The video explores the unique aspects of Airbnb, highlighting its founder Brian Chesky's approach to innovation and leadership. Chesky shares his experience of turning personal challenges into opportunities, initially by renting out his own living space, which paved the way for Airbnb's global success. He emphasizes the element of trust essential in sharing one's private space and discusses the major Sociological change Airbnb has induced in society, where strangers now comfortably stay in each other's homes.

Chesky narrates the significant impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Airbnb, forcing a reevaluation of company values and operational strategies. During this crisis, Chesky learned invaluable lessons on leadership, particularly the need for strong direction and the importance of understanding human nature in business. Despite adversity, Airbnb bounced back, achieving substantial financial success, and Chesky describes his vision to use digital tools to foster real-world human connections.

Main takeaways from the video:

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Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. Memorabilia [ˌmɛm(ə)rəˈbɪliə] - (n.) - Objects kept or collected because of their associations with memorable people or events.

There's a lot of, like, cool design books here and, like, a lot of Memorabilia.

2. Visionary [ˈvɪʒ.ən.er.i] - (n.) - Someone with original ideas about what the future will or could be like.

I think I'm less a Visionary than an Expeditionary in the sense that I didn't have a vision.

3. Expeditionary [ˌɛkspəˈdɪʃəˌneri] - (adj.) - Involving or relating to an expedition, exploration, or journey.

I think I'm less a Visionary than an Expeditionary in the sense that I didn't have a vision.

4. Sociological [ˌsəʊ.si.əˈlɒdʒ.ɪ.kəl] - (adj.) - Pertaining to or characteristic of the science of sociology or social relations.

But Airbnb has actually been a big part of maybe a major Sociological change.

5. Resilient [rɪˈzɪl.i.ənt] - (adj.) - Able to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions.

The city is so Resilient, and just when people said there was going to be a massive exodus.

6. Crisis management [ˈkraɪ.sɪs ˈmæn.ɪdʒ.mənt] - (n.) - The process by which an organization deals with a disruptive and unexpected event that threatens to harm the organization or its stakeholders.

And I think I had lessons that have now been seared in my brain.

7. Pragmatic [præɡˈmæt.ɪk] - (adj.) - Dealing with things sensibly and realistically in a way that is based on practical rather than theoretical considerations.

I stopped apologizing about how I want to run the company.

8. Reinvent [ˌriːɪnˈvent] - (v.) - Change (something) so much that it appears to be entirely new.

Phase four, Reinvent yourself, extensively.

9. Intersection [ˌɪn.təˈsek.ʃən] - (n.) - A point at which two or more things intersect or meet.

Although I probably set the Intersection.

10. Orchestrate [ˈɔr.kəˌstreɪt] - (v.) - Arrange or direct the elements of (a situation) to produce a desired effect.

I think we can design some of the best interfaces for AI in the world.

Inside Airbnb: A Journey Through Trust and Innovation

Let's just say this isn't your typical Airbnb. Hello. How are you doing? Thank you for having us. I'm gonna be hosting. Sophie. Sophie. She'll be co hosting with us today. She's such a good host. And this is your house. This is my house. Love it. Yeah. Here we are. This is the infamous Airbnb of all Airbnbs. This is. This is where it all happens. I love your coffee table book game. I'm, like, really into coffee table books. Oh, yeah? That's cool, right? Yours are pretty good.

There's a lot of, like, cool design books here and, like, a lot of Memorabilia. Like, there's Obama O's. This is literally how we funded the company. We sold collectible breakfast cereal. And you became cereal entrepreneurs. Yes, I think I produced it. You'll see that one's autographed by the actual president Obama. And you handmade these, right? We handmade these. We designed these with a team. And I literally hot glued this one myself. Joe made me this one. This is my IPO gift. This would be my kid's favorite. Chesky's charms. Chesky's charms. So you have Chesky's chips, Chesky's charms. I love his house. It's beautiful.

Honestly, it's gorgeous. And it's a nice balance. Cause, you know, I live alone. I don't want to have, like, a weird tech McMansion, you know, super modern. I'm not gonna name names, but, you know, people my age buying hundred million dollar homes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not my thing. What's it been like playing host so far? Oh, my God. It's been. It's been a lot of fun. I'm a co host. I got Sophie supernova. That's true. She's a nearly two year old golden retriever. It's been cool. Cause I haven't really hosted that much since the early days.

You're kind of busy. You're running a multibillion dollar company. Like, what made you want to make time for this? I never wanted to be one of those CEO's. That's kind of an ivory tower, just looking at data and spreadsheets all day. When you first build a company, you make something usually for yourself. People aren't just numbers, they're people. And that means that you need to be emotionally connected to what you're doing. Understand? When hosts are complaining about something or your customer's complaining, what do they mean? So that's, like, the main reason I did it. But then there was another reason I wasn't expecting, which was this fun?

It was crazy to think you were gonna rent your house to a stranger or that you were gonna stay in some stranger's house. And now it's just what we do. Does the level of human openness to that idea still surprise you? I think I'm less a Visionary than an Expeditionary in the sense that I didn't have a vision. I discovered something. One weekend, I couldn't pay rent. I decided to let people in my house only to make money. For the most part, I thought it'd be fun. And I ended up becoming friends with these people. And it made me realize that, like, these homes are these private spaces that you never let anyone in, but you understand why there's no trust. And we thought, well, if we could solve a system of trust and make them not feel like strangers, this would be an idea that's spread on the world.

I think we have trouble imagining Sociological changes, sometimes harder than technological changes. We can all imagine things getting bigger faster, but it's hard to imagine us changing behavior. But Airbnb has actually been a big part of maybe a major Sociological change, probably. I mean, it's been now been used 1.4 billion times. And if you had told me when we first started that 1.4 billion people from 220 countries and regions would live together, that on a typical night, we'd have nearly the population of Los Angeles staying together. People from the Middle east and Texas, like cultures, you wouldn't necessarily think mixing together. I think we all would have said you were crazy.

It's like most tech companies have to understand laws of physics. We call these first principles. And we also have to know a different law, which is a law of human nature. Like, who are we at a very basic level. And if you can start to understand that, then you can start to design for people. You know, obviously the pandemic hits travel, comes to a screeching hall, the majority of your revenue almost vanishes. Also, nobody wants to see other people. Right in that moment, did it feel like you were standing on the edge of a cliff?

I thought we had made it before the pandemic. You know, we had a business that was doing, like, let's call it $35 billion in sales. That's more than Starbucks. That's almost like the size of Nike. If you told me in, like, the 1980s growing up, we'd have a business that big. You're totally crazy. I thought, we're making work in IPO to lose 80% of it in eight weeks. I mean, you remember there were articles like is this the end of Airbnb? Will Airbnb exist? I got to tell you, like, that changed my life and it changed my life and the company for the better.

How you ever hear people say, like, they had a near death experience and they had this moment of clarity? Well, thankfully, I've never had that, but I felt like I got that clarity. From a business perspective. How did you change as a person? We'll see. My hair is a little grayer, but I think I really grew up during the pandemic. I think I felt my responsibility. More employees were worried about their jobs. Investors were worried about their investment. Guests were worried about if they could get their money back when they're traveling.

And they were all reaching out to me at the same time and not in a low key, composed way. And I remember my board member, Ken Chenault, who was the CEO of Amex. He was CEO during 911 in the financial crisis 2008. And he basically said, I've been through two of the biggest crises of my lifetime, and this is ten times bigger than either of them. He said, this is your defining moment as a CEO. And I think I had lessons that have now been seared in my brain and I'm never going to forget them. What are the lessons?

So the first thing I learned is who people really are. The good news is that the vast majority of people turned out to be great people. I learned to focus the entire company and point them every single person to one direction. And I learned to stop apologizing about how I want to run the company. Because you hire people and they come from Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and they bring their way with them. And what I realized I was doing was trying to find some midpoint between how I wanted to run the company on how they wanted to run the company, which actually made everyone miserable. It's like I had to go into wartime mode.

And the crazy thing was, as I took more command, more control, became more decisive, more bossy, so to speak. I think people were happier. Cause they had clarity and direction. And then the tide turned. Or maybe it's like the Titanic didn't hit the iceberg. You go public, Airbnb goes public the end of 2020. I'm interviewing you live. You can't even speak like you're completely tongue tied. I actually want you to. I want you to watch it. It's such a moment.

We just got indication on your opening price. Shares indicated to open right now at $139 a share, which is more than double what you priced at. I mean, are you at all concerned about froth. What do you think about that number and the potential that you're leaving billions of dollars on the table? That's the first time I've heard that number. That is. That's when we, in April, we raised money, and it was a debt financing. That price would have priced us around $30. So I don't know what else to say. That's a very. That's, wow, I haven't watched that in a long time. Wow. That actually makes me a little emotional.

What's going through your head in that moment? I think that moment, it was like my hard drive crash. And I think it's that, like, the pandemic happens. We have an emergency board meeting. All of a sudden I realize this is gonna be a 24 hours thing, and I probably never stopped at any point to think about anything. You took a whole year and you made it like a 15 2nd trail run. I was like, oh, my God. And it just. Maybe at that moment, it all hit me. This is just so crazy. Your interview went viral. It did. People could see it hit you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. My eyebrows went to the top of my head and I didn't know they went that high. That was one of the most surprising moments of my life. I'm not usually speechless. I mean, 2020 was an intense and emotional year, and that was the capstone. Do you ever think about where Airbnb would be if the pandemic didn't happen? That's the crazy thing. Like, your culture is often forged in your darkest moments. I think people think of culture as like, the perks, yoga, free food, snacks. No, culture are the shared behaviors that you all have based on lessons you've learned together.

And the lessons you remember most are during the moments of trials and tribulations, the things that forge you. We basically made five years of progress in six months, and you can't ask for an occasion like that. You can only hope that if it happens, you will rise. We've seen a lot of founders CEO's step back, whether it's Amazon, Google, Twitter, Pinterest, slack. You're still here. I think when I was starting out, I think I was afraid to run a giant company. But the thing that's most surprised me is I have more excitement today than I did when I was in Y combinator. The job today as a public company CEO is more fun, really, than the job as a private company CEO.

I feel like I often hear the opposite. You often do, because you know by the time you run a public company, you're trying to appease shareholders. You're trying to appease employees. You're negotiating. I stopped obsessing over making money, and we ended up generating three and a half billion free cash flow. There's a paradox there. I like to tell entrepreneur. Think of the growth of your company. You have to grow faster than that. And if you don't grow faster than your company, then your company is going to be pulling you, and then you're going to eventually be holding it back.

Does it ever feel like this immense responsibility that you have to stay? Or does it feel like a burden? I only want to keep doing this if I'm the best person to do this. And the interest in me is, the longer I do it, the more I probably become the best person, because I have both the history of the founder being a founder that you can never replace. And my biggest weakness was probably I was young and I didn't have a lot of experience, but now I have that, too.

I think that our day is just getting started. We're like, phase one, have an idea, bring it to market, get product, market fit. Phase two, hyper growth. Phase three, become a public company and, like, generate profit and be a real company. Phase four, Reinvent yourself, extensively. I'm an entrepreneur and a business person, but I think of myself as kind of designing and making. And the reason I, like, have more fun now is because now it's more creative than it used to be.

Are you an artist, designer first and CEO second? That what you would say? I think you're always what you were growing up. You know, there's something about what you were growing up that's always in your heart. And probably I approach problems more like a designer than a CEO, although I probably set the Intersection. And how does that change the company? How is that mentality infused into the company? I have, like, books like this Frank Lloyd Wright book here, right? My favorite architect, or Charles and Ray Eames, two of the great industrial designers of the 20th century.

Charles Eames said, the details aren't the details. They make the product. And I am absolutely involved in the details. I think design is not just how something looks, it's how it fundamentally works. It's about simplifying something. And people think simplifying is removing things. And it's not. Simplifying is understanding something so deeply that you can get to the essence of something. Even like how we became profitable. We kind of designed the P and L. You know, most people cut, we didn't cut, we designed, because cutting, you're just like, lopping things up. But designing says, well, instead of cutting all these expenses, what if we just thought about the whole operation differently? To have fewer parts, fewer components.

And it really takes creativity to do that. What's a day in the life of Brian chesky outside the office? I like to learn. I like to draw. I like to hang out with people I care about, and I like to travel. I guess those are the things I do. I love your art. Yeah. So this is all. This is my life before tech. Did you do these? Yeah. So I did this in freshman year, Arisd. This is like a thousand triangles glued together to turn into a self-portrait. I didn't realize you were such an artist. I mean, I knew you were a designer, but I feel probably, yeah, more an artist now.

Artist. I started as an artist, became a designer, then I guess an entrepreneur in that order. Is this another one of yours? Yeah. So this was like my big high school senior project. This is me basically hanging off a ledge of the grand canyon. There's a lot going on there. Probably highly symbolic to how I felt senior in high school, which was like, oh, my God. Like, my life is changing so much. I was planning to go to art school. I thought I'd be an artist at that point. I didn't even think I'd be a designer. Designer was like a leap. Yeah.

And I had to go the whole journey of realizing, like, I love drawing, and then I get to campus and I realize I was born, like, 100 years too late for what I wanted to do. Freshman year. Risd, you have to pick a major. And the department head of industrial Zion came to pitch. And they said, industrial Zion is design of everything from a toothbrush to a spaceship and every single thing in between. And I thought to myself, that's what I'm gonna do in my life. So Airbnb was the thing in between. I guess we're between the toothbrush and the spaceship.

Over the years, you've really emphasized, you know, the values of Airbnb, whether it's community or connectedness. What does it take to make something that people really love? When I joined y combinator, the first day, they give you a t shirt. It's a gray t shirt and it says, make something people want. And if you get an exit, they send you a black t shirt and it says, I made something people want.

And that was something that always stuck with me. And I think the way you make something that people want is you have to care about people and you have to understand people. We did this thing ten years ago. I named it Snow White after the movie Snow White. Snow White was basically the advent of the storyboard. Walt Disney is one of my heroes. This film was so long, he had to storyboard. And I said, why don't more businesses do that? Why don't businesses understand who their customer is, storyboard the experience, and then try to put themselves in the shoes of that person.

And just every single opportunity is a detail that you could perfect. Talk about being in the details. Oh, yeah. I mean, is your team, like, should we invite Brian or not? If they had the choice. But you're presuming they have a choice. I don't intend to be in the details of everything forever. It's like I'm a coach and I'm like trying to teach a level of detail and excellence. I think there's this idea that I think is a bit of a myth that great leaders hire great people and empower them to do great work. And that sounds great, but they're missing something.

And what they're missing is you got to be in the details of the people. It's not micromanaging, it's auditing and understanding what they're doing. Tech is going through a tumultuous time. Oh, yeah. Tens of thousands of people getting laid off in waves. How do you think about how Amazon and meta and other companies are handling these layoffs? I always felt like when I would read some of these corporate communications that, like, they weren't written by people, they seemed to be like, written by committees, and it felt like maybe a bunch of lawyers or HR people had sanded the edges off the person to the point where the person speaking wouldn't actually talk like that. Any communication.

I write a lot of CEO's, don't write anything that they have their name on. The second thing is, I think when you do a layoff, if you're going to cut, you need to cut once, and therefore you better cut deep enough. Try to avoid doing multiple layoffs. I think multiple layoffs can be very difficult from a cultural standpoint, because if there's more than one, then people can't trust they will ever end. And the company is like in a paralyzed standstill if that happens.

You started Airbnb at the depths of a financial crisis 2009. Yeah. What's your advice to entrepreneurs now? I mean, I honestly think, hi, Sophie. Sophie. She's like, this is going on a really long time. I get it. We've been talking a while. Hello. I think she likes me. All right, what's your advice? Look, it's like, yeah, banks are collapsing. What's your advice to entrepreneurs right now? I think this is a great time to start a company. If you look at the history of companies like Apple and Microsoft, I think we're starting a down economy.

Google emerged during the.com crisis we started during the great recession. I like to tell people the best time to start a company is the moment you're ready. If your idea is really good and you can make it in a tough economy, you can definitely make it in a good economy. And I think the discipline of being in a really difficult environment will teach you something. So what do you want the next phase of Airbnb to be? Let's say five years? I feel like at this point we've all these capabilities. It would be such a shame not to use that to solve a very important problem.

And the problem that I'm most concerned about, that I think we can help, is that I think this is the loneliest time in human history. If people lived this isolated alone thousands of years ago, before modern technology, we would be dead. Right? There's a reason loneliness hurts.

It's because some people would say, like, tech is connecting us all and making us less lonely. Loneliness has been rising United States since the 1970s, as far as I can tell. So it's definitely not all tech, but I do think that we need to have a reality check. The average American spends ten more hours alone every week than ten years ago. We're sleeping less, exercising less, spending less time with friends and family. You know, your Instagram followers aren't coming to your funeral. No one changed someone else's mind.

YouTube comment section so we need to marry the best of the digital technology with the best of the physical world. I want the next chapter, Airbnb. I want to be less about housing, less about travel. But new things we're going to do are going to be a lot more about bringing people together. This isn't bad. Not bad at all. It's so beautiful. Yeah, Sophie loves it here. I mean, look at this view of the city. It's amazing. So, yeah, here we are. Dolores Park.

I mean, you've been doing this like 15 years. Yeah, 15 years. This is a long time. This is a long time. Does it ever get, like, lonely at the top? Oh, yeah. You can have all the money in the world, all the success in the world, but the thing that makes most people happy is just connections and relationships. You talk about your parents and your family a lot. Do you want a family? Like, do you want. Oh, yeah, definitely.

It's probably the one thing I haven't done. I got a dog that was a starting family. Let me take care of something really, like, low key first. If you had told me in my twenties what my life would be like at 41, I would have told you I have a family and maybe I wouldn't be that far in my career. And now I have, like, a huge public company and I don't have a family. And so I did things in a different order. And the last 15 years has been work and all consuming Airbnb. So what's the goal for the next ten years?

Of Brian Chesky? I think I have to do things I haven't done before. As long as you're in a constant state of becoming and changing and growing, you're going to be okay. And I think for us, like, we're in the tech industry, it means we're in the change industry. So we have to change and Reinvent ourselves. You, obviously, you lived around the world in Airbnbs. You've interacted with so many cities and people in different countries, and many of them welcomed Airbnb with open arms.

And some are still resisting. Yeah. Why do you think that is? So every city is a community, and every community has many different stakeholders and they have many different circumstances. Some cities need more tourism. Other cities have been going through a housing affordability crisis, and they're very, very sensitive about housing and taken off the market. And so the lesson I've learned is you gotta, like, there's no one size fits all. You have to treat every city personally, try to make a system for them that works. People think Airbnb is driving up costs, enriching landlords, bringing in floods of tourists, changing the character of a place.

What do you say to the people who are like, I hate what this is doing in my community. Why never want Airbnb to do anything other than strengthen a community? I also think it's really important to never presume that we're the good guys, is what we're doing, like, good for the world, and to constantly reevaluate. And so, for example, affordable housing. A lot of cities said, you know, we want to have some basic restrictions on how airmen can be used in our city. So we have, like, we comply with registration systems for cities.

We want to make sure that, like, cities say they want to be able to, that we have to collect our fair share of taxes. But I also want people to know that we want to strengthen communities. And if that means that they need to, like, change the way Airbnb exists in their city, we'll have that conversation. Are you long, SF San Francisco? I think I am, ultimately. I think the city, my God, has it had its fair share of challenges, and I think that I'm saddened that the tech community and the city haven't worked better together. That being said, the city is so Resilient, and just when people said there was going to be a massive exodus, there is a new kind of.

Probably the word revolution is not an understatement to say what's going to happen. AI, and a lot of it's happening right here. How do you think AI is going to change Airbnb? I think we can design some of the best interfaces for AI in the world, and I think what I ultimately want to do is imagine one day the app is more like a concierge that knows you. It can match you to the perfect Airbnbs. I think that's ultimately what it could do. All right, well, you know what would make this world a little more perfect? Tell me. Chocolate chip cookies. All right, let's do it.

Sophie, you want cookies? That's exactly what she wants. The key to a good chocolate chip cookie is lots of brown sugar, lots of vanilla extract. That's pretty much all you need. I have a chocolate chip cookie recipe, too, so I'm very excited to see what your secrets are. We'll bake off. Do you like baking in general? Is this, like, a thing of yours? I do. It's a little, like. Reminds me of, like, drawing. Drawing is like baking, and painting is like cooking.

How many chips you put in? I like less chips than more. Me too. I prefer more cookie than chip. Does that seem good? That looks great. So now we have dough. All right, so ready? We're gonna do, like, this piece. Okay. This is the test. Is it? It's pretty good, right? Mm hmm. All right, so now. Yeah, we are. Yeah, they're kind of. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, so we're gonna ask a couple real questions. Yeah. What's overhyped? Crypto was overhyped, and now it's not. But crypto was overhyped.

I think AI is probably appropriately hyped, but there is a risk that people will have unrealistic expectations of what it can do going forward. Like, the whole world has to move with the technology or the technology will get ahead of itself. So how much do you really want AI in your life? Like, would you want Chachi PT in your kitchen? There is such a thing as too much technology in our life. Technology is not inevitably a solution to our problems. Technology is a tool. It's power.

And power can make things better, and it can also make things worse. It can simplify our lives or add complexity. It can bring us together or divide us. And the speed at which things are about to change is something that we have to be very careful about. Ten minutes. Ten minutes. And it's ready? Yeah. All right, let's see what they look like. Let's do it. And here they are. Yum. Oh, my gosh. They look amazing. Boom. There they are. Look at that. Okay. Shall we? Let's do it. Okay. Cheers. Cheers. These are ten star cookies. I was skeptical. I know. I know. How can you believe creating this until you see it?

Science, Technology, Innovation, Leadership, Brian Chesky, Airbnb