I think there's a lot of fear about AI outside of Silicon Valley. I understand the reason — it's changing their jobs, it's replacing them, and part of that may be true. But I'm saying everyone has that power now.
This is Brian Chesky, co-founder and CEO of Airbnb, a Fortune 500 company valued at $95 billion. He believes AI is widening the gap between people who have access to the same tools. So I wanted to understand what really gives people an advantage in an AI-driven world.
AI is like an amplifier. It makes good people even better. And for people who weren't that good, its multiplier effect is smaller.
I'm just trying to translate this for people who are thinking about different business ideas. How do they know if that idea is viable to launch?
This video is sponsored by HubSpot. Hi, Brian.
Hey, how's it going? Good to see you.
Welcome to Silicon Valley Girl. It's been 7 years since we met, and I wanted to show you this. I don't know if you remember, but that crazy girl at the airport who saw Brian Chesky and then ran up to you.
And you were boarding a commercial flight? Of course.
It was at LAX. Thank you for being so kind and friendly.
Of course. Look, thank you for being here. I'm very honored to be on your show.
Thank you. And I invited you to a podcast back then. So, 7 years later, we're here doing this. We're doing this here. We are.
So, I came to San Francisco to build a travel company, and we went through very difficult times during COVID. And seeing how you faced that period really inspired me and gave me strength. And now we're in this new era of transformation, which is AI. So today I wanted to focus on how you're transforming the company for the AI era. And I wanted to make it as applicable as possible for people who might be thinking about starting a business in the AI era, or maybe going through difficult times as professionals, because a lot is changing. So tell me, if Airbnb becomes AI-native, what does that mean for guests? And I'm also a host — I have a place in Hawaii that we rent out on Airbnb. So what does that mean for both sides of the coin?
AI means just modernizing every touchpoint of the app to be smarter, easier to use. So, I'll give you some examples. Let's say you're a guest. Before AI, you'd do a normal search, type in a location, and get a bunch of results. Now, with AI, starting today you can turn on an option and do an AI search. It's very natural, right in natural language, like typing into a chatbot. And then it's a very intelligent search. So you can say: "I want to go to Paris this weekend with this number of people. I want this kind of view and I want this kind of architecture." And it will not only show you all the results, but it will also pre-filter everything for you, because Airbnb is all about filters and controls. See, chatbots aren't very good at shopping. Chatbots aren't very good at travel, and the reason is that they're text-based. They're very hard to compare. You want things that are inspiration-based and visually navigable? You want it to be fun and entertainment-oriented? An Airbnb experience, on average, is three people traveling, so everyone has to be able to share. You have to be able to message the host, you have to have filters, and you need to be able to see, like, if I turn off this filter, I see this house, but if I turn this filter back on, I see that other house. So, we had to find an interface that wasn't a chatbot, but that felt like a chat you could start talking to without losing the functionality people loved. Then, when you open a listing on Airbnb, we have these AI-generated highlights. Basically, the AI summarizes the listing for you, and these are personalized, very cool snippets. They're personalized for you. So, we can make the listing literally written for you, saying: "This is why you'll love this listing." Then when you get to the bottom of the page, if you have a question, you don't even need to ask the host anymore. You can literally ask the page, and the listing can answer things for you. You can still message the host, but now you can message. Then if you have several listings and want to compare them, we have an AI comparison tool, which makes everything very smart and easy. And one of the challenges people don't notice, and one of the problems with chatbots, is that Airbnb is largely about comparing accommodation options. Okay, I like these 10 houses. This one has a pool. This one has a barbecue. This one has very high ratings. This one is new. This one is a bit more expensive. This one is in a very good location. How do I make decisions and how do I compare side by side and how do I filter the options? Then we have brand-new maps where I can, starting with Paris, tap and see information about each neighborhood. Over time, this will be rolled out in 1,000 different cities around the world. And these are just some of the features we have for guests. On the host side, we're going to make the app look more and more like an agent that can be your mentor, understand your goals. It can help you price your listing.
So, I think the basic idea is that Airbnb is getting smarter. The entire Airbnb app will look more like an agent. But when I say agent, I don't mean a chatbot. When people hear agents and chatbots, they think they're the same thing, but they're not. An agent is an evolution of an app. It's an app that's smarter, that understands you and knows you. And it harnesses the power of AI. A chatbot is a user interface. And I think because most agents are chatbots, we confuse the two. But they're not the same thing. And I think a chatbot isn't the right interface for travel, it isn't the right interface for shopping, but agents are great, and I think the best thing about agents is that they're interoperable, so one agent can talk to another agent. And that's why I think agents are definitely the future of Silicon Valley, and chatbots aren't.
Yes. And the chatbot seems more reactive, while the agent is more proactive, knowing your interests. And I really liked the comparison feature, because you don't know how many hours I've spent. These are two very similar bookings, but this one is quieter, except this one has a bigger room. And so, I think seeing them side by side makes a huge difference. And you're also adding a social graph, something I simply love.
You know? It's really funny. I came to Silicon Valley 19 years ago, and when I arrived in Silicon Valley, there was this thing called social networking, and it was Facebook, and everyone was on Facebook, and it was almost just your friends, and you could keep in touch with your friends, and they shared what they were doing. And now none of my friends are on Facebook. And Instagram isn't a social network, it's a media network. So it's basically Instagram, X, YouTube, TikTok. They really aren't social networks, they're really platforms where people perform. They're broadcast platforms. And that's not — I'm not saying that's bad, but I'm saying that now there's nowhere on the internet for me to know not only what my friends are doing, but one of the things I used to love was knowing where people were traveling. The people in my life, where they traveled, where they're going? And here's a use case. Let's say I'm going to Chicago. I'm sure I have several friends who have already been to Chicago, but I don't know which ones. And now, if I connect with people on Airbnb, I can see all my friends who have been to Chicago and I can see where they stayed. I might want to stay where they stayed, but more importantly, I can ask them, like, hey, what's good to do in Chicago? Because what we've found is that more and more people want recommendations from their friends and family, rather than, you know, celebrities or writers. They increasingly want people who seem to know them, like: "You know me, so you know what I like." But this is an unsolved problem, because you don't know where everyone in your life has traveled. Another thing about Airbnb is that one of the best parts of it is meeting someone new. You know, it's hard to meet people nowadays. I asked my parents: "How did you meet people?" They'd go to the mall, go to the movies, go to physical spaces. Increasingly, people today aren't in physical spaces, they're on their phones. And the phone is really a way for you to talk to strangers online, but it's a pretty hard way to meet strangers offline. And that's why we want to help solve that problem by making it easier to meet people in the real world and to stay in touch with them. So, if you travel and stay at someone's house, you can get to know them. If you do an experience with someone, you can stay in touch with that person. So, I think a lot of what we're trying to do is transform Airbnb from kind of just a house-rental platform into something more like a travel community. And I think the travel network is really cool. And if you go on Airbnb, you can basically add your friends, your family, and you can see where they're traveling. And here's a really cool use case. Wouldn't you be curious to know where all your friends are traveling this summer?
I think that's really cool. Now you can know and decide. Well, if they're going, we can go at the same time.
Yeah, and one of the reasons I started this podcast was because I wanted to meet people in person, and whenever guests suggest doing it online, I say: "No, no, no, that's not why I wanted to do this from the start." So, I totally relate, and I think you're also opening up opportunities for new businesses, right? Because now you're doing grocery shopping, baby items, restaurant food deliveries. Are you launching more than 700 features?
I think so. Uh, we're launching, I think the statistic is that we're launching 80% more features than a year ago. Most of that is because of AI. Obviously AI is like this incredible superpower, you know? 10 years ago, even a few years ago, everything had to be hand-coded. Everything was much harder to do. Now that we can ship things much faster, we can ship features faster. We used to take a year to launch a new service. Now we can do that in weeks. And now, for example, with services, one of the things we hear most from guests is: "I love staying in houses," but they don't have all the services of a hotel. And we thought: "Well, what if we could have not only all the services of a hotel, but even more services?" So, we can have baby items if you have kids. You know, sometimes hotels have cribs, but maybe they have two or three cribs. And if they run out, you're stuck. That's what we — I don't have kids, but I hear from my friends who do. Maybe you want to do laundry. A hotel has laundry. Well, now on Airbnb you can hire a laundry service. So, we just wanted to go down the list. Ski equipment rental. I'm going skiing. I don't want to — I don't have my own ski equipment. So, going to a place to get ski equipment can be very, very, you know? It can be a hassle, right? And you just arrived in a city, you're tired, you don't want to be thinking about how to get ski equipment? We can have all the sizes waiting for you, all the equipment for you. So, we're really trying to make Airbnb as easy and convenient as possible. So, you're not just getting a house, you're getting a full-service experience. So, over time, you'll see us adding dozens, even hundreds of services that can be integrated into the house so that when you book a house, you can have everything you need for your trip.
Where do you see the biggest opportunity for small businesses trying to build something to connect to your system?
Let's pretend I'm a masseuse. I'm a masseuse in Tulum, Mexico. I'm just making up a random place. Now, how do I get clients? I can only get local clients who know me. But how would I get — if I were a traveler, how would I get clients? I probably wouldn't get clients. Maybe I'd have to go work at a resort and they'd have to get me clients. Now I can have my own business. I can advertise on Airbnb and to all the travelers arriving in Tulum. If someone wants a massage, they can go on Airbnb and book a massage with me. So, it's kind of like the original Airbnb, where I had a house, but nobody knew about my house, and we gave them a distribution platform and they could basically reach an audience. Something like that. Just like social networks give everyone an audience, we can give all these small businesses access to an audience, and we give them a global audience of travelers. That's very, very hard for someone. I'm a photographer in Paris and I take photos of families in front of the Eiffel Tower. Many people want me to take their photos. How do you take your photo in front of the Eiffel Tower? If you're a parent, one of you doesn't appear in the photo? Or you hand the camera to someone else and they get annoyed. Yeah. And it ends up being just an iPhone photo. Now you can have incredible professional photos in 30 minutes. It's not very expensive, and you'll remember those photos forever. That photographer would never know how to advertise to all these guests from all over the world. We really feel there's a whole economy of service providers. Whether they're masseuses, chefs, photographers, companies dealing with equipment or baby items, laundry or cleaning service, car rental, airport pickup and drop-off, airport search, anything you can imagine. In other words, now you can use Airbnb for more than just a house. You can use Airbnb for anything.
And you were testing all of this, I imagine, before launching. Yes. Can you tell me about all the testing and what the decision-making criteria are?
For everything we launch, we're probably testing many, many more things, and we have dozens of services in progress, like ski equipment. I'm not a big skier, but I ski a little. I don't ski enough to have my own skis, I don't ski enough to have my own boots, my own helmet. So, everywhere I go, I have to rent equipment. And it's always like, I don't even know where to go, I go to the mountain to rent the equipment, I have to wait in line, I have to wait for someone to take my measurements. It would be much more convenient if I could arrive at Airbnb. They know my boot size, they know my ski size, and they just have everything ready for me. That's something we're testing. I think the test is in Italy, but we hope to bring this to ski mountains all over the world. And there are these ski rental companies, and they would love to be able to bring the equipment to you, instead of you having to wait in line at the store, which can be quite inconvenient. Surf equipment, you know? A professional surfer will probably travel with their own board, but it's quite hard to bring a surfboard on a plane, and many people won't travel with a board. So they'll have to rent that equipment. And what if that equipment was waiting for you at the house? Or if you knew exactly where to go to get the equipment. Those are roughly the ideas. So we're trying to test. You know, we usually do a test in one market, one city. If it works, then we take it to other markets. And everything we announced today, we were testing. So we have many more services coming, there are literally hundreds. By the way. What's exciting is the long tail. It's that there are so many different services, and maybe no individual service is big enough to be a giant business you've already heard of and that has an app. So that's the challenge. Like ride-hailing, there's an app, Uber. Food delivery, there's an app, Uber Eats, DoorDash, but most other services aren't big enough to have a global brand where you know where to go. And even if they have an app, they're not integrated with Airbnb, and that's why it's quite hard. Like Instacart, they have an app, but now you can get groceries delivered to your Airbnb, and there's an option to order Instacart groceries through the Airbnb app. It already knows your address, it already knows how many guests, and the food can be delivered to the house, and the host can open the door and put the food in the fridge. So the fridge is stocked for you. That's incredible, it's just much more convenient.
