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Transcript

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky · The David Rubenstein Show

0:02
Speaker 1: One of the most important companies in the travel industry
0:05
Speaker 1: today is Airbnb. It started less than two decades ago
0:09
Speaker 1: as a concept of renting out one's room to make
0:11
Speaker 1: some extra money. Now all over the world people are
0:14
Speaker 1: renting out their homes their apartments to other people. I
0:17
Speaker 1: actually used an Airbnb recently in Alaska and found to
0:21
Speaker 1: be quite good experience. I sat down with Brian Schofsky,
0:23
Speaker 1: who conceived of Airbnb has now built it into one
0:26
Speaker 1: of the largest travel companies in the world. You came
0:29
Speaker 1: up with the idea with your partners of starting this
0:31
Speaker 1: company around two thousand seven two thousand eight. Did anybody
0:34
Speaker 1: tell you it was a good idea? No? I mean
0:37
Speaker 1: it was pretty universally considered a terrible idea. I um.
0:41
Speaker 1: I remember the first person I told the idea to.
0:43
Speaker 1: I said, Hey, we've got this idea. We're gonna build
0:45
Speaker 1: this website where you like strangers could other strangers in
0:48
Speaker 1: their homes. And the person who was kind of somebody
0:51
Speaker 1: I looked up to in Los Angeles, he looks at
0:53
Speaker 1: me in the straight face. I said yes. He said, Brian,
0:56
Speaker 1: I hope that's not the only idea you're working on.
0:59
Speaker 1: And that was by the way one the nicer things
1:00
Speaker 1: people said. But the reason I think it worked was
1:03
Speaker 1: because I stumbled into this idea of my roommate. I mean,
1:06
Speaker 1: there was this design conference coming to San Francisco in
1:09
Speaker 1: October two seven. I couldn't afford to pay rent this
1:12
Speaker 1: design conference conference service to go. All the hotels were
1:15
Speaker 1: sold out. And we have this idea, we said, when
1:17
Speaker 1: we just turned our house into a bed and breakfast
1:19
Speaker 1: for the design conference. I didn't have any beds, but
1:22
Speaker 1: Joe had three our beds. We pulled them out of
1:23
Speaker 1: the closet. We called the air bed and Breakfast dot com.
1:26
Speaker 1: We made enough money pay our rent, But more importantly,
1:29
Speaker 1: we actually ended up making friends of these three people
1:31
Speaker 1: because they live with us for a week. And at
1:32
Speaker 1: that point, I think we realized if people could experience
1:36
Speaker 1: what we experienced, that this would be an idea that
1:38
Speaker 1: would spread around the world. But little did I know
1:41
Speaker 1: that it was going to be a very difficult uphill road.
1:44
Speaker 1: Where did you get your initial money? Was that the
1:47
Speaker 1: y combinator from Paul Graham? Well, actually, um, there's kind
1:51
Speaker 1: of a weird story about how we raised money. So
1:54
Speaker 1: we had this kind of quirky idea to sell collectible
1:56
Speaker 1: breakfast cereal. Um So, Barack Obama John Keane are both
2:00
Speaker 1: running for president, and we thought, you know, the breakfast
2:02
Speaker 1: isn't selling the bet that we're bet and we're a
2:05
Speaker 1: bet and breakfast. We're not selling beds. Maybe we can
2:07
Speaker 1: sell breakfast. And so we started selling collectible breakfast cereal,
2:11
Speaker 1: a Barack Obama theme cereal called Obama Ohs, which is
2:14
Speaker 1: like cheerios, and we called it the Breakfast a Change.
2:17
Speaker 1: And we learned about John McCain was a captain the Navy,
2:19
Speaker 1: so we called it Captain McCain's a Maverick Entervy Bite.
2:22
Speaker 1: And we made these really funny like looking cereal boxes.
2:25
Speaker 1: We actually ended up selling thirty thousand dollars with a
2:28
Speaker 1: collectible breakfast cereal and that was actually originally how we
2:31
Speaker 1: funded a company. So now it's late two thousand eight,
2:35
Speaker 1: we're like desperate. We've launched three times, no one's using it.
2:38
Speaker 1: I'm hockling cereal boxes in my kitchen. I'm thinking to myself,
2:41
Speaker 1: I wonder if Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs ever had
2:44
Speaker 1: to hock blue cereal boxes in their living room. The
2:46
Speaker 1: answer was no, they hadn't done it. This was a
2:49
Speaker 1: foreboding sign. And I'm going out to dinner at a
2:51
Speaker 1: tire restaurant in San Francisco with the founders of Justin
2:55
Speaker 1: That TV, who are Ye Combinator, and they said, you
2:57
Speaker 1: should join Why Combinator because you guys are dying and
3:01
Speaker 1: I thought, well, it's probably too late. We already launched,
3:04
Speaker 1: but Paul Graham eventually allowed us to apply. We actually
3:07
Speaker 1: missed the deadline, but he allowed us to apply after
3:09
Speaker 1: the deadline and we got an interview, and that's when
3:12
Speaker 1: Paul Graham said, like in our first question, people actually
3:15
Speaker 1: doing this? And I said yes, and he goes, what's
3:18
Speaker 1: wrong with them? So the interview kind of went downhill
3:20
Speaker 1: from there. He didn't He's the admitted he hated the
3:23
Speaker 1: idea of airbnb at first. Who didn't get it? But
3:25
Speaker 1: as we're leaving the interview, my roommate Joe, hands him
3:29
Speaker 1: a box of Barack Obama cereal that we made and
3:32
Speaker 1: he looks at it and he goes, what what is this?
3:34
Speaker 1: Why am I getting this? And we said this is
3:36
Speaker 1: how we funded the company, and he looks to us.
3:38
Speaker 1: He said, if you can figure out how to get
3:40
Speaker 1: people to pay forty dollars for a four dour box
3:42
Speaker 1: of cereal. Maybe you will convince them how to sleep
3:44
Speaker 1: in each other's homes. So why commentator let us in
3:48
Speaker 1: the program? I think we barely I don't know if
3:51
Speaker 1: we got in barely got in. And the moment we
3:53
Speaker 1: got into the program, you know, the recession is occurring.
3:56
Speaker 1: People are desperate to save their homes, and lot of
4:00
Speaker 1: people started trying to Airbnb to save their homes by
4:02
Speaker 1: renting them out. At the same time, you have a
4:05
Speaker 1: great recession which is causing a lot of young people
4:07
Speaker 1: to feel like, well, I need to save money. You know,
4:10
Speaker 1: Facebook and social media is growing, so people are comfortable
4:13
Speaker 1: meeting people on the internet, and it was kind of
4:15
Speaker 1: the supernova forces that led to an opening for everybody
4:18
Speaker 1: to finally take off. So traditionally people might build a
4:22
Speaker 1: company like yours and five or six years later they
4:24
Speaker 1: would take a public and liquefy for the employees, the
4:27
Speaker 1: founders and also the investors. But you were resisting pressure
4:31
Speaker 1: to do that. Why didn't you go public sooner? And
4:33
Speaker 1: you have any regrets about not going public sooner than
4:36
Speaker 1: you did. I just didn't feel like we were ready
4:39
Speaker 1: to go public sooner. And I think in hindsight, maybe
4:43
Speaker 1: we could have gone public sooner. I mean, just so
4:44
Speaker 1: it's important. Remember when we were growing really quickly, there
4:47
Speaker 1: were not regulations on the books for Airbnb, and a
4:50
Speaker 1: lot of people are wondering was this business going to
4:52
Speaker 1: get regulated out of existence? That to me was one
4:55
Speaker 1: of many existential questions. Eventually, we able that we were
4:59
Speaker 1: able to get law as in the books and nearly
5:01
Speaker 1: every big city in the world we were able to
5:03
Speaker 1: collect four billion dollars. Hotel tax became legitimate. We expanded
5:07
Speaker 1: a nationally, We built an executive team. But I felt
5:10
Speaker 1: like going public was a big stage. It was almost
5:13
Speaker 1: like it's almost like, you know, if you're I don't know,
5:16
Speaker 1: there's a kind of a weird analogy, but if you're
5:18
Speaker 1: like baking a cake, going public is putting in the oven.
5:21
Speaker 1: You know, It's it's hard to change the ingredients after
5:23
Speaker 1: you go public, right, And so I wanted to make
5:25
Speaker 1: sure that everything was kind of baked before we went public. Now,
5:29
Speaker 1: once the pandemic hit, that was more than a decade
5:31
Speaker 1: after we started, I was accused of having waited too
5:34
Speaker 1: long and having missed the I P O window. I
5:38
Speaker 1: would have never imagined what had transpired over the course
5:40
Speaker 1: of but I think looking back, it worked out really
5:43
Speaker 1: well for everyone. Well, you went public in December after
5:48
Speaker 1: the pandemic, but you obviously were probably you had to
5:51
Speaker 1: lay off some people during that period of time, Is
5:53
Speaker 1: that right? You know? Like when the pandemic hit, I
5:55
Speaker 1: was working on our S one, and like many people,
5:58
Speaker 1: I came back from the holidays and twenty team thinking
6:00
Speaker 1: my life was going to go in one direction, not
6:02
Speaker 1: realizing our entire world was about to get rocked. I
6:05
Speaker 1: felt like a captain of a ship and a torpedo
6:07
Speaker 1: hit the side. We lost eighty percent of our business
6:11
Speaker 1: in eight weeks, and we were doing tens of billions
6:13
Speaker 1: dollars a year in bookings and then suddenly go from
6:15
Speaker 1: high flying to people predicting is this the end of Airbnb.
6:18
Speaker 1: I mean there were multiple mainstream journalists predicting that we
6:21
Speaker 1: were going to go out of business. It was almost
6:23
Speaker 1: like our business flash before our eyes, and I ended
6:26
Speaker 1: up having to confront this reality David that I realized
6:28
Speaker 1: we're gonna lose half our business. And so it's like
6:30
Speaker 1: running into a burning house if you can only save
6:33
Speaker 1: half your furniture, Like and half your stuff, what do
6:35
Speaker 1: you take with you? And I said, we're going to
6:37
Speaker 1: get back to the original idea of Airbnb, the individual people.
6:41
Speaker 1: They are sharing their homes and experiences all over the world.
6:44
Speaker 1: We had to make the hard decision I've ever made,
6:46
Speaker 1: which we had to lay off of our workforce nearly
6:50
Speaker 1: two thousand employees. But I wanted to make sure even
6:53
Speaker 1: in a layoff, we could show compassion, to be really principled,
6:56
Speaker 1: So we end up giving people a year of healthcare.
6:59
Speaker 1: We're I think very chivers our severance. So when you
7:01
Speaker 1: went public in December, you priced the I p O
7:05
Speaker 1: or the underwriters did at half of the price that
7:08
Speaker 1: ultimately ended up that day. So some people might say
7:11
Speaker 1: you left twenty three or four billion dollars on the table.
7:13
Speaker 1: Do you look at it that way where you think
7:15
Speaker 1: it was miss price or you're okay with it. We
7:17
Speaker 1: came back from nineteen as a somewhere between on the
7:20
Speaker 1: private markets a thirty to forty billion dollar valuation at
7:24
Speaker 1: the depth of the pandemic. Our valuation was below eighteen
7:27
Speaker 1: billion dollars. I mean, we probably would have struggled to
7:29
Speaker 1: raise money at eighteen billion dollar evaluation. We had warrants
7:32
Speaker 1: and to be able to be a hundred billion dollar
7:34
Speaker 1: company eight months or seven months after that low point.
7:39
Speaker 1: It was really hard to imagine any of that was
7:41
Speaker 1: going to happen. And I think part of the reason
7:42
Speaker 1: our stock popped was I believe we had hundreds of
7:45
Speaker 1: thousands of people in retail trying to buy our stocks.
7:48
Speaker 1: So I don't feel bad. I never took the highest
7:50
Speaker 1: price in any round. We totally could have priced to hire.
7:53
Speaker 1: But it was pretty hard, I think at the time
7:55
Speaker 1: to foresee that this was going to be a company
7:57
Speaker 1: that was going to reach evaluation like that. Now as
7:59
Speaker 1: we talk, you've just reported your earnings for last quarter
8:02
Speaker 1: and last year, and they were record earnings, record revenues,
8:05
Speaker 1: and so forth. And you said, I think at the
8:08
Speaker 1: release that Covid has changed everything. People are changing the
8:11
Speaker 1: way they work and the way they travel. Can you
8:13
Speaker 1: explain what you mean. I think the world is never
8:15
Speaker 1: going back to the way it was fully before the pandemic,
8:18
Speaker 1: and one of the changes I think, David, it's been
8:20
Speaker 1: a change in how we work. You know, for many people,
8:24
Speaker 1: not all, but many people had a job at the office.
8:27
Speaker 1: They're not going to be required to come back to
8:29
Speaker 1: the office five days a week, and I think that
8:31
Speaker 1: I don't think CEOs per se are going to determine
8:34
Speaker 1: these policies. I think workers will because all of us CEOs,
8:38
Speaker 1: I think, want the best talent, and I think flexibility
8:41
Speaker 1: is going to be the second most important benefit after compensation.
8:44
Speaker 1: So I think we're now living in a world where
8:45
Speaker 1: many people are gonna work remotely. They might go into office,
8:48
Speaker 1: but not five days a week. If you don't have
8:50
Speaker 1: to go in office five days a week, you're more flexible,
8:53
Speaker 1: You're less tethered to anyone's city. And so I think
8:55
Speaker 1: what that means is that for millions of people, they
8:58
Speaker 1: can now live anywhere. Some people that don't have kids,
9:01
Speaker 1: like me, can literally live nomadically. You can stay city
9:05
Speaker 1: to city, hopping around. I think a lot of young
9:06
Speaker 1: people and retires to do that. All of this, David
9:09
Speaker 1: has culminated AIRBB not just being a company about traveling,
9:12
Speaker 1: but now a company about living. Half of people don't
9:16
Speaker 1: realize is half of our nights booked are for stays
9:19
Speaker 1: a longer than a week. A fifth of our knights
9:21
Speaker 1: booked are for stays are longer than a month. So
9:25
Speaker 1: there's this whole new category of travel that's not classic too.
9:28
Speaker 1: Three nights in a city, it's not long term housing,
9:31
Speaker 1: and it's completely emerged because of the pandemic. So let's
9:34
Speaker 1: go back to your background. For those who don't know
9:36
Speaker 1: your background, what part of the United States are you from.
9:39
Speaker 1: I'm from a small town in upstate New York called
9:43
Speaker 1: Niskey and which is a suburb of Schenectady outside Albany.
9:46
Speaker 1: And your parents they were social workers. My mom and
9:50
Speaker 1: dad were social workers. Both my grandfather's worked for General Electric,
9:52
Speaker 1: but my my mom and dad were kind of lived
9:54
Speaker 1: normal lives of social workers. And when you're growing up,
9:58
Speaker 1: I understand you wanted to be a hockey play or
10:00
Speaker 1: when you were young, Is that true? Yeah? When I
10:02
Speaker 1: was five years old that would have been nine six,
10:04
Speaker 1: Wayne Gretzky was the greatest hockey player in the world,
10:06
Speaker 1: and I wanted to be just like him. I had
10:08
Speaker 1: posters and Wayne Gretzky in my wall. The problem with
10:10
Speaker 1: athletics is your dreams come crashing down pretty quickly. By
10:13
Speaker 1: the age of six, I realized I wasn't gonna be
10:15
Speaker 1: Wayne Gretzky. Hey, when that dream went away, you decided
10:18
Speaker 1: you might want to be an artist because you had
10:19
Speaker 1: good skills in that area exactly. I ended up getting
10:22
Speaker 1: a scholarship to go to Ronald School Design, and they
10:25
Speaker 1: only gave away a few scholarships, so it was kind
10:27
Speaker 1: of a big deal to get the scholarship. And my
10:29
Speaker 1: mom said like, well, you know, my mom, Dad, you
10:31
Speaker 1: can go to art school, but you've got to promise
10:33
Speaker 1: me that you one day get a real job. And
10:36
Speaker 1: I said, well, what's a real job. She said, A
10:38
Speaker 1: real job is a job that gives you health insurance.
10:40
Speaker 1: And I said, okay, I promise I'm gonna go to
10:42
Speaker 1: Risdy and one day I'm gonna a real job with
10:44
Speaker 1: health insurance. That was kind of my ambition. I mean,
10:46
Speaker 1: my high school yearbook quote literally was I'm sure I'll
10:50
Speaker 1: amount to nothing. I don't. I think I was being
10:52
Speaker 1: kind of sarcastic, but I didn't really think I was
10:55
Speaker 1: going to be a tech founder. I mean, you know,
10:57
Speaker 1: I didn't really see very much beyond my small town.
11:00
Speaker 1: So let's talk about it. You graduate from Rhode Island
11:02
Speaker 1: School Design and then you moved to California, Los Angeles
11:06
Speaker 1: to become a designer, So then you ultimately didn't like
11:09
Speaker 1: it that much and decided to move to San Francisco.
11:11
Speaker 1: Was that right? I liked it for like three months,
11:13
Speaker 1: because there's like a thrill when you're a student. Nothing
11:16
Speaker 1: you make is real, and you just have this yearning
11:18
Speaker 1: that you want to make something that's real, that's not
11:20
Speaker 1: a shelf and people pay money for. But then after
11:23
Speaker 1: a few months of doing that, maybe a year, I
11:25
Speaker 1: kind of remember thinking my I was like twenty four,
11:29
Speaker 1: maybe twenty five years old. I remember like feeling like
11:32
Speaker 1: I could see the rest of my life and the
11:34
Speaker 1: rest of my life look like a road that disappeared
11:36
Speaker 1: in the horizon and exactly look exactly like the road
11:38
Speaker 1: behind me, and it kind of terrified me. I was like,
11:40
Speaker 1: I don't really want to just be a designer. I
11:43
Speaker 1: at this point realized, I think I want to be
11:45
Speaker 1: an entrepreneur, but I don't know what I'm gonna build
11:47
Speaker 1: or what I'm gonna start. And this is now two
11:49
Speaker 1: thousand seven, and so I think like the Internet revolution
11:52
Speaker 1: was really taking hold. You know, YouTube was just sold
11:55
Speaker 1: to Google, it was kind of the biggest company. Facebook
11:57
Speaker 1: was rising, the tech had come out, the ashes, the
12:00
Speaker 1: dot com crash, and it just felt like the gears
12:04
Speaker 1: of the world we're starting to turn in San Francisco,
12:07
Speaker 1: and so I just had this premonition that, like, I
12:09
Speaker 1: have to come to San Francisco. It's pulling me. Right.
12:11
Speaker 1: So you started the company with your roommate Joe, right, yep,
12:16
Speaker 1: you brought a third partner in. Yeah, so really not
12:18
Speaker 1: long after it was just Joe and I were both designers,
12:21
Speaker 1: so we can design a website, but we can't actually
12:23
Speaker 1: code and build a website. You need a software engineer
12:26
Speaker 1: to do that. And so after we host the three guests,
12:29
Speaker 1: I looked at Joe and I said, like, who's the
12:31
Speaker 1: best engineer you know? And Joe said, well, it's funny
12:35
Speaker 1: you ask, because there was an engineer who used to
12:38
Speaker 1: live with me before you moved in the house of
12:40
Speaker 1: me named Nate. And so the three of us got
12:42
Speaker 1: together and we said, you know what if you could
12:43
Speaker 1: build a website where you can book someone's home the
12:45
Speaker 1: way you can book a hotel anywhere in the world.
12:48
Speaker 1: And that was the original vision. Um, little did I
12:50
Speaker 1: know how hard it was going to be to get
12:51
Speaker 1: it off the ground, but that was a pretty simple idea.
12:54
Speaker 1: So as you look back on what you've built, what
12:56
Speaker 1: would you say is the best decision you made, and
12:58
Speaker 1: what was the biggest regret you had have so far,
13:01
Speaker 1: and what you do, what you built. The most important
13:04
Speaker 1: piece of advice I ever got was when I first
13:07
Speaker 1: started Airbnb. It was actually Paul Graham. He told me something.
13:11
Speaker 1: He said, it's better to have a hundred people love
13:14
Speaker 1: your service then have a million people that are kind
13:18
Speaker 1: of like your service but a little apathetic. He should
13:20
Speaker 1: start with a small group and perfect your product. Do
13:24
Speaker 1: things that don't scale, turn them to advocates. Because of
13:27
Speaker 1: those hundred people love your service, they're gonna tell everyone
13:30
Speaker 1: about them. They're gonna become your marketing And it's easy
13:33
Speaker 1: to improve your service when you only have a hundred customers.
13:35
Speaker 1: When you have a million customers, really hard to change it.
13:37
Speaker 1: And so do things that don't scale, go above and beyond.
13:40
Speaker 1: And that was something we did, and I think that
13:42
Speaker 1: really helped explain why we're so successful. I think the
13:46
Speaker 1: biggest mistake I made was when you're in your twenties
13:51
Speaker 1: and you never imagine being an entrepreneur and suddenly you're
13:54
Speaker 1: a multibillion dollar company and somebody gives you billions of
13:56
Speaker 1: dollars and you hit on something that's hugely successful. You
14:00
Speaker 1: tend to start to believe that you can do anything,
14:03
Speaker 1: and you try to do everything, and you try to
14:05
Speaker 1: do everything at the same time. And before the pandemic,
14:08
Speaker 1: we had like ten divisions and we were extending all
14:10
Speaker 1: different places. And in hindsight, I think having too much
14:14
Speaker 1: money is sometimes worse than having not enough money, because
14:17
Speaker 1: I think not having enough money creates constraints, It creates discipline,
14:20
Speaker 1: it creates focus, It forces you to create trade offs.
14:23
Speaker 1: I think when corporations and start ups to get over capitalized,
14:26
Speaker 1: they can avoid making tough decisions. The accountability goes down.
14:30
Speaker 1: There's a real sense of complacency that goes into the company.
14:34
Speaker 1: And I think a little that lack of focus happened
14:37
Speaker 1: Airbnb before the pandemic. So you have a lot of
14:39
Speaker 1: mentors that have helped you over the years. How did
14:41
Speaker 1: you get to know Barack Obama? Is he's staying at
14:43
Speaker 1: airbnbach he has stayed in the Airbnb is actually um.
14:47
Speaker 1: You might recall that UM we lifted the embargo in
14:50
Speaker 1: Cuba when he was president. President Obama end up going
14:53
Speaker 1: to Havana, Cuba, and he wanted to bring American businesses
14:56
Speaker 1: with him to show that business is now open between
14:58
Speaker 1: US and Cuba. Well, the problem is there weren't really
15:01
Speaker 1: any of US businesses in Cuba except for Airbnb. So
15:04
Speaker 1: I went with him to Havannah. I got to know
15:06
Speaker 1: him and we kept in touch, and so I think
15:07
Speaker 1: it was just helpful to have somebody who could help
15:10
Speaker 1: me see the world in a broader away and just
15:11
Speaker 1: think a little more systematically about my decisions and the
15:15
Speaker 1: consequences that we would have on society. So that's where
15:17
Speaker 1: how he became very helpful to me. Now, as I
15:20
Speaker 1: understand that you're spending a year or so going to Airbnb,
15:23
Speaker 1: is around the United States, Yeah, most of the United
15:26
Speaker 1: States kind of reasonable time zone. So when you want
15:28
Speaker 1: to book an Airbnb, do you have a trouble getting
15:31
Speaker 1: a place where you want to go or no? I
15:33
Speaker 1: you know, there's six million homes to choose from, so
15:35
Speaker 1: I've got more than enough options. I don't really say
15:38
Speaker 1: who I am, Um, I you know, and I think
15:41
Speaker 1: sometimes they find out, sometimes they don't, but um, yeah,
15:44
Speaker 1: I kind of his book last minute. I was in Atlanta, Nashville, UM, Charleston,
15:48
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, now Miami. I need ideas for where to
15:51
Speaker 1: go next. So when you book when an Airbnb, do
15:54
Speaker 1: you do it yourself or you have a team of
15:56
Speaker 1: people that pick it for you. I do it myself.
15:58
Speaker 1: I I gotta I gotta see whatever else is doing.
16:00
Speaker 1: I mean, I always feel like people who build great
16:03
Speaker 1: products ideally are building products they themselves want to use.
16:06
Speaker 1: I also think there's only so many things you see
16:08
Speaker 1: in the data. You have to like just have a
16:10
Speaker 1: feel for the product, and so I try to use
16:12
Speaker 1: it as much as I can. I always wonder who
16:15
Speaker 1: sets the rate? Do you set the rate and airbnbad
16:18
Speaker 1: or is they host set the rate? And do you
16:20
Speaker 1: negotiate rates? No? No, no host sets rate. They can
16:23
Speaker 1: charge whatever they want from ten dollars a ten thousand
16:26
Speaker 1: dollars a night or beyond. And you know, we have
16:28
Speaker 1: people renting luxury villas that are incredible, like Luxy villas,
16:32
Speaker 1: and then we people renting like, you know, little spaces
16:36
Speaker 1: in their backyard. I mean we had in two thousand
16:38
Speaker 1: nine a member when we first launched, we had people
16:40
Speaker 1: renting spaces under their kitchen table because they kind of thought, oh,
16:43
Speaker 1: it's space. I can rent any kind of space. So
16:45
Speaker 1: it's kind of everything from a couch to a castle
16:47
Speaker 1: and everything in between. And they set the rate and
16:49
Speaker 1: we basically take So when you stay at a place,
16:52
Speaker 1: do you ever call up the host and say, by
16:54
Speaker 1: the way, you're charging too much or charging not enough.
16:57
Speaker 1: I try to give feedback less on the value, but
17:00
Speaker 1: more on the kind of hospitality. Like sometimes like a
17:02
Speaker 1: host will want me to like, you know, like go
17:05
Speaker 1: through some like they'll give me like a rental contract
17:07
Speaker 1: because we used to doing on other websites, and I'm like,
17:09
Speaker 1: Airbnb is a contract. You don't need to do this, um,
17:11
Speaker 1: But it would be pretty weird to be a tech
17:13
Speaker 1: founder of Airbnb and saying, hey, I think you're overcharging me.
17:16
Speaker 1: It would just kind of send a slightly weird message.
17:18
Speaker 1: But I try to give them feedback. And we have
17:20
Speaker 1: a review system. Guest and host review each other at
17:24
Speaker 1: the end of day. So I've tried to write a
17:26
Speaker 1: pretty detailed review for every host. I I try to
17:29
Speaker 1: be positive but honest about the reviews. But you signed
17:32
Speaker 1: b C or Brian Ky, Brian Sewsky, so they know
17:36
Speaker 1: by the time I leave review who I am. I'd
17:38
Speaker 1: say half the time they know who I am when
17:40
Speaker 1: I book either half of I don't like I don't
17:42
Speaker 1: want to be a secret shopper where I'm like lying
17:44
Speaker 1: to them and then booking under a pseudonym. But I
17:46
Speaker 1: also don't want to tell them who I am, like
17:48
Speaker 1: I'm expecting special treatment, because then I'm not going to
17:50
Speaker 1: get the real experience. So be half the time I
17:53
Speaker 1: know they know who I am. Half they don't. But
17:55
Speaker 1: it's a pretty fun experience. You're forty years old. Yeah,
17:58
Speaker 1: so at forty you've already achieved more wealth and almost
18:00
Speaker 1: anybody could possibly imagine. Have you thought about stepping back
18:04
Speaker 1: and smelling the roses or doing something else with all
18:07
Speaker 1: the money you have? No, I I feel like I'm
18:11
Speaker 1: just it's really just getting fun now. I mean it
18:14
Speaker 1: was fun when I started, and then like there was
18:16
Speaker 1: this like corporate adolescence was it was kind of painful,
18:19
Speaker 1: the growing of the company. But I'm having so much
18:21
Speaker 1: fun right now. And if I were to step back,
18:23
Speaker 1: I'd probably only do that to start another company, to
18:25
Speaker 1: spend another ten years just to get back to this place.
18:28
Speaker 1: So when you've got a good thing going, you want
18:30
Speaker 1: to keep going. And I just feel like, you know,
18:32
Speaker 1: I have so much I still want to do with
18:33
Speaker 1: the company. I think there's like a lot of loneliness
18:36
Speaker 1: in the world, and I think part of our bigger
18:37
Speaker 1: contributions to help try to bring people together around the
18:40
Speaker 1: world living communities. So that's what I'm focused on now.
18:42
Speaker 1: The company that I started and built had to partners
18:46
Speaker 1: with me for the entire thirty plus years and we're
18:48
Speaker 1: still together. It's hard to have three people work together
18:51
Speaker 1: for a long time. You've had three people working together
18:54
Speaker 1: for quite some time as well. Don't you ever have
18:56
Speaker 1: fights with each other or get jealousies or how do
18:58
Speaker 1: you work together? So so well, it's a great question, David. Yeah.
19:01
Speaker 1: I mean, we're one of the only companies in the
19:03
Speaker 1: world as valuable as we are intact to have three
19:05
Speaker 1: founders have been together for fourteen years. I think it's
19:09
Speaker 1: a couple of things. Number One, I'm really lucky because
19:12
Speaker 1: I had the gift of having two incredible co founders
19:15
Speaker 1: that are really high integrit and you always put the
19:17
Speaker 1: company before themselves, and they were very supportive of me
19:20
Speaker 1: as CEO. But the other thing is we had a
19:22
Speaker 1: principle we said we're never gonna allow being right to
19:26
Speaker 1: get in front of the relationship, like if you try
19:28
Speaker 1: to be so principal that you try to win every
19:30
Speaker 1: single argument, you'll kind of see the trees and lose
19:34
Speaker 1: the forest, Which is say that we knew this company
19:37
Speaker 1: would only survive. It had a really strong founding team
19:39
Speaker 1: attack and that mean that occasionally each of us are
19:42
Speaker 1: going to have to kind of make compromises. So we
19:45
Speaker 1: tried to never let debates go so far that winning
19:49
Speaker 1: an argument got in the way of the relationship. I
19:51
Speaker 1: think that made a big difference. So on philanthropy, giving
19:54
Speaker 1: away money sounds like it's easy, but it takes time
19:56
Speaker 1: to do it. Well, so how are you thinking about that?
19:58
Speaker 1: Are there certain areas you to give away some of
20:00
Speaker 1: the money you've committed to the the given way half of
20:02
Speaker 1: your net worth, but you you know you have to
20:04
Speaker 1: take time to do it. So for me, I wanted
20:07
Speaker 1: to join the Giving Pledge in my thirties because I thought,
20:10
Speaker 1: you know, the main reason was even though it wasn't
20:12
Speaker 1: at that point ready to give away all my money,
20:15
Speaker 1: I did want to send an example if if it
20:16
Speaker 1: takestent that I could for the next intern entrepreneurs. You
20:19
Speaker 1: know that, like you know, it's it's like redistribute the
20:22
Speaker 1: majority of wealth back to society seemed like a reasonable
20:25
Speaker 1: thing to do was better for everyone, But I didn't
20:28
Speaker 1: know what I wanted to focus on. I did write
20:30
Speaker 1: in my giving pledge letter, though, that one of the
20:32
Speaker 1: issues that I want to focus on is just helping
20:35
Speaker 1: maybe create scholarship programs helping young kids like me. You know,
20:38
Speaker 1: I wasn't I wasn't poor, I wasn't underprivileged. I was
20:42
Speaker 1: just kind of obscure middle class. But had it not
20:45
Speaker 1: been for a series of people in my lifetime, I
20:48
Speaker 1: wouldn't be here talking to you today. You would have
20:50
Speaker 1: just never met herd of me, and I would have
20:52
Speaker 1: never left my town. And so I think that so
20:54
Speaker 1: many kids have untapped potential like me that their teachers
20:59
Speaker 1: would have never probably get predicted, would have had the
21:01
Speaker 1: journey that I've had. And I want to help kids
21:04
Speaker 1: see their unrealized potential and maybe help them change reject
21:07
Speaker 1: their lives. So that's maybe one area I'm passionate about,
21:10
Speaker 1: but make no mistake, there's a lot of other things
21:12
Speaker 1: I like to learn about and be able to help.
21:14
Speaker 1: The final question for somebody that's young, younger than you,
21:18
Speaker 1: if they want to be the next Brian Schowsky, what
21:20
Speaker 1: is the advice about how you would recommend they build
21:23
Speaker 1: a company. I would say a couple of things. The
21:26
Speaker 1: first thing I'd say is, don't listen to your parents.
21:28
Speaker 1: Don't take career advice and your parents. I love my parents.
21:31
Speaker 1: They want what's best for me. But you know, like
21:33
Speaker 1: your parents, um, and when I use parents or proxy
21:36
Speaker 1: for anyone, and when wise and old, most of them
21:39
Speaker 1: are gonna try to talk you out of crazy things.
21:40
Speaker 1: But sometimes the crazy ideas are the ones that do
21:43
Speaker 1: kind of spread around the world. The second thing I'd
21:46
Speaker 1: say is probably solve your own problem. A lot of
21:49
Speaker 1: people are looking for markets. We weren't looking to go
21:52
Speaker 1: into a good market. We were just trying to solve
21:54
Speaker 1: our own problem. If you solve your own problem, you
21:56
Speaker 1: may have just solved the problem for millions of other people.
21:58
Speaker 1: And it might be quite marketable and monetize herble, you know.
22:01
Speaker 1: I think last thing I'd say is just like, focus
22:03
Speaker 1: on on on, focus on love. It sounds like a
22:06
Speaker 1: weird thing, but I think a business is really simple.
22:08
Speaker 1: And build a prop company people love working for that
22:12
Speaker 1: creates something people love consuming or using. I just think
22:15
Speaker 1: it's I don't want to say it's so simple, but
22:18
Speaker 1: it kind of is all comes back to passion. Thanks
22:21
Speaker 1: for listening to hear more of my interviews. You can
22:24
Speaker 1: subscribe and download my podcast on Spotify, Apple, or wherever
22:28
Speaker 1: you listen