Brian Chesky
American businessman, industrial designer, the co-founder and CEO of Airbnb
If we tried to think of a good idea, we wouldn’t have been able to think of a good idea. You just have to find the solution for a problem in your own life.
- Brian Chesky
Culture is so incredibly important because it is the foundation for all future innovation. People with passion can change the world.
- Brian Chesky
If you want to create a great product, just focus on one person. Make that one person have the most amazing experience ever.
- Brian Chesky
Our "overnight" success took 1,000 days.
- Brian Chesky
The stuff that matters in life is no longer stuff. It's other people. It's relationships. It's experience.
- Brian Chesky
A company's culture is the foundation for future innovation. An entrepreneurs job is to build the foundation.
- Brian Chesky
It's better to have 100 people love you than to have 1,000,000 people like you.
- Brian Chesky
We start with the perfect experience and then work backward. That's how we're going to continue to be successful.
- Brian Chesky
Everyone's got a moment or two in their life where something happens and you make a decision and then your entire life changes.
- Brian Chesky
Brand is really the connection between you and your customersif you have a very strong culture, then the brand will come through.
- Brian Chesky
Build something 100 people love, not something 1 million people kind of like.
- Brian Chesky
People went to Dell for the computers, but they go to Apple for everything… That’s the difference between a transactional company and a transformational one.
- Brian Chesky
Do things that won't scale; it will teach you.
- Brian Chesky
Somebody asked me 'what's the job of a CEO', and there's a number of things a CEO does. What you mostly do is articulate the vision, develop the strategy, and you gotta hire people to fit the culture. If you do those three things, you basically have a company. And that company will hopefully be successful, if you have the right vision, the right strategy, and good people.
- Brian Chesky
Culture is simply a shared way of doing something with passion.
- Brian Chesky
Designers + artists see potential in things where others do not. I think artists in many ways are the original entrepreneurs.
- Brian Chesky
Customers are willing to try new things, and if you can survive, you will have fewer competitors. It's like entering the eye of the storm. As long as you are strong enough to survive, you can end up in still water by yourself.
- Brian Chesky
I had to learn to get comfortable in a role of ambiguity where I had to seek out advisers and learn quickly.
- Brian Chesky
The American dream, what we were taught was, grow up, own a car, own a house. I think that dream's completely changing. We were taught to keep up with the Joneses. Now we're sharing with the Joneses.
- Brian Chesky
The second thing I had to do was not to be reluctant as a leader...And when I started doing that, I realized that people are thriving from this, and that it's so much more helpful for people.
- Brian Chesky
Having a clear mission and making sure you know that mission and making sure that mission comes through the company is probably the most important thing you can do for both culture and values.
- Brian Chesky
Every day I would wake up and think, 'Today is another missed opportunity to do something important.' After enough days like this, you start feeling like you are getting old, even when you are relatively young. We are all natural entrepreneurs, and being manacled to a desk job is not for us.
- Brian Chesky
It's living the core values when you hire; when you write an email; when you are working on a project; when you are walking in the hall.
- Brian Chesky
The stronger the culture, the less corporate process a company needs. When the culture is strong, you can trust everyone to do the right thing. People can be independent and autonomous. They can be entrepreneurial.
- Brian Chesky
I'm not saying the whole world will work this way, but with Airbnb, people are sleeping in other people's homes and other people's beds. So there's a level of trust necessary to participate that's different from an eBay or Facebook.
- Brian Chesky
When you start a company, it's more an art than a science because it's totally unknown. Instead of solving high-profile problems, try to solve something that's deeply personal to you. Ideally, if you're an ordinary person and you've just solved your problem, you might have solved the problem for millions of people.
- Brian Chesky