Brian Chesky’s new playbook

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

Lenny Rachitsky

Technology, Business, Entrepreneurship

5 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 12 November 2023

⏱️ 73 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Brian Chesky is the co-founder and CEO of Airbnb. Under Brian’s leadership, Airbnb has grown into a community of over 4 million hosts who have welcomed more than 1.5 billion guests across over 220 countries and regions. I had the privilege of working under his leadership, so it is a great honor to have him on the show. We discuss:

• How Airbnb has shifted their thinking on product management

• Why bureaucracy happens in companies, and how to avoid it

• The importance of founders diving into the details

• Why Airbnb moved away from traditional growth channels and what they are doing instead

• Airbnb’s newly released features

• How and why Brian encourages his team to set ambitious goals

• Why he says he still has a lot to prove

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Find the full transcript at: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/brian-cheskys-new-playbook/#transcript

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Where to find Brian Chesky:

• X: https://twitter.com/bchesky

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianchesky/

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Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

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In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Brian’s background

(05:18) The current structure of product management at Airbnb

(09:21) How fast-moving companies become slow-moving bureaucracies

(12:20) Brian’s thoughts on performance marketing

(13:50) Airbnb’s rolling two-year roadmap

(15:30) Brian’s journey as CEO in a growing company

(18:34) Best practices for A/B testing

(20:30) Who inspired Airbnb’s new direction

(23:18) The first changes Brian implemented at the onset of the pandemic

(24:51) Why founders should be “in the details”

(30:15) Airbnb’s marketing, communication, and creative functions

(31:38) Advice for founders on how to lead

(34:15) Tips for implementing Airbnb’s business methodology

(38:48) Airbnb’s winter release

(41:47) Why Airbnb no longer has separate guest and host teams

(42:38) Brian’s thoughts on design trends

(45:36) The importance of empowering hosts with great tools

(45:57) How setting ambitious goals improves team performance

(50:05) Tips for preventing burnout

(56:02) Tips for personal and professional growth

(58:19) Why Brian says he still has a lot to prove

(1:02:58) Paying it forward

(1:05:03) A fun fact about Brian

(1:09:26) Airbnb’s origin story

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Referenced:

• Localmind: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/localmind

• Config 2023 in review: https://www.figma.com/blog/config-2023-recap/

• Why Founders Fail: The Product CEO Paradox: https://techcrunch.com/2013/08/10/why-founders-fail-the-product-ceo-paradox/

• Hiroki Asai on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hiroki-asai-a44137110/

• Jony Ive on Crunchbase: https://www.crunchbase.com/person/jonathan-ive

• Charles Eames: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Eames

• Airbnb 2023 Winter Release: https://news.airbnb.com/en-in/airbnb-2023-winter-release-introducing-guest-favorites-a-collection-of-the-2-million-most-loved-homes-on-airbnb/

• Airbnb 2023 winter release reel: https://x.com/bchesky/status/1722243847751970861?s=20

• John Wooden’s website: https://coachwooden.com/

• An 85-year Harvard study found the No. 1 thing that makes us happy in life: It helps us ‘live longer’: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/10/85-year-harvard-study-found-the-secret-to-a-long-happy-and-successful-life.html

• Sam Altman on X: https://twitter.com/sama

• Alfred P. Sloan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_P._Sloan

• Bob Dylan quote: https://quotefancy.com/quote/950807/Bob-Dylan-An-artist-has-got-to-be-careful-never-really-to-arrive-at-a-place-where-he

• OpenAI: https://openai.com/

• Michael Seibel’s website: https://www.michaelseibel.com/

• Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/

• The Norman Rockwell Museum: https://www.nrm.org/

• Rhode Island School of Design: https://www.risd.edu/

• Joe Gebbia on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jgebbia/

• Nathan Blecharczyk on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/blecharczyk/

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Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

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Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.

Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	way too many founders apologize for how they want to run the company.
0:04.0	They find some midpoint between how they want to run a company and how the people they lead
0:09.5	want to run the company.
0:11.2	That's a good way to make everyone miserable because what everyone really wants is clarity.
0:15.2	What everyone really wants is to be able to row in the same direction really quickly.
0:19.6	And so I basically got involved in every single detail and I basically told leaders that
0:24.5	leaders are in the details and there's this negative term called micromanagement I
0:29.3	think there's a difference between micromanagement which is like telling people exactly what to do and being in the details.
0:36.4	Being the details is what every responsible company's board does to the CEO.
0:41.2	It doesn't mean the board is telling them what to do, but if you don't
0:44.3	know the details, how do you know people are doing a good job? People think that great
0:48.2	leaders job is to hire people and just empower them to do a good job. Well, how do you know they're doing a good job if you're not the details?
0:54.4	And so I made sure I was in the details and we really drove the product.
0:58.0	Today, my guest is Brian Chesky. Brian is the CEO and co-founder of AirBMB, which he started in his apartment with his co-founder's Joe Nate and is turned into an 80 billion dollar global business with travelers and homes in 220 countries.
1:15.9	I was very lucky to get to work with Brian for many years and my sense is if you ask people
1:21.1	who they consider the most inspiring tech or business leaders today,
1:25.0	Brian would be right near the top of that list.
1:28.0	In our conversation, Brian shares an in-depth explanation of what's happening with product management at Airbnb which caused quite a
1:34.0	start in the product world when he talked about this previously.
1:37.2	We also get deep into Brian's new approach of how he runs Airbnb, including shifting
1:41.7	away from traditional growth channels like paid growth, and instead
1:44.9	betting that if they just build the best possible product and tell people about it, growth
	...

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