Brian Chesky: Rebuilding Airbnb from the ground up | Rapid Response

I think we can take the Airbnb model and bring it to all these different categories of traveling and living. We've had to basically rebuild the app from the ground up to do this, build out entire new functions we didn't really have before, reorganize the company. It's a real challenge, but it's the best kind of challenge because it keeps us young. One of my favorite musicians is Bob Dylan. He used to say an artist has to be in a constant state of becoming, and as long as you don't ever become something and arrive there, you're going to be okay. That's the thing: as a company, you have to constantly reinvent yourself to stay young, and I think we're at that moment.

Oh, thank you for having me. I always love our conversations.

I think that I am ever the optimist, and I try not to be too affected by the circumstances happening in the world. I think Airbnb as a brand is a pretty optimistic brand. You kind of have to be an optimistic company to think that bringing strangers together to live in each other's homes is a good idea, right? It was a bit of a Rorschach test: do you think it's a good idea or a bad idea? Are you optimistic or pessimistic about the human spirit? I've always believed that humans are pretty much fundamentally good, and we have a tendency to want to gravitate to light, to love in the long run. But I also do think there is a huge amount of polarization right now. I think the world is better than it's reported to be. I'm kind of impervious to some of the negativity; I think the negativity is a little overblown compared to daily life. It's not to say things aren't challenging, but we also have more technology than we've ever had at our disposal to fix things, if we can only just cooperate. And I think cooperation is going to require a sense of optimism. It's going to require us believing other people, optimistic circumstances about them, so we can work together to actually fix problems. I worry that a negative mindset becomes a self-reinforcing kind of prophecy.

You know, I think every company is a little different. These really large tech companies are very much regulated at the national level, and what happens at the national level from a policy standpoint has potentially very large ramifications on these platforms. Airbnb, we have to deal with a lot of laws and regulations, but most of our laws and regulations are at the city level and the state level. So most of what we need to do is focused on working with stakeholders in 100,000 cities. We work really closely with policymakers there. There really wasn't a reason for me to attend the inauguration, and so I wasn't looking just to join a big party or big trend. I haven't really spoken out that much about politics recently. It doesn't mean I won't speak out in the future, but there need to be some countervailing forces in society, some things bringing people together, and that's where the Airbnb brand best comes into play. Ultimately, we have 4 million people a night staying together. We have Trump voters hosting Kamala Harris voters and vice versa, and that's just the United States. We have people from all different cultures, all different religions, all different political groups coming together. I really feel like if we were put on Earth to do one thing, it's to help bring people together in communities. That's probably the secret sauce of Airbnb. But we will speak out when there's an issue, like when there was a travel ban we spoke out, because we know a little bit about travel and what the ramifications of banning travel would be. As Silicon Valley is going more political, the best thing I can do is have Airbnb chart its own course. Sometimes we'll look like one side or the other. We're very much about building global community, bringing people together. We're also very much about making sure we deliver value to shareholders. Is that threading the needle? I think we have our own views, and the best characteristics are when people have their own views. So we just try to chart our own course. We have a pretty global mindset because we have a global view. We run a global business. Airbnb has been used more than 2 billion times, I think in more countries than Coca-Cola. We're truly distributed in every geography in the world, and yet we're still an American corporation, so we do have a foot in each.

I'll try to share just a little bit of detail without giving away everything, because you'll have to have me back on. I always need to leave you with a little bit wanting more. To give you a little bit: the arc of the company — we had this crazy idea. People said the idea won't work. It was like the craziest idea that ever worked, and it did work. I went on one of the biggest rocket ships in the history of Silicon Valley. Then of course the pandemic happened. We lost 80% of our business in 8 weeks. People were asking, 'Is this the end of Airbnb?' It really wasn't; it was just the beginning. We had this unbelievable turnaround, went public at a $100 billion market cap. Expectations are really high. So the last four years, what we've been doing is really trying to perfect our core business. We basically asked everyone who didn't like Airbnb, 'Why don't you like Airbnb? What are your issues with the service?' We were really methodical. We blueprinted the end-to-end experience for guest and host, and over the last four years we made 535 features and upgrades. I think our core service is better than ever. It's not ever going to be finished. It's kind of like if you want to build a skyscraper and you're a four-story building, you can't just keep building new floors. At some point you need to rebuild the foundation so you can hold more floors. That's kind of what we've been doing: improving our service, rebuilding the foundation, waiting for this moment. And this is the moment where we want to expand the Airbnb model beyond a place to stay. This is something I've been thinking about for 10 years. The reason we haven't done it successfully is there's this old quote in Silicon Valley — I think Marc Andreessen said it — 'There are no bad ideas, just ideas that are too early.' Which is kind of counterintuitive, because most people think ideas are too late. Often in Silicon Valley, ideas are too early. We probably weren't ready to expand beyond our core business until this moment. I think we can take the Airbnb model and bring it to all these different categories of traveling and living. We've had to basically rebuild the app from the ground up to do this, build out entire new functions we didn't really have before, reorganize the company, become much more collaborative. It's very rare to get out of your groove at this age. It's kind of like later in life learning a new language. It's a real challenge, but it's the best kind of challenge because it keeps us young, keeps us from becoming a big old company by having to fundamentally change and reinvent who we are.