Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on what founder mode really means
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Hello, welcome to decoder. I mean, I petal, editor in chief of the virgin decoder, is my show about big ideas and other problems. Today i'm talking with a bb cofounder and CEO, brian cheskin, who is only the second person to be on decoder three times.

The other is metta CEO, mark, sucker berg. It's rare company. And what made this one particularly good is a brand. I work together in our new york city studio for the first time. It's pretty easy to hear how much loser and more fun the conversation was because we were .

in the same room now.

Bryant made a lot of waves a couple months ago when he started talking about something called founder mode. At least one well known investor, pod gram red, a blog post about brians approach to running A B D, gave IT that name. Founder mode has since become a little bit of a mean.

That means basically what anyone wants that to mean. And I was excited to brian back on the show to talk about IT and what specifically he met. After all, one of the reasons I love talking to brian is because he spends so much time obsessing over company structure and decision making. Pure decoder bate.

In fact, if you've listened to brian's previous appearances on the coder, you've already gotten a pretty good preview of founder because brian radically ally restructured airbnb after the pandemic to get away from its previous divisional structure and into a functional organization that all works from a single road map and allows him to have input on many more decisions. That's really what he's been talking about with fundament that good leaders need to be in the details. You'll hear him say that very clearly and also expressed his disappointment in the idea that founder mode is about pure sweat or micro management.

But leaders being in all the details and helping make all the decisions isn't not how most companies run. And of course, we went back and forth on how much good leaders should delegate and trust their teams to make independent decisions. For your decoder fan, this is the good stuff brand.

I really got into IT go to hear him talk about a wide range of managing styles, what they're good for, why he still considers himself as student of Steve jobs. Actually, Steve jobs comes up a lot in this one, as does john Y. F, whose new company love from does design work for airbnb.

Don't worry, I asked about that too. On top of all that, we actually started the show by talking about some big air being being news. The company just launched something called the cohoes network, which is a directory of experienced A V B hosts that can run listings for people who just want to make a little extra money renting out their homes without all the it's a big change, which effectively creates a new role on the air B N B S platform.

And he gave you a great opportunity to talk to brian about some of the issues surrounding area B, B, and what it's like to run a platform that has all of the same issues as any other platform like youtube or tiktok, but which deals in literal, physical housing. All of that in an hour plus even more. There's assessments of tim cook in such an adella here.

Talking to brian is a ride, but I think I held my own, and I think you really like this one. okay? Bran chest CEO. L, B, B.

every go.

Francheska a coffee and sea of airbnb. Welcome back to the coder.

Well, thank you for having me again.

Ah it's you're only a second, third time guest. OK. The other one is mark zag.

H wow, this is really good company .

and you are in the study of if your people, you were together.

which is amazing in the first time i've been the studio with you.

So thank you for help me here. Yeah, actually the last time you were on IT was such a good conversation. We are both in new york and I my brain reinterpreted IT as we were together because I was a .

good conversation. So yeah, the sign of a good very we were remote in the same city.

Yes, I was. But you're here today. It's great. There's a lot talk about airbnb just had it's winter release to a bunch of features we should talk about and actually very curious about how you are thinking about hosting and professionalized hosting and what that means for a platform.

And then if you're decoder, you gotten know I want to talk to brand about founder mode. Yeah the feast of our show is basically right up the then diagram of decoder and founder mode. And what those ideas are, are basically a circle.

And then I just how to be generally, well, how the companies is going and you've made some water truck changes of your own. Let's start with the news, the winter release. The last time you are on and actually talked about staggering airbags releases on one time when to the whole companies summer release, the winter release. What's the big news in the winter release?

Two things. The first thing is we're introducing something that we call the cohoes network. So what is this? Well, let's start and give some background arb.

We're only as good as a number of homes we have. And the more homes we have, the more modulated the Prices are on army base. So we need to get a lot more homes.

And Frankly, we had more than eight million holmes today. We d love millions more in a addition to the ghana comes come there being a big. So we went out to a lot of perspective host, and we asked them, if we do piero c know, why aren't you hosting?

Number one, people first say, you know that they had no idea of the of money they can make, and it's a very compelling amount of money you can make, make tens of thousands wars with an asset your day paying for. So we ask why rents you hosting? And the number when the answer people give us was they perceived as being too much work.

So like, well, I have a job, I have kids, I have this, I have that. I don't know if I can come home, check in guest, or maybe I live in new york city here and I have a summer home in florida, but I can't be in floria check in the gas, so I need help hosting. And we thought to ourselves, okay, so now if somebody doesn't have the time, they either make one of two decisions they don't host or they go in google and they type in like A B B, like property management company and they find the third party property management company.

And there's there's many, many companies that can manage your arby invite. The chAllenge we've noticed is the average five star rating for third party proper manners on ban b is about a four point six two is significantly below the the median range review score. So we thought, what what if we basically put together a whole collection of almost like M V certified host that can manage urban b for you, so we can basically create a marketplace.

We matched people with homes but don't have time. The best poser bin b don't want to expand, but they don't have a home. And these would be, you know, people that only manage a few properties so that I can to be managing you in one hundred other homes, maybe three, four, five other homes.

And so that is what we build. We build a network of cohoes who will host your property with you to take care of your home in your gas. The averaging of a cose is a four point eight six, seventy three percent of super host. And we have ten thousand of them today in ten countries, including, of course, here in the united states.

So if anyone's listening, and they are like to make twenty thousand dollars a year with the house they are to have and do very minimal work, you can go online, you'll go to the cohoes network will match you to the very best person for you. You'll have some choices. It's basically like eighty different factors to match you to the right cohoes.

Most importantly, where are you located? We want somebody near and then you negotiate the rate. So how do how do you pay them? They take a cut on your bookings and you decide that cut or you negotiate together and they give and IT can be based on whatever service you want.

They can do all the hosting for you or they can do just some of IT. So it's a totally in your control. So again, and just to bring IT all back, I think this is gna lock hundreds of thousands, potentially even millions of homes in a ba b.

And I think most importantly, this is in a lock, more real people, regular people renting the homes they live in rather than you more furnish ed dedicated rentals, which is what more likely a third party property manure would likely do. So that's the main thing we announced. But of course, that's not IT because if you know twice year we want to make these big upgrades, we can talk a lot more maybe if you want to go into later, like why we do this because it's a different way, right?

We develop software are a little more like a hardware company where instead of just doing this continuous development every hour, every day, we do some of that. We try to have these big single moments where we bring a lot of upgrades together. So we're also making more than fifty upgrades for gas in.

The basic idea is to make them be a more personalized experience. So for decades, if you went to a travel website, whether it's a media or this or that, you'd have the same exact search experience with someone else. It's not personalized to you.

And we think travel should be more personalized. So we have a whole bunch of features and upgrades that really personalized a search experience based on the passbook you've done and what we know about your profile. So those are the basic things we've done, seventy upgrades.

I mean, the final thing i'll just say is these seventy upgrades are seventy out of four hundred and thirty upgrades do we made IT over the last two years. So this system of launching, I think, has really accelerated product development. R, B, B.

yes, I want to come back to the product cycle. You all do, do, do IT very differently, but I wanted to stay on the coast for one second. That is professionalized a huge portion of airbnb.

I know some professional host to managment companies to other properties. You know, their point of view is you got to find us more market to people who in properties, and they will will put you on every platform. Yeah you're going to do all of the discovery of finding a coast and then the negotiated cut and then handling the switch on your platform. Yes, in this actually just bring a more professional class of management companies .

is directly in the area, baby, no, actually um let let me break this down. So there is a lot of third party professional property management companies. If you're like a third party company, you don't want to have a business just managing five people and build your own website and build your own domain for five people, for five properties.

So you tend to need economies of scale. So you're going to be managing hundreds of properties, even thousands of properties. If you managed thousands of properties.

Now you have a whole bunch employees, and then you probably have a company name and your employees probably wear A T shirt with the company name on the t shirt. This is basically just a little more of an an strip hospital experience. Some of my arguments a little more like a hotel.

There can be pluses to that from a service standpoint. But a lot of people, the original ethos severan b of like living like a local, this is a little bit different than that. So what this is is, number one, every single cohoes is veit by airbnb.

We go through everyone's profile. We only allow cohoes to be people that have high ratings in arb b. So these are the very best host in being being.

Additionally, we bias towards people that manage only a few properties in the reason why is we notice that the more properties you manage, the lower the five star rating a gas leaves. After a certain scale, there are some property matters amazing and defy this. But generally speaking, hospitality is a difficult thing to industrialize.

And so people want a local feel asking her to amazon or delivery or other types of businesses where, you know, scale makes the service Better. In hospitality, scale often makes the service more chAllenging. And so I think this is maybe an alternative to the extremely professionalized third party property managers.

And in some ways, IT kind of moves there may be a little more closely towards the roots. And again, I think we're going to bias towards more regular people putting up their real homes rather than more dedicated rental. So that's where we're going now.

Just a one copy if anyone is listening and they work at or uh, a third party property mantra, we love the ones guess love. So though the averaging across the board isn't as high, there are some unbelievable property managers and we love them. The last point of this make is IT is true that property matters are more likely.

You know, you might call crossness the the cross list their inventory in many different platforms. And you know one of the core values of A B B is you come to R B B to find something. You can find a new else. If you can find everything else, then we're just like another e commerce platform, but not adding a lot of value. So the cohoes airbnb are exclusive and these properties are exclusive.

Hearing an b one of the reasons I was like talking to you is the airbnb has all of the chAllenges of a internet video platform, is a platform suppliers and audiences. But then you're managing this a very physical thing, seems chAllenging.

The it's a airbnb. Here's here's a thing people don't realize airbnb is a harder business to run than IT pears because the reason like apple does not appear to be an easy business because the one device is like a miracle on your hand opening eye doesn't appear to be an easy business. The area bb does in the reason there, bb appears to be easy business because at a subscale, IT is an easy business.

If you wanted to just find a home in creation, you don't even need a website. You can just get a friend. You can get a house.

The part that makes them to be harb is four million people at night from nearly every country in the world, more countries. And cocoa o Operates living together. That's the part that makes a hard.

The scale in the scale is the only way you can actually do this profitably or very, very profitably as well. So that's the part that makes IT really difficult. In other words, like I member, I think he was Douglas I from sqa capital.

This is like ten years ago, he comes in my office and he said, you have like the hardest business of any, the square, a powerful companies to run and he said, like you, first of all, you have to have a mobile APP. You need a website. You know, this is when uber only had a mobile p so you need to be on every platform.

You need to be in every country in the world, but you need supply and demand. And they're not in the same city. Uber could go one city at a time.

They can get riders and drivers in one city. We had to get like supply everywhere, in demand everywhere and perfectly match the corridors. IT is highly regulated as regulators.

Uber probably even more regulated in many ways. And the hotel commissions and the hotel trade councils are signals more powerful than the taxi union. So there is a very, very difficult business.

We're handling a lot of money through the platform over ninety billion hours year, which is the GDP of creates a we have to deal what physical safety and more types of physical safety than even right sharing because of all the mural things. Obviously, there's a lot of accidental lake issues that can occur. You have to deal with some of the hardest customer service change.

You can imagine somebody checks in at eleven pm in paris there from tokyo. They don't speak french and the host doesn't responsive. They've to call customer service.

So you you start to really think about you have to manage the quality of supply that you don't actually own or control, but you have to influence the quality in your competing with the alternative supply that has a front desk. By the way, I could keep going on on on our search problem. People think that like google has got one of the heart to search problems and I mean, b is got a more pedestrian search problem.

I'm not saying we have any type of search technology like google, but here's the difference. When you type summer in google wins the last time, you need to just ever look at the third page of google is the first five results are the only five results you need if you're typing in paris and you need a house, we have one hundred and fifty thousand homes. So suddenly this is a matching problem, not just a search relevancy problem, where there's just one right answer. So IT is a harder business than meets the eye and not just our core business that doesn't involve taking this business in expanding this model to new categories and verticals.

One of reasons that I like the frame of its a platform when I chat with you is I can just come up with ways that I would game any other and asked them how you would solve this problem. So how would I game tiktok? Ker, how would I game youtube? Or how do bad actors use those platforms? IT seems like you have a lot of those .

same account and mouse game. IT is so changing. For example, we i'll give an example of something. We found there was an entire industry of companies that emerged that we call and we stop them that were basically advertising that they can get your bad reviews taken down.

And they basically like knew how to like call customer service and what to say to get your like negative reviews taken down. That became non ally, a fragging activity. IT became an industry.

There were entire companies built doing this. And of course, that's fragile lent, and so you have to stop that stuff. But the thing that makes erm be so difficult in this way and probably more difficult than, say, a video platform is IT a longer tale, right?

Like it's not like like somebody like a youtube people can be gaming things, but generally like a disappoint tion. Number of views go to certain videos, right? Make sense in a bb that's not possible.

Only one person can stay at the house at a time or one family can stay at a time. So you really is a long tail and it's nearly every country. So there's a lot of different schemes that can occur.

The reason brought that up in the context of cohoes network is IT seems like professionalized or certifying that class of user on airbnb goes a long way hundred towards ending some of the game fiction ocs in the park.

Yeah I mean, basically maybe they like mildly over simplify the entire one of the entire trends that we're doing going to bb. We are basically managing more of the elementary and verifying more the users at like the simplest level. So you think about like it's really important to see in the history where he became from the context of starting airbnb was ebay and crack list, in fact.

And I think people should recall that I think when I started being being with my two friends, ebay is market cap might even been higher than amazon. I wasn't obvious amazon was gonna the winner or kind of really pulled LED away. But ebay was the marketplace and craggs us was how most people found housing IT was completely the willest.

I mean, it's pretty much still is today. There is nothing there was really no management of intent when we thought the internet is like an immune system. And what you should do is give community tools to more moderate themselves.

So flags report to this behavior, but most importantly, a review system. And we built this really powerful review system where about two hundred to three people, after they book in airbnb, labor review in two thousand of three coast liver review. And we thought all this is, and IT turns out that, that is necessary, but not sufficient.

And so over time, we've been in the business of managing more and more of the quality ourselves. So we're very, very hands on, on quality control. Most new services were actually vetting and even certifying ourselves.

And so we think reviews are important, but we don't want to put the entire burden on the user base. And again, there's a lot of ways to game things. So you're got to be very, very hands on. But the more things you verify, the more things you inspect, the more things you certify, the fewer kind of areas to exploit a company there is we .

need to take a quick break will be your epic.

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We're back with A B B C, A bran chest. I discussing how the similarities and differences between a product like airbnb and other big social platforms influence the moderation tools and design decisions that go into IT. Let me put that right next to the platforms and forgive me a bit.

However, many days away from the election and the thing I see of all of the major social networks right now is they're doing less moderation. Yes, they are less interested in. Therefore, ying things are true or fuse, or even the people are real.

People are not A I like you just see IT all over the photos. They're taken a hands off every bb platform. You're saying we're doing more.

Yes, we're certifying more things when you sign up and you want to rent the room in your house while you're gone. unification. Here's a list of approved code.

Here's experiences we're designing with professional designers. Why the difference? Why is that all the other platforms let him go and you're .

grabbing on title? I have a theory that i'll share in our business. It's obvious what the customer wants. The customer wants more moderation. They just do like we've never I never heard of customers say, like you are controlling the inventory too much, you are removing too many bad listings. You are pioneering hosts that are making me unhappy.

They actually call to the opposite, like how dare are you like like they get very upset and personal when a home doesn't work out, even if not our home, where is the platform? So we are consistently held responsible by the customer for the content on our platform. And so the customer is expected this number one.

Number two, the economic incentive are very, very clear. This is not like an advertising platform where the like product in the business model are pretty separate from an a line interest in point. They're completely connected. So you can started to see a bad airbnb people then don't read book on airbnb that don't come back. So it's a really clear economic incentive.

And the last thing is army bees are just not that politicize, you know, like people just want to have good vacations and so you don't have the like kind of myriad of political issues and baggage. I think when IT comes to platforms like twitter or will x youtube, instagram, tiktok, it's not clear what the customers asking for. I think in the one hand, customers you know users want information.

By the other hand, I think they're very skeptical of the hand that platforms are putting on the product, and they're not in our case. But I do think that we're going to look back in history and the platforms in the future that can be most successful and be the ones that have the greatest truth and veracity information and veracity information starts with. Are these people real? Are they not real? I remember ealing, elon, when he first acquired twitter, and I gave a unsolid advice, which is that you should verify a hundred percent of the years, as on twitter, they decided not to do that. And I didn't even really.

but I would have .

done and you maybe maybe you do yeah I would have verified one hundred percent of the users. I still think a platform that verifies every single person, it's a really, really good idea. And that's what we do right now. Yeah, now there might be reasons not to verify like you just want to I know maybe people are nervous about verification. IT can be wise flowers on platforms and light.

And but again, a lot of the reason people don't want moderation is they the companies and they believe the companies are critically motivated and they're putting their thun on the scale politically for free speech, this becomes like an attack vector for politics. I think before you moderate content, you should moderate people. You should moderate not should they be kicked off the site or on the site. But just are these real people? Are they who they say they are and are they allowed to use suing them or not?

In the speech context, there's quite a long history of debate about and we can set that side in the context of airbnb ah, but it's interesting how the platforms is expressed in Adams for you and bits for them. yes. Result in very different incentives totally in the part where you're taking more and more control the experience because you think that's perfectly line of the customer at some point. You just send up with a front desk, you just run in the hotel like that. That's the farther end of that journey.

IT seems like I love how you think because like it's good to like take logical steps towards their conclusion and ask where did you draw the line? I think we want to have almost all the benefits of a hotel when, while we're meaning a while retaining the benefits of arab b, so lets us break them down. The benefits of an airbnb is every room in every homeless difference.

There's no skill. You got a hotel. I mean, hotels are such commodities that you never see the room you're booking, you don't even know the florida booking, you book a hotel room, don't know even florida are on, let alone what view you have.

And by the way, doesn't really matter because they are kind of all the same or release to hold us kind of trains, you not to care that is the definition of commodity. It's such a commodity. You don't even have any choice.

You just choose the hotel. You barely choose the room, maybe you choose the tear of the room. But so we want every space to be unique.

We want every space to be one of a kind. We want our experience to be as personal as possible. Yes, there are like more professional managers today than the work ten years ago.

But generally speaking, still ninety percent of our host are regular people. We want to feel like when you step into an airbnb or you travelled to a city, you're living like a local. So those are the things we want to retain.

And we really wanted to be there home. We don't want to create an urban by aesthetic, right? I've been asked, like what you guys do a deal if I kia in this and that and it's like, well, actually that's not really what people want.

They don't really want a standards ization of design. They really want to feel like they are in paris, though they feel like they are in paris. They feel like the same as they are in kinds of city or somewhere else.

But hotels, they they start to feel more similar, especially chain hotels. But we do want to do is match the hotel service at least as much as we can. And so there isn't a front test.

But can we create a essentially like remote front test? Can we have more twenty four, seven support? Can we use A I to basically level the playing field of front desk, where A I can be like immediate IT? Can be multi language IT? Can, uh, a judi mean A I at least can be a front line that can Better adjudicate disputes between gas ino's Better than a real person.

Because what I can do as you can train up on the corpse of like a hundred policies. And then I can look at the last hundred thousand times somebody complained about this, and what was the most likely resolution that LED a satisfaction? Remove parties. And you can actually train a model to spit out the right, the answer, and they can either directly spit out the answer as the front line through the APP to the gas on hose, or if you do want to talk to a person, IT can help the the customer service person. So I think we want to manage alban bees more and more and more before they become ours because then um not even that would be a bad business model, but I think I would like start to cut into the ethos of feel like you're living like a local and being .

truly authentic. Where's the last step of that? Is IT just owning the property?

Is taking the book. I mean, the step beyond this we haven't gone to is you have applied a list and airbnb, we have certain quality criteria. And if you don't meet that quality, caterina, then you can't listen.

Or bamba, that's probably where we're going within our new verticals. Our new verticals we're going to be launching starting next year. We're gna basically, you know, amazon had this moment where they were just selling books and then then like the late nineties, they decided to go just outside books.

What's adj in the books back in the nineties, dvds in city players, right? cds. And then they went further and further, further. So we're going to have the amazon moment for the new verticals and categories were launching. I believe we're gonna a, replied the list model where you have to apply.

And so we're starting to have an opinion equality that is gonna the next step and pride the final step, the step beyond that is actually own inOperable. And we don't interOperate anything except for these promotional listings that people might know of, which are basically called icon. So we built like a forty foot tall Polly pocket clam shell.

Yes, we owned, Operate that, but that's really marketing. And IT generates a lot of views. We're not riding the business owning.

Operating anything idea you people who will apply. I just keep coming back to the history of various platforms, youtube for a while, how these things called mcs. They were like big companies, multi channel network, and then they would buy a bunch of popular youtube channels.

And they they wanted to be like preferred suppliers each in youtube basically decided this was too big of a risk. They don't want anyone to have that level of control over youtube. So basically killed all the mcs. This is a lot. There's a books about IT now you can read. Do you ever force yourself as having that kind of supplier on the ibb platform? This is a hosting provider that provides this kind of experience at this level that we can trust to build something out with, and they're going to own and Operate the actual property.

I think that we're gna probably have in the future are more standardized quality tears. And so there's going to be a standard to list on airbnb. And then there's probably going to be like maybe depending upon the vertical different letters, les of certificates or quality.

And the quality could be based on their experts in the real world, where could be based on what customers are saying and there being based. For example, we have this tag, this designation called gas favor. It's too mine the best time to be based on ratings, reviews and customer service tickets.

So I think going to do more and more of that. Yeah, that's probably work gna go. Yes.

i'm interested to see that plays.

It's all going to play over the next twenty four months.

I'll give you another really dumb example, like both fee designed its entire business on being the best at facebook and one day facebook was like, well, we can we don't have you. An army of teenagers will just make instagram for us today. Bus fy this whatever business IT is yeah and you can see how and whatever tear has called the eighty year in nashville summons like we're just going to dominate the eight year in an area being we will have to deal with us. Is that a eventuality you thought that .

I think it's a little bit different because you don't have the consolidation of inventory in the same way, right? Like let's take youtube. mr. Bee's video can get one or two hundred million views. You can't have the ibb a single ibb be that popular.

So the entire marketplace is significantly more long tail where in one hundred thousand cities, not one city represents even one percent of our business in airbnb. So I think generally, there has been this move towards a little more consolidation at even via profession property managers, but is not in that much. Again, for the last four years alone, ninety percent of our host are individuals.

That number has remained pretty much unchanged. I think many of the new products and features were launching are going to able more and more people to allow more and more long tail inventory onto the platform. That's generally where we're pushing.

Does IT benefited B, B to have less consulted in mentorian? The platform would probably does because they're less like good across list. But you know, that would be a bomb if we did that and there was missile with a customer.

But IT turns out that like there's a chart i've put out before, IT literally shows a number of properties you managed in your five star rating. And quite literally, IT is a perfect curve downward slope. The highest rated airbnb host manage one property, the second higher managed two down to a thousand and IT literally goes and there is not one single deviation from one, two thousand.

It's crazy. Now IT doesn't mean therefore all people mentioned that prompts are bad IT just means that most people haven't figured out how to industrialize hospitality. And there's it's just oh, here, let me give you one other argument for why regular people can sometimes work economically really well.

If i'm a dedicated rental, I need to basically build a profit margin because i'm a business. So I have rent and I need to be very careful about any cost I in curve. So if we're in a house, I might have like four books, but I maybe I won't have twenty books because like book five through twenty is additional cost on putting on to my ibb.

And so I might have six coffee mugs, but I am going to have ten coffee mugs. I mind. I have a kitchen aid mixer. These are all cost I have to bear. If it's your real house, you might have all the stuff anyway because you live there.

And so you don't need to charge a nearly rate that has a profit margin because this was unsold inventory that you weren't monodist ing and now you're monodist ing IT. So it's another one of the economic dynamics where non professionals sometimes have an economic advantage over professionals. This is just one example. Another, their homes are equipped and the fixed cost is an investment of already incurred. So this might be another .

way of saying IT, yeah, that's interesting. Well, i'm very interested to see how cost, when the fourth time, what will check in .

on I I love these conversations. Anything I appreciated the depth that you go into.

Well, get ready because it's come let's to do IT. So I said, I think the founder road conversation in the deco der questions are just a pure overnight. Yes, the last time you were on the show, you described reorganize b he restructure the company.

You went on to this road map where you ship twice a year in big deliveries, and he said, I got rid of all of these middle managers, and i'm the product manager in everyone. Yes, rose up to me. And I thought.

this is the product after g product offers.

And I thought, this is great. This is what I want out of code conversation. And then like a year passes and you gave a talk and I was like, i've seen that talk for that's that we don't have pms like the designers i've heard this from before.

And in palgrave goes and rights, a block khost called founder mode ah and everyone is reacting to IT yeah is there is something meaningfully different than the way you have structured airbnb and founder mode? I missing something. Is something changed in that .

I don't think china logy, I don't think so. I think that let me this way. It's not like I suddenly and running the company different than a year ago.

It's just now IT has a label and I think IT just makes sense. Everyone, let me let me give a little bit of background and that talk. Yeah okay.

So you get the first version is talk a .

figura conference. Yeah yeah. In the figure, a conference was kind of like maybe quarter of what I said. So let me let me just go.

I'll do you like the the short version because I know we have limit a time, but let me just give a low, as you know, over last four year, like from two thousand and nine and two thousand and nineteen, iran, airbnb, the way most technical, run their companies. I didn't know how to run IT. And so I hire people from google and amazon and microsoft, different companies, and they brought their processes with them.

And we kind of vert towards way everyone runs their company. So, you know, we basically remember, like a thousand employees, we were kind of a matrix organization, like almost all matter. Storing IT was hard to get worked done. Basically like a giving example. There was like a creative marketing department that would have to create graphics for different teams.

And then we kept hiring teams that kept herring sub teams that kept asking more and more for the graphics, right? The graphics team that was called the created group at at some point the created group was like a delhi, and they had these like lines out the window and they just kind of threw their hands up if you needed anything done, like let's see you a team, you needed a button design or like a graphic for a button design, IT would be like a three months waiting less because they were innovated. So then the team said, i'll give us their own resources, give me a dedicated creative person.

And this could also be true for technology, for finance, for a legal team like any function. And this is when you start to divisional ze the company, quite literally, you're sub dividing IT. And this is where the general management structure comes from. IT makes a lot of sense why this happens.

The problem with that though, is that once you subdivide the company that can be searched, rolling in different directions, now you have even more because because the groups don't want to work together because they're incentivize to work on different things and they might not be totally compatible anymore. Now ten teams can have ten different text tax. They don't actually fit together.

A local decision that might make sense for your team, might not make sense for of the company rates is thing. The next thing is that these journal manager incentivize typically output goals. You don't usually run on pants.

They run on like impact growth. So they have to advocate for as many resources as possible. This is what we call politics you're advocating for yourself.

And so suddenly groups like you know, they startling in many different reactions. And because the companies going immediate instructions, oversight becomes more difficult. When oversight gets more difficult, now there's this censors less accountability yeah people there are crappy and there's no consequence.

So that makes people feel like IT doesn't matter. This sets in complacency. And this is, I think, what ends up happening at big companies.

The big thing that I said about founder mode, and this is something I said for four years, it's not about programme coin that founder mode. I think it's a good name. I think it's very catchy. I could not have made something as virus program, but there is a downside to the name. The downside and name is now is viewed first of people don't know founder motives.

They think that means swagger I remember a tweet said, like i'm going founder mode n this breeder, I don't know what that means like I think people think that means like the founder swagger, I don't give a fuck i'm going in kicking us that that's kind of what IT turned into and only founders have that. And that wasn't the message. If I could summarized founder mode in like a couple sentences, it's being in the details.

It's that great leadership is presence, not absence. It's about a leader being in the details. And if you as a leader aren't the details, guess what? Your leaders aren't in the details and their leaders aren't any details.

And one day you're going to wake up and you have fifty men or fifty year olds managing forty year olds managing thirty old, managing people two years at a college, doing all the work. We know oversetting of these four unnecessary layers, and you have no experts in the company. So the end, oto, this is to try to be as functional as possible.

We are a functional organization. Functional just means expertise space, not general management space. And so i'm the only non functional person in the company.

All functions roll up to me. I generally think the CEO should be the chief producer of the company. And here's the horrific like the most important thing the company does is make a product.

If the CEO is not the explain the product, then why are they the CEO? I another said differently, I should not be the CEO spaces because I couldn't be the cheap broke doors, because I do not understand rockery. So maybe i'm a good CEO, but I can be the cheap broadcasters.

There may be some exceptions, but I generally think that's the case. And then your leaders shouldn't just be quote managers and I put managers in quotes. They should be in the details.

If we were a military like a battle on the coverage, generals should know how to ride horse, like it's crazy that they down and leaders shouldn't be functional. So it's really about being in the details. Now here's the problem with the narrow of being the details.

There's a term for IT and it's a majority. It's called micro manager and everyone's afraid to be accused to be a micro manager. So I had this thought because founder mode, a lot of IT came from me studying Steve jobs.

Basically for ten years. I was at witz end. I wasn't my first sensing to copy Steve jobs leadership style. IT was kind of a last resort, and I didn't copy everything, but I copied a lot of how you organize the company and ran the company.

A few weeks ago, I had dinner with his son, read jobs and I member asking him what Steve jobs opinion of micro management was. And he said he had such an interesting perspective. He said Steve jobs was in the details.

He would skip level many levels to be in the details, which is something that, like somebody who goes to hbs would like, never do. He said he never felt like with micromanaging because he was pardoning with people on the details. And I asked like Johnny eve and people like heroic e who worked with Steve and I said, do you feel like d js Michael manage you? And they said, no, he didn't.

I don't know. Maybe i'm a micromanager, maybe i'm not. I think the distinction is I member, one time an executive on my team said, is this your decision or this my decision? And I members saying I should never be either and that's founder mode.

IT should never be either. It's never your decision. It's never my decision.

We're in IT together. If your co founders whose decision is IT, it's your decision together. It's the same thing.

Hierarchical ally with the art chart. So that's really what this means. That means a great leadership is presence, not absence, is in the details.

And what a lot of founders do is they let go the product and they abcde responsibility, and they, you know, the CEO the company should set like frying sleut men wrote book cult amped up. He basically said to turn the company around, this CEO just needs to set th Epace o f t he c ompany. You set the vision, you said, but more important, the vision.

I think you set th Epace, you set the standards and and that's what founder mode is really about. And by the way, you don't need to be a founder to do that. You can apply founder mode to government. You can founder mode to a nonprofit, to a volunteer organza, to being a sports coach. IT just means the leadership is presence in the details.

And it's not about being so called autocratic because you're not telling the experts what to do, but you know what they're doing and you're working through and you're chAllenging them and you should do this because let's say you have ten experts like they might disagree, right? Like finance says this is the best outcome that making flick with legal, which might conflict with product marketing, which represents the customer, which might conflict in engineering, which is the schedule. So you have to weigh all these trade us. That's why you have to be in the details. So that's little bit of that's a maybe one other thing before .

we wrap up is so far from rapping.

yeah, yeah, yeah. One little bit, i'd like to say about hiring just just like just a thought. One of the most important things I do is I an executive team.

You could think of them as like sea level or S V P. There's about like seven of them. And then I have you probably the next level of VP s and this maybe like thirty of them are forty.

I don't really know how many there something I do that's different than almost every other C E. O. In the valley.

But I think you, I think jenson wang basically does the Steve jobs did this. What this need to this new one must do this is I treat all the VP as track reports. Jenson got rid of the executive here.

He just has forty direct. That's a little unwieldy for me. I gone to that thought experiment of just having the VP s and it's just it's like I can't track everything but all VP s dual report. They report to me, enter their executive and I am the co hiring manager.

So instead of me hiring an executive like a CFO and the CFO hires their people, I am the co hiring manager, I do the kick off, I am the second interview, and ultimately I decide the final compensation for all the top people in the company, not the managers. The managers give recommendations, and I basically make the final decision. This is a just a very practical version of founder mode of being in the details. You don't just hire and manage your executives, use skip level and manage as many people's possible in the due reporting relationship.

We have to taken another .

quick AK glib ax.

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We're back with airbnb C. O. Brian chesty talking about founder mode, what its origins are inside the airbnb and how the phrase has helped to clarify some of brands big thinking on management.

So I think the branding of founder mode has offered you some narrative clearly is very clear for not the last year time we had a very similar kind of conversation. I did pull all of that back into what are we really describing here in the sort of decode or framework. I would say what you are describing is fundamentally the functional organza, not a divisible organza.

And I was the big change that you made the last time you were on the show. You since made other changes. You just created this new role in the sea sweet chief business officer.

You promoted your CFO into that role. Walk me through that, right? You're obviously involving how you're thinking of the company and the rules within the company inside of this framework. How do you make that decision?

One thing about functional and another another question is this. I don't think all companies should be functional, but I think they should be as functional as they can get away with that the rule band hori had the same. Give ground gradually.

Y you should give them gradually. Ally, all start up, start as functions organza, Steve jobs s said, I want to be the world's large to start up, but he wants to still Operate like a startup. And so I think you should give ground ragingly.

And so that's the general physical. Hy, I just want to say one thing about being a functional organism. There is one very specific downtown side.

The downside of functionality ization is you cannot do desperate things. Yeah, but here's something I wanted to spell. It's not sure you can do as many things.

It's not true you it's a slower run organza. We've actually increased product development by being a functional organza, but we're like one fly wheel, and we can create three other fly wheels that are desperate. So you know, the only reason I believe a company should divisionally ze is so they think could do truly desperate things that have despite functional expertise.

So like if we had like a jet engine business, like that's a different functional expertise. So now let's go to the business organza. At most companies, there is no function called business.

Maybe we can also say called revenue. The business revenue, commercial, commercial, there's different names. They achieve commerce officer, chief business officer, chief of advances ster.

They all kind of me the same thing. And the reason most companies don't have this is because they have general managers and the journal al managers play that role. The general managers are extensively, both they like mini CEO and they own the business, and they usually partner with a finance person. So somewhere between the journal manager, the finance person or maybe a data scientist, there r the business function. And we found that the problem, what that is, none of them are really experts in, quote, business.

When I mean business, I mean kind of revenue, the business model, the market size, you what are the kind of dynamics of this market? You know, like cohoes, like what should we charge? Should this be a free service? Do we take a commission? Know how does this compared to the other party property management services? Which countries do we roll out? What are the economics by country? Is that a standard rate? Like there's a lot of detail questions.

One meant answer. So we decided to create a chief bs organza organza. IT has three functions.

One is supply. Supply was always a functionality, but I was kind of conflicted with international in general managers. We said there are experts in getting supply of homes, experiences and other things on me.

Then we have a business function. Business function is quite literally the counterpart, the business counterpart of product marketing. So product marketing is basically news vo product management, product marketing is basically product management minus program management, plus some outdoor marketing, and its fewer people.

That's all IT is. And it's outbound and down in one role, they are really thinking about what the customer wants, what the experience should be like. But they're not in spread cheats.

They're not business model people. So they have a counterpart called the business function. And so with cohoes network, for example, we had a business person looking at the business model of coast.

We had a product marketing person that's understand what's the product, how we're going to market this, like why do people actually want this? Those two people have to go together. One reports to heroic e, its product marketing is more creative.

One reports to dave Stephenson, the former CFO now chief business offers. And they're really the two parts of the continue. Then you have a supply person.

The supply person then based on the business organization, the business model in the product marketing brief has to now go get supply. Then they work with international. The third group in the chief business officer worked to then take that playbook and bringing IT to all the different countries.

And then, of course, the product marketing has room three legged store with design and engineering, but different from other companies where a product really direct design. And I don't like that, and I caused a bit of a storm, a fig ma conference. I basically, I got i've got taken a lot context, and I said I fired all the product managers.

And what I actually happened was I got rid of the classic product management function. I resigned the most senior product manager, product marketers, and I requisitioned most the other product manage as program managers. By the way, most product managers and silicon value aren't actually product managers.

They're glorified programme managers. But there not even experts at programme matter, but that's all they are doing. They're making sure the things ships that's programme management, that's not product management. So this is what we're doing. It's a very, very simple organization and it's just a continuum of us being functional.

It's funny you say all this. If you ask my say, he will tell you that I scream that we should be division all, all the time. Yeah because I think tech journalism is different than no video game journalism is different than sports is different.

The new york magazine. But at the end of the day, we all make one kind of thing and there's reasons to have central teams and there's reasons to share class. Do you ever find yourself thinking, okay, if I was in the other kind of organza something else to be faster, but there would be another kind of I would make this trade off, but there would be a benefit to being in the more .

division yeah like I think it's really important to not be dogmatic and safe. Functional is Better in the divisions, and I think that really depends on industries. I think in tech companies, functional is journalists Better because you can leverage, share technologies and everyone can roll together, and you will get economies of scale.

And I don't know if you're business, you're doing that. But there again, the major downs. Okay, here's the here's the two things I said.

One is really too. There's two benefits of the divisional. The first benefit is you can do desperate things. We talked about that, right? So if I wanted, I just think of like an absurd.

We want to create a podcasting division like IT would be really hard for the people designing the APP. The marketers like advertising homes to think about podcasting. And now we want to create like A T V series that's like really, really desperate.

So we would struggle to do super desperate things. The second downside to a function organza is that takes longer to start. Because if we wanted just get something going, you need to, I get everyone organized.

But everyone organized has a game, multiple road map, so they didn't now make room on the road map. So desperate things that you can start quickly. A divisional structure is Better.

Those, to me, are the primary advantages of a divisional structure. There's a theoretical third advantage, which is you can hire you so called entrepreneur type people that don't fit into a functional al organza. But I that one I kind of don't agree with that.

That's a bit of a raw hole. So I won't go there unless you want to ask about IT. That being said, once you get rowing, I think about a bunch of us in like a like a crew, like a boat, right? Recall this crew boat and we're rolling together.

If if there's ten people in ten boats, they can get going faster and they can go in different reactions. But the ten person boat is going to roll faster than ten one person boats. And so once you get going, the function organza.

What I days could tell people is I is is harder to get something on the road map. But if they get on the road map, we put the weight of the company behind IT. Now I like that constraint.

I like that constraint if anyone can just do anything. Because now we're focused. Now we prioritize. Now we only do things that are differentiated. And the governor is we only do as many things as I can focus on.

That's what I do and that's what Steve jobs did at apple and that's what disney did a disney and that's what elon must does a tesler you only do as many things as a CEO can focus on a manage. Now this presumed the CEO is competent, intelligent, present, present. They understand the business. This doesn't work if you like come from a management consulting in your now leg. You're a general manager and you don't really know the domain like that wouldn't work as well.

I feel like I have like you're setting aside one topic. I'm just setting inside elon yeah to say yeah.

yes, exactly. E maybe maybe elland is a bit of a red hearing because there's all the surface level things about him that are very idiosyncratic and i'm certainly knocking the leg endorse everything he ducks. I do a lot of things differently, but I think the the commonalty of him, jenson, Steve jobs in zc kinds, absent flows, I don't think and I know zc very well and I think he would say I was a big inspiration for his year efficiency because I talked about we would did a bnb. But I think those people, they're pretty close to functional and they're pretty in the details and they set th Epace f or t he c ompany a nd t hey g enerally r eally k now w hat's g oing o n t o t heir c ompanies.

I will take about micromanaged real quick, and I will end with decisions which you see. The other big decoder question that I was like talking to you about, you mention that exactly people don't like IT. You mention that found a mode as a brand means people are just acting my church to their companies.

It's IT means like a lot of swagger for Better, worse. And I I don't think that's .

really what IT means. And I actually think is mostly for worse. I don't think IT is for Better in in most cases, you're obviously outlining a very deep level of like management thinking. You've thought of all these sometimes a lot.

If you thought what you're in company a lot, you thought about this trade offs a lot, yeah, the general sense that you should be in the details, you should not just hire smart people and let them do what they. I have a lot of ceos and show, and they are like, my secret is that I higher smart people, and I let them do IT ever they want. yeah.

I asked a lot of CEO how to make decisions. And I would say one of the most common answers we get yeah is IT would be best if I wasn't making so many decisions, if my team was empowered and all I was doing was breaking the hardest ties or making the biggest, riskiest investment decisions. yeah. So they weren't feeling that pressure.

I totally, totally disagree with that. I think i've heard jeff bao say that certainly more recently, he said my job is to make as few high quality decisions as possible, and I could not disagree more with that. And so let's start by saying it's not like I am right and jeff is is wrong by way when I say i'm also saying what Steve jobs what I said Steve jobs right IT was jeff is right.

The truth is there's multiple ways to do something yeah i'm strongly advocating for this way, by the way. Funny enough, i've taught to many people that were early members of amazon, and that's not how jeff basis ran IT early on. So here's the key thing.

I believe you need to hire smart people. The paradox is I believe most smart people want you involve. They want your partnership.

They don't want you to tell them what to do. But there's this assumption that like control a zero sum b, either I have the power or you have the power. And I think that's the flaw.

There's a scenario where all of us are powerless. It's called most four and five hundred company and there's a scary where I have more power and therefore you have more power. It's not like zero summer and i've wrestled control.

I found that the most talented people like my involvement as long as the involvement constructive and involvement isn't telling them what to do, involvement is pushing them. It's like, what about this? What about that? Steve jobs went to john.

I eyes designs to you everyday. He wasn't telling john y i've what to do. He was stuck discussing things.

And they were debating and brainstorming. And IT was partnership. And I think this is a really, really important framework. But let me give you one more yeah so somebody might ask why you are all the details.

How can you be in all details forever? That seems like it's not going to scale and someday you're going to get tired. And the answer is they're right.

Here's the most people do. They hire smart people? They give them Operating freedom. They have no idea if they're good enough because they're not engaged enough. And then over time, they start getting signals that the person isn't good and then they wrestle back control.

And once they get involved, but they haven't been involved for months or years, suddenly the executive losers, their confidence because they're only involved because they are not doing well, and that's the beginning in the end, then you basically replace them. This is happens every for the company. So there's an inverse, and i'll use that analogy.

I'm not a golfer. I'm terrible golf. I don't think i've even shot a hole terrible. But I did a couple of golf lessons once and I had a golf instructor. The golf instructor literally coached me on every single swing.

And thank god I had the gulf and structure, because if I just won the golf course on my own and I swung a thousand times, by the time the gulf structure god involved, I would have had a really screwed up swing and would take even more work to, like, retrain my swing. So the golf in structures said, i'm going to watch your swing thousands of times. And eventually this is muscle memory, and I won't need to watch your swing over time.

And that's my philosophy, my philosophy. You start in the details. You are involved in every single thing. You hire great people in your all the details in over time.

Once they develop muscle memory and they prove that they understand on the system, then you can gradually let go. Give you an example. Two years ago, I wanted to write perfect press releases.

Not, I think, anyone reads them, but because if you can't put your ideas down in a clear press release, then you don't have clear thinking. You don't know why you're doing something. Two years ago or three years ago, we did press release that we do as many seventy revisions.

And people said, this is completely crazy. Are we going to, like ten years, are now seven rivers in the press release? And the answer is no.

The most recent press release for the coast network, I probably reviews like three times, but IT was the repetition in the details. That was how people learned. Another saying is that a prentice, you know you learn and even if you hire experts, are not experts at ear company, not experts are collaborating.

They're not experts in your business. So it's about starting the details and letting go. And by the way, that's what I think jeff basis, even though he said his jobs to make only a few high quality decision that nobody in one thousand and ninety nine. So that's kind of my philosopher.

Let's talk about decisions actually. This is the other question we've been on several times that asked you how you make decision. Several times I went back and looked, and the one that struck me was the last year on, I said I did make decisions.

He said, let me tell you a long story. I was about various airbnb conversions. Read big decisions.

And he said, really, i'm going to have to make so many decisions that I went to all my team and I said, here are our principles. Trust me to use these principles. And this is how many to make decisions. Is that still the framework that ever only degrees on the core principles?

Pretty much I mean, they are what I basically said is like you want to make principal decisions, not business decisions, principal decisions or if I don't understand the outcome, can't predict to how do I reread MERS? What do I think is the right thing to do and the right thing to do that, that can sound very subjective, but that actually you would have thousands of inputs. So that's essentially what I do.

And it's kind of interesting because like it's kind of like somebody ask you, how do you do what you do? You might not even like consciously know how you do, you do. But what i'm doing is i'm basically making a decision.

The reason is the leadership so valuable. Somebody once said the most important thing leaders do is make decisions. And it's probably true. Maybe, maybe the most important things, they hire people and they assemble the right team, but probably day a day, the most important thing they do is make decisions. And it's really important that people understand the criteria for which you're making decisions.

And so yes, if you have clear principles, I mean, what I did is I went to my board and I said I wanted to make like a thousand decisions. I can't run every decision by you. So let's agree on the principles and the framework for which I make all the decisions.

And then i'm going to make all the decisions. And if something stands out, I will elevate you. I will retroactive be, show you all the things I made.

If there's something that's huge, bet the company and one way door, I will tell you I had a time. Otherwise, give me authority to make all these decisions. And that's what I did with the board.

They really liked IT because the key to a crisis of speed, and I have I have to debate every decision. We're not moving quickly. It's like a car chase. It's like, you know, which should you turn left or right? Well, most importantly, to turn quickly.

And so that's what I did as far as just to go back to this like to call song analogy, what I do the way I run bnb is I review all the work every week, every two weeks, every four weeks, every eight weeks, two thousand weeks. You might ask, like, how do you do? How do you have people do a report? How do they, like, keep two people happy? And the answers were all the same.

Meeting together. And I usually have my direct talk first, because if I talk, you'd just agree with me, then i'll make the final decision. Most my final decisions are just agreed.

Ninety percent time i'm agreeing what the team says and ten percent of time i'm disagreeing. And if I disagree, I always try to say why. And I try to like go down, like here's my thinking and so chAllenge my first principles.

So whenever I make a decision, I try to ask myself, like I did this conversation, where did the first principles driving this decision? And don't chAllenge my decision. ChAllenge my first principle thinking.

In other words, like, here's my answer, check my mouth and that's kind of what I do. So the principles are, I think, really, really important to get preauthorized ation from a boarding week, a lot of fast decisions. But then when you're in a meeting, I do not like in a meeting reviewer coast network with like a series of four principles.

I'm just intuitive ly making IT a system, I think x and here's why. And let me share with you my work, my thinking. What do you think? What about this? Did I get right? wrong? And so the most important thing is to debating the first principles.

not the answer. Yeah, that is the company know the principles that you used to make decisions that publishes that, a thing that you talk about.

I mean, there's not a single list. I mean, there's like core values. There's a gic differentiators like the things that you put in your s ones of people like know what you stand for.

So there's those general things um but actually here's in a way saying IT, I don't push decision making down. I pull the decision making in I think of the company is one chair consciousness. Remember one time I called branch Johnson, ron Johnson work for Steve jobs.

He ran an apple retail. Remember asked him how Steve jobs in apple, and he said, even when apple was like twenty, thirty, forty thousand people, he only ever thought of apples a hundred employees. That's why he had this offset called top hundred.

And so he said his job was to only manage the top hundred people and they manage everyone else. Never thought of A A total company. And that's kind of what I do.

And maybe it's even fewer people. It's like sixty or seventy. So I don't manage all there being B, I am managed a top six, seven people, but i'm very engaged and I pull them in and I create one shared consciousness.

And so I would say those people, if you were to interview every single one of my senior people, I don't think they would have like pithy word for word by verbatim, like principles. But they ouldn't be able to described exactly how I think, because we're in so many meanings together. Remember, scope or stall.

One time, like right before he had left apple, I was at a group dinner with him and he said he used to spend thirty five hours a week with Steve. Now not one of one, but like he was in every meaning with Steve. So that think about that thirty five hours a week every single week, that's thousands of hours.

So that's the equivalent. I don't thirty five hours week with most people, but there are many people that spend ten to twenty hours a week in a room at me. It's the same few dozen people going through different meetings creating one shared consciousness beyond finish their senses.

And that's another version of founder mode. It's one shared consciousness. And so you can imagine that's not disappointed. IT requires collaboration if you want to be alone wall for a cowboy like that's not gonna. But if you're willing to work with other people.

you're actually pretty impowered in this way. We to rap up need to very important you mention apple and sea jobs and john y bunch times. I know that airbnb works closely with love from yeah, which is john y of company. There's a near times article i'm looking at IT. Yes, IT says the clients pay love from as much .

as two hundred .

million dollars. Ablution true?

No, but I like so true, not close to true.

And the other question I have is you thought about apple a lot. They don't have Steve jobs anymore. They don't have jonny anymore. They have started a bunch of division to do all kinds of other things. Do you think that sustainable for them?

No.

you are one of the closest watchers of this company I can think of. And very curious what you think.

Okay, i'll i'll wrap up with my view on apple. Yeah, I think he cook has done an external job. I think he's done an external job, especially given the cards you style t right? There were all turn of us there, right? Like Steve died, I don't know the circumstances, but I you don't think you know I think I was a little bit like, you know, he resigns in August, dies in october, only eight weeks later.

So was only eight week window between resignation and he's not even there. It's not like basis retired to bees. The executive chair, I think, is that tim cook basically chok apple from three hundred million to what are three trillion, added more than ninety percent of market cap.

And it's done very, very well. He is a great Operator. A couple of things to say though. Number one, just because tim added two point seven and trillion a market cap dead at three hundred billion, doesn't mean that tempted most the work because he inherited the most valuable product of all time. And there is just really continuing momentum.

The iphone, the iphone, the probably the the most successful product in history of capitalism, right? And I think they're other product has generated more profit, maybe not more revenue and more profit than the iphone, the most successful company, probably the history of capitalism, or at least certainly last twenty five years. It's crazy when you think about IT, then ask yourself a couple of other questions.

Let's imagine D, D, to die to us. Let me die to us in five, right? When the ipad video had just launched, would they have come up with the iphone? They might have? Would IT have been the most successful consumer product of all time? Maybe not.

I don't know who would have done IT. My general is that tim was an incredible period where what they really need to do was maybe not an invention, new product, but take the most successful practical all time and scale, IT and manufacturing, and make IT a complete ubi. C.

S. Park around. And he did that. But to technology industry. I mean, the word technology may well be a syn m for the word change. We're in the change industry.

And IT is very, very dangerous to not be constantly changing. And if you're a copy, the mixed devices, the most important ting going to do are make new tools, make new devices. I saw a bloomberg report that said they're moving away from launches.

They're moving more towards services. They're going more divisional. I think that whenever tim, my unneccessary devices, whatever he decides, retire the next CEO should also be the cheap proc officer.

I asked people who was cheap product officer, apple and Steve s. Live in. Everyone said Steve IT wasn't feel shower.

So IT was a great svp of product marketing, but he wasn't the cheap product officer that is a product company. And you really want to make sure long term that a product person is drive in the company. This goes to the very awkward thing that no one wants to talk about.

Succession planning is hard because the people that are great product visionary are typically Young. They're Young, less mature. Who wants to put a Young, not super mature person at the help of a giant company managing the founders are allowed to manage people older than name because of the founders.

But if you're not the founder, people just don't want to be managed by somebody Younger than them whose may be a virtuoso wonder kin, but there are a little immature and the companies don't want na take that the risk. So they bias towards senior grown up functional experts. And typically, that function is not the product, and I think that's a problem.

Saudia is more technical. I think that is afforded them a more, but he mostly just gotten back to build gates primacy. So I think that apple should go back to having a CEO that's a cheap product officer.

I think they should rain the company in and simplify how they Operate. But you know, that's just my would you do that up? I think airbnb is the right job for me. They definitely need somebody who .

has hardwork experience ough IT is always a pleasure to thank you.

I love this. Aren't thank inly.

I'd like saying brand chaskey for taking the time to join me on decoder and thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed like, let us know you thought about this episode really anything else? Drop a sine.

You can email a decoder at the verge to com. We really do read all the emails and I would like to say thank you to everyone who details this about the into an episode. You don't say me up directly on threads and that reality and we have a tiktok check IT out.

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The verge in part of the boxing in podcast network producers are cake cox, next that our editor is Kelly, right? Or supervising producers liam James, that a coder. Music is my great matter ciller we will see next time.

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