Brian Chesky on priorities, easy money and discipline

In life, one of the things I learned from the pandemic is you can do anything you want in your life; you just can't do it all at the same time.  You have to have ruthless prioritization.  And one of the pitfalls of tech the last 10 years - especially the last 5 years - is probably a plethora of capital.  Too much money.  And too much money means too many things at the same time.  And so we had to get really disciplined.  We said, "what we need to get focused on is great customer service and getting enough hosts."  And those became our priorities.

~ Brian Chesky, Airbnb CEO, interview, Bloomberg TV, November 18, 2022

Brian Chesky on cryptocurrencies post FTX collapse

Now as far as crypto, I think that generally the analogy I'd make is like we're all in a nightclub and the lights just came on.  So suddenly I feel that we have to take a really cold hard look, have a reality check.  The technology's really interesting.  I think we have to be very careful, though, about this frenetic get-in-on-any-technology trend before it's over.  I think we ought to be very very careful about that because that's when discipline goes down.  I think people will regret decisions they make when they have this mentality that "someone else is making money, I'm not."  You really gotta always focus on fundamentals.  You always have to focus on building things for other people of value.  And if the more you learn about somthing, the less you understand it, you just gotta slow down and make sure you really know what you're doing.

~ Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, interview, Bloomberg TV, November 18, 2022

Brian Chesky on the future of the office

I think that the office as we know it, is over.  We can't try to hold on to 2019 any more than 1950.  We have to move forward.

~ Brian Chesky, "Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, who recently announced that employees could work from home forever, calls the office an 'anachronistic form' and 'from a pre-digital age'," Yahoo Finance, May 8, 2022

Brian Chesky on entrepreneurial ideas

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, co-founder of Airbnb