Brian Chesky is still in “founder mode.”
Mr. Chesky, chief executive of Airbnb, helped popularize the term in 2024, after feeling like the company he helped create almost 20 years ago was getting too bogged down by bureaucracy, which eventually created more work for him.
Founder mode, unlike “manager mode,” thrusts the chief executive deep into the daily details of a company. This approach, to supporters, helps turbocharge growth by recapturing the start-up spirit that can fade as a company matures.
To others, it is a license for micromanagement.
Since Mr. Chesky started Airbnb with his roommates, Joe Gebbia and Nathan Blecharczyk, the short-term rental company has grown to more than $12 billion in revenue and 8,200 employees. Last year, Airbnb users booked more than 500 million nights via the company, up 8 percent from the previous year.
Airbnb’s rise made it a paragon of the “disruption economy,” along with other upstarts like Uber, which was founded around the same time. Disruption can be messy, and along the way these fast-growing companies ran into trouble on issues like discrimination, vandalism and the effect that their services have on cities, be it traffic or housing shortages. Airbnb’s stock price has stalled as analysts look for signs that the company can keep growing in this environment.
In recent years, Mr. Chesky, who studied industrial design at art school, felt that people were incorrectly diagnosing the issue of what could propel the company forward.
“There was politics and bureaucracy and people kept saying it was a culture problem,” Mr. Chesky, 44, said in an interview at his San Francisco office. Instead, he saw it as a “design problem” and asked himself: “What if you were to redesign the company?”
That’s the mind set that Mr. Chesky has adopted while expanding Airbnb’s offerings. In addition to finding a place to sleep, users can book food tastings and salon appointments. This month, Airbnb added car rentals, luggage storage and grocery delivery.
Most surprisingly, perhaps, is that one can also now book hotels, the institutions that Airbnb initially sought to upend. Mr. Chesky insists that it’s a natural evolution. Independent hotels and boutiques are on the platform because customers want them, he said.
“I was ideological for 10, 12 years. I was like, ‘We’ll never go to hotels,’” he said. “At some point,” he added, “our customers changed my mind.” Then, the founder made it happen.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Tell me about your upbringing. You’re from upstate New York, right?
That’s right. Niskayuna, a suburb of Schenectady.
My parents are social workers and they lived a life of service, didn’t make a ton of money. I remember my mom one day said, “I chose a job for the love, didn’t get paid a lot of money. You should choose a job that pays a lot of money.”
I chose to be an artist.
She said, “You chose the only job that will pay you less than a social worker.”
My dad got me into ice hockey when I was 5 and it became a big part of my life. I learned about teamwork. I learned all the things that an artist doesn’t learn.
When did your path in art school turn more toward design?
There was a department head who said that industrial design is the design of a toothbrush to a spaceship and everything in between.
It was technical. It involved manufacturing and marketing. It involved user interface design, and it really prepared me to be a tech founder and C.E.O.
I have insatiable curiosity. I like learning things. That’s part of being a designer. You want to disassemble things. Just keep asking questions, then you’ll find answers.
I also studied leadership, partly because I just didn’t think I was that good of a leader at Airbnb. I felt like I was a good founder — it was intuitive. But the moment I became C.E.O., it was not intuitive. I was like, “Why am I not good at this?”
This is 2013, 2014, 2015. I went through a lot of pain and suffering and research and learning and stumbling to just figure out how to do this. That was a version of curiosity. Why are these companies really well run and Airbnb isn’t?
Is that what you led you to “founder mode”?
I ran the company as a negotiation between my intuition and the people I hired. I learned a very hard lesson. The right way is one way.
The C.E.O. ultimately has to pick that way, partly because the people who you listen to maybe won’t even be at the company, and you’re still pursuing their strategy. The right way is one way and the one way has to be your way.
Have you changed how you explain what you mean by founder mode?
No, definitely not. I think that the principles that I described were right.
I do think founder mode wasn’t well understood. I remember there was a tweet, “I’m going founder mode on this burrito.” I don’t know what that meant, but I don’t think that’s founder mode.
I think that founder mode and hustle culture are totally different.
How so?
As a leader, you’re in the details, you’re making sure your team’s in the details, you make sure everyone’s rowing in the same direction and you take ownership of everything. I think that can coexist with a great environment to work in.
I actually found that the more involved I got, the happier people got. Some people left, but most people stayed and they were happier because I was able to empower them when I was closer to them. There’s not this notion that either you have power or I have power. It’s not zero sum.
In an age of A.I., even C.E.O.s of the big Fortune 500 companies need to be in founder mode, meaning they need to get into the details. They need to rethink how they’re doing everything. They need to start using A.I. themselves.
What do you see as the most powerful use of A.I. at Airbnb?
It’s probably customer service. When people have an issue, 40 percent of people get their issue resolved in a chat through an A.I. agent. That’s pretty amazing, especially because Airbnb customer services are kind of difficult. There are a lot of things that can go wrong.
Many people use A.I. chatbots to help plan their travel. That’s more competition for you. How does Airbnb stand out?
For now, we think chatbots are probably going to be like Google, sending traffic to us. It’s probably more beneficial than competitive, at least in the next year.
Airbnb now lists hotels on its platform. That’s surprising, since Airbnb is seen as a competitor to hotels. Why add them? Is this Airbnb waving the white flag?
Customers want them on Airbnb. We’re not against hotels.
But we’re not going to have the big chains. We’re going to have cool, unique independent boutiques that really care about hospitality.
Approximately half the hotels in the world are independent boutiques. We looked at them, and we were like, “Wow, a lot of these feel like Airbnb hosts.”
Then there are some people who only stay in hotels. There are some who only stay at Airbnbs. And there are a bunch of people who stay in both.
They stay in Airbnb in Italy with their family and they book a hotel for a night in Boston for work. We were losing those travelers.
Was including hotels a response to frustrations that people have about Airbnb, like finding a lockbox or being scolded about not doing the dishes and taking the trash out?
The main response to that is to try to streamline the experience. For example, there’s a total price display that we’re introducing. You’re not going to see a bunch of tacked-on fees.
We are limiting and streamlining house rules. We are constraining checkout tasks to reasonable checkout tasks.
How much is too much for a host to ask of a guest?
It’s hard to say. We basically said, for example, you should put away trash in a bin — even though maybe at a hotel you don’t have to. But you shouldn’t have to take the trash bag out to the backyard.
No one should have to put the towels in the washer and start it. It’s reasonable to ask people to put dishes in the dishwasher but, with rare exceptions, they shouldn’t have to turn it on. I don’t know if I have a pithy statement except to say we generally like the golden rule: Treat the home as if it’s your own.
For hosts, it’s to remember to be as hospitable as possible. These people are on vacation and they’re on vacation from their chores.
We have almost six million hosts. You’re going to get extraordinarily outlandish requests. We’re trying to help and empower people to provide hospitality, but they’re competing with hotels that have people who went to hospitality school.
Airbnb has been expanding into experiences and classes and other features. Is it becoming an “everything app”?
If you can Airbnb more than Airbnb — well, then, what is an Airbnb? If it’s not just a house, is it travel? Is it more than travel?
We are piloting dozens of other businesses and categories. Some are services that make the trip easier. Some make a trip more magical, meaning memorable.
I think what we decide not to do is as important as what we decide to do. I think we become a community for traveling and living.
The World Cup is going to be a big moment for travel. But there are questions around rising prices and fears about traveling to the United States given the White House’s immigration policies. Could this potentially dampen demand?
Airbnb’s business has historically been a little more resilient than other travel platforms. When the economy is not doing as well, more people turn to hosting. A lot more people are putting up their homes and wanting to offer a place to stay for the World Cup. There are more people that want to go than there are hotels to house them.
We expect record demand for the World Cup, and we’re working our hardest to try to provide housing for as many people as possible.
We definitely think that this will be the biggest event in the history of Airbnb.
It’s time for the lightning round. What’s an item you never travel without?
I bring a sketchbook.
Where haven’t you been but want to go?
Buenos Aires.
What’s the last question you asked A.I.?
A question about Hulk Hogan.
What was the question?
I was watching the Hulk Hogan documentary — the first episode — and I asked why he rose to be the central figure in wrestling. What were the ingredients?
What’s your best advice for meetings?
Make sure that you have a clear decision maker and that you leave with a decision. The best meetings are as few as possible and short as possible.
How often do you check Airbnb’s stock price?
I don’t even think weekly. Not very often. Just after earnings. I’ll look because I think of it as a scorecard for my earnings, but otherwise I just don’t check things I can’t control.