Brian Chesky Quotes & Sayings

The office is the laboratory and meeting your users is like going into the field. You can't just stay in the lab. And it's not just asking users what they want, it's about seeing what they're doing. — Brian Chesky

Don't listen to your parents. — Brian Chesky

People went to Dell for the computers, but they go to Apple for everything ... That's the difference between a transactional company and a transformational one. — Brian Chesky

Everyone's got a moment or two in their life where something happens and you make a decision and then your entire life changes. — Brian Chesky

Customers are willing to try new things, and if you can survive, you will have fewer competitors. It's like entering the eye of the storm. As long as you are strong enough to survive, you can end up in still water by yourself. — Brian Chesky

If you want to create a great product, just focus on one person. Make that one person have the most amazing experience ever. — Brian Chesky

The stronger the culture, the less corporate process a company needs. When the culture is strong, you can trust everyone to do the right thing. People can be independent and autonomous. They can be entrepreneurial. — Brian Chesky

We start with the perfect experience and then work backward. That's how we're going to continue to be successful. — Brian Chesky

The second thing I had to do was not to be reluctant as a leader ... And when I started doing that, I realized that people are thriving from this, and that it's so much more helpful for people. — Brian Chesky

What I've been surprised by is not how different people are, but how similar they are. There are certain types of Airbnb people, and they are in every city in the world - it's just that in some cultures, there is more of a generational divide. — Brian Chesky

Build something 100 people love, not something 1 million people kind of like. — Brian Chesky

[On culture] It's living the core values when you hire; when you write an email; when you are working on a project; when you are walking in the hall. — Brian Chesky

Brand is really the connection between you and your customersif you have a very strong culture, then the brand will come through. — Brian Chesky

I had to learn to get comfortable in a role of ambiguity where I had to seek out advisers and learn quickly. — Brian Chesky

Every day I would wake up and think, 'Today is another missed opportunity to do something important.' After enough days like this, you start feeling like you are getting old, even when you are relatively young. We are all natural entrepreneurs, and being manacled to a desk job is not for us. — Brian Chesky

In organizations (or even in a society) where culture is weak, you need an abundance of heavy, precise rules and processes. — Brian Chesky

Whatever career you're in, assume it's going to be a massive failure. That way, you're not making decisions based on success, money and career. You're only making it based on doing what you love. — Brian Chesky

Our "overnight" success took 1,000 days. — Brian Chesky

In June 2010, I moved out of my apartment and I have been mostly homeless ever since, off and on. I just live in Airbnb apartments and I check in every week in different homes in San Francisco. — Brian Chesky

Somebody asked me 'what's the job of a CEO', and there's a number of things a CEO does. What you mostly do is articulate the vision, develop the strategy, and you gotta 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. — Brian Chesky

It's better to have 100 people love you than to have 1,000,000 people like you. — Brian Chesky

The American dream, what we were taught was, grow up, own a car, own a house. I think that dream's completely changing. We were taught to keep up with the Joneses. Now we're sharing with the Joneses. — Brian Chesky

When you start a company, it's more an art than a science because it's totally unknown. Instead of solving high-profile problems, try to solve something that's deeply personal to you. Ideally, if you're an ordinary person and you've just solved your problem, you might have solved the problem for millions of people. — Brian Chesky

Culture is simply a shared way of doing something with passion. — Brian Chesky

Whatever the press is talking about, they want to keep talking about it. So instead of asking yourself, 'How can I get them to start talking about me?', figure out a way to get yourself involved in what they're already talking about. — Brian Chesky

Do things that won't scale; it will teach you. — Brian Chesky

Having a clear mission and making sure 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. — Brian Chesky

I think the next big thing in music, and it's kind of because I come from the tech industry, is actually, I think it's the platform ... Spotify is incredibly interesting. I think the platform is becoming the star. — Brian Chesky

Culture is so incredibly important because it is the foundation for all future innovation. People with passion can change the world, — Brian Chesky

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. — Brian Chesky

Companies that hire employees..that are deeply passionate create companies that customers are really really passionate about, and those are the companies that have strong brands. — Brian Chesky

I'm not saying the whole world will work this way, but with Airbnb, people are sleeping in other people's homes and other people's beds. So there's a level of trust necessary to participate that's different from an eBay or Facebook. — Brian Chesky

Designers + artists see potential in things where others do not. I think artists in many ways are the original entrepreneurs. — Brian Chesky

The stuff that matters in life is no longer stuff. It's other people. It's relationships. It's experience. — Brian Chesky

A company's culture is the foundation for future innovation. An entrepreneurs job is to build the foundation — Brian Chesky