set the stage with a few slides and some
comments but the main stage is going to
be with Brian when he comes up and talks
about uh how he built the Airbnb culture
so uh you're here you I've been
following the presentations and so now
you know how to get started you've built
a team you started to sort of build your
product it's off the ground it's growing
people love it you figured out how to do
that you figured out how to create a
very special one in K company with uh
Monopoly Powers that's big and the
market that you're chasing after is
slightly bigger than the paper airplane
business so you're good right so now
what so we're here to submit that
actually culture is the thing that's
going to be very very important for you
to be able to scale uh the business as
well as your team and hopefully after
this talk you'll be able to know what
what is culture uh why does it matter
how to sort of create your core values
and think about elements that sort of
fit together for the core values and the
culture that create a high performance
team and get some best practices for the
culture so what is culture um anybody
have a want to take a guess at what how
one should Define this a set of values
in a team yeah that's good you did you
look that up on the uh because you had a
computer and internet connection you you
just look it up so these are some
definitions uh that you'll find uh in in
Webster's Dictionary and but that that
we're at Stanford this kind of a trick
question it's a CS class questions are
never straightforward the real question
is what is company culture going to be
you know culture that we can generally
talk about Society uh about groups about
places or things here we're talking
about company culture and so how do we
want to Define company culture we can
take the previous definition and modify
it a little bit and so every this is a
hint of how we may want to Define
company culture every day blank and
blank of each member of the team in
pursuit of our company blank uh and some
people have filled these in with
different sort of things a the first
blank could be assumptions beliefs
values my favorite is core values the
second blank for the b blank people have
said behaviors my favorite s answer that
is real action how do you act uh and in
pursuit of goals that's kind of weak uh
in in pursuit of big and hairy audacious
goals that's a little stronger but a
better definition is in pursuit of the
mission so now that sort of we have that
definition what do we do with it and why
does it matter uh this is a quote from
Gandhi your beliefs become your thoughts
your thoughts become your words your
words become your actions and your your
actions become your habits and your
habits becomes your values and your
values become your destiny if you don't
have a good culture in the company you
can't pursue your destiny
uh what matters is it it becomes the
first principles that you sort of go
back to when you make decisions becomes
a way to align people on values that
matter to the company it provides a
certain level of stability to fall back
on and it provides a level of trust that
people can sort of trust each other with
it also give you a list of things that
you should be able
to figure out what to do and what not to
do and what the more important thing
about that is what not to do uh and then
finally the other thing that is
important is it allows you to retain the
right employees there are people in this
world that are not going to be a fit for
your company but if you have good strong
culture and good strong core values
you'll know who you want to retain and
who you do not want to retain and if you
took the take the first words uh first
letter of those it happens to help you
move
faster another reason you're thinking
that's like all mushy stuff this is is
actually more scientific stuff uh so
here are uh indices for from 1997 to
2003 of stock market index of companies
in the S&P 500 in the Russell 3000 and
then for the one uh Fortune 100 best
companies to work for they survey all
these companies out there and they've
picked out companies that they believe
are the best companies to work for and
the returns the stock market returns of
those companies happen to be 11. 8%
11.08% which is almost twice that of the
other two indices and so there's real
power in companies that treat their
employees well where there's a lot of
trust and where there's a lot of C uh
strong
culture so how do you sort of create a a
set of values and and sort of Define the
culture Etc get asked out a lot you got
to start with the leader of the company
the founder and uh s ask yourself what
are the personal values that are most
important to to you what are those
things that are most important to the
business who are the types of people you
like working with and what are their
values and through that you sort of
distill together what a set of values
are then think about all the people that
you've never like working with what
values do they have think of that the
opposite of that and maybe those should
be considered values for for uh your
company and finally remember this the
values have to support your mission and
if it doesn't support your mission
you're missing something and and then
the last final checks are they have to
be credible and they have to be uniquely
tied to your mission so at zapo in terms
of uniquely applied to the mission we
were focused on creating a culture that
was going to provide great customer
service so the first core value we had
was to deliver while through service we
were very specific that we wanted to
deliver great customer service and was
going to be a wild experience and then
below that we want to sort of had a
paragraph support in that talking about
exactly what we mean by that want to
support them um deliver while through
service and support people such as our
employees our customers and our brand
partners and our investors in terms of
the opposite thing we generally didn't
like working with arrogant people so one
of our core values at zapis was to be
humble so those are two examples where
we sort of created core values in a way
that sort of sort of became uh credible
and uniquely tied to our
mission
so you go through this process you come
up with a few core values these might be
some of them whether it's honesty
Integrity service teamwork and there
might be a list of you might start with
three you might end up with a list of 10
you might list list of 30 it's a good
start um and when zapus went through
this process we start with like we asked
all the employees at the time uh what
core values they want to identify with
we came up with 37 we initi we sort of
would that down to about 10 uh and it
took a year to do this that's a long
time and you might want to ask why well
if you just come up with the word
honesty I mean give me a break everybody
wants uh the culture to be honest no you
nobody's going to say I want to be lied
to every day uh service what do you mean
by
service there's got to be a lot more
depth in this than that and nobody
everybody talks about teamwork but
there's a different in level of teamwork
that you see in an intram mural sports
team as versus a baseball team and so
how do you sort of dive deeper into
teamwork what are the things that don't
work on uh for a team a lot of it has to
do with Communications a lot of it has
to do with things that people have
studied and you might want to go deeper
into that at zos we thought about well
there are a lot of smart people in this
room um when they're fighting with each
other and trying to figure out who's
right and who's not it's probably not
the best use of time and we wanted
everybody to sort of Riff Off each other
and help each other make any idea better
the result is that the company gets a
better idea not that any individual
person is right so we wanted to instill
this idea that it's company first then
your department then your team then
yourself and how do you do that can go a
level deeper in that there's another
there's a great sort of
um sort of element of high performing
teams that I really like which is this
pyramid that was created by Patrick Lon
um and he wrote this book the five
dysfunctions of a team and the reason
this is interesting he talks about the
breakdowns of a teams first of all if
you don't a lot of teams break down
because they don't have any trust then
even if you had trust why do you need
trust well then if you have trust you
can actually have debates and conflict
and get to the right answer if you don't
have conflict and debate people are just
it's the blind leading the blind how do
you know you actually got to the right
answer before you sort of commit to
something so people are not actually
willing to commit they're afraid of
committing uh and so let's say you get
to the next level and you are actually
able to commit well what what goes wrong
then it's usually because people are not
held accountable to things that they
committed to and if people are not held
accountable to the things that they've
committed to then they can't get results
and I would submit to you if you think
about the company as a black box and
results whether it's Financial whether
you produce a great product or anything
like that as the
output one of the major inputs is the
culture of the
company so uh some other best practices
we're going to actually talk about
during Q&A because I think this is going
to blend into the conversation is that
you want to incorporate your mission to
values we've talked about that
performance you got to think harder
deeper longer about your values than you
might initially think you need to do uh
one of the things that I think a lot of
companies don't actually do is they
interview for technical fit or skill fit
uh or competency in that realm but they
don't actually interview for the culture
fit and whether someone will actually F
believe and follow the mission I think
that's a big big no no like I think you
can have the smartest engineer in the
world but if they don't believe in your
mission they're not going to put the
pour their heart and soul into it uh and
that's one of the things that where if
you actually sort of start thinking
about
from the interview process to
performance reviews to making sure that
it's a daily habit you'll get uh a lot
further with prod with um making a great
culture the final point on making a uh
daily habit I think culture just like
customer service or Fitness is like
motherhood and apple pie everybody wants
to provide great customer service every
company wants to have a great culture
what they fail to do is make it a daily
habit you just can't be fit if if you're
if you don't do it as a daily habit
eventually you get out of shape then you
get fat and then you're like oh I got to
go on a crash diet to sort of get back
into shape that doesn't quite work uh
and the same is true with something like
culture
so I think we checked all of these off
so we can go into Q&A with Brian right
cool move the
chair right here yeah it's good
all right hello
everybody it's quiet in here I'll be
honest now it's much better now I feel a
little less on edge nothing worse than
like a room for people really really
quiet staring at you but now I feel
better oh I did it for 5 10 minutes yeah
you could bear for a little yes exactly
so Brian could you talk about how the
process by which you came to understand
the culture was important to Airbnb and
in building the company yeah so
um I think one of the things we real
realizes so just to give you I won't
tell the full story of aing being some
of you may know it um but the very short
version of the story was that um Airbnb
wasn't meant to be like the company we
were trying to start I had quit my job I
was complete um I was living in La one
day I drove to San Francisco became
roommates with my uh friend from college
I went to R School design Joe gbia and I
had $11,000 the bank and the rent was
$1,150 so that weekend um this
International conference was coming to
San Francisco all the hotels are sold
out we had this idea let's just turn our
house into a bed and breakfast for the
conference I didn't have any beds Joe
had three air beds we pulled them out of
the closet we called it the airbed and
breakfast that's how the company
started I probably told that story
10,000 Times by the way some version of
that story and I didn't think I'd ever
tell that a second time um when I I
remember growing up um I I also went to
college and um my parents were social
workers and they had kind of nervous
about me going to art school they kind
of worried that maybe I would like not
get a job after college which is I'm
sure a lot of parents are worried about
so she said make sure you promis me you
get a job with health insurance I ended
up starting airband breakfast.com was
original name and she remember her
telling me I guess you never got that
job with health
insurance the reason I say this though
is this Airbnb was never meant to be the
big idea it was meant to be the thing to
pay the rent so we could think of the
big idea and along the way by solving
our own problem it became the big idea
um so alongside that um and I'm not
going to talk about like kind of how we
built the product that's probably
another conversation that some other
people are talking about you have to
build a team and a great company and in
the early days we had three co-founders
Joe Nate and myself and I kind of think
of one of the reasons we're successful
was I was really lucky and I don't think
I was really lucky because we came up
with the idea of Airbnb and I don't
think we were really lucky that we
became successful once we had the team I
think we could have come up with a lot
of ideas and been somewhat successful I
think I was lucky cuz I found two great
people that I wanted to start a company
with people I admire that almost
intimidated me how talented how smart
they were and I think that's one of the
first things you got to build a team
that is so talented that they kind of
almost make you slightly uncomfortable
because they know by being with them
you're going to have to raise your game
to be with them and then when we were
working together in the early days this
is like 2008 um the first thing is we we
were like a family if you think about
Founders Founders are like parents and
the company's a child and the child will
manifest in many ways behaviors that
parents have between the relationship if
parents are dysfunctional they're not
working together then the child's going
to be frankly pretty up and so
you don't want that you want your
culture to be awesome and so Jon and I
were like total a total family in the
beginning we we worked 18 hours a day
seven days a week I remember when we
were white
combinator we like worked together we
like ate food together we like even went
to the gym together we may as well have
gotten jumpsuits we didn't go that far
but we were like it was like we were a
mission I felt like we're like a special
forces or something and we had this like
amazing shared way of doing things
amazing
accountability and then um we real that
was like the DNA of the company and then
we started thinking at some point you go
from building the product to phase two
which is building the company that
builds the product and so a lot of the
talk is about how do you build the
product how do you get product Market
fit once people start doing that now you
got to build a company and it doesn't
matter how great your original product
or idea is if you can't build a great
company then your product will not
endure and so we thought about this and
one of the things we realized is we want
to build a company for the long term the
last thing I want is to build something
I mean think about it this way if your
if if your company's like your child a
parent wants this child that will live
him or her it would be a tragedy to
outlive your child it would also I felt
like be a tragedy for us to outlive our
company and just watch it rise and fall
we didn't want that we wanted a company
that would endure and so to do that we
started noticing companies have
something in common companies that were
around for a really long time had a
clear Mission and they had a clear sense
of values they had a shared way of doing
something that was unique to them and
was really really special and so then
Joe and and I when we were three people
decided to look around companies I
noticed Apple you know Steve Jobs talked
about his core value was that he
believed people with passion could
change the world and he said our
products changed but our value never had
and we learned about Amazon we learned
about Nike we learned about companies in
the early days you can even use this to
talk about organizations you know even
like a founding of a nation has a strong
values and a declaration then the
country might endure longer and so we
started realizing like we need to have
intention culture needs to be designed
and that's kind of how we got connected
is because um you know when we were
funded by seoa Alfred ly just joined
from zapo seoa and I was told zapo had
an amazing culture and we went to Las
Vegas and met up with Tony and we
learned about it and so what did you
learn
well you guys are crazy um I the F the
thing we learned and we were three
people was you need to have like if
culture is a shared way of doing things
there's really two parts one is
behaviors and those can kind of change
and maybe 50 years from now there will
be rituals and behaviors that will
change be different but there have to be
some things that never change some
principles some ideas that endure that
make you you and I think of core values
is integrity honesty those aren't core
values because they're values everyone
should have they're like Integrity
values but there have to be like three
five six things that are unique to you
and you could probably think about this
in your life what is different about you
than every single other person if you
could only tell somebody three or four
things what do you want them to know
about you and we realized that when
zapus was 100 employees they wrote down
these nine is it nine 10 10 core values
and the only thing I learned from Tony
is he said I wish I didn't wait till I
was 100 employees to write down a core
value so I think I was talking to Sam he
says he thinks we're one of the only
companies that wrote Our core values
down before we hired anyone how long did
it take you to hire a first employee so
our first employee was our first
engineer and I think we looked for him
for four or five months and I probably
interviewed I probably looked through
thousands of people and interviewed
hundreds of people and by then when you
hired the when did you write it did you
write it on day one or did you it was a
month three did I think we started
working on it around the time of white
commentator which would have been
January 2009 it was probably a process
that evolved over the course of six to S
months we finished white commentator in
April 2009 I think we hired a first
engineer in July something like that so
it's probably like 6 months and the re
some people ask like why did you spend
so much time on like hiring your first
engineer and here's how we thought about
it I kind of felt like your first
engineer was like bringing in DNA to
your company this person was going to
like there were going to be if we were
successful there were going to be a
thousand people just like him or her in
the company and so it wasn't a matter of
like getting somebody to build the next
three features that we needed to ship
for our users there was something much
more longterm and much more enduring
which was do I want to work with 100 or
a thousand more people like this now you
want diversity but you don't want you
want diversity of like belief you want
diversity of like backgrounds age you
don't want diversity of values you want
a very very homogeneous beliefs and
that's the one thing that shouldn't be
diverse so what what what are airbnb's
values so we have six core values um
I'll maybe talk about three of them okay
so our first core value we talk about is
Champion the mission and what it really
means is that we want to hire people
that are here for our mission we don't
want people here because they think
we've got a great valuation they like
office design they need a job or they
think it's hot we want people to be here
for the one thing that will never change
and that's our mission and just to tell
you a quick story about our mission um
you know Airbnb you know a lot of people
describe it as a way to book a room or
book a house and you travel around the
world and that's what we do but that's
not at all why we do it and to answer
the question of like what what our
mission is I'll just tell you a quick
story and this I think describes it in
um early 2012 I met a host named named
Sebastian so we do these meetups around
the world where we meet with host and I
meet this host named Sebastian he's
probably like late 50s he lives in North
London and Sebastian looks at me he says
Brian there's this word you never use on
your website and I said what's that word
he said that word is friendship I would
love to tell you the story about
friendship I said okay tell me the story
about friendship he said six months ago
the lendon riots broke out outside my
home and I was very scared and the next
day my mom called me to make sure I was
okay he said yeah Mom I'm okay and she
goes what about the house and he says
well yeah the house is okay as well he
said here's the interesting thing
between the time the riots broke out and
the time my mom called me was a 24-hour
window of time and in that period of
time he said seven of my previous arbb
guests called me just to make sure I was
okay he said think about that seven of
my guests called me before my own mother
did I know what that says about our
guest's mother more but um but in in
this summer
on a typical night or a peak night we
would have 425,000 PE 25,000 people
staying in homes and living together and
they were coming from 190 countries on
the world which is every country but
North Korea Iran s and Cuba so when you
hear that story at our core what we're
about that's much more than just booking
a room or traveling what we are about is
we want to help bring the world together
and we want to do that by giving a sense
of belonging anywhere you go so our
mission is to belong anywhere so 5 years
from now 20 years from now maybe we're
still selling rooms and homes but maybe
we're not but I can guarantee you what
we're always going to be about is this
sense of belonging and bringing people
together and that's the more enduring
idea so when we hire people the first
thing we need to make sure is if that's
our mission you need to Champion that
mission you Champion the mission by
living the mission do you believe in it
do you have stories about it have you
used the product would you bleed for the
product I used to ask like crazy
questions like one of the the crazy
questions Sam reminds me of is I used to
interview people so I interviewed the
first 300 employees at Airbnb which
people think I'm like really neurotic
and that may also be true but um and I
used to ask him a question which I've
now amended I used to ask them if you
had a year left to live would you take
this job and actually the people who say
yes to that you probably don't want
because that's like they should probably
spend time with your family so I amended
it to 10 years cuz I feel like you
should you whatever if you knew you had
10 years left to live whatever you do
want you would do in those last 10 years
you should just do and and I really
wanted people to think about that that
was enough time for like you to do
something you really cared about and the
answer doesn't have to be this company
and I say fine if what you're meant to
do is a travel or if you meant to do is
start a company you should just do that
don't come here go do that and so
there's this old kind of parable
probably many you've heard of it about
like two men are laying bricks somebody
comes up to the first man and says what
are you doing he says I'm building a
wall he ask the other guy what are you
doing he says I'm building a cathedral
there is a job and then there's a
calling and we want to hire people
aren't just looking for jobs or looking
for calling and that's that's kind of
the first value and that's Champion the
mission I'll just maybe because I don't
want to take all the time I'll talk
about um I'll talk about just one more
just so we don't talk the whole thing
just about values the second value um
relates to being kind of creative and
Frugal and I'll tell you a story our
company was like by the way all the
founding stories of your company end up
becoming the things that people repeat
and talk about when you're a thousand
people and it kind of embodies right
it's kind of like your childhood these
things kind of come back later in life
same thing with the company so Airbnb I
think Mark and Jon actually sent the
last talk that was like the worst idea
that ever worked and it it it really
probably was the worst idea I mean
people were thought we were crazy I
remember telling people about the idea
and I remember actually telling Paul
Graham I said we have this in an
interview we said we have this idea it's
called Airbnb he goes people actually
doing this I go yeah his follow question
was what's wrong with them so I knew the
interview wasn't going well um and in
the interview at the end of the
interview Paul Graham I think wasn't
going to accept us and but we told him
this story of how he funded the company
and here's how it goes we were
introduced Michael syo who I think is a
partner of Y com lot people know
introduced me and Joe to like 15
investors in the valley including um
some of the ones that have been here and
all of them like said no to the company
they could have bought 10% of the
company for like1 $150,000 they all said
no they thought it was a crazy idea no
one would ever stay in someone's home so
we ended up just funding the company
with credit cards and you know those
binders kids used to put baseball cards
in so we put credit cards in those cuz
we had to put them all somewhere that's
how many credit cards we had and we were
completely in debt and in the fall of
2008 we providing housing for the
Democratic and Republican National
Convention
and um we had this weird crazy idea cuz
we weren't really selling a lot of homes
basically airb be launched and a year
after we launched I think we had 100
people A Day visiting our website and we
had like two bookings which is generally
bad it's kind of like releasing a song
and a year later like three people
listen to it every day like it's
probably not going to be a very popular
song so but I believed in it and Joe
Nate believed in it but um and so we're
completely in debt we don't know what to
do and so we get this idea well we're
airing breakfast we're providing housing
for the Democratic and Republican
national conventions what if we made
like a collectible breakfast cereal for
like the Democratic National Convention
and we came up this Obama Barack Obama
theme cial we called it Obama O's the
breakfast of change
and then we came up with a republican
theme serial for John McCain we found
out he was a captain the Navy so we came
up
with Captain McCain's a Maverick in
every bite and we had zero dollars and
without any money we were able to we
tried to call like General Mills and
they told us to like stop calling them
or they're getting restraining order so
that didn't work but we found a local
alumni of Ry he made a thousand boxes of
cereal for us and we end up sending him
to press and eventually within a week we
got on National Television national news
we made $40,000 selling breakfast cereal
and that the year 2008 we made $5,000
from our website and we made $40,000
selling the breakfast
cereal and I remember my mom asking so
are you a Serial company now and that
wasn't the bad part the bad part was the
honest answer which was well 80
technically yes technically yes
so but the reason I tell that is our
second core value is To Be A Serial
entrepreneur I'm sorry for the cheesy
pun I'm sorry um but be a seal
entrepreneur and we really mean is that
we believe constraints bring out
creativity and when you raise like $800
million suddenly all that scrappiness
it's easy to lose that scrap in it's
easier for people to tell you you know I
just need like this $50,000 contract or
I need this or I need that and whenever
somebody is just being a little bit not
like Frugal and not being creative or
they tell me they can't do something
I'll just take a box of seral
and like even just the suggestion of OB
knows they need to be Scrappy and Frugal
and so again a lot of the founding DNA
or company becomes these values these
principles and so everyone knows if you
don't give a crap you shouldn't be here
and it doesn't mean you have to give a
crap it just means you have to be here
and you also have to be creative and be
like kind of like an entrepreneur it's
super Scrappy and these are some of the
values we learn cool um so you guys
should start list uh sort thinking about
questions I'm going to open up to
questions from the audience but um I
have a few more questions for you so
this all sounds nice the stories are
great people here are a pretty skeptical
group it's a CS Department class
probably left brain focused feels like a
softy kind of right brain Focus to softy
sorry
um but how has uh having a strong
culture helped you make important tough
decisions
well I think that having a so here's
here's the thing about culture there's
three things they never tell you about
culture the first thing is they never
tell you anything in other words no one
ever talks about culture and no one ever
tells you you need to have strong
culture and so like there's tons of
articles about building a great product
there's tons of articles about like
growth and adoption and there's very few
things about culture it's this like
mystical thing that's like kind of soft
and fuzzy that's the first problem the
second problem is it's hard to measure
and things that get are hard to measure
often get discounted and um these are
like two really um hard things but the
third thing is the biggest problem the
biggest problem with culture is it
doesn't pay off in the short term in
fact if you wanted to in one year build
a company and sell it as quickly as
possible the number one piece advice I
give you is up the culture forget
about it just hire people quickly
culture makes you hire really slowly and
makes you be deliver about decisions
that in the near term can slow progress
it's kind of like putting an investment
into the company short term and so these
are the things people never tell you so
it it's really about building a company
for the long term and to endure now
some of the things about culture the
first thing is you need to like be very
clear about like what's unique to you
that you stand for once you do that you
need to make sure you hire people that
believe in that and so we interviewed
hundreds of people you need to make sure
that you hire and Fire based on the
ideas these values and um and you know
one of the things we do is we constantly
repeat over and over again so we
interview like when we interview we want
to make sure they're world class and
they fit the culture so the first thing
I used to ask people I have at the end
of an interview sheet is if you could
hire this is a functional question if
you could hire anybody in the world
would you hire the person sitting across
from you and if our V if our if our
vision is become like the best in the
world of what we do why aren't we hiring
the very best in the world so every
single person is meant to hire a person
better than the previous people you're
constantly hiring the raising the bar
you're constantly hiring worldclass
people then we have separate people
called core values interviewers who
aren't in the function so if you're an
engineer the core values Engineers value
uh interviewers are never Engineers
because we don't want them to be biased
and say oh I know how good they are and
they interview just for values to make
sure that people care about the same
thing and we've said no to a lot of
really great people because we just
didn't feel right about them being with
us long term so that's one of the things
I also think that um maybe some other
examples of when we kind of had uh hard
decisions I've had a kind of in um in uh
late two mid 2011 we had this um so we
were mostly in the United States and we
had this internet clone um funded by
these guys called The samare Brothers I
don't know if has anyone heard about
these samare brothers they basically
they clone yeah rocket internet they
just went public and they basically copy
American websites quickly and they try
to sell it back to you and if they don't
if you don't then they just try to so
it's kind of like putting a gun to your
head and so and they had they had they
had basically done this to Groupon
Groupon at this point was like the
fastest growing company in the world
ever first company to fastest company to
billion dollars in revenue and then they
they stopped doing Groupon this is been
Groupon's on top of the world and they
cloned us and we had 40 employees we had
raised $7 million they cloned us and
they raised $90 million and in 30 days
they hired 400 people and I was and they
and they and they wanted to sell the
company and if they couldn't they were
going to like destroy us around the
world and the problem with Airbnb is if
we're not everywhere around the world
like a travel site not being in Europe
is like your phone not having email it
doesn't actually work so we were kind of
in trouble and I I we had this
conversation and there was the pragmatic
decision of should we acquire them and
then there was the like kind of values
decision the pragmatic one should have
probably have said buy them because you
can't risk losing International so just
guarantee you're going to get
International but we ended up not buying
them and the reason we ended up not
buying them is I just didn't like the
culture I didn't want to bring in this
for of people I felt like we were
missionaries and they were mercenaries I
didn't think they were doing it for the
beliefs I thought they were doing it to
make a lot of money very quickly and I
believed in a war you know missionaries
would Outlast and out endure mercenaries
and I also felt like the best revenge
against an internet startup uh internet
clone was just to make them run the
company longterm it's like you had the
baby now you got to raise
it so that's what we end up doing and
that was a very controversial decision a
lot of people were telling me you should
buy this company we didn't and I think
it worked out uh let's see the last
board being how what percentage of
Revenue comes from Europe um more than
50% I think it worked out yeah
all right uh anybody have any questions
I can keep going if you have so one
other question uh one other statement we
had at zapus was that culture and brand
were two sides of the same coin yes uh
Airbnb has a great culture and also a
great brand you want to talk a little
bit about branding since that's it's
actually kind of a weak thing in Silicon
Valley we don't tend to focus on this on
culture brand that's what I actually
just said that to Sam mman it's like I
think Silicon Valley is not historically
really strong or we don't talk about
culture and brand very much they are two
sides of the same Co so culture are like
the the principles and the beliefs that
you have inside the company that you
want people to be aligned with longterm
and whatever happens inside the company
eventually comes out you can't hold it
in and brand is really the promise
outside the company that everyone
identifies with and so I think having a
clear Mission and making sure that 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 and
then the second thing you need to know
is that your brand the way people think
about you as a company is often decided
by your you know I mean your brand
evangelist are your employees so you
have a weak culture we often think that
like companies that hire employees or
people that are deeply passionate create
companies that customers are really
really passionate about and those are
the companies that have strong Brands
and so you know zapo had a really strong
brand because they strong culture and a
lot of companies of Google they care
deeply about the the culture they
actually have a question is this person
googly and it's meant to be like a cat
all for do they fit the Google culture
Google is a very strong culture it's
Unique to Google and by the way there's
no such thing as a good or bad culture
it's either a strong or weak culture and
a good culture for somebody else may not
be a good culture for you so I think
brand is incredibly important as well
and brand is really the connection of
you with your customers and so if you
have an incredibly strong culture there
could be a whole talk on brand but if
you have a incredbly strong cult culture
then the brand will come through the
final thing to say about brand is a lot
of people when they talk about their
brand they talk about what they sell so
if you're apple one way of doing is say
we sell computers and like this new our
new screens are like larger and it's
faster and they talk about bits and
bites and I remember Steve Jobs had this
really important talk where he says the
way to win this is 1997 when he first
came back wasn't to talk about bits and
bites the way to win is to talk about
what we value and our core values we
believe people of passion can change the
world and that was how we introduced the
think different campaign and so Apple
before they had this huge Renaissance
which became the most valuable company
in the world they did the think
different Campaign which is basically
saying this is what we believe in and if
you buy an Apple computer you're also
saying I believe in this too and there
has to be I think a deeper core belief
and if that doesn't happen you're a
utility and the utilities get sold at
commodity
prices go how did you know how to
communicate this the
beginning how uh the question is how do
you uh know how to communicate this to
the company the culture or the core
value or to employees world to the
outside world the culture the values the
the brand how to communicate what Airbnb
does and how how it's well so the
question is how do we communicate what
Airbnb does in early in the days well we
learned a lot because in the early days
we communicate like a utility we
actually said Airbnb is a cheap
affordable alternative to hotels and we
had a tagline of forget hotels save
money with
Airbnb and over time we felt like that
was I mean you know this is in really
early days and we felt like that was way
too limiting that undercut the idea and
so we we then eventually changed our
tagline to travel like a human which we
don't we haven't kept um but it was
basically meant to say that like we
believe in a certain kind of world and
we really feel like travel is
mass-produced you feel like isolated you
feel like a stranger and we want to
bring the world back to the place where
it's a little bit like a village again
where the service is coming from other
people you have this feeling like you
belong and you're actually treated like
a human you know no matter how
successful you are in life often
traveling will remind you you're not
that successful go through TSA stay in a
typical Hotel sometimes you'll have some
problems and so we really want to make
people feel special and um this was kind
of some of the stuff we did in the early
days and we did a lot of Storytelling I
mean you know I probably told the story
of Airbnb like 10,000 times and this is
something it's kind of related to
culture but one somebody asked me the
other day like what's the job of a CEO
and there's a number of things CEO does
but what you mostly do is articulate the
vision so you like articulate the vision
you got to develop a strategy and you
got to 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 so we end up doing is articling
the vision over and over and over again
whether you're hiring people or
recruiting them talking to investors
raise money doing PR interviews if
you're speaking out of class you're
always reinforcing the values you're
doing it in email through a customer and
so you just do it thousands of times and
if you do something thousands of times
it will change and get better every time
and so it just kind of evolved yeah so
the US interacting with the host so how
do Ure that the host are reinforcing the
culture of Airbnb very very good
question how do we make sure the hosts
are rein uh enforcing the culture of
Airbnb so when the the answer to that is
we do a pretty good job but not yet an
amazing job at it um when we first
started Airbnb we I kind of took the
Craig Newark school of thought Craig
newark's the founder of craigus and I
said anybody should be able to use
Airbnb you didn't have to apply if you
want to rent your place you can rent
your place and it turned out that many
of the people believed in our values cuz
we talked about it and we attracted them
but there were people who rented on airb
not because they believe in Valu but
because they realize they can make a lot
of money rening their home and not
everyone really was a great culture it
and these people actually did cause us a
lot of problems so that was actually a
bit of a lesson for me and I didn't
think our host had to I didn't really
occur to me in the early days the host
had to completely fit the values now we
met them we trct people like us and so
over time we've realized host are
partners and so they need to believe in
the same values we do and so um you know
now we have this program called the
superhost program where they have to
like demonstrate values to reach this
kind of badge which gets them kind of
priority customer support and
distribution um we are having this host
convention where we bring all the host
in we're going to be talking about and
reinforcing the values so the answer is
like the answer is we were really late
but we now do it by reinforcing it every
step of the
way
Goan has made some great contributions
to the open source Community do you have
any thoughts on how that uh contributes
to the culture on your
development yeah I mean I think
just in general and it may be Rel it may
be may be related to two things about
Airbnb um we tend to be a pretty open
culture just in general we we
communicate a lot and we we generally
you know believe in the idea of like a
shared world where people are giving
back and contributing making communities
and industries stronger so um and just
my one philosophy on communication is we
basically communicate and talk about
everything internally except for things
that relate to employee or customer
privacy so if it doesn't really those
two things we'll basically talk about it
as far as open source culture and
Engineering um we wanted to make sure
that um we had a really strong
identification of the team and so we we
we really felt like um a lot of source
codes shouldn't be you know we felt like
every company needs a moat some kind of
moat that protects you from your
competition we thought some technology
would be but we also felt like we wanted
to be able to give back from a
technology standpoint and we preferred
our to be that we provide the very best
experience in the world when you use
Airbnb we have the biggest Network
effects and we thought that kind of took
precedent over having like you know you
know having like certain technology that
we only we could use and so we decided
to try to share some of that out to
people and I think it does again it does
relate to the values now one other thing
is I never Rec I never one day
recommended this is hopefully if you
have a strong culture like I didn't
recommend we we we we do any of that we
hired Engineers that we felt like fit
the values and it just just
independently occurred to them they
should do that they felt like that was
the right thing to do all the way in the
back you talked about how during the
conventions you didn't have any money
and you only a couple people visited
your site what did you do to increase
the number of users that came to your
site how did you scale that
up so the question was uh Brian had
talked about there weren't that many
visitors to the site uh when they were
trying to sort of get off the ground how
did they get users to the site so this
is this is actually not about culture um
but I'll answer anyway um
so you know a lot of people so the best
advice this is not even a culture
question but the best advice I ever got
was probably from Paul Graham and Paul
Graham basically said he I remember he
had this line he said it's better he may
have even talked about this talking
about he said it's better to have a
hundred people that love you than to
have a million people that just kind of
sort of like you it's literally better
to have 100 people love you and the
reason why is if you have a million
customer customers or a million users
and they just kind of don't care about
you but they kind of use your app and
you're okay to get them to care is a
really really hard thing in fact I don't
know how to get a million people that
all of a sudden care what I do know is
if you get a 100 people that love you
those people if they feel incredibly
passionate each of them will tell a 100
people and in fact all movements
typically start or companies or ideas
that are really powerful start with just
100 people so the reason this is so
critical is he let gave us another
lesson which is if all you need to do is
get a 100 people to love you then what
you need to do is things that don't
scale so you know it's hard to like if
you have a million people you can't meet
all of them but you can meet a 100
people you can spend time with them and
so that's exactly what we did Joanie and
I I mean we would go door too in New
York City or in Denver where the
Democratic National Convention was
literally meeting with staying with and
living with our users I used to joke
that when you buy an iPhone Steve Jobs
didn't come and sleep on your couch but
I did and that that was is like really
critical like living with your users and
by living with our users and spending
time with them all we had to do is give
them enough time attention and get them
to get the point where they were deeply
passionate and if you work backwards
from a 100 people or even one person
like without even technology imagine
what would be an amazing experience for
just this one person and walk through
the Journey from the time they like
whatever your service is right and make
it perfect for that one person once you
make a service perfect for one person
it's actually really easy to make almost
anything perfect for a person it's not
actually that hard the hard thing is
then how do we scale us to millions of
people where everyone gets in trouble is
they try to solve both at the same time
so the first thing we do is get the
perfect experience for one person we
went door to door to do this we W over
their love then we use a separate kind
of part of our brain to imagine now how
will we achieve that at scale and I'll
give you one example before I stop
talking about this right now on Airbnb
you can if you put your home on Airbnb
you can click a button and a profession
it kind of works like uber and we did
this before Uber a professional
photographer comes to your house and
they'll photograph your homes for free
we have 5,000 photographers around the
world and we photographed hundreds of
thousands of homes so it's probably one
of the largest on demand photography
networks if there was such a thing I
guess probably the only one but um in
the world and that started with Joe and
I we were living with we were staying
not living staying with this one host in
New York City and her her house is
amazing but our photos were terrible and
we said why didn't you just put up
better photos and this is before like
you know iPhones had great cameras this
2008 and she said well I can't figure
out how to get camera photos from this
camera onto this computer she wasn't
very technically Savvy and she said well
we'll just take photos for you or
actually I said what if you could press
a button and somebody just showed up at
your door and took professional photo
photograph that'd be magic so next day I
knocked on her door and said I'm
here and I photographed her home and
then we sent emails to people saying we
have this new magical photography
service and if you want you can press
this button in a professional photog
would show up at your home someone just
press this button would just send me
alert or Joe an alert and we'd rent a
camera in Brooklyn in January of 2009
walking through snow photographing
people's homes we did this by hand
without any technology we managed it
with just spreadsheets I wasn't going to
burden Nate with trying to build
something we designed before we had
photography then we started hiring
contract photographers then eventually
we got an intern to manage all the
contract photographers then we got an
intern to become a full-time employee
managing other interns to manage the
contractor employees and at some point
this is before we built anything and at
some point there were too many like
people to manage like there were like
hundreds of photographers then we
finally built all the tools to manage
all the photography but we did it only
after we knew exactly what the perfect
service
was one more question one more question
so a lot of people say that um when when
the hardest part isn't the technology
here the marketing and the communication
is the hardest part there going be um
and let say it's not compan
so do you want to repeat the question so
the question uh is uh a lot of people in
this particular situation there BNB a
lot of people think that this is not
necessarily a technology company but
it's more of a marketing
company good question so um I I'll I'll
answer the question with a story um Let
me let me let me just let me preface
that question by a set of questions do
you have do you today have um
proprietary Tech te
do you have uh a moe yes do you have
Network effects yes do you have pricing
power
yes uh do you have a good brand I think
so are uh are you a monopoly I'm not
going to answer
that but but I think similar to the
question um just forgetting about all of
that if companies that have Network
effects and sort of get off the ground
the flywheel is going people just think
that you're lucky and let me let me it's
a totally fair question and people have
said it so I want to answer it you uh
guy that runs tooy Capital now his name
is Doug Leone yeah one day I think it's
a year year and a half ago Doug Leone
says your job sucks and I was like what
the hell is that mean like this is like
you've got the worst job of any CEO in
my portfolio and I said tell me why and
this is what he said he says well let me
here's how I think about it first of all
you're a technology company thought we
were a technology company I would say at
our heart in many ways we are a
technology company um and so you have
all the challenges of all my other
portfolio companies but beyond that you
are in 190 countries and so you have to
figure out how to be International we
have to hire people in countries all
over the world we're literally in every
country world but North Korea an here in
Cuba you're a basically a payments
company we handle billions of dollars
through our system every year and we had
to get money transmission license to the
state of California so we actually are a
payments company we have serious fraud
and risk to to to warrant and needs to
be locked down like Fort Knox he said
that's that's usually where companies
end but you got to worry about all this
other crap and he says trust and safety
you know we have 425,000 people staying
in other people's under in other
people's beds in their sheets think
about a woman from Texas staying in the
Middle East or vice versa the cultural
conflicts that could happen and
misunderstandings and you know you have
425,000 people a night it's like being
the mayor of Oakland now imagine if
you're the mayor of Oakland all the
things happen Oakland tonight so you've
got trust and safety now we have
regulatory problems you know we are in
34,000 cities every city has a different
law different rules and many of them
were written in a different Century
before he had any of his technology and
so you've got to deal with that then
you've got issues like search and
Discovery so Google's Got a Brand about
being really important about search the
thing about search though is usually if
I have a question you know Google could
give me 40,000 results but it's probably
clear that there's like one or two best
options for everybody so if I want to
know a question to an answer there
usually one best answer we have 40,000
homes in Paris there is no best home in
Paris for anybody in this room so we
have to be really really great at
matching people and Technology we have
to be a company that's just you know
another example Facebook for example is
a digital product their product is their
website our product are these
experiences you have in the real world
so we're not just an online product we
have to be an offline product and we
need to transition from when you're at
your app through cities and these are
just some of the examples why technology
design so basically the long and the
short of it is we have to be world class
at technology we have to be world class
at design we have to be world class at
branding because we've got to convince
people this isn't crazy you're not going
to die when you use it we have to
convince governments this is good for
your neighborhood what happens the
internet moves into your neighborhood
that's what people call it it's a good
thing hopefully and you've got to make
sure trust and safety is really world
class that we handle all these payments
not have problems with risk and I could
kind of go through and this is not even
to do with culture I didn't even mention
culture so that's how I describe it as
like I think great companies or
companies are probably really strong at
everything but um you know we H we try
to hire the very best engineers and
Technical talent in the world and I
definitely don't see as a marketing
company thank you thank you thank you
guys all right thank you sir
awesome