McKinsey recently put out a great interview with one of the founders of Airbnb, Brian Chesky, talking about the relationship between his company and cities. I thought it was fascinating. Click here to watch the video.
If you don’t feel like doing that, I’ve also pasted the interview transcript below and bolded some of the really interesting takeaways. Let us all know what you think in the comment section below.
_____________________________________________________
Interview Transcript
Starting a revolution
It’s a currency of trust, and that used to live only with a business. Only businesses could be trusted, or people in your local community. Now, that trust has been democratized—any person can act like a brand.
Airbnb is a way that you can, when you’re traveling, book a home anywhere around the world. And by anywhere, I mean 34,000 cities in 190 countries. That’s every country but North Korea, Iran, Syria, and Cuba.
The reason we started was I was living with my roommate, Joe, in San Francisco, and I couldn’t afford to make rent. That weekend, the International Design Conference was coming to San Francisco. All the hotels were sold out. Joe had three air beds. We pulled the air beds out of the closet, we inflated them, and we called it the “Air Bed and Breakfast.”
The reason it’s grown so fast is, unlike traditional businesses, we don’t have to pour concrete. The infrastructure and the investment was already made by cities a generation ago. And so all of a sudden, all you needed was the Internet.