Pivot - BONUS EPISODE! Live from Pivot MIA: Kara & Scott in conversation with Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb
Episode Date: February 19, 2022Kara and Scott chat with Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky about the future of the travel industry, housing, workplace culture, human interaction, and why the pandemic was the “ultimate growing-up experience�...�� for business founders. Plus, he tells the audience all about his stay at a “themed fairytale princess Cinderella cottage.” Send us your Listener Mail questions by calling us at 855-51-PIVOT, or via Yappa, at nymag.com/pivot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Hi, everyone.
This is Pivot from the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Today, we're running a bonus episode.
It's our conversation with Brian Chesky, the CEO of Airbnb, recorded at Pivot MIA on February 16th. Our conversation
covered everything from the impacts of the pandemic to regulation to the personal struggles
of CEOs. Enjoy. Thank you. Thank you. Cool. So thank you for coming to this, our first one.
Brian spent a code many times, and I said we were trying out this new thing in Miami,
and he first to say yes.
It was great.
So let's start off.
Let's talk a little bit about, I guess I'll let you crow about your earnings, really strong
after, I think it was a year ago we did an interview, or maybe a year and a half ago,
you laid off 1,900 employees, made a decision to refocus to local travel, really difficult
existential time for your company.
And then this yesterday, you turned an astonishing quarter as opposed to a lot of other companies who are seeing some trouble.
Can you talk a little bit about that journey, the beginning of the journey?
Yeah, I mean, the short version of the story is I probably started the year 2020 like everyone, thinking your life was going one direction.
And all of a sudden, life came at us fast.
And I think we were one of the first companies affected by the pandemic because we had a
business in China.
I remember making a kind of naive statement like, wow, if this thing spread beyond China,
it'd be really bad.
And because our business dropped 80% in like a matter of two, three weeks in China.
All of a sudden, we're preparing for IPO. I've
written the S1. Our whole life is going one direction and we lose 80% of our business in
eight weeks. And then suddenly, the banks are like, no IPO. And for the next couple years,
all of a sudden, there were a lot of press articles. Is this the end of Airbnb? So suddenly,
we have to take this huge re-evaluation of who we are. I've luckily never had a near-death
experience. But I've, of had a near-death experience,
but I've, of course, been described to me that when that happens, your life flashes before your
eyes. And I think that kind of happened in the business sense that our business flashed before
our eyes. And I kind of came to the conclusion, we're going to lose half our business. And if we
lose half our business, which half do we want to keep? It's like, if you're running an emerging
building, what do you keep? And I said, we're going to have to just go back to the original
idea of Airbnb. And so we shut down, we to just go back to the original idea of Airbnb.
And so we shut down.
We had 10 divisions.
We shut down nine of them.
We became a functional org.
Talk about the ones you shut down.
We had a transportation division where we were going to launch this new way to book flights.
We had a travel content group.
We had a business travel group.
Business travel, as we know, is completely over despite what other people say.
Like, you know, there will be people traveling for business.
But the bar to get on a plane for a meeting is much higher.
Which you said early on.
Early on. And I think a lot of people, I mean, a lot of people thought we were going to recover after hotels and airlines, because in 9-11, September in 2008, business travel came back
before leisure. And I said, these are totally the wrong analogies. That was pre-Zoom.
We've totally revouted how we're going to live our lives. So we had a lot of other businesses and we just had to get really, really focused.
We were burning at one point a few hundred million dollars a month and we still took $215 million
off our balance sheet and gave it to host. I had some investors saying, you are completely crazy.
You're putting good money after bad. And I said, no, we're in the business of trust. If we don't
have hosts, we have nothing. We need goodwill. We need to be able to give them money.
And then, of course, the hardest thing I ever did was a layoff.
I was always warned, if you ever do a layoff, it's going to be the worst day of your business life.
And I said, it's going to be bad for me.
It'd be worse than people getting laid off.
So we tried to just do things that were more than were expected of us.
We created an alumni directory where people were allowed to publish their information.
We had a half a million recruiters reach out to our former employees.
So that obviously made a huge difference.
And that was it.
We thought like, it's June.
I'm thinking, okay, like, you know,
I remember one of the banks said,
you're not gonna have to dust off your S1 for a while.
And all of a sudden after Memorial Day weekend in 2020,
we started noticing like people were booking Airbnbs.
They weren't getting on planes.
They weren't traveling for business. They weren't traveling for
business. They weren't crossing borders, but they're traveling nearby and staying in homes.
And all of a sudden we realized we have a really adaptable model and we're not just a travel
company. We're moving more into housing and people are starting to book homes for a week,
for a month. So we pivoted the entire company, kind of rebuilt the company from the ground up.
And I mean, I guess what you're seeing
now is a bit of the momentum of that. So I read through your earnings call.
Yeah. But I think we were talking about yesterday, there's so many companies that are below their IPO
price. You're not only dramatically above, I think you're 5% off your all-time high.
So, and the thing that struck me in
your earnings transcript that really stood out was 22% of your bookings are now for 30 days or
longer. 50% of your total nights are for seven nights or more. And it kind of opened my eyes.
And I thought, you're not in the hospitality business. You're in the residential business. Aren't you the next big residential company? Aren't you the place,
people have been coming to you for vacations, but aren't, aren't you now housing America?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that. I'm the new IR person for Airbnb.
Yeah. I think that, I think that before the pandemic, people had this very simple model that you lived one place 50 weeks a year and you traveled two weeks a year elsewhere.
And we're not a long-term housing company at this point.
But I think what happened in the pandemic was there's a category in between.
That in a world of flexibility where many people aren't going back to the office five days a week, you have more flexibility.
And so what we're starting to see is people traveling to thousands of communities. Before the pandemic, everyone went to Miami, Las Vegas, New York City, Rome, Paris. What we're
seeing now is, number one, people are going everywhere. The place to be, I'm not sure it's
Miami as much as it's the internet. And meaning, the place to be is everywhere. And so what we're
seeing is population redistribution. And we're seeing a lot of people not stay in one place.
So we're having people go for a week, a month, or a season.
So I just think the line between travel and living is blurring.
There's a generation of people that are going to have more flexibility.
And yes, housing is a major thing.
And the longer you're away from a home, the more you want to be in a home.
And so like, you know, a hotel is great for a night or two nights, for a week.
It's probably cost prohibitive.
For a month, it's like, you know, I mean, no one would do that.
Talk about that idea.
Because one of the things you said at the time of the, when you were sort
of in the midst of the bottom, you said, I don't think business travel is coming back, which was
problematic for your business, because I use Airbnb on business a lot. I don't like hotels as much.
That has sort of borne out. How do you look at that now? How do you look at business travel right
now? I mean, I like to just try to go to first principles. Like I thought, like, well, why do
people travel for business? They were traveling for meetings and everyone's made arguments like,
well, if you don't travel for a meeting, you're going to lose that deal. And I said, well, while
you're on the airplane trying to get to the meeting, their person's already Zooming and
building a relationship. So I think that the transactional part of business travel is over,
like people getting on a plane for a transaction. I still think people are going to want to have relationships. Like the one thing I also have seen with Zoom is like, it can be exhausting. Your circles get really small and we want to have connection. There's a reason this conference is a conference.
there will be some of it, but I think what's going to be replaced is as employees redistribute all over the country, they're going to have to come back to a headquarters. And when they come back
to headquarters, they're going to come back for maybe a week or a few weeks at a time. You're
going to have a lot more gatherings, a lot more conferences. And so I think it's going to change
everything. I even think remote work is going to change our orientation to offices because I don't
think people are going back to an office. I think an office is, as we know it, a little bit of an anachronistic kind of form factor.
You know, like people are going to regather, but do you want to regather in a drop ceiling
like space around a conference room?
Maybe not.
And so I think what we tried to do in the early, early days was just look at the data
and realize like, how are people living their lives?
They like working from home.
They want more flexibility.
A lot of cities are cost prohibitive. Suddenly the playing field's leveled. You can live anywhere.
For families, they can't live nomadically, although many can live somewhere else for the
summer. People without kids or empty nesters actually have a lot more flexibility. And as
borders reopen, you're going to see a lot more people living abroad. I mean, that's the next
thing. And so I think our orientation around housing and travel has completely changed forever. And I think some other people in our industry were
just thinking the world was going to go back to the way it was. The only thing I know about the
future is it's going to be different. And so like people saying that the world's changing,
but travel wasn't, was always going to be, I think, a kind of wrong prediction.
So what happens to those travel businesses? Because you had experiences,
you were thinking about planes. Is any of those, the things you put in the drawer, you said, I put them all in a drawer.
Yeah.
Some of them depressed.
Experiences still exist.
So experiences, you know, we paused because it was prohibited to have people gather together.
That has now come back.
And, you know, I'm very excited about that business.
And I think, you know, there is pent-up demand for people wanting to, like, meet other people.
I know, Scott, you were saying, like, the number of people that would meet their significant other at work.
Like, how the hell are people going to meet each other in the future?
You're not going to like meet your significant other on a Zoom call.
They're not. They're going to do audio porn. But that was yesterday.
But yeah, so I think that people are going to have a need to gather in the real world, want to have experiences.
And so I think experiences are going to be pretty big.
The rest of the businesses, though, we're kind of just waiting and seeing,
you know, I think any that you think you want to bring back are the ones you put in the drawer.
I mean, I think down the road, like transportation, I think it's going to go through revolution the
way we fly, but I think it's going to take a while, you know, it's a, you know, a lot of
airlines, you know, that, you know, there's trillions of dollars infrastructure, they're
centrally subsidized. But I think there might be like a lot of I'm not saying we're going to do this, but there's a lot
of opportunities. I think there's going to be a gap in the market between private flying and
commercial flying. There's thousands of private airports in the United States and around the
world. The government subsidized and keep these together for national security reasons. There's
a lot of unutilized capacity. So you'll have a lot of interesting places. But I also think it's
a hard business to get into right now. And this is not a really good time to get into that part. So
we're looking at a bunch of things. But I think to Scott's point, two things I'm really excited
about housing. I mean, this is just a whole paradigm shift. And the other thing is just
addressing another reality, which is loneliness. You know, I think we have to be really careful
that we don't recreate the movie WALL-E, where we're just staring at screens all day, totally disconnected from those people around us.
And I do think the more time we spend online, sometimes the more lonely and isolated we get.
And, you know, there's something about like real life interaction that I think
creates a little more empathy.
That's why you said yes, because I've been talking to Brian from his house.
Yeah.
I think he's been with your parents, right?
Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, I mean, the pandemic was a pretty weird experience for me because it was both a growing up experience for me,
you know, like one of the things, and we've talked to us, it's like, I started the company, I was 26.
And you know, when you are 26 and you have this crazy ride and you like raise billions of dollars,
like it's very easy for no one to say no to you. And it's very easy to think because I can
do anything, I can do everything. I had a teacher, RISD, once said, you can do anything you want in
your life, just not at the same time. And I think a lot of us founders that had a lot of success
never really had a reality check. You know, we didn't really see the unintended consequences
of our platform. No one really said no to us. And then suddenly the pandemic was the ultimate
growing up experience. And so I started confronting the consequences of like 10 years of decisions
and having to say goodbye to people
and just being a lot more thoughtful
about when I start something, I'm gonna finish it.
I'm not just gonna willy nilly
just think I can go in 50 different directions
at the same time because I feel the downside
of having to like lay people off.
And so it was a growing up experience.
I felt like I was like 39 going on 49.
At the same time, I'm like 39 years old.
And I remember when I was growing up, my mom's a social worker. And she told me, she said,
I chose a job for love and I got paid no money. So you should choose a job that pays you a lot
of money. And I said, okay, I've decided I'm going to be an artist. And she said, you've chosen the
one job that's going to get paid less than a social worker. You're going to like live with me.
You're going to be, and she said, I remember her telling me, you're going to end up 40 years old
and living with me. And here I was 39 years old. And I was actually living with my mom. She moved
in with me and I had a golden retriever and it was like baking cookies. And I said, this is so much
like less sexy of a story than these other tech founders living my lives. I'm baking cookies
on zoom all day with my mom mom making me a quiche. It
was not a glamorous life, but it was very focused. And maybe that's what I needed during crisis.
All right. Okay. All right. Well, I just like, I don't know what to say.
I have no comment. Your mother's very nice. Yeah. She's really good.
Yeah. Okay. So let me try to pivot somewhere. So one of the things is when he was talking about housing, we had WeWork CEO here and obviously Adam Newman is back. I'm actually meeting, he's here in Miami. I'm going to meet with him. He's trying to go into housing, redoing housing. You had bought a hotel tonight, which is sort of, you wanted to be in that space to offer people that. I use it. I love the app.
sort of you wanted to be in that space to offer people that. I use it. I love the app.
My kids use it, actually, interestingly. They like it a lot. But is that the way to go,
or do you think you need to be in apartments? What do you think of that idea? Is that somewhere you all need to go? I mean, sorry, which idea specifically? Adam?
Buying apartments. That's what Adam's doing. Oh, buying apartments.
He's going vertical. Would you ever go vertical and actually own real estate?
I'll tell you a story I told Adam, because we had a conversation
years ago about could there be a partnership, and could we build basically the equivalent of
Airbnbs or some combination of WeLive and Airbnbs? And who did WeLive? Yeah, WeLive. And the one
thing I told him is, so we have six million homes. Let's take a really rough guess, and let's say
the average home is half a million dollars
and that's conservative because in a city it would be much more expensive but if we're averaging out
latin america and asia let's go to half a million dollars per per apartment so if you want to add
two million apartments that's a trillion dollars of capital and so i mean one of the things i said
like you're going to pretty much pretty quickly get to like the gdp of italy is from a sense of
capital to build them out.
So if we were to get into vertical integration,
it would be probably more like a brand statement,
like the reason why you do an iconic flagship.
But from a scale perspective,
it's just really hard to get the kind of scale.
You literally need trillions of dollars.
And one of the great things about our model
is you don't have to pour concrete
to get millions of people.
And I think our business is really more about community
than it is about real estate and pouring concrete.
So not anytime soon.
We have some really cool ideas, though,
around funding people to build unique Airbnbs.
So for example, there's a whole asset class
to get your apartment built and funded.
There's an entire division.
The most profitable Airbnbs are tree houses,
tiny homes, igloos. I mean, there are tree houses that
make a hundred thousand dollars a year. You can get a hundred percent return on your investment.
A bank won't give you money. A venture capitalist is not interested. So there's a lot of like really
interesting spaces where we actually can be helpful, but like there's a lot of people who
build apartments and they're really good at them. And I'm not sure we have a lot to add to that.
Right. And so like you have a yurt, for example, you mean that people just want good at them. And I'm not sure we have a lot to add to that right now. Right, and so like you have a yurt, for example.
You mean that could, people just want to try them.
People want to try the yurt or whatever.
I mean, people are like, the thing that's crazy
is that the best ROI thing I've ever seen
other than like tech companies that work
are unique spaces on Airbnb.
Because think about it, if you build a yurt,
a tree house, a tiny home, the property is very cheap
because you're in the middle of nowhere. A tree house is like slightly cost slightly more than like a shed
to build. I mean, well, some of them are really, they can cost a lot, but like a tiny home and
get people, it's a romantic idea. Like people will want to have an experience. They want to
do something different. And so there's a really interesting arbitrage designing really unique
spaces that don't have to be too expensive to build. Which you would fund. I'm sorry? Which you would fund or help. Potentially. And that's
something we're looking at. So what I'm trying to do is like, I want to make sure to help the
everyday people that could use help. I think there's a lot of property managers and hotels
on Airbnb. We want to support them too, but they don't need as much help from us. There's entire
ecosystems that are already supporting those companies. There's a lot of regular people. There aren't ecosystems for them. They don't know
where to get capital. And so that might be an area that we can probably help a little bit more.
So you've been living, and you're going to live in Airbnb?
I'm living in Airbnb right now. I don't actually live in San Francisco.
This reminded me, at first I was like, remember when Mark Zuckerberg went around the country?
Like killed everything he ate? Oh no.
Yes, killed everything he ate. That was another year.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, I haven't killed anything in the last four weeks.
Okay, good.
No, when he went around the country,
he rode around on tractors to meet the real people of America. Oh, yeah.
Real people are everywhere, actually.
I had an argument.
I'm like, there are real people in San Francisco.
There's real people in New York.
There's real people in Kansas.
But you're staying in them.
I'm staying in them.
I'm sleeping in them. What is the point of this? It's a little stunty, but I like it. I enjoy that.
What is the point for you? Well, to be clear, it's totally a stunt and it's also real. Meaning,
even if there was no press, do I want to, I'm 40, I live by myself in San Francisco. I'm on Zoom
16 hours a day. I walked to Dolores Park. So at some point I'm like, I have to get out of the
city for a little bit. There's no office there. So at some point I'm like, I have to get out of the city for
a little bit. You know, there's no office there. So I'm thinking, where do I go now? Should I go
to New York? Should I go to Miami? And I'm like, well, actually, I guess I can go for a week here,
a few weeks there. I know not everyone can do it, but even without the stunt, I would probably still
do it. It's fun. And I was in Atlanta. I went to Nashville, Charleston. So I did a little tour of
the South. Hadn't seen those cities before.
Los Angeles, Miami.
Stay a week.
I typically stay a week.
In those cities, I stayed a few days.
I'm in Miami for like a week, a week and a half.
And then I don't know where I'm going to go after this.
Maybe I'll go to, I'll probably go to a place in the, like New Mexico or Arizona or something.
And what's your learnings from this?
Just to please yourself or get away from your mother?
Yeah, exactly.
Like getting away from my mom.
She definitely is probably, yeah, that's why I can't publish my itinerary ahead of time.
But no, so I'm one of those annoying bosses that makes a really-
Brian, that was funny.
Go ahead.
I'm one of those bosses that makes kind of like an annoying list of things.
Like I check into Airbnbs and we made 150 upgrades last year.
So I thought, wow, like we've perfected this service.
It's great.
And then I check in and I'm like,
why the hell can't I find the wifi in the app?
Like, why do we put there?
So you always see things.
I think a big problem with CEOs is the bigger you get,
the more your job gets abstract.
You start like managing your board
and talking to Wall Street
and dealing with reorganizations.
And you just kind of forgot
like why the hell you're doing it.
Like at the end day, you're making a thing that people have to like and to provide value.
And so a lot of it's just me like cutting out those layers.
But also like when you live in Airbnb, it's different.
Like you need a comfortable desk and an office chair.
You can't just sit around the kitchen table.
I have a golden retriever, Sophie.
She's seven months.
So like that's a whole new experience.
And so it's just you pick up little things when you live in a home versus when you travel and stay in a home. And so the
bar gets a little higher. And so I'm trying to refine the experience. You're doing private homes
over like staying in a room in a home, that kind of thing? Yeah, right now, they've all been
entire homes because the dog, but I definitely would like to, it'd be fun to stay in a private
room. I show up with my dog and I'm in one bedroom.
Someone's on the other side of the wall.
I mean, I've done that in the past.
Years ago, I stayed in a house.
I didn't actually know the host was there.
It was in San Francisco.
It turned out to be a shared studio apartment with a woman older than my mom.
It was me, her, and her parrot.
And the parrot would not shut up.
So, you know, you always get, actually,
the last Airbnb I stayed in, this is slightly embarrassing, but I'll say it because I have to be at least somewhat interesting. I was in LA and I saw this really cool listing. It said
fairytale cottage. And I didn't, I kind of looked, okay, it's a nice fairytale cottage.
I get to the listing. It's a themed fairytale princess Cinderella cottage.
And it's supposed to be for like girls who love Cinderella that want to have a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
So the bedroom is all pink.
There's no shower.
It's like a small children's bathtub.
I haven't been in a bathtub actually since the 80s.
I kind of, once I turned like 9 or 10, I just started showering.
Yeah, good idea.
So I got to
take a bath and there was like a tree house. There were two pigs in the backyard. No one told me
about, I should have read the description. My dog loved the pigs. So you get like a lot of really
interesting experience in Airbnb. Yeah. When we return, Brian Chesky discusses the lonesome life
of a CEO. That's coming up in a moment.
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and who to hire start caring for your home with confidence. Download Thumbtack today. So if the story goes long enough, the hero becomes the villain. I think any company that gets to the market cap that you're reaching has externalities.
And I was struck by, when I go to the West Coast, when I go to San Francisco, or when I go to L.A., just the homeless problem.
Yeah.
And just the natural economics of Airbnb, good for a lot of stakeholders, but it has increased the cost of housing in certain areas.
but it has increased the cost of housing in certain areas. It feels like you're uniquely blessed with the model, the data, and quite frankly, the
capital to really try and zig where other big tech companies have zagged and say, we're
going to commit our capital, we're going to commit our time, our treasure, and our talent
to working with local governments. I don't know what the format is, but to really, you know, try and stay the hero and do
something around homelessness. Have you given any thought to this and what you might do? Is this an
opportunity to make a big, bold commitment in front of carousels around? Yeah, I totally should. I'm
just going to make something up right now. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, I've been the underdog. I've also, you know, before the pandemic, you know, we were a bit of a pinata at periods of time. And I totally agree. You know, when I came to Silicon Valley, the word tech may as well have been a dictionary definition for the word good, you know, like YouTube was cat videos, and Facebook was a keep up with your friends and Twitter was to just say, I'm drinking a milkshake. It was all very
innocent feeling at the time. And I think one of the things that I had to learn, I think we all
grew up very quickly is it's not the tech. I don't think we should think of tech as per se good or
bad. I mean, it's on balance good, but it's like saying it's nuclear power good. Well, it can light
up a city or destroy a city. The designer in me says it depends on how you design it. And one of the things that I had to learn the hard way is when you build something
and 100 million people or more use it, unintended consequences are going to occur. How could you
possibly imagine the way 100 million people are going to do something? And so I think it's been
a big growing up experience for me and probably for everyone in the industry. And I think we're
all better for recognizing the externalities you put on society. Because I tell people either we self-regulate, we'll invite more
regulation. It's just a choice. There's no third path here. As far as providing housing for those
in need, we're definitely interested in that. Obviously, homelessness is a very difficult
problem. It takes a lot of capital. One just thing we have been doing is in 2012, many of you remember Hurricane Sandy occurred,
and we started providing housing for evacuees, and we provided housing for about 100,000 people in
need. We've housed nearly 20,000 Afghan refugees for free. So, and yeah, thank you. So, you know,
I don't, I don't, you know, we have our challenges.
I don't want to pretend like it's all perfect and all good.
But I totally think that the bigger you get, you know, Pablo Caso is saying the older you get, the stronger the wind gets.
It's always in your face.
I think that's true of tech companies.
The bigger you get, like the harder you have to try to fight against the skepticism of your power.
Your regulatory pressure was quite high.
It was very high.
And we were under scrutiny. We kind of took the opposite Amazon approach where Amazon didn't really have
any scrutiny until they got big. Most tech companies have scrutiny because they're big.
We had scrutiny because we were in your neighborhood. I remember having scrutiny. We
had 10 employees in a three bedroom apartment and the, you know, the city council in New York City
was coming after us. And I didn't even know, like, I didn't know anything.
I mean, you know, like two years before that,
I thought angels were crazy.
People were crazy to believe in angels.
I didn't know they meant angel investors.
So I was like, I had a very long road to Silicon Valley
and it's definitely gotten better.
I mean, partly it's because we collected
and remitted $4 billion of hotel tax.
Right.
And that money's gone to cities.
Which was the big fight that was going on with the hotel.
That was a big fight.
But to be clear, we were always trying to pay tax.
It turns out some cities didn't really want us to pay tax initially because a tax that's to regulate us is to legitimize us.
And so there were some challenges.
The city in New York.
What's the big regulatory challenge now?
Because you had faced some.
I mean, almost every market
interview thing you had the party house yeah we have yeah yeah i mean yeah the homes and hotels
are popular for orgies yes you told me that once yeah so said that on this panel it was so funny i
didn't this is a nice sweet man and then all of a sudden he's like you know people have been having
orgies in hotels forever and the whole crowd was like, yes. Exactly. By the way, I'm not saying I knew
that. It's just that was a reasonable speculation. You seem to know that. Well, I'm just piecing
things together. I'm not walking into anything. Some of your best friends. And in fact, it's
probably true. So what is your biggest regulatory scrutiny right now that you're facing?
So I think before the pandemic, there were a lot of concerns about the price of housing in cities.
People living in San Francisco, obviously, there's limited housing.
And if people are renting airbnbs year-round, that's a really big problem.
Now, it's a whole different situation where everyone's redistributing.
And I think it's a pretty exciting time.
I mean, one of the things I told a recent mayor is the way to think about your citizens is almost to think about them as customers who have choices now because they are nest tethered.
The other side of that, though, is that we have to now be careful because instead of having to deal with five or 10 cities, we have now 100,000 cities.
And, you know, not everyone wants a ton of travelers in their neighborhood. And, you know, so we have to be making sure that people are contributing to communities.
They're not just passerbys.
They're not just creating a nuisance.
So I think just making sure that our community of hundreds of millions of people can live in communities and be respectful, that's probably the biggest challenge right now.
I would say safety, if I had to pick one, because I've gotten a lot of notes about when I talk to you.
Like, does he know the lack of safety, the response to safety?
Yeah, I mean, safety, safety, neighborhood,
like safety, community, safety, the traveler,
safety, the host.
We're doing a lot on safety.
I mean, like, for example, you know,
we have a 24-7 team.
We are continuing to develop our urgent safety line.
We try to have really good support for people
if they ever feel unsafe.
You know, we try to take action
whenever we feel like there's going to be a bad situation. We have this, we offer this new product called Air Cover,
which is a million dollar protection against theft or property damage to your properties. So
we're trying to continue to innovate on that area. Have you, the thing I think there's going to be
case studies about, in addition to the business model, is you're sort of known now for executing the best firing.
And as- The best what?
Firing.
Oh, yeah.
You were praised for how you did that.
What advice would you give to managers or CEOs
that have to go through the uncomfortable experience
of laying people off?
Yeah, I mean, unfortunately,
if you run a huge company,
I wouldn't say it's inevitable you have to do that,
but it might be in your future.
I think that, but it might be in your future. I think CEOs and leaders are more human than they come across. I mean, most of these people are real people. They do have feelings. I think the problem with corporations is the lawyers
and HR people and others sand the edges off the person in an effort
to protect the person. And that is a major disservice because they just reduce them to
something that's not even a human being anymore. They're just this very cold person. So a CEO seems
really personable. And then suddenly they do a layoff and it's like a different person. It's
like a split personality. The other thing is, I mean, I think that like in a crisis, you have to
make principled decisions, not business decisions. A business thing is, I mean, I think that like in a crisis, you have to make principal
decisions, not business decisions. A business decision is knowing like, I'm going to try to
game this because I know what the outcome is going to be. A principal decision is, I have no idea how
this is going to go out. So how do I want to be remembered? And in a crisis, I wanted to make sure
that we could do whatever we could to take care of people. So the two things I would say, and if
you ever have to do a layoff is I would do more than is expected of you. In a crisis, you can do less than expected. What is
expected or more than expected? I would try to do more than expected. I would try to be incredibly
transparent. There's so much advice around take the layoff playbook off the shelf, be like paint
by numbers, very corporate. I used the word love in a letter. I said, I love you all. Like I felt that I was just, it was a weird kind of thing to say. I can
assure you no internal comms person would have ever written that for me or recommended I say that.
And then we did some things that were a little controversial. Like we published an alumni
directory. There's reasons why companies don't do that. You could reverse engineer the entire
organizational chart. Like there's, there's reasons why that might not be a good idea. And I always viewed just do whatever you think is the right thing
in that moment, take care of people, and then they'll root for you. And I do think that the
way we handled the crisis made people root for us a little bit more, which I think did contribute
to the rebound. But you never try to do it to get that result. You just try to follow what you think
is the right thing to do.
We'll be back in a moment with more from Airbnb's Brian Chesky.
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You had taken a lot of controversial stands around January 6th. Before that, you had done them. You got a lot of pushback on those things. How do you think about having done that? You had limited people.
You had barred certain people from coming to the inaugural.
I think we're a little different than other platforms because on Airbnb, safety ends up taking precedence over things like free speech because people's safety, they're really concerned.
And I actually came from the other direction where I used to have an ideological view of being hands-off. I believe in the Craig Newmark, Pierre Midiar
original marketplace 1.0 that the internet's an immune system. You build moderating tools
and they moderate their cells. And then people's homes are getting trashed and people are having
orgies and they were doing meth in Airbnbs. And then suddenly they said, you know what?
We don't like your immune system approach. You're going to have to be much more hands-on. If you're
not hands-on, you're going to be regulated out of existence.
It was a pretty serious growing up experience. So we took responsibility much earlier on than I
think a lot of internet companies. And the basic idea was all this came from 2016. There were a
number of African-Americans in the United States, black people who were describing gaming discriminated against trying to get Airbnbs. There was a hashtag trending on Airbnb, Airbnb
while black. This became a huge crisis for us. And we thought we can either put our heads in the sand
or we could try to do more than expected of us. So we created this community commitment saying,
like, you got to just, it's an honor code, but just check this box saying that you will not
discriminate against people. A million people refused to check this box saying that you will not discriminate against people.
A million people refused to check that box.
We kicked them off the platform.
And at that moment, I said, the hell with it.
Like this platform is not going to work if people aren't going to accept one another from different values.
So why the hell are you using it?
And why are you traveling if that's how you feel?
And then, of course, we heard about this rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
I never, I didn't really know much about it.
And I thought like, you know, if people are part of what, you know, FBI and others are
saying are hate groups, that feels like, I don't want to be the arbiter. That feels like a reasonable
like violation of our community commitments. So, you know, we did that. And then January 6th was
actually more of a safety thing. We were just really concerned with people going into neighborhoods
in DC and like really dangerous things happening. So we canceled all reservations. But again, I didn't want to screw over the host. So we actually paid out all
the host reservations. It was probably $300,000 of booking. So we said, we'll take the cost.
You'll continue to do that kind of stuff. You don't mind. Was there a blowback for doing that?
There's a blowback to everything I've ever done. Yeah, there always is because these things get
kind of politicized. Yeah. And how do you, does it make you do it less?
No.
I mean, you know, like you just do what you think is right and people are going to agree
with or disagree.
So you're editing.
You feel okay about editing.
I have a big arguments, you know, with Spotify, whoever the person of the day saying they
have no responsibility.
I'm like, you have some.
Well, we all have responsibility.
If you have a platform, hundreds of millions of people on it, like, and things happen, and you could have done more and you didn't, that sounds
like the definition of responsibility. Now, whether you choose to do something or not, I understand
different platforms have different risks. I would argue the risk is greater than the risk of speech
because you're such a physical body. I mean, really bad things can happen. And so we have to
just take a slightly different and I think more hands-on approach. I have one last question. Is
the meta, is cryptocurrency the metaverse?
Are you accepting cryptocurrency?
Do you expect to do that?
We're not accepting cryptocurrency,
but I like to every couple of years go on Twitter
and ask if we launch anything, what should we launch?
And crypto probably not surprisingly
was the number one voted response.
And so I've committed to looking into it
and we're absolutely looking into it.
Most people don't realize we actually have a pretty big payments platform already. We've
handled $330 billion in our homegrown payments platform since we started. So I'm definitely
looking into crypto. I think that the Web3 movement is super interesting. I think that
people building Web3 companies have to know that they're basically in the community business. And
I think you should be very thoughtful about if you're trying to financialize the community from the
very beginning, you should think about, I think a lot of people in Web3, entrepreneurs, I hope they
know that one of the most important things you start a technology company is your ability to
change and pivot. And when you build immutable laws, now you need consensus of many people.
I mean, I've run a company in the past where I try to like run things by consensus. It's very difficult. It takes a very long period of time. And I think the metaverse, I mean, I've run a company in the past where I try to like run things by consensus. It's very
difficult. It takes a very long period of time. And I think the metaverse, I mean, I think the
main thing I'll just say at the metaverse is it is no doubt inevitable that the internet will
become more three-dimensional and more immersive. Like who would deny that everything is going to
get higher fidelity. And I think what's going to happen is the real world and the digital world
are going to start to blur together. That's exciting and also, if not done correctly, quite terrifying.
So just before we, because we have a bunch of questions, but I want you to have very rough edges here and just say what comes to mind.
What are some businesses you might be in five years that would surprise us?
No commitments, just top of your head.
What are some businesses you might be in?
I think we're going to do a lot more around housing, people living on Airbnb. That's one arc. But I think the other one is
really just bringing people together. I think we're living in one of the loneliest periods
in human history. Is that dating? Absolutely looking at dating. I mean, it would have to be
something that would make sense to people and there would have to be probably higher verifications,
really good matching. But when people are traveling, they're very interested in meeting other people.
So I'm absolutely looking at things like that.
You know, a lot of people use their memories to work out of.
So there's obviously potentially co-working.
Probably things that are built with more community are really interesting.
You know, you and I have talked a little bit about ideas around loyalty programs, subscription services, membership.
You know, I mean, you know,
the biggest loyalty programs aren't retail, they're travel. And the biggest loyalty programs
are only usually travel. So there's a lot of opportunities there. Actually, we were developing
something and we paused it. So we're looking at that as well. So I also just think a lot more
services for hosts. You know, we want to get the next generation hosts, millions of them,
and I want it to be something that anyone can do. So we're going to be looking at a lot of
services for hosts as well. But I mean, the sky's the limit. You know,
I'm a designer by training. I don't want to feel like the best day ideas I had were in my 20s. So
I want to, you know, the bar is hard. The original idea was pretty good. But we're trying to find
some new things too. Services for hosts. He keeps trying to get my house on. I'm like,
no fucking way. Yeah, we'll work on it. No, no one's touching Kara Swisher's things. Go ahead. Hi, Brian. I'm Libby. I work at Klarna.
And yesterday we heard from a speaker that talked about the age of a company. So like toddlers who
need a lot of care, and then you've got like, or toddlers that are kind of falling up, getting up,
whatever, falling down, and then teenagers who are self-sabotaging, things like that.
What age do you think Airbnb is at?
And then what are some things that scare you over the next couple of years?
It's a great question.
I actually thought about this a lot.
I felt like between 2009 and 2014, I felt like I knew what I was doing, actually,
because it was a startup.
It was intuitive.
And I know how to manage a few hundred people.
You can kind of figure it out. Around 2015, 2016, it got really hard.
And I would describe that as the adolescence. And my corporate adolescence was unfortunately
almost as awkward as my actual adolescence. And it wasn't good. I went through basically
multiple executive teams. I didn't know how to run the company. At one point, I tried to run it the
way Bezos runs Amazon. That did not work for us.
It was a bad idea for me.
And I think what the crisis did is I kind of grew up a bit.
You know, I had to confront every decision I ever made.
Every promise I made, it came home to roost.
Some worked, some didn't.
I had to look every employee in the eye.
All 2,000 people we laid off, I went through every single person feeling like one by one.
I didn't want to be systematic.
And it was pretty tough.
And so I think, as I said, I grew up like 10 years in a year.
And I would say now we're definitely an adult company.
I mean, we did $1.6 billion in EBITDA last year.
This is a company that some people asked would never make a profit.
And I think it's clear that we're disciplined now. So what is the biggest challenge going forward? I think expectations are really
high now. And I think that once you're a hundred billion dollar plus company, the amount of
responsibility you have kind of skyrockets. And I want us to be, I would like us to be a role model
for a new generation of entrepreneurs.
And that doesn't mean that I want to act like we're perfect or wholer than now, but I want people to feel like there is a model.
I also, I'm a designer.
When I started at MB, there were no role models.
There's no designers running giant companies.
And I always thought, you know, a creative person could run a company.
And I want people to know that creative people can have a seat in the table and you can run a company a little bit differently.
And so that's what the next few years
will probably be about for us.
Okay.
Yes, sir.
Thanks, Dallas.
First super host, love being a super host.
I want to thank you also.
Really cool move letting us participate in the IPO.
Of course.
That bought a lot of goodwill from all your super hosts.
Where's your igloo?
In the desert.
A question about one of the things that we're seeing with the local cities clamping down on timeframes, you know, minimum 30 days, getting away from the short term.
Are you seeing them start to kind of lessen their restrictions now as this work anywhere mindset comes in place?
Are they revisiting the tightening restrictions they passed in the years or are they holding fast?
Yeah, all the restrictions are being reevaluated, both landlord restrictions and cities. So before the pandemic, the vast majority
of businesses in big cities, landlords were like renting all their apartments. They had no problems
with their yield. And cities were like, we have plenty of tourism. Suddenly, a city like San
Francisco, they have low occupancy. Tourism is like, I mean, most people don't realize the number
one export in San Francisco was not tech, it was tourism. They were making more money every year on tourism. It was critical
to the economy. So now cities go from an over-tourism problem to, in many cases, an under-tourism
problem. So we've had a lot of cities reach out to us. They want help. And then landlords are now
wanting to allow air between their buildings because they actually realized it'd be more
likely to be able to rent their apartments to people because a lot of people want to do it. So a lot of laws are being re-evaluated,
but it doesn't mean they're only going to be better. There are going to be more restrictions
because you've got these little beach communities that suddenly all people are moving into. And
so every city is now, and every town is re-evaluating. But I think the laws trying
to arbitrate between travel and housing have to go, I think we have to think about it differently.
We used to live in a world where you live 50 weeks one place and a week or two another place.
And some people still live that way. And other people live in somewhere in between. And we have
to design laws for that, I think. Hey, Brian. Big fan of end user. Maybe I shouldn't admit this
because I work for a hotel hospitality group. So I'm president of Final Rose, which is a private membership club.
Have you ever thought of getting into that space?
Yeah, there's a lot of that.
We haven't really, no.
You think, yeah, what do you, do you say more?
Just curious.
Nope, just curious.
Yeah.
That's really interesting.
A lot of people are doing, and there's been a bunch of,
Picasso is a, there's been a bunch of that.
You don't see.
I mean, we've looked into it a little bit.
Not really, I mean, I've looked into it a little bit. Not really.
I mean, I haven't looked into it to an Airbnb, but I've looked into those models.
It's been limited to very wealthy people.
Yeah, yeah.
I think there's like Inspirato and exclusive resorts.
We have a Lux business and anyone can book, but I do think there's, I think one of the
things that'll be really interesting is people being able to host
within a kind of defined community.
Now, at the same time, you want to be careful
because you don't want people saying,
I want to host certain kinds of people.
That can get a little bit dangerous,
but there is an affinity where like,
I love to host other creative people or something.
That could be pretty cool.
And so I think Pablo's question was different.
Pablo runs something called Faina Rose.
I don't want to put words in your mouth,
or it's sort of a membership community that they bring together to talk about cultural events.
Oh, I see. Okay.
Like a Soho House type.
Oh, I see.
Oh, that's cool.
No, we haven't really thought about that very much, but I do think that would be something that would be quite popular for people.
Because again, they want to be part of a community.
And then suddenly when you're living, I mean, one of the things I'm learning is when you live on Airbnb, it can be really awesome.
But if without the right community, it can be a little isolating.
So we're just trying to connect you to local communities.
It can be really important.
Yeah.
Hi, Brian.
Catherine Kermans from Oscar Health.
Similar to you, I left my New York City apartment to go travel and taking advantage of a bunch
of co-living and co-working spaces.
Similar to the last theme, it seems like there's a lot of innovation in the space that's going to happen. Curious your approach to acquisitions going
forward and do you see it looking similar to Hotel Tonight or would you approach it
kind of differently strategically moving forward? Yeah, I mean, we've done like two really big
acquisitions, Luxury Retreats, Hotel Tonight, both really great acquisitions. I think that going
forward, we'll probably do fewer acquisitions, but if it really counts,
we'll do it. I mean, we did probably 20 acquisitions before the pandemic. Maybe we did
more. It's a lot of work administratively to integrate companies. I don't think I appreciated
that. So I think our source of innovation is going to be primarily internally, but we are
absolutely going to be opportunistic about acquisitions going forward, but we'll probably
be bigger and fewer.
Bigger and fewer. This is something Aswath talked about.
He doesn't like acquisitions.
I'm sorry?
He thinks innovation is better internally.
Yeah, 100%. If you're creative.
I think that so much of big tech companies are going to be precluded from doing a lot of acquisitions, so they're going to be forced to innovate.
And if you're forced to innovate, you have to have a creative culture.
You have to have an innovative culture.
Yes.
You can't just growth hack your way to an optimization. You have to actually a creative culture. You have to have an innovative culture. Yes. You can't just growth hack your way to an optimization.
You have to actually have an idea.
You have to be research-based.
You have to use your own products.
Creative people have to be at the table.
You have to have a design sensibility.
Marketing and engineering need to be close together.
You can't just build something and hope people use it.
So I guess that's a good word.
But you have to be creative.
That's the beginning.
Hi.
I was wondering, you have spoken a bit about wanting to create more community and experiences for people and kind of trying for frequent Airbnb users who maybe if you pay a
monthly fee, you get access to exclusive events with other Airbnb users, or maybe it makes it
kind of easier to book subsequent Airbnbs, maybe a decline in the kind of cleaning and administrative
fees that are sometimes like hidden. Like it says, it's $100 a night,
and then it's, you know, a little bit more.
By the way, I love Airbnb, but...
She wants more, Brian.
I want more.
Yeah, no, so that we've definitely thought about for sure.
And we've even had conversations around like,
I just think people want to be able to connect
with other people.
They would pay to do that.
They would, there's a potentially elevated service people would want.
So it's a great suggestion.
It's something we've definitely thought about.
So yeah, I like it.
It's really important.
They may trust you more.
It's interesting.
We had a Twitter space on Peloton, even though everyone's sort of dumping on them.
And the Peloton users love them so much, they want more stuff from them, which was really
interesting.
And Airbnb, I feel like I have a trusted relationship when I use it. And I would accept more. Same thing with Apple. There's
certain brands that you would want. That you would do a little bit more with.
Well, if they offered it, if they brought it to your attention.
Hi, I'm Claire Cruz. So I work in legal technology. I actually think we do a little
bit of e-discovery work for you. But my question is actually from a friend of mine who is a real
estate attorney and
represents a lot of Airbnb hosts. So bear with me a second with this. A number of cities like
Chicago are enacting strict regulations on Airbnb that require hosts and potential hosts to obtain
prior permission from municipal governments before they can create an Airbnb account or a listing.
And then that require
hosts to delete their Airbnb listings if that city denies such a permission. So what is Airbnb's
stance on the attempt by municipal governments to regulate who can use your platform, and what are
you doing about it? Well, I mean, this is something that's been going on for 10 years, including
Chicago. I have a long history working with the city of Chicago. We're regulated in, I think, the
largest 200 markets in the world. I think we're regulated in just about every single one
of them. New York City is the primary one that we haven't had a major piece of regulation
on the books. Listen, we're supportive of regulation. I mean, not all regulation has
to be onerous. I used to say, like, I was one of the only tech CEOs that wanted to be regulated.
We were trying to pay taxes because that would legitimize us. At the same time, I understand why cities have concerns with housing
prices. They want to stop Airbnbs. And I said, well, you probably shouldn't have to stop all
Airbnbs. I started Airbnb with my friend because we couldn't afford to pay rent. So I think it's
really important that we don't have like a one size fits all, like it's either legal or illegal.
So we, I used to say like, well, why can't you limit it to primary homes and secondary homes? If there's a housing crisis, why do you have to just limit it
to 30 nights a year? So we're in support of a regulation, but we want to be smart, nuanced
regulation. And I think a lot of times that requires a dialogue. So we have, we work with
our host and our cities all over the world to try to have face-to-face conversations. And I find that
usually when you like, it's, it's hard to-to-face conversations. And I find that usually when you,
like it's hard to hate someone else up close.
And when you sit down with city officials and you have a reasonable dialogue,
you realize that the other is not so other,
that they're not as black and white as they said they are.
And you can come up with a reasonable compromise solution.
And so that's what we've done.
I think we actually done that in the city of Chicago
and it will continue to evolve.
You had that experience in San Francisco.
One of the interesting things at the beginning of these two companies was watching Brian deal with the city of San Francisco and Travis Kalanick.
And it literally was like night and day.
Well, he was the Secretary of War of Secretary of State.
Yes, that's right.
It was crazy.
But go ahead.
Just before we get to Aria, I want to channel your mom.
Brian, when are you going to settle down?
You're four years old and single.
I asked the same question of Merit, the CEO of the New York Times yesterday.
Can you talk a little bit about trying to balance your personal and your professional life?
I can't imagine you haven't been pretty much working nonstop for the last decade and a half.
It's a, yeah, man, that's the hardest question I've ever asked.
stop for the last decade and a half it's a yeah man that's the hardest question i've been asked um yeah i um no one ever told me i mean first of all i'm like incredibly privileged so i want to
like not sound like i'm complaining it's amazing but i i thought the more successful i got the more
friends i'd have the more people who surround me and the less lonely i'd feel and i actually
some of the loneliest people i know are some of the most successful people I know. There's something about success where the more successful you are,
the more people surround you, but your world gets smaller and it gets isolating.
And the pandemic, it did something really good in my life. And it did something that
I wasn't expecting. The good thing is it made me totally focused. It made me grow up. It made me
make a lot of hard decisions. And I think I've made like ten years of progress in a year
But I worked 16 hours a day seven days a week for probably 400 450 days and one day I wake up
I'm almost 40 years old living by myself with a dog and I'm like wow on the one hand
I've done so much in my life professionally more than I ever thought I would
Other hand when I was a kid, I thought I have a family by now. And so, you know, you do sometimes put things on hold. And I,
you know, once I turned forward, and I'm like, okay, I have to really be intentional about
what kind of life do I want to have, I do want to eventually have a family. And that requires
making the time to meet people. It gets, you know, it's not natural when you're like, you know,
like in my position to meet people
in the same kind of way. So it is something I'm actively thinking about. And, you know, maybe that
maybe that's partly why I just felt the desire to get a little bit out of San Francisco as well.
Good idea. I'm always, I tease Brian, I text him sometimes, like, how did I have two children in
the pandemic and you have none yet? I'm worse than his mom. Last question.
Hey, Brian, Ari Horowitz here. I also formerly a super host and currently automate lending to e-commerce businesses.
So we can talk about that if you want.
My question, though, is, you know, I've read data that people actually book their restaurant reservations before they book their lodging.
And we could really use a Yelp killer.
Any plans for that?
Google is the Yelp killer.
Yeah.
Yeah. No plans on restaurant reservations. I mean, that was one of the other things that we started getting into before the
pandemic. And, you know, I think one other lesson I've learned is companies can confuse their assets
with their capabilities, right? We have an asset. We have a global brand. We have tons of traffic.
We could fill a restaurant, but that doesn't mean we have the capability understanding the
restaurant business. And I think it's very But that doesn't mean we have the capability of understanding the restaurant business.
And I think it's very important for me that if we're going to get into something, I mean, you mentioned Apple.
Like, they don't get into something unless they reinvent it and they do it well.
And I like that approach.
I don't really want to go into something unless I feel like we can reinvent it, add a major contribution to it.
And if we can't, then I think someone else should do it.
And right now, you know, I think there could be a day we could do something there, but you know, probably not the first thing
on the list right now. So how do you like Miami? I actually like it a lot. I mean, I would say
people seem really happy here. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if you're in Wynwood, right? Yeah. Yeah. I'm
staying, staying there. And it's, I love the city. I think it's not, I mean, I'm not saying it's like
San Francisco when I first moved to San
Francisco, but I remember coming to San Francisco in 2007 and there was just this excitement and
optimism, like the first day on a college campus. And it feels like everyone's like new at college
and they're happy to be there. And they're just, it brings out the very best of mentalities.
And that's really good for tech because you need to be in a high trust environment and you need to
be optimistic, right?
Like, because there's a fine line between being an entrepreneur and being unemployed.
I learned that when I was starting.
I said, I'm an entrepreneur.
My mom said, no, you're unemployed.
And so you need to have an environment of creative, supportive people that are optimistic.
And, you know, the spirit is a lot lighter in Miami than it is in San Francisco, to say
the least.
It's a little heavy there.
And heaviness is not great for entrepreneurs.
You're kind of dragging an anvil behind you.
So it's really important that lightness, it kind of comes back to cities if they want to have great ecosystems.
And where's your next city?
I don't know.
I'm definitely in the market for ideas.
So I haven't booked it yet, but I'm open to any ideas.
You've been to Nashville?
I just came from Nashville, actually. All right. Anybody? Philly. Philly. Durham. Asheville.
Sydney. Sydney. Okay. That's going to be really hard on the time zone for me. All right. Yeah.
All those are great ideas. They're all. Charlottesville. Charlotte. Wow. Yeah. New Jersey.
There you go. All right. I'm going to New Jersey.
I grew up in New Jersey.
Oh, don't go to New Jersey.
Anyway, Brian, thank you so much.
Thank you, Brian.
Thank you, all of you.
Thank you, thank you.
We'll have more bonus content from Pivot MIA this week, so stay tuned.