Brian Chesky dates Apple's golden age of industrial design to roughly 1998 and the iMac.
“you get to the golden age of Apple, starting probably in 1998 with the iMac”
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Brian Chesky
1 episodes · 19 quoted claims
Brian Chesky's graduation project at RISD was a child's ventilator.
“One of the projects I designed when I graduated was a child's ventilator.”
Brian Chesky says Apple was about ninety days from bankruptcy when Steve Jobs returned in 1997.
“Steve Jobs, when he came back to Apple in 1997, in July of 1997, they were ninety days from bankruptcy.”
Brian Chesky says Airbnb had about 7,000 employees around 2019 and he felt he had lost control of the company.
“I had like 7,000 employees. I didn't know what anyone was doing.”
Brian Chesky says Airbnb lost 80% of its business within eight weeks when the pandemic began.
“the pandemic happened, and we lost 80% of our business in eight weeks.”
Brian Chesky says he held about thirty-five hours of group meetings a week in founder mode, similar to Steve Jobs's approach at Apple.
“So I probably did thirty five hours of meetings, which is very similar to the way Steve ran Apple.”
Brian Chesky says 159 of 175 companies in the latest Y Combinator batch were enterprise companies.
“I'm on the board of Y Combinator, 175 companies last batch, 159 were enterprise.”
Brian Chesky says Airbnb handled nearly $100 billion a year in gross sales, about one dollar of every $1,000 spent worldwide.
“It did nearly $100 billion a year in gross sales. For every $1,000 spent in the world, one dollar was spent on Airbnb.”
Airbnb launched its services and experiences business in one hundred cities at once, which Brian Chesky says did not work right away.
“And we launched service experiences in one hundred cities.”
Brian Chesky says Airbnb began in New York City with about a hundred users.
“When we started Airbnb, we started in one city, New York City. We had a hundred users.”
Brian Chesky says Paul Buchheit, a Y Combinator partner, created Gmail.
“Paul Buchheit was a partner Y Combinator. He created Gmail.”
Brian Chesky says Hiroki Asai was Steve Jobs's creative director at Apple, working on ads and graphic design.
“He was Steve Jobs' creative director. It was a function under marketing. He did the ads, he did the graphic design.”
Brian Chesky says John Wooden won ten NCAA championships over twelve years coaching UCLA.
“So John Wooden won ten NCAA championships over twelve years.”
Brian Chesky says Airbnb has roughly a 40% free cash flow margin and about $100 billion in sales.
“We have like 40% free cash flow margin, we're very profitable. We do $100 billion in sales.”
Brian Chesky says Airbnb went public at roughly a $100 billion valuation, which he first considered one of the best days of his life.
“we go public, you have 100 billion dollar valuation. It's like one of the best days of my life.”
Brian Chesky cites a former Disney CFO saying the company has done little fundamentally new since Walt Disney died in 1966.
“Walt died in 1966. Since 1966, you still make feature length animated films, TV and Magic Kingdoms.”
Brian Chesky says Apple was worth a few hundred billion dollars when Steve Jobs died and is now worth multiple trillions.
“They were a few 100 billion dollar company. When he died, they're like a multi 1 trillion dollar company.”
Brian Chesky says he competed in bodybuilding at the teenage national level by age nineteen.
“I ended up by nineteen competing at the national level. I competed at teenage nationals.”
Brian Chesky says Sequoia funded Airbnb with $600,000 at a $3 million post-money valuation, the highest for a Y Combinator company at the time.
“Sequoia just funded us, $600,000 at 3 million dollar post money valuation, highest valuation Y Combinator.”