Brian Chesky says no one is born a good CEO and that founders who over-delegate to professional managers become managed rather than managing.
After the pandemic erased 80% of Airbnb's business in eight weeks, Chesky took full control and reviewed nearly every detail for two or three years.
Chesky predicts pure people managers will not survive AI, and that consumer AI is the next prize because no consumer business model for AI exists yet.
Chesky says AI will make founder mode even more intense
Brian Chesky argues that founders should stay inside the details of their companies, and that AI will make this founder mode even more intense. Small teams, few management layers and leaders who can do the work replace professional managers. Consumer AI is the open field.
Takeaways
Founders should stay hands-on, not delegate. No one is born a good CEO, Chesky says, and founders tend to over-delegate to professional managers, becoming managed rather than managing. By 2019, with about 7,000 employees, Airbnb felt out of his control. Control and power are not zero-sum.
The pandemic forced wartime, detail-level control. Airbnb lost 80% of its business in eight weeks. Chesky took full control and reviewed nearly every detail for two or three years, often at 100 hours a week, modeled on Steve Jobs's 1997 return to Apple. His first attempt caused revolts.
AI will flatten management and end pure managers. Chesky expects asynchronous management with far fewer layers, while most companies have seven to nine. Pure people managers will not survive. Every engineer needs to code, and managers need to code too.
Consumer AI is the next open prize. Y Combinator's last batch had 159 enterprise companies out of 175, and AI still has no consumer business model. Chesky thinks ChatGPT subscriptions may plateau because Claude and Gemini are free, and predicts a consumer AI renaissance within 12 to 24 months.
Small teams focused on one metric pay off. Project Hawaii, about 10 to 12 people focused on conversion rate, delivered roughly $200 or $300m in revenue in year one and $400 or $500m the next. The approach was then extended to pricing and to Services and Experiences.
Depth of love beats breadth of liking. Chesky returns to Peter Thiel's view that a monopoly of a tiny market beats a small share of a big one, and Paul Graham's advice that 100 people loving you beats a million who sort of like you.
Airbnb's next unit is the person, not home. Chesky wants to change the company's atomic unit from a home to a person, building an authenticated identity and preference library, and to industrialize offerings from three to 50. He predicts agents will replace apps.
Chesky's operating habits
Run the eleven-star exercise, imagining absurd experiences so that six or seven stars become achievable.
Spend two to three hours a day on pipeline recruiting.
Pilot each new business in one market, then 10, then industrialize it if it works.
Hold a roadmap review twice a year with the top 100 people in the room.
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