Name: Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky: Why We Offered Free Housing to Refugees
Uploaded: 2017-02-14
Duration: 5 min 16 s
Description: He explains why the home-sharing platform will soon become less about renting a room.

In nine years you have gone from an idea that everyone thought was crazy to something that really transforms the way people travel, been controversial. So I guess my first question is did you ever thing that this will be this big? No I mean I remember when Joe and I were having conversation. Well like we're having the idea, like this thing is gonna be huge. One day, hundreds of people will stay in air beds around the world. And a lot of people ask, why didn't you give up? And, I think the the thing we talked about is we thought about that first experience, and we thought, when Joe and I hosted those three first guests, if people experience what we could experience, this would be an idea that would spread around the world. You just have to wait a little bit longer. And spread it did, and then it caught on. And then it became very, very big. Yeah. You've also had, obviously, your share of controversies. Right. And you've run into all sorts of challenges, whether it's safety incidents or legal pushback or discrimination. What of those has been hardest for you? Well, I think that The first one was by far the hardest, the first big big crisis or challenger we had. We didn't have like robust 24 / 7 customer support, we didn't have a trust and safety team, we didn't remove very many users, and then a woman's apartment got trashed, and was a huge wake- up call. And it told me that though our thesis was our communities and immune system, people didn't want for the musician to kick in, that we had a responsibility to prevent These bad things from happening. It completely changed our model and now we're pretty hands on in managing the market place. The other thing to remember our business is about people. Is there one thing that you would have done differently about this, not just in New York, but in general about the legal pushback if you? Yeah, there's definitely some things I would have done differently. I would have been much more aggressive in removing Some of what. I've been called the so- called illegal hotels. Then again, a lot of our intervention kind of was antithetical to where we started. I was like, we're like Craigslist. We're like a community. It's an immune system, and over time, we would have more constraints, more constraints, more constraints. If I could've done it over again in 2011, 2012, I would've removed a lot more of the property managers that we've since removed. Because I think they became a lightning rod. I think they were always a minority of our business, but I think they became a symbol and got overblown, and they became the wrong face of our business. Well, a couple of weeks ago, you took a strong stand against President Trump's ban on immigration. You came right out and said you didn't agree with it and took some steps. Why was it important for you to do that? On New Year's Eve, we had two million people that were living together from 191 countries. You had people from Middle East staying with people in the United States. You had people in China staying with people in Japan. Our entire idea is predicated on the notion that you can go to any community in the world, And the moment that walls go up between communities. And you can't actually have access. You can't get out and you can't get in. That is a huge opposition to our mission. The notion that you wouldn't accept somebody from a country because of who they are is just incomplete violation of all the values that we believe. And I think that there's a next generation of people that are no longer just citizens of a country, but citizens of a planet. And they're going to be much more globally minded. And if you think of a child today, and you think, and that child grows up, is that child growing up gonna want to live in a country with walls around them? I think the history is not on your side if you believe that. So this is a President who has been known to single out people who don't agree with what he says. Did that concern you at all? Did you think that you were taking a risk when you took that stand? I thought I was taking a risk but it didn't concern me. And tell me about your Super Bowl ad. Your Super Bowl related to this as well. [ LAUGH ] We, I never thought we'd do a Super Bowl Ad. And Jonathan our CMO came to me on Tuesday and said, we should do a Super Bowl Ad. I said, I don't think we should do a Super Bowl Ad. On Wednesday, I think you should do a Superbowl ad, and I'm like ok let me think about it what's the message. He showed me an idea of the ad we were going to take some footage from other film, cut it down, Thursday morning, I kind of wake up and I decide lets just go for it. Shifting topics, you last year introduced tricks, which is your first category expansion of the company How's it going so far? It's going incredibly well I mean we've had tens of thousands of people submit experiences, and there's a huge wave this because we once you kind of start small, but the satisfaction the kind of review scores and trips, is actually significantly higher that even at home. So we've already learned that there is a huge amount of Buzz, people like these experiences as much, actually in fact more than homes And based on the limited outreach, there seems to be a greater capacity of people who wanna offer an experience and offer a home. So, all indicators are that I think that this could be just as important on an idea to our community as Offering homes. You also announced other things, restaurant reservations, events- Yep, yep, yep. Some services- Yep. Something involving flights coming- Right. Sometimes soon. You've told me that at one point you think that Airbnb's revenue from homes is gonna be less than half of the total. Is that still the goal or? Yes, I think that the majority of the revenue one day will be not homes As long as we with the [ UNKNOWN ] of up sells from the home like amenities, extra services things that don't exist today. May be to be more specific the product that you know today as Airbnb in the future will be the minority of revenue. That would be my prediction. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

He explains why the home-sharing platform will soon become less about renting a room.