July 2, 2020 • 32 mins
2020 was going to be a big year for Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky: With a valuation around $31 billion, Airbnb was going to go public on March 31. And then the pandemic hit. Within weeks, Airbnb was gutted and Brian was forced to lay off 25 percent of his staff. “It would have been so easy to just spiral,” Brian Chesky says. “But every moment is a moment for us to be doing something that’s defining, to make us better.” On this episode of Back to Biz with Katie and Boz, co-hosts Katie Couric and Bozoma Saint John talk to Brian about how he quickly pivoted his company and how travel will be forever changed. In the wake of the national anti-racism protests, Airbnb has also had to reckon with its record on discrimination. Brian Chesky shares his regrets on not doing more sooner on race and the steps the company is taking now to make the platform and the company more equitable.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hi for one. I'm Katie Couric and I'm Boma st.
John and this is Back to Biz with Katie and
Bose Bose. I'm really excited to have Brian Chesky on
our podcast today. I've known him for a long time.
He's been the boy wonder as the CEO of Airbnb.
Yes for sure. I mean even when I was in
(00:23):
Silcon Valley at Apple and then at Uber, I was
always impressed by what he was doing. But his backstory
is so interesting for people who don't know. Brian started
the company twelve years ago, yes, during a recession, with
two buddies. He had studied industrial design at Risty. He
moved to San Francisco, so he and his friends rented
(00:44):
out their apartment. When there was a convention in town,
but not enough hotel rooms, they blew up a few
air mattresses and voila, the idea was born. Air Go Airbnb,
get it. Listen. I'm a marketer, and that joint is fresh.
I like it, very fresh. But the last couple of
months have been crazy. Right, he was about to go
(01:06):
public and then bam, here comes a pandemic. I can't
imagine bows the stress he's been under in recent weeks.
So we started there. We asked Brian just how he's
managing right now? Yeah, let's get to it. Yeah, I'm
I think I'm I'm doing about as well as somebody
in my circumstance could be doing. Right. Um, it's been
(01:26):
a pretty uh intense and harrowing four months or so,
and I'm sure I'm sure most people listening will have
identified that experience. You know, when we started Airbnb a
dozen years ago, I told myself, now, I don't think
I'll ever do something as crazy as that, And I
think I've just we have experienced something that is probably
even crazier than starting this company. When you're the child
(01:48):
of two social workers and you're like unemployed and suddenly
twelve years later you have a company like Airbnb and
you're gonna go public, you just you have this real
sense of, um, wow, I've really done something last twelve years.
So then to lose of it in five weeks is like, um,
you know, that was definitely um. And if if I
(02:10):
thought my life was crazy the first twelve years, the
next five weeks got even crazier. Losing eight percent of
it or it and um, and then suddenly you know,
we found ourselves in this kind of total crisis where
it felt like, you know, I don't know, probably like
a lot of people, you feel like you're staring into
the abyss and you can't quite tell if it will
ever be better. And for me, so much of it
(02:33):
was your psychology. It would have been so easy to
just say the spiral. And you know, when you're responsible
for thousands of people and you know everyone's pretty scared
and a little freaked out, it's really really important that
the psychology organization maps, matches and mirrors the psychology the leader.
And so you have to find your way to stay
(02:53):
positive and you have to find a way to say,
for every single bad thing, this is an opportunity. I'm
not gonna exploit this, but every moment is a moment
for us to do something that's defining to make us better.
And that was the thing that we like went into
this crisis with. How did the pandemic fundamentally change your business?
As you said you were set to go public, Uh, instead,
(03:17):
you've taken a huge hip, you had to lay off
of your workforce in may Um. I know you've tried
to be very generous to your employees. You let them
keep their laptops, keep their health insurance for a year.
But um, you know, how did you figure out how
to move forward? And with all your hopes and dreams,
(03:37):
as you said, shattered in a period of five weeks?
Boom oh god, yeah, I mean and I felt so
terrible because it wasn't just our hopes and dreams. It
was all these employees who had stock and you know,
I you know, and many people are I'm sure they
were employed planning to do things like buy homes and
(03:59):
stuff with that money and really counting on it. And
investors have been really page with me. Probably the hardest
thing though, um with the host. We have four million
hosts and of them telling us that they depend on
me to pay their rent or the mortgage. And we
had guests who wanted to cancel their their future bookings
because they told us I can't travel. Well was more
(04:20):
than a billion dollars of cancelations and the problem was
that these were a host who are depending on the
money to pay their rent or mortgage entering an economic recession.
So what do you do when guests are telling you
I feel unsafe, I can't travel, I need a refund,
and host saying if you refund them their money, I'm
going to be in a really bad economic position. And
we ultimately did the following We decided to refund the
(04:43):
guests the money. We felt like we told the host like,
we have to do this because we can't. We have
to say we were not signing with the guests, were
signing with health and safety. We can't have people being
put in harm's way. And you know, um, this is
a global at the time was global shutdown to and
f billion people shutdowns. So we can't be part of
everyone traveling right now if they don't want to travel
and they want their money back. But then you know,
(05:05):
there was a huge uproar and host were like super
upset and they were very upset with us and me,
and we decided to take and this was at the
depth of our kind of our own despair. UM million
dollars of our own money. Now in good times it's
you know, you could you raise money, and bad times
though it wasn't crazy, we'd be able to raise any money.
(05:26):
So this was two million we thought we'd probably need
and we just gave it to our host. Um, we
didn't make them whole, but it was the most we
could do. And then something crazy to happen. Our employees
pulled together of their own money, a million dollars in
their own money UM to give to host And so
then we the founders, we we put some of our
own money in and we started doing all these things.
(05:47):
And that was probably the first kind of defining action
we did. And then after that we said to ourselves,
you know, we can't we're not as relevant right now
as we used to be because people aren't traveling, but
we can be useful in a crisis. And so we
noticed that these nurses and UM and fireworks, firefighters and
others UM and doctors, UM, we're going to sites and
(06:09):
they needed Airbnb. They need homes to stay in or
they didn't want to stay with their families and get
their families sick. So we worked with our host community
and two hundred thousand of our hosts offered homes for
workers on the front line for a discount, and we
kind of shared the discount. We had these products, this
product called Experiences where you can do these three our
activities with locals. I remember, I remember, Brian, when you
(06:32):
and I talked about how you were expanding that that
service to Airbnb. You know, and it was the next
second act of Airbnb, and then it got stopped because, um,
you know, social distancing. You can't be bringing travelers together
from countries. It's like the exact opposite what people want.
So our host said, well, we're um, can we offer
(06:54):
them online? And so in fourteen days our team build
a product to create online experiences, which ended of being
like the fastest growing product we ever created. So that
worked out really well. But like master classes, yeah yeah,
they're they're kind of but they're interactive, so um so
basically it's a one hour activity. So I'll give an example.
We have Olympic athletes, so we did a partnership we
(07:14):
did we're one of the sponsors the Olympics. The Olympics
aren't happening this year. We got I think thirty Olympian
athletes and by the way, the average Olympic athlete, a
lot of people don't know this, lives around the poverty
line because a lot of them, you know there that
you dedicate your life to your sport, and then a
lot of sports you don't get a sponsorship, so they
kind of have to start their careers over. And so
(07:35):
we said, well, you know, we we created a way
for them to be able to offer a one hour
kind of online class. Um. You know, it could be
a workout, it could be like learning about setting goals,
It can be a bunch of things. We have about
thirty of them now and hope they hope to get
a lot more. And then of course we had to
raise two billion dollars because we were burning cash very
(07:55):
very quickly. And then of course we had the layoff,
which was probably the heart decision I've ever made in
my life. And um, and it became an unavoidable truth
when we we realized, you know, travel stopped, and we
don't know what's gonna return, and when it does return,
we know it's going to be different. When you're in
a crisis, you learn a lot about yourself in a crisis.
(08:17):
You also get clarity in a crisis that you may
not have had in any other period in your life.
And in this crisis, I kind of got clarity and
like like we got clarity, like why are we even
doing this in the first place, Like what would the
world lose if we just disappeared tomorrow? And it became
really clear that the part of your manb that was special,
where the everyday host that we're offering, like connection and belonging,
(08:39):
and if we disappeared from this earth and they couldn't
offer what they're offering, that would be the thing that
would be bad. And she thought, you know, that's we
need to get back to. We need to get it
back to why we started this company. Back to belonging,
back to connection, back to empowering regular people, UM, back
to our roots. And so we decided we're gonna like
(08:59):
scale back or shut down things that aren't that. So
we paused our transportation effort, we had a content effort,
we paused that, we scaled back our hotels business. You
really just got really focused and we said, that's what
we're gonna do. And UM, you know, I think we're
gonna build off that base now. So we can't do it.
We're not as big as we were in some ways,
we can't do everything we used to. But things we're
(09:20):
gonna do, we're gonna be very very passionate about. And
I I think ultimately, I'm hoping years from now, we'll
look back on that as a really important decision when
we come back. Brian Chesky on how travel will forever
change you're listening to back to biz with Katie and Bows.
(09:47):
Let's return to our conversation with Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky.
By the way, I do have a confession for you
that when I was at uber Um, first of all,
I'm I'm a nerd of marketing, right I I obsess
over everyone's creative, everyone's strategy, everyone's vision, and I was
(10:10):
absolutely in love with the idea of belonging that I
thought it was just it just hit the mark so
beautifully because in that instance, you don't have to pick
a side. You know, it's not you're you know, the
folks who are booking versus the host. You know, it's
not it's not versus. It's just a belonging. Everybody wants
(10:33):
to belong and we all understand that from a very
deeply emotional human level. And it is still true, you know,
it's what we are dealing with right now with the
crises in the world around racial inequality and everything else.
Everybody wants to belong. It is the fundamental need, you know.
And now I think there's also an opportunity to serve
(10:54):
in sort of future hope about continuing to belong to
the world, because what this pan Ammick has done has
brought us home and we are you know, inside, and
we are concerned and we're anxious, but we also want
to connect back to people and back to outside, and
you know, we all have a deep longing for that.
So what do you think is the future of travel
(11:18):
and of that belonging to the world. Because let me
tell you something, I'm tired of my house. Can I
get some kind of membership, you know, for Airbnb where
I could just you know, frequently, just move around the
way I want to, because because I would like that
future for myself. That's actually a really good idea to
talk about. That, I mean, a really good idea we
should definitely talk about. Um, what is the future of
(11:40):
of travel? Well, um, I'm hoping and I think that
travel will get more focused on communities, more focused on people,
more intimate, authentic, small, off the beaten path, truly being
connected to communities where you go, not being an outsider,
being an insider. And I think that the last fifty
years of travel has been very defined by being an outsider.
(12:03):
The only other thing I'd say is I think that
we used to live in this world where you lived
in one place and you would take a weak vacation
somewhere else, or you travel for business, and I think
that is also changing. I think that living and traveling
will blur together because now you could instead, like you
could go somewhere for a few months. Is that living
(12:25):
or traveling or is that something in between? And so
I think you're gonna see this blurring. This the idea
that people will be mobile. They won't just have moble devices,
they themselves would be mobile. I think that you're gonna
see UM travel being longer length of stay, two smaller communities,
UM to you know, local, authentic, and UM more immersive,
(12:45):
more experiential. Maybe the one thing that makes that obvious
to me is you ever want to know what the
future will look like, just look at what young people want,
because they're going to define that future. And the younger
the person is, the more they want something that's authentic,
and the more they want to have an experience, not
own a thing. I remember reading that all these small
towns across America were dying because the older residents were
(13:08):
passing away, the younger people didn't stick want to stick around,
and they were all migreeting to cities because that was
where the exciting cultural things were happening. So I'm curious
what you what you see in the future for some
of these major metropolitan areas. Do you think that there
will be a return to more rural kind of pastoral
(13:31):
or bucolic and all those words lifestyles. Yeah, I think
the short answer is yes. But um, I thought that
the small communities, um, Pittsburgh's um, you know, like I'll
just Pittsburgh and Cleveland. I thought they were going to
see a resurgence, but I thought that would happen over
the course of ten years. So I thought, you know,
(13:52):
before COVID that maybe by thet that you would see
the rise of small communities. And the reason why was, um,
you know, for the first time in human history, more
people live in cities than out of cities. And the
cities they're they're they're congering to are not just metropolis
mega metropolisis. So these are like ten million plus cities
(14:13):
like New York or you know, SF is only a million,
but it feels really dense, the second densist city in
the country and then outside of the United States. And
I think there was this problem where there was a
little bit of an alienation of urban living. So UM
people lived in apartment buildings, but they didn't quite know
their neighbors. It was really expensive live in cities, and
if you live in if you live in San Francisco,
(14:34):
l A, New York, London, you'll, I mean, anyone living
these seas will know how expensive it is, and they're
really it was becoming like city life was becoming I think,
really really hard, and for each new generation going to city,
I think it was it was it was getting a
little bit difficult. And so we're in a way, I
think we were reaching what I call a temporary, not
a permanent, a temporary peak city moment um. I thought
(14:55):
that was going to take a lot longer, and I
think what COVID did is I think it accelerated that
in I think the big other unlock was Zoom, because
now people are realizing, actually you can get work done
without being in a space. Now. To be clear, I
do think there's a huge value people being together, and
I also want to be clear that I do not
think this is the death of the city at all.
I think it's a sign wave. So I think you're
(15:17):
gonna see over the next five years people doing what
I'm what we're calling travel redistribution. And population redistribution. Um,
I think you're gonna see people traveling to smaller communities.
And I think people are kind of We've got used
to this industrialized mass tourism world where you were in
lines and crowds, and I think people really want something
(15:37):
more intimate, more authentic. What I would say, though, is
the is the following. I think New York's best days
are ahead of it. I think Los angeles best days
are ahead of it. I think big cities best days
are ahead of them, not behind them. But I think
before they get better, they're gonna get a little tougher.
And I think what's going to happen is that you're
going to see, um, the business prediction. So the risk
(15:59):
of predictions is I'm wrong, um but um but I
do think you're gonna see a population slow down in
urban cities. A lot of creative people. I come from
a creative background, are going to choose. They were already
a lot of creative people were already not living in
New York. They were going to New Jersey, they were
going all through to other places. It was just too expensive.
They're going to redistribute, And then I think, what's gonna
(16:20):
happen is cities are gonna be cheaper. And as cities
like New York gets cheaper than a new generation of
people are going to go into cities. But they're gonna
come and they're gonna bring a whole fresh perspective to
new urban living. And I think they're gonna do something
awesome that like and I'll be like, you know, in
the next five or ten years, I can't predict, and
I think the city will be something different when we
(16:42):
come back. We asked Brian about Airbnb's race problem. That's
right after this. Hi. Everyone, if you're listening to Back
to Biz with Katie and Bows, let's pick back up
with Brian chest. One of the things I'm hearing you say, Brian,
(17:07):
is you think this pandemic is going to result in
a real reset for society for all of us, our priorities,
our relationships are, you know, our hopes and dreams, how
we want to live our lives um and And I'm wondering,
you know, I hope so, because I think the world
(17:27):
needed to be recalibrated. There was something that was off.
But I wonder after a vaccine is is uh you know,
comes about do you worry and wonder is it just
going to go back to the way it was or
do you think we will be forever changed. I think
it will be forever changed. I think the big question
(17:47):
is how long does this go on? And the longer
the shutdown happens, the more we can't go back, and
the more profound the shifts, because where people are gonna
invent and they're gonna adapt, they're going to create new
how bits. And I think the way to ask this
question is how many things were we doing in the
old way just because we were doing them or because
there were habits. Because now we're gonna have to make
(18:09):
a choice to go back to the old way. We're
not going to be doing that because we were just
doing it all along. And so I think we will
go back to a bunch of stuff because people will choose,
but they're not gonna choose everything. They're going to choose
to only go back to the things that were essential.
And then I think new things are going to emerge,
so we'll go back a little bit. It's like a pendulum.
We we're gonna but we're not. I don't think we
go back all the way. And my my point of
(18:32):
view on this would be um less will return than
than than is intuitive that that that this is a
new world. Um and I think we're only the beginning
of it, because what are we only four months into this?
So I mean, and it's probably gonna go on, Like
we may not be in lockdown the rest of the year,
but like you know, I think another four months of this,
(18:54):
you know, Like I know, our industry is going to
be changed forever, and I doubt we're the only one. Yeah. Well,
I I really enjoyed the conversation around change because we've
been waiting for it a long time, especially as it
relates to diversity, inclusion, discrimination, Like this is a time
of real change. And you know, as a as a
(19:15):
black woman who travels alone by her you know, a
lot for work and sometimes for personal Um, it's always
been on my mind, you know how discrimination or my
own safety, uh how I managed that in the world.
And I wish that more companies and more businesses would
pay attention, you know, to my particular plight. I know
(19:38):
Airbnb is certainly one in which you know, discrimination on
the platform and within you know the product has been
a challenge and so what what are you thinking around that? Yeah?
I think this has been like a wake up call
for a lot of a lot of us and white
(19:58):
people and like business leaders an other's like it's been
a it's just been a It's has just been like
a fundamental wake up call that I think that everyone needed.
And so I think that's another example and a good example.
We're not going back like whatever change happens this front,
it's it's it's happened, and it's not going backwards. UM.
I think specifically to Airbnb, UM, we have a unique
(20:19):
history in this area. You know, in two thousand sixteen,
there was a hashtag that was trending on Twitter and
the hashtag was airbing hashtag Airbnb wall black, and the
hashtag basically meant that black travelers, primarily United States, We're
chronicling their experiences trying to book an Airbnb and being
(20:40):
rejected by white hosts primarily. And it took me by surprise,
and you know, we were not fully conscious that some
our platform could be used for discrimination. So this became
an existential risk to our business and we um we
ended up actually bringing Eric Holder before Uber, so we
were the first ones to I think bring an Eric Holder,
and he did. He did a whole report and analysis.
(21:03):
We worked in the American Civil Liberties Union, this woman
Laura Murphy, and we basically created an anti discrimination task
force and we made a bunch of progress. We did
a couple of things, like one of the things we did,
which seems really basic, was we asked everyone to basically
like a test. It's kind of like checking a box,
like terms of service box, saying that you will not
(21:23):
discriminate on the base of like age, race, religion, um orientation, gender,
things like that. In one point three million people chose
not to do that. So we said, fine, see you later.
We were moving through the platform and so but we
we we had we had limitations because we were not
measuring the amount of discrimination or platform. And as you
(21:45):
know in Silken Valley, what you can't measure, you don't
often optimize, and we were only responding to anecdotes. Now,
it's really hard to measure discrimination. How do you do it?
You have to know people's races to do that. Well,
how do you find out someone's race without violating their privacy?
And so we ended up doing two years ago as
we started engaging with Color of Change there obviously you
(22:07):
know the I think they're the largest online civil rights
group UM, and we worked with them other civil rights
organizations and c P, and we worked at privacy groups
because you know, you've gotta be thinking of us avil
rights and privacy. And we designed a way where and
we just launched this like I think it was a
week ago, where we can collect this thing called perceived
(22:29):
race data because of course discrimination is about perceived race,
because no one asked somebody what their races. They just
perceive a race. But we had to do it in
a way that was UM consistent with privacy. So it
took us longer than I wouldn't want admit, and we
developed a bunch of principles. We said, you know, we're
gonna anyone who doesn't want to be in this research
can opt out. UM, we're gonna decouple your perceived race
(22:54):
from your account, and we're gonna be transparent about UM
what we're doing with this information and results. And so
now we have a way to like follow cohorts of
data on our platform and then measure the bias and
discrimination on our platform, and hopefully with that data we
can then design our platform to be more equitable and
(23:16):
UM and and create more belonging I'm hoping there's a
really big silver lining here, and we're going to open
source our learnings around discrimination and also even how we
work to anonymize this data. So this is just one
of the things we're doing. And I don't say this
to pat ourselves in the back, because frankly, we got
issues we gotta work on. But I think we'll be
(23:38):
remembered for what we do, and I think that every
tech company and probably every company, but every tech company
the world will remember what we did on this issue.
We can either choose to be a mirror to society,
or we can be a mirror to what we want
society to look like. Those are those are literally choices
we have and why wouldn't we make that second choice?
And why don't we at least try, And so that's
(23:59):
what we're doing. I'm also very proud of Alexis Sahanian,
who is a is a friend because some friends with
Serena williams Um But I am very impressed by his
decision to, you know, stepped down from Reddit's board so
that it could be flat filled by a black candidate.
(24:20):
And can I tell you about who that person is?
Do you know him? Yes? Yes, yes, Michael right, you
know his history with Airbnb. No no, please share. Had
it not been from Michael Cybel, I probably wouldn't be
here telling you this story. Michael Cybel um is um
joan A and I started Airbnb, and I remember telling
(24:42):
like people about Airbnb and they thought it was like
like the worst day they've ever heard of. And so
we were trying to raise a hundred fifty dollars at
a one point five million dollar evaluation. Nobody wanted that deal.
I mean, just like Weber, we got in true to Tony,
investors couldn't get raised money, and we ended up meeting
Michael Cybel. We met Michael Cybel in March two. Now
(25:04):
we launched in October down seven and he basically when
I was like we were nobody and we didn't know anybody,
he took us under his wing because our roommate, my
roommate Joe and I, my roommate had was this guy
named Phil. He worked for a company called Justin Do TV.
Michael Cybel was a CEO justin I TV, which is
the basically the predecessor to Twitch with Ama John Bought
(25:25):
and Michael basically met with us every Friday and I'm
not exaggera for like three to five hours, we'd go
for a happy hour, he'd take us to the site
and we'd be there till like late in the evening.
And he eventually helped us get into y Combinator. And
I think that he's probably, after the founders, the most
significant person um in the founding story of Airbnb. Um,
(25:46):
you know, and I think we used to call Michael
the god Founder because like the Godfather, we'd go every
week to him everything. Michael, we got problems, can you
help us? But I just wanted to give a shout
out to Michael because, um, you know, he's he he
embodied is the culture of Silk and Valley. You know,
he he didn't want something from us, and he said,
this is the culture, is a culture of trust and
(26:08):
you pay it forward. I think that's so. I mean,
that's a that's an amazing story, but it goes to
the Testament and probably points out even more so why
there needs to be more open spots, you know, for
people of color, black people to be on board, you know,
ordinarily wouldn't make it. So is there another Michael Cybel
(26:29):
or MICHAELA. Cybel somewhere who can step onto your board. Yeah, absolutely, Yeah.
I wanted to ask you about that, Brian, because you know,
there's a courts article granted from two thousand and sixteen
that says the dirty secret of Airbnb is that it's really,
really white. So I'm curious about how you if you've
(26:51):
managed to change that, and how you plan to continue
changing it in the future. Yeah. We're part of the
way there, but not not nearly where we need to be. UM.
We've just let's start with the board. So probably the
time that article was written, UM, it was it would
have been five people on the board. Three founders were
(27:12):
white guys, and then we had to venture capitalists. You know,
when you raise money, a VC takes a board c
typically in UM. And so since then we've appointed four
independent board members. UM. Three were women, UM, including my
former CEO. We have An Mathers. She was the CFO
of Pixar for Steve Jobs, audit chairf of Google and Netflix,
(27:35):
and then Angela Renz you probably know she UM ran
Apple Retail before that was CEO Burbery, and then we
added Keen Chanel, who was CEO of amex. UM. So UM,
not to make excuses, but we are we are trying,
but we definitely need to get more diverse, even on
the board, and so absolutely I I would definitely be
interested in us, UM continuing to add a couple more people. UM,
(27:59):
you know in time I don't know win, but absolutely
on the executive team. UM. You know, we UM, we
also need to make progress. We UM we we we
were we We have set diversity targets that we want
by the end of next year of our board and
executive team to be people of color. UM. I think
(28:21):
I think we can get there for sure. UM and
maybe we can we can beat that actually and UM,
and you know, I think that we've like the last
three hires I made to them or women, UM, my
head of operations, UM, Tara Bunch, she was running operations
for Apple, and I hired this woman named Katherine Powell,
who ran basically SEV the Disney parks. And I mean,
(28:44):
I would just say from my experience that I can
say this, UM, a more diverse company is not only
the responsible thing to do, it is actually a competitive advantage.
UM you know, And I really mean that, like, like
we we became so much high are performing when we
started becoming more diverse, and we're not there we're not
even close to where we need to be. You should
(29:06):
at least map to demographics and the country you operate.
So if you know, like you shouldn't and you could
be better, but you shouldn't be worse than that. So
we want to go a lot further. I was going
to say, given this reckoning that and the movement we're
witnessing and this realization and wake up call as you
referred to it, Brian too of systemic racism and what,
(29:29):
it's just no longer acceptable. I mean, you can't really
get away without with with not being diverse. I mean,
not only for all the reasons you just outlined, but
let's face it, it's just not it's not an acceptable
book anymore. No, it's and and that is as it
should be. UM it probably overdue and and um and
(29:50):
so that will be one of the one of the
good that come out of a crisis. Are you embarrassed
you haven't done more? Brian? UM, I wish I did more.
I wish I did more sooner um and UM and
I'm proud of what we have done. UM. I think
(30:12):
that UM. I think you know, coming like ours um
mission is built around belonging connection I think that's like
really really important and so um yeah, if I cut
it over again, I would have done more sooner. And
I think that's a good lesson here for everyone, that
every one of us could be doing more sooner. Bose.
(30:35):
I think Brian is absolutely right. I think there wasn't
an urgency to fix this problem before, but there's certainly
an urgency now, and hopefully this will be a real
moment in time where things will change for the better. Finally,
I really hope. So. I mean, we're demanding more of
ourselves right now, and that's really what matters. Again, we've
(30:59):
been talking to Brian Chesky, the CEO of Airbnb, and
that does it for this week's episode of Back to
Biz with Katie and Bows. If you're not already, you
can subscribe to the podcast on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
and you can learn more about all the cool people
(31:21):
were talking to, as well as our favorite moments from
these interviews on our Instagram feeds and stories. Until next time,
I'm Katie Currik and I'm Bozma st John and this
is Back to Biz with Katie and Bows. Thanks for listening.
Everybody Back to Biz with Katie and Bows is a
(31:42):
production of I Heart Radio and Katie Currik Media. The
executive producers are Katie currk Bozma St John, and Courtney Litz.
The supervising producer is Lauren Hansen. The associate producers are
Derek Clements, Eliza Costas, and Emily Pinto. Editing by Derrek
Clements and Lauren Hansen, Mixing by Derrek Clements. Special thanks
(32:02):
to Adriana Fasio. For more information about today's episode, go
to Katie Kirk dot com. You can also follow Katie
Kuric and Bosmas st John on Twitter and Instagram. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows,
Hi for one. I'm Katie Couric and I'm Boma st.
John and this is Back to Biz with Katie and
Bose Bose. I'm really excited to have Brian Chesky on
our podcast today. I've known him for a long time.
He's been the boy wonder as the CEO of Airbnb.
Yes for sure. I mean even when I was in
(00:23):
Silcon Valley at Apple and then at Uber, I was
always impressed by what he was doing. But his backstory
is so interesting for people who don't know. Brian started
the company twelve years ago, yes, during a recession, with
two buddies. He had studied industrial design at Risty. He
moved to San Francisco, so he and his friends rented
(00:44):
out their apartment. When there was a convention in town,
but not enough hotel rooms, they blew up a few
air mattresses and voila, the idea was born. Air Go Airbnb,
get it. Listen. I'm a marketer, and that joint is fresh.
I like it, very fresh. But the last couple of
months have been crazy. Right, he was about to go
(01:06):
public and then bam, here comes a pandemic. I can't
imagine bows the stress he's been under in recent weeks.
So we started there. We asked Brian just how he's
managing right now? Yeah, let's get to it. Yeah, I'm
I think I'm I'm doing about as well as somebody
in my circumstance could be doing. Right. Um, it's been
(01:26):
a pretty uh intense and harrowing four months or so,
and I'm sure I'm sure most people listening will have
identified that experience. You know, when we started Airbnb a
dozen years ago, I told myself, now, I don't think
I'll ever do something as crazy as that, And I
think I've just we have experienced something that is probably
even crazier than starting this company. When you're the child
(01:48):
of two social workers and you're like unemployed and suddenly
twelve years later you have a company like Airbnb and
you're gonna go public, you just you have this real
sense of, um, wow, I've really done something last twelve years.
So then to lose of it in five weeks is like, um,
you know, that was definitely um. And if if I
(02:10):
thought my life was crazy the first twelve years, the
next five weeks got even crazier. Losing eight percent of
it or it and um, and then suddenly you know,
we found ourselves in this kind of total crisis where
it felt like, you know, I don't know, probably like
a lot of people, you feel like you're staring into
the abyss and you can't quite tell if it will
ever be better. And for me, so much of it
(02:33):
was your psychology. It would have been so easy to
just say the spiral. And you know, when you're responsible
for thousands of people and you know everyone's pretty scared
and a little freaked out, it's really really important that
the psychology organization maps, matches and mirrors the psychology the leader.
And so you have to find your way to stay
(02:53):
positive and you have to find a way to say,
for every single bad thing, this is an opportunity. I'm
not gonna exploit this, but every moment is a moment
for us to do something that's defining to make us better.
And that was the thing that we like went into
this crisis with. How did the pandemic fundamentally change your business?
As you said you were set to go public, Uh, instead,
(03:17):
you've taken a huge hip, you had to lay off
of your workforce in may Um. I know you've tried
to be very generous to your employees. You let them
keep their laptops, keep their health insurance for a year.
But um, you know, how did you figure out how
to move forward? And with all your hopes and dreams,
(03:37):
as you said, shattered in a period of five weeks?
Boom oh god, yeah, I mean and I felt so
terrible because it wasn't just our hopes and dreams. It
was all these employees who had stock and you know,
I you know, and many people are I'm sure they
were employed planning to do things like buy homes and
(03:59):
stuff with that money and really counting on it. And
investors have been really page with me. Probably the hardest
thing though, um with the host. We have four million
hosts and of them telling us that they depend on
me to pay their rent or the mortgage. And we
had guests who wanted to cancel their their future bookings
because they told us I can't travel. Well was more
(04:20):
than a billion dollars of cancelations and the problem was
that these were a host who are depending on the
money to pay their rent or mortgage entering an economic recession.
So what do you do when guests are telling you
I feel unsafe, I can't travel, I need a refund,
and host saying if you refund them their money, I'm
going to be in a really bad economic position. And
we ultimately did the following We decided to refund the
(04:43):
guests the money. We felt like we told the host like,
we have to do this because we can't. We have
to say we were not signing with the guests, were
signing with health and safety. We can't have people being
put in harm's way. And you know, um, this is
a global at the time was global shutdown to and
f billion people shutdowns. So we can't be part of
everyone traveling right now if they don't want to travel
and they want their money back. But then you know,
(05:05):
there was a huge uproar and host were like super
upset and they were very upset with us and me,
and we decided to take and this was at the
depth of our kind of our own despair. UM million
dollars of our own money. Now in good times it's
you know, you could you raise money, and bad times
though it wasn't crazy, we'd be able to raise any money.
(05:26):
So this was two million we thought we'd probably need
and we just gave it to our host. Um, we
didn't make them whole, but it was the most we
could do. And then something crazy to happen. Our employees
pulled together of their own money, a million dollars in
their own money UM to give to host And so
then we the founders, we we put some of our
own money in and we started doing all these things.
(05:47):
And that was probably the first kind of defining action
we did. And then after that we said to ourselves,
you know, we can't we're not as relevant right now
as we used to be because people aren't traveling, but
we can be useful in a crisis. And so we
noticed that these nurses and UM and fireworks, firefighters and
others UM and doctors, UM, we're going to sites and
(06:09):
they needed Airbnb. They need homes to stay in or
they didn't want to stay with their families and get
their families sick. So we worked with our host community
and two hundred thousand of our hosts offered homes for
workers on the front line for a discount, and we
kind of shared the discount. We had these products, this
product called Experiences where you can do these three our
activities with locals. I remember, I remember, Brian, when you
(06:32):
and I talked about how you were expanding that that
service to Airbnb. You know, and it was the next
second act of Airbnb, and then it got stopped because, um,
you know, social distancing. You can't be bringing travelers together
from countries. It's like the exact opposite what people want.
So our host said, well, we're um, can we offer
(06:54):
them online? And so in fourteen days our team build
a product to create online experiences, which ended of being
like the fastest growing product we ever created. So that
worked out really well. But like master classes, yeah yeah,
they're they're kind of but they're interactive, so um so
basically it's a one hour activity. So I'll give an example.
We have Olympic athletes, so we did a partnership we
(07:14):
did we're one of the sponsors the Olympics. The Olympics
aren't happening this year. We got I think thirty Olympian
athletes and by the way, the average Olympic athlete, a
lot of people don't know this, lives around the poverty
line because a lot of them, you know there that
you dedicate your life to your sport, and then a
lot of sports you don't get a sponsorship, so they
kind of have to start their careers over. And so
(07:35):
we said, well, you know, we we created a way
for them to be able to offer a one hour
kind of online class. Um. You know, it could be
a workout, it could be like learning about setting goals,
It can be a bunch of things. We have about
thirty of them now and hope they hope to get
a lot more. And then of course we had to
raise two billion dollars because we were burning cash very
(07:55):
very quickly. And then of course we had the layoff,
which was probably the heart decision I've ever made in
my life. And um, and it became an unavoidable truth
when we we realized, you know, travel stopped, and we
don't know what's gonna return, and when it does return,
we know it's going to be different. When you're in
a crisis, you learn a lot about yourself in a crisis.
(08:17):
You also get clarity in a crisis that you may
not have had in any other period in your life.
And in this crisis, I kind of got clarity and
like like we got clarity, like why are we even
doing this in the first place, Like what would the
world lose if we just disappeared tomorrow? And it became
really clear that the part of your manb that was special,
where the everyday host that we're offering, like connection and belonging,
(08:39):
and if we disappeared from this earth and they couldn't
offer what they're offering, that would be the thing that
would be bad. And she thought, you know, that's we
need to get back to. We need to get it
back to why we started this company. Back to belonging,
back to connection, back to empowering regular people, UM, back
to our roots. And so we decided we're gonna like
(08:59):
scale back or shut down things that aren't that. So
we paused our transportation effort, we had a content effort,
we paused that, we scaled back our hotels business. You
really just got really focused and we said, that's what
we're gonna do. And UM, you know, I think we're
gonna build off that base now. So we can't do it.
We're not as big as we were in some ways,
we can't do everything we used to. But things we're
(09:20):
gonna do, we're gonna be very very passionate about. And
I I think ultimately, I'm hoping years from now, we'll
look back on that as a really important decision when
we come back. Brian Chesky on how travel will forever
change you're listening to back to biz with Katie and Bows.
(09:47):
Let's return to our conversation with Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky.
By the way, I do have a confession for you
that when I was at uber Um, first of all,
I'm I'm a nerd of marketing, right I I obsess
over everyone's creative, everyone's strategy, everyone's vision, and I was
(10:10):
absolutely in love with the idea of belonging that I
thought it was just it just hit the mark so
beautifully because in that instance, you don't have to pick
a side. You know, it's not you're you know, the
folks who are booking versus the host. You know, it's
not it's not versus. It's just a belonging. Everybody wants
(10:33):
to belong and we all understand that from a very
deeply emotional human level. And it is still true, you know,
it's what we are dealing with right now with the
crises in the world around racial inequality and everything else.
Everybody wants to belong. It is the fundamental need, you know.
And now I think there's also an opportunity to serve
(10:54):
in sort of future hope about continuing to belong to
the world, because what this pan Ammick has done has
brought us home and we are you know, inside, and
we are concerned and we're anxious, but we also want
to connect back to people and back to outside, and
you know, we all have a deep longing for that.
So what do you think is the future of travel
(11:18):
and of that belonging to the world. Because let me
tell you something, I'm tired of my house. Can I
get some kind of membership, you know, for Airbnb where
I could just you know, frequently, just move around the
way I want to, because because I would like that
future for myself. That's actually a really good idea to
talk about. That, I mean, a really good idea we
should definitely talk about. Um, what is the future of
(11:40):
of travel? Well, um, I'm hoping and I think that
travel will get more focused on communities, more focused on people,
more intimate, authentic, small, off the beaten path, truly being
connected to communities where you go, not being an outsider,
being an insider. And I think that the last fifty
years of travel has been very defined by being an outsider.
(12:03):
The only other thing I'd say is I think that
we used to live in this world where you lived
in one place and you would take a weak vacation
somewhere else, or you travel for business, and I think
that is also changing. I think that living and traveling
will blur together because now you could instead, like you
could go somewhere for a few months. Is that living
(12:25):
or traveling or is that something in between? And so
I think you're gonna see this blurring. This the idea
that people will be mobile. They won't just have moble devices,
they themselves would be mobile. I think that you're gonna
see UM travel being longer length of stay, two smaller communities,
UM to you know, local, authentic, and UM more immersive,
(12:45):
more experiential. Maybe the one thing that makes that obvious
to me is you ever want to know what the
future will look like, just look at what young people want,
because they're going to define that future. And the younger
the person is, the more they want something that's authentic,
and the more they want to have an experience, not
own a thing. I remember reading that all these small
towns across America were dying because the older residents were
(13:08):
passing away, the younger people didn't stick want to stick around,
and they were all migreeting to cities because that was
where the exciting cultural things were happening. So I'm curious
what you what you see in the future for some
of these major metropolitan areas. Do you think that there
will be a return to more rural kind of pastoral
(13:31):
or bucolic and all those words lifestyles. Yeah, I think
the short answer is yes. But um, I thought that
the small communities, um, Pittsburgh's um, you know, like I'll
just Pittsburgh and Cleveland. I thought they were going to
see a resurgence, but I thought that would happen over
the course of ten years. So I thought, you know,
(13:52):
before COVID that maybe by thet that you would see
the rise of small communities. And the reason why was, um,
you know, for the first time in human history, more
people live in cities than out of cities. And the
cities they're they're they're congering to are not just metropolis
mega metropolisis. So these are like ten million plus cities
(14:13):
like New York or you know, SF is only a million,
but it feels really dense, the second densist city in
the country and then outside of the United States. And
I think there was this problem where there was a
little bit of an alienation of urban living. So UM
people lived in apartment buildings, but they didn't quite know
their neighbors. It was really expensive live in cities, and
if you live in if you live in San Francisco,
(14:34):
l A, New York, London, you'll, I mean, anyone living
these seas will know how expensive it is, and they're
really it was becoming like city life was becoming I think,
really really hard, and for each new generation going to city,
I think it was it was it was getting a
little bit difficult. And so we're in a way, I
think we were reaching what I call a temporary, not
a permanent, a temporary peak city moment um. I thought
(14:55):
that was going to take a lot longer, and I
think what COVID did is I think it accelerated that
in I think the big other unlock was Zoom, because
now people are realizing, actually you can get work done
without being in a space. Now. To be clear, I
do think there's a huge value people being together, and
I also want to be clear that I do not
think this is the death of the city at all.
I think it's a sign wave. So I think you're
(15:17):
gonna see over the next five years people doing what
I'm what we're calling travel redistribution. And population redistribution. Um,
I think you're gonna see people traveling to smaller communities.
And I think people are kind of We've got used
to this industrialized mass tourism world where you were in
lines and crowds, and I think people really want something
(15:37):
more intimate, more authentic. What I would say, though, is
the is the following. I think New York's best days
are ahead of it. I think Los angeles best days
are ahead of it. I think big cities best days
are ahead of them, not behind them. But I think
before they get better, they're gonna get a little tougher.
And I think what's going to happen is that you're
going to see, um, the business prediction. So the risk
(15:59):
of predictions is I'm wrong, um but um but I
do think you're gonna see a population slow down in
urban cities. A lot of creative people. I come from
a creative background, are going to choose. They were already
a lot of creative people were already not living in
New York. They were going to New Jersey, they were
going all through to other places. It was just too expensive.
They're going to redistribute, And then I think, what's gonna
(16:20):
happen is cities are gonna be cheaper. And as cities
like New York gets cheaper than a new generation of
people are going to go into cities. But they're gonna
come and they're gonna bring a whole fresh perspective to
new urban living. And I think they're gonna do something
awesome that like and I'll be like, you know, in
the next five or ten years, I can't predict, and
I think the city will be something different when we
(16:42):
come back. We asked Brian about Airbnb's race problem. That's
right after this. Hi. Everyone, if you're listening to Back
to Biz with Katie and Bows, let's pick back up
with Brian chest. One of the things I'm hearing you say, Brian,
(17:07):
is you think this pandemic is going to result in
a real reset for society for all of us, our priorities,
our relationships are, you know, our hopes and dreams, how
we want to live our lives um and And I'm wondering,
you know, I hope so, because I think the world
(17:27):
needed to be recalibrated. There was something that was off.
But I wonder after a vaccine is is uh you know,
comes about do you worry and wonder is it just
going to go back to the way it was or
do you think we will be forever changed. I think
it will be forever changed. I think the big question
(17:47):
is how long does this go on? And the longer
the shutdown happens, the more we can't go back, and
the more profound the shifts, because where people are gonna
invent and they're gonna adapt, they're going to create new
how bits. And I think the way to ask this
question is how many things were we doing in the
old way just because we were doing them or because
there were habits. Because now we're gonna have to make
(18:09):
a choice to go back to the old way. We're
not going to be doing that because we were just
doing it all along. And so I think we will
go back to a bunch of stuff because people will choose,
but they're not gonna choose everything. They're going to choose
to only go back to the things that were essential.
And then I think new things are going to emerge,
so we'll go back a little bit. It's like a pendulum.
We we're gonna but we're not. I don't think we
go back all the way. And my my point of
(18:32):
view on this would be um less will return than
than than is intuitive that that that this is a
new world. Um and I think we're only the beginning
of it, because what are we only four months into this?
So I mean, and it's probably gonna go on, Like
we may not be in lockdown the rest of the year,
but like you know, I think another four months of this,
(18:54):
you know, Like I know, our industry is going to
be changed forever, and I doubt we're the only one. Yeah. Well,
I I really enjoyed the conversation around change because we've
been waiting for it a long time, especially as it
relates to diversity, inclusion, discrimination, Like this is a time
of real change. And you know, as a as a
(19:15):
black woman who travels alone by her you know, a
lot for work and sometimes for personal Um, it's always
been on my mind, you know how discrimination or my
own safety, uh how I managed that in the world.
And I wish that more companies and more businesses would
pay attention, you know, to my particular plight. I know
(19:38):
Airbnb is certainly one in which you know, discrimination on
the platform and within you know the product has been
a challenge and so what what are you thinking around that? Yeah?
I think this has been like a wake up call
for a lot of a lot of us and white
(19:58):
people and like business leaders an other's like it's been
a it's just been a It's has just been like
a fundamental wake up call that I think that everyone needed.
And so I think that's another example and a good example.
We're not going back like whatever change happens this front,
it's it's it's happened, and it's not going backwards. UM.
I think specifically to Airbnb, UM, we have a unique
(20:19):
history in this area. You know, in two thousand sixteen,
there was a hashtag that was trending on Twitter and
the hashtag was airbing hashtag Airbnb wall black, and the
hashtag basically meant that black travelers, primarily United States, We're
chronicling their experiences trying to book an Airbnb and being
(20:40):
rejected by white hosts primarily. And it took me by surprise,
and you know, we were not fully conscious that some
our platform could be used for discrimination. So this became
an existential risk to our business and we um we
ended up actually bringing Eric Holder before Uber, so we
were the first ones to I think bring an Eric Holder,
and he did. He did a whole report and analysis.
(21:03):
We worked in the American Civil Liberties Union, this woman
Laura Murphy, and we basically created an anti discrimination task
force and we made a bunch of progress. We did
a couple of things, like one of the things we did,
which seems really basic, was we asked everyone to basically
like a test. It's kind of like checking a box,
like terms of service box, saying that you will not
(21:23):
discriminate on the base of like age, race, religion, um orientation, gender,
things like that. In one point three million people chose
not to do that. So we said, fine, see you later.
We were moving through the platform and so but we
we we had we had limitations because we were not
measuring the amount of discrimination or platform. And as you
(21:45):
know in Silken Valley, what you can't measure, you don't
often optimize, and we were only responding to anecdotes. Now,
it's really hard to measure discrimination. How do you do it?
You have to know people's races to do that. Well,
how do you find out someone's race without violating their privacy?
And so we ended up doing two years ago as
we started engaging with Color of Change there obviously you
(22:07):
know the I think they're the largest online civil rights
group UM, and we worked with them other civil rights
organizations and c P, and we worked at privacy groups
because you know, you've gotta be thinking of us avil
rights and privacy. And we designed a way where and
we just launched this like I think it was a
week ago, where we can collect this thing called perceived
(22:29):
race data because of course discrimination is about perceived race,
because no one asked somebody what their races. They just
perceive a race. But we had to do it in
a way that was UM consistent with privacy. So it
took us longer than I wouldn't want admit, and we
developed a bunch of principles. We said, you know, we're
gonna anyone who doesn't want to be in this research
can opt out. UM, we're gonna decouple your perceived race
(22:54):
from your account, and we're gonna be transparent about UM
what we're doing with this information and results. And so
now we have a way to like follow cohorts of
data on our platform and then measure the bias and
discrimination on our platform, and hopefully with that data we
can then design our platform to be more equitable and
(23:16):
UM and and create more belonging I'm hoping there's a
really big silver lining here, and we're going to open
source our learnings around discrimination and also even how we
work to anonymize this data. So this is just one
of the things we're doing. And I don't say this
to pat ourselves in the back, because frankly, we got
issues we gotta work on. But I think we'll be
(23:38):
remembered for what we do, and I think that every
tech company and probably every company, but every tech company
the world will remember what we did on this issue.
We can either choose to be a mirror to society,
or we can be a mirror to what we want
society to look like. Those are those are literally choices
we have and why wouldn't we make that second choice?
And why don't we at least try, And so that's
(23:59):
what we're doing. I'm also very proud of Alexis Sahanian,
who is a is a friend because some friends with
Serena williams Um But I am very impressed by his
decision to, you know, stepped down from Reddit's board so
that it could be flat filled by a black candidate.
(24:20):
And can I tell you about who that person is?
Do you know him? Yes? Yes, yes, Michael right, you
know his history with Airbnb. No no, please share. Had
it not been from Michael Cybel, I probably wouldn't be
here telling you this story. Michael Cybel um is um
joan A and I started Airbnb, and I remember telling
(24:42):
like people about Airbnb and they thought it was like
like the worst day they've ever heard of. And so
we were trying to raise a hundred fifty dollars at
a one point five million dollar evaluation. Nobody wanted that deal.
I mean, just like Weber, we got in true to Tony,
investors couldn't get raised money, and we ended up meeting
Michael Cybel. We met Michael Cybel in March two. Now
(25:04):
we launched in October down seven and he basically when
I was like we were nobody and we didn't know anybody,
he took us under his wing because our roommate, my
roommate Joe and I, my roommate had was this guy
named Phil. He worked for a company called Justin Do TV.
Michael Cybel was a CEO justin I TV, which is
the basically the predecessor to Twitch with Ama John Bought
(25:25):
and Michael basically met with us every Friday and I'm
not exaggera for like three to five hours, we'd go
for a happy hour, he'd take us to the site
and we'd be there till like late in the evening.
And he eventually helped us get into y Combinator. And
I think that he's probably, after the founders, the most
significant person um in the founding story of Airbnb. Um,
(25:46):
you know, and I think we used to call Michael
the god Founder because like the Godfather, we'd go every
week to him everything. Michael, we got problems, can you
help us? But I just wanted to give a shout
out to Michael because, um, you know, he's he he
embodied is the culture of Silk and Valley. You know,
he he didn't want something from us, and he said,
this is the culture, is a culture of trust and
(26:08):
you pay it forward. I think that's so. I mean,
that's a that's an amazing story, but it goes to
the Testament and probably points out even more so why
there needs to be more open spots, you know, for
people of color, black people to be on board, you know,
ordinarily wouldn't make it. So is there another Michael Cybel
(26:29):
or MICHAELA. Cybel somewhere who can step onto your board. Yeah, absolutely, Yeah.
I wanted to ask you about that, Brian, because you know,
there's a courts article granted from two thousand and sixteen
that says the dirty secret of Airbnb is that it's really,
really white. So I'm curious about how you if you've
(26:51):
managed to change that, and how you plan to continue
changing it in the future. Yeah. We're part of the
way there, but not not nearly where we need to be. UM.
We've just let's start with the board. So probably the
time that article was written, UM, it was it would
have been five people on the board. Three founders were
(27:12):
white guys, and then we had to venture capitalists. You know,
when you raise money, a VC takes a board c
typically in UM. And so since then we've appointed four
independent board members. UM. Three were women, UM, including my
former CEO. We have An Mathers. She was the CFO
of Pixar for Steve Jobs, audit chairf of Google and Netflix,
(27:35):
and then Angela Renz you probably know she UM ran
Apple Retail before that was CEO Burbery, and then we
added Keen Chanel, who was CEO of amex. UM. So UM,
not to make excuses, but we are we are trying,
but we definitely need to get more diverse, even on
the board, and so absolutely I I would definitely be
interested in us, UM continuing to add a couple more people. UM,
(27:59):
you know in time I don't know win, but absolutely
on the executive team. UM. You know, we UM, we
also need to make progress. We UM we we we
were we We have set diversity targets that we want
by the end of next year of our board and
executive team to be people of color. UM. I think
(28:21):
I think we can get there for sure. UM and
maybe we can we can beat that actually and UM,
and you know, I think that we've like the last
three hires I made to them or women, UM, my
head of operations, UM, Tara Bunch, she was running operations
for Apple, and I hired this woman named Katherine Powell,
who ran basically SEV the Disney parks. And I mean,
(28:44):
I would just say from my experience that I can
say this, UM, a more diverse company is not only
the responsible thing to do, it is actually a competitive advantage.
UM you know, And I really mean that, like, like
we we became so much high are performing when we
started becoming more diverse, and we're not there we're not
even close to where we need to be. You should
(29:06):
at least map to demographics and the country you operate.
So if you know, like you shouldn't and you could
be better, but you shouldn't be worse than that. So
we want to go a lot further. I was going
to say, given this reckoning that and the movement we're
witnessing and this realization and wake up call as you
referred to it, Brian too of systemic racism and what,
(29:29):
it's just no longer acceptable. I mean, you can't really
get away without with with not being diverse. I mean,
not only for all the reasons you just outlined, but
let's face it, it's just not it's not an acceptable
book anymore. No, it's and and that is as it
should be. UM it probably overdue and and um and
(29:50):
so that will be one of the one of the
good that come out of a crisis. Are you embarrassed
you haven't done more? Brian? UM, I wish I did more.
I wish I did more sooner um and UM and
I'm proud of what we have done. UM. I think
(30:12):
that UM. I think you know, coming like ours um
mission is built around belonging connection I think that's like
really really important and so um yeah, if I cut
it over again, I would have done more sooner. And
I think that's a good lesson here for everyone, that
every one of us could be doing more sooner. Bose.
(30:35):
I think Brian is absolutely right. I think there wasn't
an urgency to fix this problem before, but there's certainly
an urgency now, and hopefully this will be a real
moment in time where things will change for the better. Finally,
I really hope. So. I mean, we're demanding more of
ourselves right now, and that's really what matters. Again, we've
(30:59):
been talking to Brian Chesky, the CEO of Airbnb, and
that does it for this week's episode of Back to
Biz with Katie and Bows. If you're not already, you
can subscribe to the podcast on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
and you can learn more about all the cool people
(31:21):
were talking to, as well as our favorite moments from
these interviews on our Instagram feeds and stories. Until next time,
I'm Katie Currik and I'm Bozma st John and this
is Back to Biz with Katie and Bows. Thanks for listening.
Everybody Back to Biz with Katie and Bows is a
(31:42):
production of I Heart Radio and Katie Currik Media. The
executive producers are Katie currk Bozma St John, and Courtney Litz.
The supervising producer is Lauren Hansen. The associate producers are
Derek Clements, Eliza Costas, and Emily Pinto. Editing by Derrek
Clements and Lauren Hansen, Mixing by Derrek Clements. Special thanks
(32:02):
to Adriana Fasio. For more information about today's episode, go
to Katie Kirk dot com. You can also follow Katie
Kuric and Bosmas st John on Twitter and Instagram. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your
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