like strangers, this would
Speaker 2: be an idea to spread on the world. But you're right,
Speaker 2: it's like so counterintuitive. It's so funny. I like to
Speaker 2: joke that people could imagine living on Mars easier than
Speaker 2: they can laugh and match I something's laying a stranger
Speaker 2: in their home. You just really think about it. I
Speaker 2: think we have trouble imagining sociological changes, sometimes harder than
Speaker 2: technological changes. We can all imagine things getting bigger, faster,
Speaker 2: kind of moving to more like to other locations, but
Speaker 2: it's hard to imagine changing behavior.
Speaker 1: But Airbnb has actually been a big part of like
Speaker 1: maybe a major sociological change probably.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's been now been used one point four
Speaker 2: billion times. And if you had told me when we
Speaker 2: first started that one point four billion people from two
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty countries and reagions will live together, that
Speaker 2: on a typical night we'd have nearly the population of
Speaker 2: Los Angeles staying together, people from the Middle East and
Speaker 2: Texas like cultures you wouldn't necessarily think mixing together coming together.
Speaker 2: I think we all would have said you were crazy.
Speaker 2: Like I remember somebody I remember in the early days
Speaker 2: used to tell people this idea is going to be
Speaker 2: huge one day, thousands of people will do it, And
Speaker 2: I think that sums up what we thought. But I
Speaker 2: think that, like maybe Emily, the lesson is, you know,
Speaker 2: I think we're conditioned to think people aren't good. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and some people aren't maybe at some basic level. But
Speaker 2: I guess I just maybe I was, maybe I was
Speaker 2: too naive to know the difference because I kind of
Speaker 2: it just was optimistic and I thought most people are
Speaker 2: fundamently good. We're probably actually ninety nine percent the same.
Speaker 2: And I know that can sound naive, but I actually
Speaker 2: think we probably have more data than almost any experiment
Speaker 2: in human history. There's never been an experiment where more
Speaker 2: people have lived together. And yes, occasionally things happen that
Speaker 2: aren't unexpected, but that's not the parts that surprising me.
Speaker 2: This surprize of me is how similar people are. And
Speaker 2: I think that was one of the core insights that
Speaker 2: we had. And it's like most tech comans have to
Speaker 2: understand laws of physics, we call these first principles, and
Speaker 2: we also have to know a different law, which is
Speaker 2: a law of human nature, like who are we at
Speaker 2: a very basic level, And if you can start to
Speaker 2: understand that, then you can start to design for people.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm excited to learn a little bit more about
Speaker 1: who you are. We've talked so many times over the
Speaker 1: years about the business about new products, Miles Jones, and
Speaker 1: hopefully there'll be many more years for that. But what's
Speaker 1: a day in the life of Brian Cheskey outside the office?
Speaker 2: Like what do you you do?
Speaker 1: Aside from Airbnb?
Speaker 2: There's like a few things I really like to do.
Speaker 2: I like to I try to exercise. When I first
Speaker 2: started air meanbi, I didn't really exercise a lot, and
Speaker 2: I noticed the markercise manage. I have Sophie and I
Speaker 2: like to go on adventures together. Last year I went
Speaker 2: to like eighteen different cities. I stayed in a franklaid
Speaker 2: right house in annab, Michigan. For example, lifelong desire I've had.
Speaker 2: I like drawing. I think I have some sketch books
Speaker 2: around the house. I could we could show my art later.
Speaker 2: I guess the other thing is I like connecting with friends,
Speaker 2: so I like I like to learn, I like the
Speaker 2: draw I like to hang out with people I care about,
Speaker 2: and I like to travel. I guess those are the
Speaker 2: things I do.
Speaker 1: You know, obviously the pandemic hit. Travel comes to a
Speaker 1: screeching hall. You're the majority of your revenue almost vanishes. Also,
Speaker 1: nobody wants to see other people right in that moment?
Speaker 1: Did it feel like you were standing on the edge
Speaker 1: of a cliff?
Speaker 2: I remember asking my mom a question, she reminds me.
Speaker 2: I said to her at some point during the bath
Speaker 2: of pandemic, I said, do you think people ever want
Speaker 2: to travel again? I mean of course I thought they would,
Speaker 2: but I had no idea how long would take. I mean,
Speaker 2: I thought we had made it before the pandemic. You know,
Speaker 2: we had a business that was doing like, let's call it,
Speaker 2: thirty five billion dollars in sales. That's about similar. That's
Speaker 2: more than Starbucks. That's almost like the size of Nike.
Speaker 2: If you told me in like the nineteen eighties growing up,
Speaker 2: we'd have a business that baby, like, you're totally crazy.
Speaker 2: I thought we're making work in IPO and then within
Speaker 2: a decade that happens to then lose eighty percent of
Speaker 2: it in eight weeks, and then you know, I mean
Speaker 2: you remember there were articles like is this the end
Speaker 2: of Airbnb? Will erbmbe exist? And I got to tell you,
Speaker 2: like that changed my life, and it changed my life
Speaker 2: and the company for the better. You ever hear people
Speaker 2: say that they had a near death experience and they
Speaker 2: had this moment of clarity. Well, thankful, I've never had that,
Speaker 2: But I felt like I got that clarity from a
Speaker 2: business perspective.
Speaker 1: How did you change as a person.
Speaker 2: I like to joke that I'm forty one going on
Speaker 2: sixty one, because is that a good thing? We'll see
Speaker 2: my hair is a little greater, but I think I
Speaker 2: think it is a good thing. In this case, I
Speaker 2: think I really grew up there in the pandemic. I
Speaker 2: really grew up. And the reason I grew up is
Speaker 2: because I think I felt my responsibility more like we
Speaker 2: all probably walk around every day with responsibility, but like
Speaker 2: you know, you don't feel your responsibility to feel the
Speaker 2: edges of it, like to you feel people depending on you.
Speaker 2: And in one moment, I had every stakeholder like depending
Speaker 2: on me. Employees are worried about their jobs. Investors were
Speaker 2: they about their investment. Guests were worried about they can
Speaker 2: get their money back when they're traveling, you know, Hosts
Speaker 2: are worrying about like if they're going to ever be able
Speaker 2: to keep their home. And then communities worrying about how
Speaker 2: are we going to house all these nurses and firefighters
Speaker 2: and doctors. And they were all reaching out to me
Speaker 2: at the same time, and not in a low key
Speaker 2: composed way, you know. It was like there was a
Speaker 2: lot of fear, a lot of concern, and I think
Speaker 2: in that moment it was like a total growing up experience,
Speaker 2: and it was almost like a bell rung in my mind. Head.
Speaker 2: And I remember my board member Ken Channel, who was
Speaker 2: a CEO of AMX. He was CEO during nine to
Speaker 2: eleven in the financial crisis to his night, so he's
Speaker 2: certainly been through crisis. And he basically said, I've been
Speaker 2: through two of the biggest crisis in my lifetime, and
Speaker 2: this is ten times bigger than either of them. He said,
Speaker 2: this is your defining moment as a CEO, and I said, well,
Speaker 2: I'm going to be defined by this crisis, and it's
Speaker 2: going to be on our terms. I think before the
Speaker 2: pandemic was a little bit the nice guy that could
Speaker 2: be a little conflict of hers and that makes me
Speaker 2: want to appease people and like not want to make
Speaker 2: hard decisions.
Speaker 1: Said yes to too many I said yes.
Speaker 2: To too many things, and it was on me. You know,
Speaker 2: the CEO has to say no. Steve Jobs, you say,
Speaker 2: focusing is not about saying yes, it's about saying no. Well,
Speaker 2: I had to learn to say no to a lot
Speaker 2: of things, and some of them were pretty heartbreaking. But
Speaker 2: you have to make hard decisions. And that's I think
Speaker 2: what ended up happening is I just think I saw clarity.
Speaker 2: We made a lot of hard decisions. I grew up
Speaker 2: by feeling my responsibility. I got more disciplined, We got
Speaker 2: more disciplined. And I think I had lessons that have
Speaker 2: now been sewed in my brain and I'm never going
Speaker 2: to forget them. You know, you don't go through something
Speaker 2: like that without it permanently changing you.
Speaker 1: What are the lessons?
Speaker 2: So the first thing I learned is who people really are.
Speaker 2: The good news is that the vast majority of people
Speaker 2: turned out to be great people, still good, still good.
Speaker 2: You can also learn a lot about yourself in a crisis,
Speaker 2: and I learned that the hardest thing to manage the
Speaker 2: crisis is your own psychology. And I learned how to
Speaker 2: manage my own psychology. I learned how to be focused
Speaker 2: like never before. I also learned how to run a
Speaker 2: company totally differently. Because when you like never seen money
Speaker 2: before in your life, and like, one hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 2: is more my I ever see in my life.
Speaker 1: We raised billions of dollars, and you personally made billions
Speaker 1: of dollars.
Speaker 2: Yes, and we raised billions of dollars, and we have
Speaker 2: it in the bank account. And so it's easy to
Speaker 2: say yes to things. I learned to say no. I
Speaker 2: learned to be focused. I learn to focus the entire
Speaker 2: company and point them, every single person, to one direction.
Speaker 2: And I learned to stop apologizing about how I wan
Speaker 2: run the company. I didn't realize until after the crisis
Speaker 2: that I spent five to ten years apologizing every step
Speaker 2: of the way or negotiating how I run into the company,
Speaker 2: because you hire people and they come from Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon,
Speaker 2: and they bring their way with them. And what I
Speaker 2: realized I was doing was trying to find some midpoint
Speaker 2: between how I wanted to run the company and how
Speaker 2: they wanted to run the company, which actually made everyone miserable.
Speaker 2: I had to go into wartime mode. And the crazy
Speaker 2: thing was is as I took more command, more control,
Speaker 2: became more decisive, more bossy, so to speak. I think
Speaker 2: people were happier because they had quarity in direction. I
Speaker 2: think those are some of the lessons I leaned.
Speaker 1: And then the tide turned, or maybe it's like the
Speaker 1: Titanic didn't hit the iceberg totally. You know, you go public,
Speaker 1: airbnbgost public. The end of twenty twenty, I'm interviewing you live.
Speaker 2: That was television most memorable And Who've ever done your shares.
Speaker 1: Double before the market even opens.
Speaker 2: Yes, and.
Speaker 1: You can't even speak like you're completely tongue tied. I
Speaker 1: actually want you to. I want you to watch it.
Speaker 1: Every time I watch it, I like, Yeah, it's such
Speaker 1: a moment when your opening price shares indicated to open
Speaker 1: right now at one hundred and thirty nine dollars a share,
Speaker 1: which is more than double what you priced that. I mean,
Speaker 1: are you at all concerned about froth? What do you
Speaker 1: think about that number and the potential that you're leaving
Speaker 1: billions of dollars on the table.
Speaker 2: That's the first time I've heard that number. That is,
Speaker 2: that's a.
Speaker 3: You know, when we in April we raised money and
Speaker 3: it was a debt financing, that price would have priced
Speaker 3: us around thirty bucks. So I don't know what else
Speaker 3: to say. It's that, that's a a that's a very
Speaker 3: that's that is I'm very humbled.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: And you know, we know that we're on a very
Speaker 3: long journey and we're going to be very very focused.
Speaker 3: Is obviously to is a very special day for everyone.
Speaker 3: But you know, the highest stock price, the higher expectations,
Speaker 3: the harder we're going to be working.
Speaker 2: Obviously, Wow, I watched that in a long time. Wow,
Speaker 2: that actually makes me a little emotional.
Speaker 1: What's going through your head in that moment.
Speaker 2: I think that moment it was like my hard drive crash,
Speaker 2: and I think it's that like the pandemic happens March fifteenth,
Speaker 2: id's of March. We have a emergency board meeting. All
Speaker 2: of a sudden, I realized, like this is going to
Speaker 2: be a twenty four hour thing. And every day I
Speaker 2: would wake up, put on sweatpants, like go right to
Speaker 2: the computer. I would like shower at night. My schedule
Speaker 2: is so crazy. I would leave my house and I
Speaker 2: probably work sixteen hours a day, seven days a week,
Speaker 2: and I'd probably never stop at any point to think
Speaker 2: about anything. It was just one day after day, and
Speaker 2: that moment I had to think about everything. The whole
Speaker 2: year was like you took a whole year and you
Speaker 2: made it like a fifteen second trailer and I was like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, and it just maybe at that moment
Speaker 2: it all hit me. This is just so crazy.
Speaker 1: The interview went viral.
Speaker 2: It did people could see it hit you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: My eyebrows went to the top of my head and
Speaker 2: I didn't know they went to high. That was but yeah,
Speaker 2: that was that was one of the most surprising moments
Speaker 2: in my life. I'm not usually speechless.
Speaker 1: Yes, you're normally quite eloquent.
Speaker 2: I did not know what to say. I guess I'm
Speaker 2: also thinking back now, I feel so lucky because I
Speaker 2: did not manage the crisis on my own, and I
Speaker 2: kind of felt like I had the wind in my back,
Speaker 2: as if like people were working with me and helping me,
Speaker 2: people I knew, and I kind of felt like I
Speaker 2: had a lot of benefit of the doubt that like
Speaker 2: maybe people were rooting for us, and maybe they weren't.
Speaker 2: Maybe they weren't, but it felt like people could have
Speaker 2: made it a lot harder if they wanted to, and
Speaker 2: they didn't. Employees, like very few employees resigned after and
Speaker 2: then they could have, like they could have gone to
Speaker 2: work at Google or like who wants to work at
Speaker 2: a travel coming pandemic? You know, the board stuck by me.
Speaker 2: My founders gave me so much support. Hosts kept listing.
Speaker 2: They adn't take their listings down. I remember in the
Speaker 2: depths of my darkness, you know people who are writing
Speaker 2: articles what air can be exists? I would get text
Speaker 2: me as former employees, I want airb me to still exist,
Speaker 2: and I remember asking like, well, why, like why other
Speaker 2: than having emotional attachment, like why do you want it
Speaker 2: to exist? I think the best answer I heard was
Speaker 2: because if you don't do what you're doing, no one
Speaker 2: else will. Like there's many sites that you know, you
Speaker 2: can get a house or you can travel on vacation,
Speaker 2: but there was something a little different by Airbnb. There's
Speaker 2: not a lot of designers running companies that have this
Speaker 2: created spirit. There's this idea of like real the roots
Speaker 2: of airbb around connection to people living together that doesn't
Speaker 2: really exist anymore on any other platforms. So that was
Speaker 2: like pretty moving to me. And I mean twenty twenty
Speaker 2: was an intense and emotional year and that was the capstone.
Speaker 1: Do you ever think about what would where Airbnb would
Speaker 1: be if the pandemic didn't happen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's almost scary to think about. We wouldn't be
Speaker 2: here today. That's the crazy thing. Like your culture is
Speaker 2: often forged in your darkest moments. I think people think
Speaker 2: of culture as like, you know, the perks, the yoga,
Speaker 2: like the yoga, free food snacks, kombucha. No culture or
Speaker 2: the shared behaviors that you all have based on lessons
Speaker 2: you've learned together, and the lessons you remember most are
Speaker 2: during the moments of trials and tribulations of things that
Speaker 2: forge you. We basically made like five years of progress
Speaker 2: in like six months, and I think we would have
Speaker 2: never reached the potential that we can now reach because
Speaker 2: the whole trajectory of the company change. There's really before
Speaker 2: the pandemic and after the pandemic. There's me before the
Speaker 2: pandemic and after the pandemic. Would have taken me a
Speaker 2: decade to get to this point without the pandemic, you know.
Speaker 2: I think that you have to rise to an occasion,
Speaker 2: and you can't ask for an occasion like that. You
Speaker 2: can only hope that if it happens, you will rise,
Speaker 2: and you can't know until happens.
Speaker 1: We've seen a lot of founder CEOs step back, whether
Speaker 1: it's Amazon, Google, Twitter, Pinterest, Slack. Yeah you're still here.
Speaker 2: I think when I was starting out, I think it
Speaker 2: was afraid to run a giant company because it didn't
Speaker 2: seem fun. It didn't seem how many people go to
Speaker 2: work at a giant company. So I love working at
Speaker 2: this giant company. There's the thing that's most surprised me
Speaker 2: is I have more excitement today than I did when
Speaker 2: I was in y Combinator. The job today as a
Speaker 2: public company CEO is more fun really than the job
Speaker 2: as a private company ce you.
Speaker 1: I feel like I often hear the opposite.
Speaker 2: You often do, And there's maybe all sorts of lessons
Speaker 2: because you know, by the time you run a public company,
Speaker 2: you're negotiating everyone. You're trying to pee shareholders, you're trying
Speaker 2: to pease employees, You're negotiating. And I learned that if
Speaker 2: you can just listen to yourself and be true to
Speaker 2: you and not apology to who you want to be,
Speaker 2: the actually you might make everyone happier. Anyway, Like we stopped,
Speaker 2: I stopped obsessing over making money, and we end up
Speaker 2: generating three half billion offree cash flow. There's a paradox there,
Speaker 2: and so I have more fun than I ever had.
Speaker 2: But I also think there's two other possible explanations. Only
Speaker 2: I think we're very long term oriented, and that means
Speaker 2: we tend to be relationship oriented. I'll give you one
Speaker 2: data point. We did, like every financing round we did
Speaker 2: when we were raising money, we never took the highest price,
Speaker 2: and that's unusual because we always tried to get the
Speaker 2: most value out an investor, and a lot of people
Speaker 2: say that, but we try to do I don't try
Speaker 2: to win a negotiation because I'm like, listen, this is
Speaker 2: our first negotiation, but we might do another deal in
Speaker 2: ten years. So I want to think of have a
Speaker 2: real relationship with you. And I think the other thing
Speaker 2: is you got to be like it's all about how
Speaker 2: fast you learn. I like teil entrepreneur. I think of
Speaker 2: the growth of your company. You have to grow faster
Speaker 2: than that. And if you don't grow faster in your company,
Speaker 2: then your company is going to be pulling you, and
Speaker 2: then you're going to eventually be holding it back as
Speaker 2: you have to basically be this beginner, constantly learning, constantly
Speaker 2: absorbing every single thing. None of us. There's no manual
Speaker 2: to have be an entrepreneur, and the problem is if
Speaker 2: you were to write one, it would be outdated in
Speaker 2: the moments printed because the rules keep changing.
Speaker 1: I think about Steve Jobs coming back to Apple, bringing
Speaker 1: it out of a death spiral, and I'm sure everyone
Speaker 1: would agree it mattered that he was there. Yeah, But
Speaker 1: does it ever feel like this immense responsibility that you
Speaker 1: have to stay or does it feel like a burden.
Speaker 2: If I wasn't enjoying it, that probably would. But if
Speaker 2: people told me you have to stay, I would It
Speaker 2: wouldn't affect me. Not, it wouldn't affect me at all.
Speaker 2: I only want to keep doing this if I'm the
Speaker 2: best person to do this, and the interest to me
Speaker 2: is longer I do it, the more, I'd probably become
Speaker 2: the best person because I have both the history of
Speaker 2: the founder, being a founder that you can never replace.
Speaker 2: And my biggest weakness was probably I was young and
Speaker 2: I didn't have a lot of experience, But now I
Speaker 2: have that too, So so long as I'm still the
Speaker 2: best person, I want to keep doing it. I think
Speaker 2: that our days just getting started. So Phase one product market,
Speaker 2: Phase two hyper growth. Phase three, become a public company
Speaker 2: and like generate profit and be a real company. Phase
Speaker 2: four reinvent yourself.
Speaker 1: M do you ever get jealous, like looking at your
Speaker 1: co your peers who have left their companies and they're
Speaker 1: moving on with the next phase of their life.
Speaker 2: Not even close. No, no, no, I don't love vacation
Speaker 2: all the time. I am a vacation company. I mean,
Speaker 2: I mean, I love traveling in the airbnb, but I don't.
Speaker 2: I like to live vicariously through my friends who like
Speaker 2: kind of leave the company. I like hearing what they
Speaker 2: do and pretend that I'm like them, but I also
Speaker 2: know that, like, I don't think I would be good
Speaker 2: at doing that. Somebody asking me, like, why are you
Speaker 2: doing Analystic? You don't need to make more money, And
Speaker 2: I said, well, you wouldn't ask a painter or why
Speaker 2: are they still paying. You wouldn't ask a musician why
Speaker 2: they still make music. You wouldn't ask an athlete why
Speaker 2: they still play the sport. And I like to think
Speaker 2: of myself more as like an artist or designer. I mean,
Speaker 2: I know extensively I'm an entrepreneur and a business person,
Speaker 2: but I think of myself as kind of designing and making.
Speaker 2: And the reason I like have more fun now is
Speaker 2: because now it's more creative than you used to be.
Speaker 2: There's a period where you start a company, it's creative,
Speaker 2: you're making stuff. Then you get successful, and the problem
Speaker 2: with being successful is now everything is breaking. You have
Speaker 2: all these responsibilities and you're just you're reacting all the time.
Speaker 2: And some people said it's like jumping off a cliff,
Speaker 2: assembling the airplane the way down and you're like an
Speaker 2: emergency room triage doctor. And we're kind of past that point.
Speaker 2: We still have our challenges, but now we can have ideas.
Speaker 2: We have this giant community. It's been used a billion
Speaker 2: a half times. We handle one hundred, like over one
Speaker 2: hundred billion dollars to the platform both directions. We have
Speaker 2: like over one hundred million verified identities. We have a
Speaker 2: brand that's a nown verurban pop culture. We have one
Speaker 2: of the most talented teams in the world. If I'm
Speaker 2: not having fun and if I can't imagine something new
Speaker 2: to do, then my god, how else am I going
Speaker 2: to find meaning in life? That's awesome?
Speaker 1: Are you an artist designer first and CEO second? Is
Speaker 1: that what you would say?
Speaker 2: Probably? Probably? I would like to be remembered as a
Speaker 2: designer first and an entrepreneur CEO second. And the reason
Speaker 2: why is I mean I'd like to either read a
Speaker 2: fine what a CEO could be as a person that
Speaker 2: came from a creative field, as a designer, or maybe
Speaker 2: more importantly redesigned what a designer could be. That a
Speaker 2: designer could design not just a thing, they could design
Speaker 2: a company. And I don't know it. I think you're
Speaker 2: always what you were growing up. You know, there's something
Speaker 2: about what you were growing up that's always in your heart.
Speaker 2: And probably I approach problems more like a designer than
Speaker 2: a CEO, although I probably said.
Speaker 1: The interest and how does that change the company? How
Speaker 1: is that mentality infused into the company? I mean, I
Speaker 1: get the sense you're very involved in the details.
Speaker 2: Extremely is that a code or a bad thing? If
Speaker 2: you ask me or my employees, it depends. I have
Speaker 2: like books like this. Frankly i'd write book here right
Speaker 2: my favorite architect or Charles and ray Eames to the
Speaker 2: great industrial designers of twentieth century, Charles Emes said the
Speaker 2: details aren't the details, they make the product. And I
Speaker 2: am absolutely involved in the details. I think design is
Speaker 2: not just how something looks, how fundamentally works. I think design,
Speaker 2: you know, is really about, like understand It's about simplifying something.
Speaker 2: And people think simplifying is removing things, and it's not.
Speaker 2: Simplifying is understanding something so deeply that you can get
Speaker 2: to the essence of something. And to understand something deeply
Speaker 2: you have to be very multip listenary. You have to
Speaker 2: have a very holistic view of everything. And so I
Speaker 2: think what we do is to make the content complex simple.
Speaker 2: We think in terms of systems. I mean, the definition
Speaker 2: of design is really typically you would say it's a
Speaker 2: better way to assemble something to achieve a task, and
Speaker 2: some assembling people systems to achieve a task more efficiently.
Speaker 2: And I love almost like the Jigsaw puzzle, even like
Speaker 2: how we became profitable. I like, we kind of designed
Speaker 2: the p and L. You know, most people cut, We
Speaker 2: didn't cut. We designed. And you can never save as
Speaker 2: much money by cutting as by designing, because cutting you're
Speaker 2: just like lopping things up. But designing says, well, instead
Speaker 2: of cutting all these expenses, what if we just thought
Speaker 2: about the whole operation differently, to have fewer parts, fewer components.
Speaker 2: And it really takes creativity to do that. And that's
Speaker 2: just one example. So I think of myself as a
Speaker 2: designer that way.
Speaker 1: I mean, over the years, you've really emphasized the values
Speaker 1: of Airbnb, weather it's community or connectedness. What does it
Speaker 1: take to make something that people really love?
Speaker 2: Oh, that's such a good question. When I joined y Combinator,
Speaker 2: the first day, they give you a T shirt. It's
Speaker 2: a great T shirt and it says make something people want.
Speaker 2: And if you get an exit, they send you a
Speaker 2: black T shirt and it says I made something people want.
Speaker 2: And that was something that always stuck with me, that
Speaker 2: I just need to make something people want. And I
Speaker 2: think the way you make something that people want is
Speaker 2: first you have to care about people, and you have
Speaker 2: to understand people, and so I like to put myself
Speaker 2: in the shoes of the person. We did this thing
Speaker 2: ten years ago. I named a snow White after the
Speaker 2: movie snow White. Snow White was basically the of the
Speaker 2: storyboard and basically is a feature like animated film. Walt's
Speaker 2: one of my heroes. He basically this film was so long.
Speaker 2: He had a storyboard, and I said, why don't work
Speaker 2: business to do that? Why don't businesses understand who their
Speaker 2: customer is, storyboard the experience, and then try to put
Speaker 2: themselves in the shoes of that person and imagine what
Speaker 2: are they going through? At what moments do they need
Speaker 2: be surprised and delighted? At what moment do they be reassured?
Speaker 2: And just every single opportunity is a detail that you
Speaker 2: could perfect. By the way those ads, you wouldn't believe
Speaker 2: how many reviews I'm in with those. I review every song,
Speaker 2: every ad every photo, like we do reviews every single week.
Speaker 2: We look at like dozens and dozens of ideas and
Speaker 2: concepts to get the exact right idea.
Speaker 1: Talk about being in the details, I mean, is your
Speaker 1: team like, should we invite Brian or not?
Speaker 2: If they had the choice that you're presuming they have
Speaker 2: a choice. I like to say, only I can cancel
Speaker 2: the reviews just in case. Well, let's be cleeer. I
Speaker 2: don't intend to be in the details of everything forever,
Speaker 2: but you have to teach. It's like I'm a coach
Speaker 2: and I'm like trying to teach a level of detail
Speaker 2: and excellence. And I think people model themselves after the leaders.
Speaker 2: I think there's this idea that I think is a
Speaker 2: bit of a myth that great leaders hire great people
Speaker 2: and empower them to do great work. And that sounds great,
Speaker 2: but they're missing something. And what they're missing is you've
Speaker 2: got to be in the details of the people. It's
Speaker 2: not micromanaging, it's auditing and understanding what they're doing. I
Speaker 2: have a board. They audit everything I do. They're aware.
Speaker 2: They're not telling me what to do, but they're aware.
Speaker 2: So I don't tell people what to do, but I'm
Speaker 2: aware of everything they do. And I want to lead
Speaker 2: by example because I want every single employee in the
Speaker 2: company to be in the details. That's our culture to
Speaker 2: be in the details, because that teaches us sense of
Speaker 2: care craft, expertise that flows through everything. And by the way,
Speaker 2: I didn't do it this way for ten years.
Speaker 1: There's a fine line between micromanaging being in the details
Speaker 1: in a good way in a bad.
Speaker 2: Way, right, yeah, And I think that, like I think
Speaker 2: at micromanaging is like telling people exactly what to do.
Speaker 2: I don't tell those people what to do with the ads.
Speaker 2: I just look at work and I tell them what
Speaker 2: I'm feeling, what I'm not feeling, I'm brainstorming things, and
Speaker 2: then they'll come back with a totally different idea. I
Speaker 2: like to hold people to a really high standard, and
Speaker 2: so I expect so much of my team, but I
Speaker 2: like to tell them I never want you to do
Speaker 2: something I don't think you can do. So if I'm
Speaker 2: telling you can do better, what I'm really saying is
Speaker 2: I believe in you, and I believe you can do more.
Speaker 2: And I think the role of a leader is to
Speaker 2: constantly be reaching for some ideal. You're reaching for a
Speaker 2: vision of a world as it could be. You're reaching
Speaker 2: for an ideal and then you're hopefully seeing potential people
Speaker 2: maybe they don't even see in themselves, and if you're
Speaker 2: a good leader, you will get that potential out of them.
Speaker 2: And that is kind of the whole thing.
Speaker 1: We've talked about the mostly good things that Airbnb has created.
Speaker 1: Bad things happen, bad things happen in airbnbs. I'm sure
Speaker 1: you remember the Bloomberg headline Airbnb is spending millions of
Speaker 1: dollars to make nightmares go away. How has Airbnb grown
Speaker 1: from those situations? And what's your sort of what's your
Speaker 1: sort of fourth star when dealing with the bad thing?
Speaker 2: Yes, well, I think our first north star is to
Speaker 2: do anything we can for somebody if something bad happens. Actually,
Speaker 2: our first north star is to do everything we can
Speaker 2: to prevent it. And if something were to happen, I
Speaker 2: always like to say we should do more than it's
Speaker 2: expected of us, not what is expected or less than
Speaker 2: it's expected. And so, you know, I remember the first
Speaker 2: the indication.
Speaker 1: Was like, oh, you're like sliding these things under the rug.
Speaker 2: Oh no, we're not trying to slide anything on the rug.
Speaker 2: We're just trying to go above and beyond. We have
Speaker 2: a dedicated safety team within customer service, and I've instructed
Speaker 2: them very carefully that you should always do more than
Speaker 2: it's expected with you. I mean, we're in the service business.
Speaker 2: Something horrible happens, you need to go above and beyond
Speaker 2: what service? And so we do spend millions of dollars,
Speaker 2: but we spend millions of dollars because we have an
Speaker 2: AIRBM guarantee called air Cover that protects you three million
Speaker 2: dollars against property damage, a million dollars of personal liability.
Speaker 2: You know, we try to do whatever we can to
Speaker 2: go above and beyond. And I think I would always
Speaker 2: try to imagine, like what would like I expect somebody
Speaker 2: to do if something we're horrible and I were in
Speaker 2: that position, And I really try to make sure that
Speaker 2: that's the culture of the company, that we go above beyond.
Speaker 2: And so that's what we're focused on.
Speaker 1: Tech is going through a tumultuous times. Oh yeah, people
Speaker 1: are getting laid off, tens of thousands of people getting
Speaker 1: laid off in waves. How do you think about how
Speaker 1: Amazon and Meta and other companies are handling these layoffs.
Speaker 2: I haven't read all the letters. I like that they're
Speaker 2: like being pretty transparent. You know, we obviously had to
Speaker 2: go through a layoff. And I always felt like when
Speaker 2: I would read some of these corporate communications that like
Speaker 2: they weren't written from by people. They seem to be
Speaker 2: like written by committees. And I felt like maybe a
Speaker 2: bunch of lawyers HR people had stanned the edges off
Speaker 2: the person to the point where the person speaking wouldn't
Speaker 2: actually talk like that. And it's maybe the no fault
Speaker 2: of anyone, except maybe they're like managing risk. And I
Speaker 2: took something off a shelf like a playbook. And I
Speaker 2: always thought I'd rather say the wrong thing, but people
Speaker 2: think I really said it. Then they say the right
Speaker 2: thing and you don't even think it was me, and
Speaker 2: I care. And so the first lesson I had in
Speaker 2: the pandemic was any communication I write, I don't have
Speaker 2: people write it for me. I might have someone like
Speaker 2: a couple of people look at it, but I'm going
Speaker 2: to write it.
Speaker 1: You write your own stuff.
Speaker 2: I write everything that comes from my name. I write everything.
Speaker 2: I don't have people writing drafts. And a lot of CEOs,
Speaker 2: a lot of CEOs don't write anything that they have
Speaker 2: their name on I think that's the first problem. We've
Speaker 2: got to write it yourself. The second thing is, I
Speaker 2: think when you do like a layoff, if you're going
Speaker 2: to cut, you need to cut once, and therefore you
Speaker 2: better cut deep enough try to avoid doing multiple layoffs.
Speaker 2: I think multiple layoffs can be very difficult from a
Speaker 2: cultural standpoint, because if there's more than one, then people
Speaker 2: can't trust they'll ever they'll ever end, and the company
Speaker 2: is like in a paralyzed standstill if that happens. I
Speaker 2: think the next thing is that you should again, in
Speaker 2: any crisis, you always do more than it's expected. So
Speaker 2: I would recommend doing more severance than is even intuitive.
Speaker 2: And whatever a cost you, you're probably gonna win it
Speaker 2: back in good will. And the employees staying are going
Speaker 2: to notice how you treat the ployees leaving, and whatever
Speaker 2: dollar you spend on a person leaving, you're gonna get
Speaker 2: more than that dollar back through the effort of the
Speaker 2: people staying. And that's what I got. And I also
Speaker 2: think it requires creativity, Like, for example, a couple people
Speaker 2: on our team, I co founder came and he said,
Speaker 2: why don't we take our recruiting team and make them
Speaker 2: like an outplacement to help get other people get jobs.
Speaker 2: And someonel said, wait a second, if people are getting
Speaker 2: laid off, why don't we let them if they want,
Speaker 2: opt into a directory where other people could reach out
Speaker 2: to them. So we publish a directory. But no one
Speaker 2: wants to reach out to people if they think they
Speaker 2: were the bad people that got fired. So you had
Speaker 2: to give them dignity. So you have to write in
Speaker 2: your communication that these are great people. Others are lucky
Speaker 2: to have them. And then the final thing is I
Speaker 2: used a word that no one ever used in the layoff,
Speaker 2: and the word is love. I said, I really feel
Speaker 2: love for all of you, and I just wrote what
Speaker 2: I felt at that moment I wrote it. I felt it.
Speaker 2: No one would ever written that for me. And I
Speaker 2: think the key is just whatever you feel, you say,
Speaker 2: like tak like a real person, not a CEO. And
Speaker 2: maybe in though.
Speaker 1: Way, you started Airbnb at the depths of a financial
Speaker 1: crisis two thousand and nine, what's your advice to entrepreneurs now?
Speaker 2: I think this is a great time to start a company.
Speaker 2: I think, by the way, if you look at the
Speaker 2: history of companies like Apple and Microsoft, I think we're
Speaker 2: starting a down economy. Google emerged during the dot com crisis.
Speaker 2: You know, we started during the Great Recession. I know
Speaker 2: Uber started kind of the wake of that, but you
Speaker 2: have less competition. And if your idea is really good
Speaker 2: and you can make it in a tough economy, you
Speaker 2: can definitely make it in a good economy. And I
Speaker 2: think that you learn better lessons with constraints. When there's
Speaker 2: a free flow amount of money. There's just not enough constraints,
Speaker 2: And I think the discipline of being in a really
Speaker 2: difficult environment will teach you something. If you want to
Speaker 2: be an entrepreneur, you should try to. I think start
Speaker 2: a company to want to run for a long time,
Speaker 2: not start a company to sell it. If you run
Speaker 2: accountany for like ten years or twenty years, you're going
Speaker 2: to be through multiple recessions. So why don't you build
Speaker 2: the muscle now. I like to tell people the best
Speaker 2: time to start a company is the moment you're ready
Speaker 2: and who cares about the economy. But if it's a
Speaker 2: bad economy, it's surprisingly easier usually unless you need a
Speaker 2: ton of capital to get started.
Speaker 1: So what do you want the next phase of Airbnb
Speaker 1: to b? Say five years from now?
Speaker 2: I'm in this very unfortunate place where I'm forty one
Speaker 2: years old and I've achieved more than I ever thought
Speaker 2: I would at this point in my life, my whole life.
Speaker 2: The biggest entrepreneur is Bob from Bob's Pizza Shop in
Speaker 2: my town, and so I didn't know I could do
Speaker 2: all this. So I think my motivation has changed, like
Speaker 2: when I was starting, like I think, like a lot
Speaker 2: of entrepreneurs were ambitious. We want to show the world
Speaker 2: we're going to make a dent in the world and
Speaker 2: we can be successful. And that doesn't motivate me as
Speaker 2: much because if I haven't proved that by it now,
Speaker 2: I don't think I ever will, Like no amount of
Speaker 2: incremental money or status, or like showing my parents or
Speaker 2: my friends growing up, like it doesn't matter any Like
Speaker 2: I've already done whatever I'm going to do. And so
Speaker 2: at some point your motivation has to be something beyond
Speaker 2: yourself or you're done. And for me, it's two things.
Speaker 2: Number One, A pianner paints and I like to create
Speaker 2: in design and I just love doing it. But I
Speaker 2: feel like at this point, again, we have this brand
Speaker 2: that the world knows about. I've been able to recruit
Speaker 2: some of the best people in the world. We have
Speaker 2: all this capital available, We've all these capabilities. It would
Speaker 2: be such a shame not to use that to solve
Speaker 2: a very important problem. And the problem that I'm most
Speaker 2: concerned about that I think we can help is that
Speaker 2: I think this is the loneliest time in human history.
Speaker 2: It's probably the longest time in human history. It's so
Speaker 2: lonely that if people lived this isolated alone thousands of
Speaker 2: years ago before modern technology would be dead. Right. There's
Speaker 2: a reason loneliness hurts. It's because some.
Speaker 1: People would say, like tech is connecting us all and
Speaker 1: making us less lonely.
Speaker 2: I mean, loneliness has been rise in the United States
Speaker 2: in the nineteen seventies as far as I can tell,
Speaker 2: so it's definitely not all tech. But I do think
Speaker 2: that we need to have a reality check. And the
Speaker 2: reality check is every new piece of technology feels like
Speaker 2: an incremental step forward for humanity, but when you take
Speaker 2: out step back, you take the aggregate experience. We always
Speaker 2: have to ask ourselves are people happier and are they
Speaker 2: better off? And I think life expectancies up. Fewer people
Speaker 2: today live in poverty, and every before there's so many
Speaker 2: great things and most of us don't want to live
Speaker 2: in an era before today, most people wouldn't choose them.
Speaker 2: At the same time, with all the technology reasons that
Speaker 2: we have, how good is the world and how good
Speaker 2: could it be? The average American spends ten more hours
Speaker 2: alone every week than ten years ago. So every year
Speaker 2: we spend more out more time alone. We're sleeping less,
Speaker 2: exercising less, spending less time with friends and family. We're
Speaker 2: doing things in the digital world. And I'm not saying
Speaker 2: phones and digital world is bad. It's just it's like
Speaker 2: a recipe. We need to marry that with physical community
Speaker 2: and physical connection. And you know your Instagram followers aren't
Speaker 2: coming to your funeral. No one changed someone else's mind
Speaker 2: YouTube comment section. So we need to marry the best
Speaker 2: of the digital technology with the best of the physical world.
Speaker 2: The promise of AI is going to be awesome if
Speaker 2: we can achieve it. But we should probably stop thinking
Speaker 2: about technology is a good or bad thing. We should
Speaker 2: think of technology as power and is It's like fire.
Speaker 2: Fire can cook food and it can burn something down.
Speaker 2: Nuclear power can light out a city or destroy a city.
Speaker 2: So this technology is power. Is power good depends who'se
Speaker 2: hands it's in. That's probably the simplest way to think
Speaker 2: about it. We have all the technology available to us
Speaker 2: to solve this loneliness problem, to reconnect people, and to
Speaker 2: solve so many other problems, so long as we can
Speaker 2: cooperate and just have this real sensitive responsibility. And I
Speaker 2: think the designer in me, you know, we're trained to
Speaker 2: like have to just be constantly like thinking about the
Speaker 2: impact we have. And I'll be honest with you, Like
Speaker 2: when I started AIRBNBA, I wasn't that mindful of the
Speaker 2: impact or me would have on the world, on communities.
Speaker 2: It just kind of grew and grew and grew. And
Speaker 2: now I've learned a very important lesson, which is, if
Speaker 2: you invent something and you put in the hands of
Speaker 2: one hundred million people, they're going to use it for
Speaker 2: ways you could never have imagined. And you have to
Speaker 2: be honest about that. And you have to be willing
Speaker 2: to adapt, to learn your lessons, to pivot, to navigate.
Speaker 2: And so I am an optimist. And the reason why
Speaker 2: is I think I'm optimistic ultimately about our ability to
Speaker 2: learn lessons and guide towards good things. Although it can
Speaker 2: be a very windy road. I do think we eventually
Speaker 2: get there. I wish we got there a little faster together.
Speaker 2: I think everyone wishes that. But I am ultimately an
Speaker 2: optimist and I do think that. But I am concerned
Speaker 2: about the more technology that seems to be available, the
Speaker 2: more spent time we spent alone and we Therefore, the
Speaker 2: answer is not demonizing technology, because then we're putting fingers.
Speaker 2: I think the answer is being very honest about what
Speaker 2: makes it happy and designing things that create those conditions.
Speaker 2: I went the next chapter, ebe I want to be
Speaker 2: less about housing, less about travel, and more about connection,
Speaker 2: more about bringing people together. Now it might still involve
Speaker 2: travel things, it might still involve housing things, but new
Speaker 2: things we're going to do are going to be a
Speaker 2: lot more about bringing people together.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, here's to new.
Speaker 2: Things, new things. Thank you, Thank you very much.
Speaker 1: You've been doing this like fifteen years. Teen years is
Speaker 1: a long time.
Speaker 2: This is a long time.
Speaker 1: Does it ever a text standard? Does it ever get
Speaker 1: like lonely at the top?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, how does that feel like? Well, no one
Speaker 2: ever told me how lonely it would become. And one
Speaker 2: day I wake up and I have a life people
Speaker 2: around me, And it was the loneliness ever felt my life.
Speaker 2: This experience isn't shared. When you're in charge and you're
Speaker 2: around a lot of people that you pay, there's a
Speaker 2: power dynamic. Everyone's depending on you, and success that happens
Speaker 2: really quickly. You can be a little hard to deal with.
Speaker 2: What makes us happy is knowing that we can have
Speaker 2: somebody we don't have, and it's like we're climbing, we're reaching.
Speaker 2: Then you realize, oh, I got It's not about what's
Speaker 2: outside me, is this in me. I got to look
Speaker 2: inside myself. I had this period of time leading probably
Speaker 2: up to the pandemic and even in the pandemic, where
Speaker 2: I had to look inside myself like what's going to
Speaker 2: make me happy? Like why am I doing this? And
Speaker 2: I also got really isolated a pandemic. I didn't really
Speaker 2: talk to people. It was the loneliest ever felt, and
Speaker 2: I realized, like, this can't be the rest of my life.
Speaker 2: So I got really focused on like reconnecting with old
Speaker 2: high school friends, old college friends. And I mean it's
Speaker 2: so crazy, like coming from me. You can have all
Speaker 2: the money world, all the success in the world, but
Speaker 2: a thing that makes most people happy is just connections
Speaker 2: and relationships.
Speaker 1: You talk about your parents and your family a lot.
Speaker 1: Do you want a family? Like do you want Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely, definitely. It's I mean, it's probably the one
Speaker 2: other than it's probably the one thing I haven't done,
Speaker 2: you know, like I've done a lot professionally. I got
Speaker 2: a dog that was a starting I wait to let
Speaker 2: me take care of something really like low key first.
Speaker 2: If you had told me in my twenties what my
Speaker 2: life would be like at forty one, I would have
Speaker 2: told you I have a family. Maybe I wouldn't be
Speaker 2: that far in my career and things happen in different order.
Speaker 2: I now have like a huge public company and I
Speaker 2: don't have a family, and so it kind of makes
Speaker 2: sense though, like I did things in different order, and
Speaker 2: the last fifteen years has been work and all consuming Airbnb.
Speaker 1: So is there like a goal for the next decade
Speaker 1: of Brian Chesky?
Speaker 2: And as long as you're in a constant state of
Speaker 2: becoming and changing and growing, you're going to be okay.
Speaker 2: And I think for us, like we're in the tech industry,
Speaker 2: it means we're in the change industry. So we have
Speaker 2: to change and reinvent ourselves. And that's the one thing
Speaker 2: we haven't done. We haven't done the next thing yet.
Speaker 2: I don't want to feel like the best idea we
Speaker 2: had was in my twenties, my friends. I feel like
Speaker 2: there's more ahead of us.
Speaker 1: You obviously you lived around the world in airbnbs. You've
Speaker 1: interacted with so many cities and people in different countries,
Speaker 1: and many of them welcomed Airbnb with open arms, and
Speaker 1: some are still resisting.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: Why do you think that is?
Speaker 2: So? Every city's a community, and every community has many
Speaker 2: different stakeholders, and they have many different circumstances. Some cities
Speaker 2: need more tourism and they reach out to us. Other
Speaker 2: cities have been going through a housing affordability crisis and
Speaker 2: they're very very sensitive housing and take off the market.
Speaker 2: Other cities they really depend on short term stays, but
Speaker 2: they want them done a certain frequency. And so the
Speaker 2: lesson I've learned is you got to like, there's no
Speaker 2: one size fits all. If the treat every city personally,
Speaker 2: you have to understand their needs. I mean, it's kind
Speaker 2: of like what designer would do and try to make
Speaker 2: a system for them that works.
Speaker 1: People think Airbnb is driving up costs, enriching landlords, bringing
Speaker 1: in floods, of churists changing the character of a place.
Speaker 1: What do you say that people who are like, I
Speaker 1: hate what this is doing in my community.
Speaker 2: Well, I never want Airbnb to do anything other than
Speaker 2: strength in a community. I also think it's really important
Speaker 2: and never presume that we're the good guys. I think
Speaker 2: we always have to be skeptical about is what we're doing.
Speaker 2: And so, for example affordable housing, a lot of cities said,
Speaker 2: you know, we want to have some basic restrictions on
Speaker 2: how Airbemy CANbus in our city. So we have like
Speaker 2: we comply with registration systems for cities. We want to
Speaker 2: make sure that like cities say they want to be
Speaker 2: able to we have to collect our fair share taxes.
Speaker 2: You know, we all been instinct to be defensive. So
Speaker 2: you're doing something I know I'm not, and you have
Speaker 2: to ask, well, are we yeah, and how can we
Speaker 2: evolve it and do it differently? So it's constantly like adapting.
Speaker 1: You know the airbnb is exacerbating the housing crisis or
Speaker 1: the people who think like, oh, this is gentrifying my neighborhood.
Speaker 1: I can't afford anything, there's not enough places for people
Speaker 1: to live. What's your response to that?
Speaker 2: I started Airbnb and my co founder because we couldn't
Speaker 2: afford to make rent, and so our roots of air
Speaker 2: and B is in providing housing that is more affordable.
Speaker 2: The vast majority of our hosts are renting the home
Speaker 2: that they live in. But I also want people to
Speaker 2: know that we want to strengthen communities, and if that
Speaker 2: means that they need to change the way air and
Speaker 2: B exists in their city, will have that convers.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Circuit.
Speaker 1: I'm Emily Chang. You can follow me on Twitter and
Speaker 1: Instagram at Emily Chang TV. You can watch full episodes
Speaker 1: of the Circuit at Bloomberg dot com and check out
Speaker 1: our other Bloomberg podcasts on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartMedia app,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to shows and let us know
Speaker 1: what you think by leaving us a review. I'm your
Speaker 1: host and executive producer. Our senior producer is Lauren Ellis,
Speaker 1: Our associate producer is Lizzie Phillip. Our editor is Sebastian Escobar.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for listening.