Name: Brian Chesky: 'It's Not About Us, It's About the Hosts'
Uploaded: 2015-11-04
Duration: 3 min 36 s
Description: The Airbnb founder comments on the rejected a proposition that would have restricted short-term rentals in San Francisco.

That there was a big vote on the ballot in San Francisco yesterday, to seriously restrict Airbnb. And it had a ton of protest, it was a very, very high profile news story around the city. It was a global news story. It was a global news story, and you won. Yeah. So, this is sort of the first big public example of this push back, but you've gotten a lot of it from regulators In cities, particularly New York and San Francisco, arguably your most important markets, << Yeah. where it's illegal or seriously restricted. So what about that pushback did you expect, and what about it surprised you? All of this has surprised me. Let me put it this way. We created this business, again, didn't really know a lot. Knew we were gonna be a global platform. Knew we were gonna be in thousands of cities. Today we're at 34, 000. I remember, I'm from Albany, New York, so I remember thinking to myself, well, I'm not sure if France will love this idea. I'm not sure Korea will, or China will. But I can guarantee you that My hometown, New York will love this and the city we're in, of course. People love this idea. And the irony is that San Francisco and New York are by far our most challenged markets. In San Francisco, it has legalized it. In fact, it was legalized and the law went into effect in February. And so now some opponents decided they would not work with the legislative process, they'd go right to the voters. So that happened yesterday obviously, the voters spoke. So I think this has been be a pretty important message, but I understand. I think that in San Francisco and New York and in San Francisco in particular, people are very, very perturbed about housing cost and I'm totally sympathetic. I think at the end of the day Our mission and the mission of many of the opponents are very similar. In other words, Airbnb was started because I couldn't afford to pay rent because the rent here is very expensive. And 1, 500 people last year depended on Airbnb to pay their rent or mortgage and save their home in the city of San Fransisco. I think that if we can, kind of, drown out the noise and realize that this is a way to allow people to make ends meet, get people into the middle class, I think that's a really, really important thing, but there's been a lot of noise just kind of surrounding the political process. The major process we have is we try to go city by city explaining who we are, we're about people renting the homes they live in. You recently hired Chris Lehane who's a former, very well known political strategist. Right. Does that signify a change in your approach? He's a crisis manager, very hands on. I think that we ultimately realized that we wanted to move towards more a campaign style of mobilization. That what was happening in a lot of cities were that we would find out at the last minute there were hearings. And hosts weren't really being represented. I mean, the true thing is this. Airbnb was not on the ballot yesterday. The hosts in San Francisco who wanted to share their homes were on the ballot. We're in 34, 000 cities. The people who have everything at stake for the most part were the hosts in San Francisco. Now there was a precedent to think about in San Francisco. But by now, most cities and countries around the world have decided they're going to deal with it how they want to deal with it. And there's been, frankly, dozens of precedents already set. So the really big battle yesterday was really about the people of San Francisco. And I think that what we really want to do, and we needed Chris to help us with, was not make me, in the company, the face of every one of these fights. Because it's really not about us. 90 % of the stakes by definition, the business model, is about these hosts, these people. And when people are protesting, they're thinking about me. And maybe they understand me, or don't misunderstand me. But I'm not even the point of this. The biggest point of this are the host. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

The Airbnb founder comments on the rejected a proposition that would have restricted short-term rentals in San Francisco.