We're looking at 2024 Summer Trends
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I'm Yasmin Gagne. And I'm David Salazar, standing in for Josh, who's still out on a reporting trip this week. And this is Most Innovative Companies.

On today's episode, senior staff writer Liz Segrin on a new trend in jeans. Oh my gosh, you guys, jeans are getting weird. Airbnb chief business officer Dave Stevenson on short-term rental regulation. We think that short-term rental regulation, reasonable laws would be prudent for New York. And as always, keeping tabs. Taps the musical. It's back. Yeah. But first, here's the download. ♪

The news you need to know this week in the world of business and innovation. Robinhood's market share dropped by 2% after its cryptocurrency division was hit with a Wells notice. This is a formal notification issued by the Securities and Exchange Commission that told Robinhood that the agency has opened up an investigation against them. In this case, it seems like Robinhood has allegedly failed to register some of its cryptocurrency tokens.

And the SEC classifies a few of those as securities. So Robinhood now has less than a month to respond. Good luck, guys. I don't know. You know, whenever I hear crypto, I remember the year I wrote about Bored Ape Yacht Club and all that. And it feels like so long ago. Wasn't that last year? I think it was 2022. Oh, wow. Yeah, I guess that's true. Time kind of compresses. Yeah. If only there was a way to find your memories on the blockchain. Yeah.

Yeah.

The announcement comes as part of their annual update to the Strategic Operating Plan. That's an initiative to improve tax administration services following $80 billion of increased federal funding from the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.

According to the update, the IRS will increase audit rates by more than 50% on individual taxpayers with more than $10 million and triple audit rate on large corporations. To enforce this, the IRS plans to hire more revenue agents, having already expanded their workforce by 9% this year. Good.

Okay, cool. Watch out all you companies using non-generally accepted accounting procedures or whatever. Dude, what if our MIC, like most innovative companies list looks totally different because of this next year? Everyone has a tax case against them. Exactly. It'd be interesting. Whatever. Hope it goes well and hope it actually brings in some income for the IRS.

A new lawsuit against Meta is arguing that people should be allowed to control what they see on their feed, even if that means shutting it off entirely. This lawsuit, which I admittedly, I don't know if I follow, it's been filed by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University on behalf of an Amherst professor who wants to release a tool to let users unfollow all of the content that Facebook's algorithm feeds them.

So it's called Unfollow Everything 2.0, and it would allow Facebook users to unfollow friends, groups, and pages, and basically empty their newsfeed. With the idea being, I guess, that people may use the app less without the constant addicting content. I don't really know. I'm not seeing a lot of addicting content on Facebook these days. No, as I've said before, Facebook is really just there to keep track of your craziest relatives and exes. Yeah.

Well, even if people don't love Facebook, they're still on Instagram and it's owned by the same company. Yeah, it's literally the same thing. And finally, more food recalls. This wouldn't be an MIC podcast without some kind of food recall announcement.

Hormel Food Sales has recalled some of its planters' nuts product. This is due to concerns of listeria contamination. The company announced their honey-roasted peanuts and deluxe lightly salted mixed nuts have been impacted. The nuts were shipped to public distribution centers in Alabama, Florida, and Georgia, and were also shipped to Dollar Tree distribution warehouses in Georgia and South Carolina. Customers are advised to dispose of the product or take it back for a full refund. Tough time for people who love public.

which is a genuine type of person down south. Publix, one of the few supermarkets that carries Fast Company. Hell yeah. All right. Yeah. We're Publix fans. I'll buy the contaminated nuts and a copy of Fast Company. I'll risk getting listeria. The X in Publix does not inspire confidence, but I think it's actually really nice there. Well, yeah, they're like publicly owned. Not publicly owned. They're like employee owned. Oh, they

Oh, they are? Wait, no, I love that. As you work at Publix, you get more shares and it's a decent company. That's cool. Well, that's all the news you need to know today. So David, summer is here. This morning I walked out in a t-shirt. What have you purchased to prepare for the heat? I haven't bought anything yet, but I've got some purchases planned. One of which is going to be shoes that are just like super easy to put on, take off, like

barely need socks, like, if any. So, like, maybe a boat shoe. You know what? There's a trusty pair of Tevas I had for two summers that I feel, as I age, I feel very conflicted about subjecting people to my feet. Yeah, doing that for free, bold. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I don't post them. I'll always blur them. So anyone in the office? No, I'm not going to say it's the office. Just kidding. What about you? What are you stocking up on for the summer? Yeah. So I stocked up on tomatoes from Fort Greene Farmer's Market to make a gazpacho, tinted sunscreen from an Indian brand called Lion Pose. Ooh.

A friend recently got me Sofia Coppola's new tinted lip balms that she did with Augustina's Butter. And that's what I'm going to be wearing all summer along with like some really baggy t-shirt dresses. Honestly, that's the move. So the reason I asked that question is because it's May. We're enjoying the spring weather. We're getting ready for summer. And we figured we'd just chat with some Fast Company folks who have their ears to the ground on what's going to be a hit and what summer trends they're seeing.

Now, David Salazar is one of them. And just a note up top, we recorded the rest of this episode before Josh left. So you'll hear his voice pop up sometimes. David, Liz, welcome back to the show. Thanks so much. I'm so happy to be here. This segment is about broadly summer trends, which I'm really excited about. And David, I want to start talking to you about music and what we're going to see.

Yeah, so 2024 broadly seems to be shaping up to be the year of the superfan, right? And I think that this is partially because, you know, DataFirm Luminate, they do all of the data for the Billboard charts. They've identified that, you know, it's a smaller subset of people, maybe like 30-ish percent of people who are like really...

super fans, which is to say that they're interacting with artists in five or more ways. Whether that's buying music, streaming music, going to concerts, buying merch, whatever. But so we're seeing that a lot of the big artists, they definitely have super fans, right? You've got Taylor Swift. She didn't make a billion dollars on casual fans, but

But the next thing we'll see, I think, is whether music companies and labels can find a way to create and encourage superfans. And one of the sort of conversations I've had recently was with the CEO of Weverse, which is the...

fan connection app that's part of HYBE, the K-pop giant label that... Wait, I don't know what this is at all. It sounds very sus. It's new. Well, it's not new. It's new to the U.S. Oh, okay. Where K-pop fans are very sort of engaged and clued in, and so Weverse has been a part of how, you know, like the BTS boys or Le Seraphim and a lot of other big K-pop acts sort of connect with fans and

They recently added a live streaming function through an acquisition and part of UMG has struck a long deal with HYBE now where UMG is going to distribute their Korean artists in the US. It's also another year of K-pop. K-pop will never go away. But it's like, I want to say it's going to be the beginning if they can get this off the ground of the K-popification of the West.

which is that K-pop has perfected the model of tapping into the most rabid fans there are, and part of the UMG deal is a small investment in Weverse, and they're starting to sort of look at artists that are going to try to connect with fans on Weverse.

One fact that made me feel incredibly old recently was finding out via Who Weekly, one of my favorite podcasts, that artists, including Lady Gaga, sell skins in Fortnite. Oh, yeah. It's like a new way of interacting with fans via these platforms that is so foreign to me. I guess you're, in some ways, it's like buying merch. Except that it's not real. It's like you're buying merch for your avatar. Yeah, that's...

like skins in this sort of... So, like, I mean, I know, David, you're a gamer. I play video games on occasion. And there's always, like, in certain, like, online games, I feel like there's always been, like, you can buy things that are, like, skins and accessories and stuff like that. And my question was always, like, wait, does this...

help me perform better in this game or add some sort of boost to the gameplay and the answer is no so i never like partook in it so when i like came to learn that like skins and all these accessories are such a huge part particularly of like gen z gamers and now like gen alpha gamers it's wild to me because i'm just like wait but this doesn't help you like i don't know like eat kill more turtles and mario what what are we doing here do a

I mean, it's so interesting because I think it reflects how much of people's identities are now on these platforms. So you like want... I mean, the fashion brands started doing that, like Gucci and Louis Vuitton. You can buy...

pretty, I mean, relatively, you're paying money for this stuff, right? To me, that one, I don't, I can't quite explain why, but that one feels like a bigger scam. Yeah, well, because it's more money. But it's also like, but it also just reflects how much time people are spending on these platforms and how much of their avatar is them, right? Like, and I feel like, Josh, like you at least have like,

just separated yourself. Like the game is something that you're doing. It's not something that you are. I don't know. That's a good point. And they couldn't make the metaverse work, strangely enough. Yeah, I know. The other thing I wanted to bring up is that there is a dark side to super fans, perhaps best exemplified by the Eminem song, Stan, one of the greatest narrative rap songs of our time. Tell me a little bit about that. How are companies thinking about it? How do you think about it?

On one level, very funny that Stan has become this sort of very casual thing that people call themselves. But on another level, Stans are really, really intense. And I think we're seeing that with the new Taylor Swift album cycle, where the Tortured Poets department is getting pretty widely panned because it's like 31 mediocre songs.

But I will probably have to change my address and social security number. You said it, not me. Now that I said it. Yeah, you're going to get doxxed. I very well may. Some websites were removing author names on their Taylor Swift album reviews, which is just so insane to me. Yeah, that's...

That's crazy. It might have been Pace that did that. There were several, actually, I think. It's so dangerous to say anything negative about an album. Unless it's Jojo Siwa. Oh my gosh. Who apparently invented gay pop, right? That cues David into his next trend that he identified. And I know we couldn't have anyone better on the show to talk about this. I sit next to David. He talks about Troye Sivan all the time.

It took a lot of restraint recently in a Five Below to not buy a magnet that said Troy Boy on it. So tell us why this summer.

Is gay pop summer? Yeah, I mean, I know as much as Liz pointed out, like, I think Jojo Siwa wants to take credit for gay pop, and there have been a lot of thoughts about that. I mean, it's not her fault. She doesn't know that she didn't just fall out of a coconut tree. You know, she's 18. It's fine. I mean, right now, there are so many sort of queer pop stars on tour. So, you know, one of the ones that Yaz knows I'm very excited about has been Chapel Roan, but she's really...

really ascendant right now. She had two really electric Coachella performances and

And that's sort of on another stage over at Coachella. There was Renee Rapp, who brought out Kesha and was on SNL a few months ago. But, you know, they put albums out late last year, but now is really sort of the touring push for both these girlies. And Billie Eilish just had that Rolling Stone interview. Billie Eilish, yeah. She's ready to put an album out this summer. And I think that, you know, she's back in the conversation. People are very excited about that since she sort of came out.

And then this week, the tickets for the Charlie XCX and Troye Sivan Arena Tour went on sale. And they're both sort of touring separately this summer. Troye's in Europe. Charlie's all over the place because she doesn't say no to a lot of things, which I respect. No, she's everywhere. But their tour will kick off September 13th, I think. And it's huge, you know? It's a big way to bring in Gen Z audiences to bring back to sort of the business of it, you know? Like...

30% of Gen Z identify as LGBT. So it's pretty huge to see yourself represented on so many major bills and so many huge tours in a way that, I don't know, I don't think has been super common. There's also this like wide variety of queer music coming. I mean, like in our home, we listen to a lot of the Japanese house, which is this like lesbian dream pop. And there's just like so many different variations of queer music right now. And it's...

That's pretty cool, I think. Yeah. It's not just like the worst music you hear when you go into a gay bar anymore. It's not all EDM anymore. So Liz, now I want to turn to you. You recently wrote a piece about the sort of black cowboy trend. I'll say the first time I heard about it or thought about it was Lil Nas X. Oh, man. But it seems like this year it's really taken off. Oh, I'm so excited about this. Yeah. So it began...

To emerge this year, starting in January, when Pharrell Williams did his second collection for Louis Vuitton. And it was this beautiful as actually if you haven't seen it, you guys should go back and check it out. But it was this beautiful runway show that was kind of like a Western epic.

And he actually had real black cowboys, right? There was this like there's this organization called the Oklahoma Cowboys, which is a black cowboy organization that tries to draw attention to the history of African-Americans and the cowboy world and the Western world. So that was the first iteration of it. Then in February, in what I imagine was a completely different

planning process, right? I don't think this was connected, but Gap collaborated with Dapper Dan and

this amazing Harlem tailor, and he created another kind of iteration of Western style, but situated in Harlem. Both of these were meant to sort of draw attention to the history of the Black cowboy. And then of course, you know, Beyonce, like during the Superbowl, she had an ad for Cowboy Carter, but she was like in full Western aesthetic. Right. And so

I think it's really interesting because I think that this is giving everybody a chance to look back at the history of how there were all of these Black men, right, who had formerly enslaved, right, and were looking for a way to enjoy their freedom, right, in this post-Civil War America. And a proportion of them decided to go out West.

and become cowboys. So we think that about a third of all cowboys were actually men of color. They had this incredible role to play in the development of America. And yet, because of the way that the stories about cowboys have been told...

we tend to think of the cowboy as white, right? As like the John Wayne character. And so I think that this is an amazing moment where fashion is doing much more than just creating another consumer trend, right? At best, fashion can actually talk about culture and talk about history in these interesting ways. And we're seeing that right now. And also, fashion,

It's kind of cute to go out in, like, cowboy boots and a cowboy hat. So I'm kind of, like, interested in exploring that part of who I am this summer. Do you think all this would have happened...

without Old Town Road? Or how do you connect that to all this? Did Lil Nas X walk so Beyonce could run? Is that what we're saying? I totally think... I mean, Beyonce had been working on that album for a really long time. So it's kind of interesting to think about how these trends kind of happen where like lots of different things are going on in the culture simultaneously. But Lil Nas X was like... I mean, that...

The style, the idea of the music, like everything he was doing there was actually really profound. Maybe it started to get people thinking. Okay, David, do you see, you know, as the aesthetic is ascendant, is there a country music ascendancy going with it? Absolutely. And like, you know, it's not just...

to the same way that's not just like high fashion getting into the Western trend, you know, like Boot Barn is a huge stalwart of just like actual Western wear that has had its...

I have seen analysts encourage people to invest based on an expected sales bump in Western boot sales. But I think that it's partially because the country is in, well, a country moment, right? Luminate again, a spotlight of this in its 2023 annual report in particular, that country fans are again, skewing younger and, you know, making very small, like one to two percentage point, but significant for the number, right? Like gains among women fans, right?

So I think that with Beyonce bringing the conversation that people were having with Lil Nas X back in 2018 or whatever back,

it's possible that she's going to open up country to a more diverse audience. It's a very white field, right? Like, Tracy Chapman was the first Black songwriter to win the CMA Song of the Year award, and that's all because of Luke Combs, right? Oh my gosh, you guys. Can I just tell you, I just, I like, wept when I saw that performance. I mean, here's this, like, queer woman who is, like,

who has had this song. And then Luke Combs, who has like this largely white audience is like...

singing her song with such reverence. But then what I thought was really interesting is that he doesn't change the lyric, right? Because there's a part where she's like, oh, I'm a checkout girl. I have a job as a checkout girl. And he sings checkout girl in it, right? I strongly believe, in karaoke at least, you're gay for the song. Or you're a different gender for the song. He was singing in a queer...

way, right? Because it was like he's singing to this audience. And he's a man with a very with a man's voice, but he's singing that he's a checkout girl. Anyway, I just thought that like, there was this like very queer moment that he was bringing to this like country audience. And I don't know, my husband's like, you're reading way too much into this country music. And it's not exactly known for its diversity or its inclusion in any dimension or in any dimension.

And it's great. I love that people are having their moment. I just don't like country music. So I'm like, oh, this is going to be all over the place this summer. And I'm just not a fan. I think that that is the other aspect to this, right? Which is that I don't think Cowboy Carter is like the best Beyonce album. Sure. I think it's a really interesting exploration of a part of Beyonce. But I think that she's made a real point there.

of bringing on musicians who are very much sort of in the Black country tradition, right? Which is the roots of country music. It's why you have her bringing in Rhiannon Giddens to play banjo on... Miley Cyrus. Oh, that's a good... Talk about queer song. I could go all day with my queer interpretation of music.

That love ballad between her and Miley Cyrus. My husband's like, just take it down a notch, Liz. Just like, keep it together. So Liz, David mentioned Boots Barn. Boot Barn. We obviously, Boot Barn. But tell us what other trends you see taking off. Oh my gosh, you guys. Jeans are getting weird. Okay, so, you know, obviously there are these like big cycles when it comes to denim trends.

There was like the bell bottom. We saw the boot cut. We saw a straight leg in kind of the 90s. So for the last...

10 to 15 years, the skinny jean was the jean of the moment, which actually had really interesting roots, right? In like glam rock culture and everything. Then it just became the norm. It was comfortable like a legging, right? Like leggings were very, very popular over the last 15 years. And so the skinny jean was, you know, the jean version of a legging. And then after the pandemic, the industry was like ripe for a change and a change has come. And that change is this really weird change

new style called the horseshoe or the barrel. It is called that because it starts out really skinny at the waist, and then it just balloons out at the knees, and then it comes right back and tapers back down at the ankle. It's just weird. It's like harem pants. I gotta say, you know, I wear barrel jeans a lot. I do think the end of skinny jeans was...

During the pandemic. I think it's been a while. For sure. To me, barrel jeans are like a sort of like mom jeans were really popular. And this is a small tweak to that design. Like, I don't think they're like totally out of nowhere. So there was this like kind of high fashion moment, right, where the very dramatic wide dress

barrel jean came in. There was the Alea show last year where there was this like gigantic, a denim top with these gigantic horseshoe jeans. The question was like whether it was going to trickle down into the mainstream, whether like Gap made well, all these kind of like mass market brands were going to

co-opt this or whether this was going to stay kind of this, because there's lots of stuff that happens on runways that never actually trickles down because it's like so dramatic. And I think, I think the argument that I'm making is that, yeah, like, I think that the question is like, is this going to become like the bell bottom, which I'm sure when the bell bottom first emerged, right. In the sixties and seventies, people like had no idea what to do with it. And then our eyes adjusted. Right. And then it became this like social thing. And so I think the question is like,

is this going to happen too with the barrel slash horseshoe? And then also there's this interesting, like citizens of humanity has a very dramatic, enormous kind of a balloon at the knee. And then, you know, like Madewell, I'm currently wearing a pair right now, but like Madewell has a pair that's a little bit more kind of like in the mom gene vein, right?

I think the question is like whether this is going to sort of end up being kind of just like a wide leg, like just a variation on the wide leg or whether we're all going to be walking around with like these enormous like harem pant versions of the horseshoe. So there's some unanswered questions here. I got to be honest. I love this silhouette.

I think it's I love the barrel jean silhouette. I think it looks cool. I feel like I've been wearing them for a year. I kind of think this is going to be the jean of this decade. And so I might have to eat my words. But like for right now, that's kind of what I'm going with. Josh is certainly going to be wearing them. So Josh will be wearing barrel jean. I'm into it. I did actually just order a pair of pants that are like they're not jean, but they're they're like a barrel cut, like high waisted.

The thing that I've seen for men is like, and my husband is one of them, is like the return of, it's like sleeker cargo pants. Yeah. Like if you walk around Soho, they're everywhere. And they don't look bad. They don't look bad. Because they're just like slightly nicer. They look like a variation on like tactical or hiking pants. It's more in that, like, but then with like a better fabric. Yeah. And like a nicer, they're not as bulky. Yeah.

Yeah. If I can have a hot take for a hot second. Go for it. I'd just like to say that barrel jeans and cargo pants,

As a husky man, this is all skinny people nonsense, right? Like, it looks great on a skinny person, but my general feeling is that, like, any time a plus-size person tries to do something trendy that is, like, retro-trendy, it's not taken as trendy, right? Like, most plus-size people are not seen as fashion-forward, and so as a result, the look is, like...

Does this person not know how jeans fit? Or like, oh, look at this loser wearing cargo pants, basically. There's like a great old tweet that's basically like, is she a brave fashion forward icon or is she just skinny? Yeah, that's so real. Yeah. Especially with men's pants. Maddie Matheson can rock anything.

A style, though, right? Oh, yeah. Like a couple of summers ago when there were the men's rompers. I feel like that's where we need to go. Love a romper. Do you have more than one? I have two. Good. More the merrier. So last summer, we obviously had Barbenheimer. And then we had Taylor Swift's tour and Beyonce's tour. And I would say that is the sort of monoculture that we had. So Liz, I'll start with you first.

Do you think that's possible again? I was really happy, actually, about all of this, because I think that one narrative during the pandemic and just kind of with the rise of TikTok and all of this, it's been happening for a while, but there was this idea that monoculture had died and that we were all going to live in our little subcultures. And I think it's kind of cool to have these kind of bigger moments. And I think it's not so much necessarily even about the subculture

star or that culture. I think it's more just like this opportunity to like connect with other people. I felt like this during the eclipse, right? Like I didn't really care much about the eclipse, but it was really cool to be out there doing something that we were all doing together. And I feel like we don't have many of those moments anymore.

I don't think that they're going to be big tours this summer. So I don't know that that's going to be the thing that brings us together. And I don't think any major films seem to be highly anticipated. So I don't know what the monoculture moment's going to be. I just really hope that there are more of them. I don't know. David, do you have any ideas about anything that could bring us together in the same way? I agree with you, Liz, that it was a really beautiful sort of like...

Five minutes last month where everyone came together for the eclipse and everyone was talking about it. But yeah, I worry that this year's... I know you're anti-eclipse, Josh. Anti-eclipse over here. I worry that in an election year especially, that the monoculture thing is going to be the election and...

It just sucks so much. You don't need that. I don't know. I mean, monoculture can be cool. And when things break through, it's fun. But I'm I sort of really embrace like this sort of multi niche, like stuff where we're seeing brands and certain entertainment or musicians kind of

break out into really strong like cult followings and I think it makes more room for esoteric stuff which I think is which I think is good overall for the culture and I think like that's served by you know things like how our social media like reels and shorts and TikTok work and and just how much stuff is out there and how many creators can make kind of like weird small followings and still succeed I'm into that I think that's a good place to end this discussion

We're going to take a quick break, followed by my interview with Airbnb Chief Business Officer Dave Stevenson. Late last year, New York City made headlines when it all but banned Airbnbs and other short-term rentals within city limits. In August 2023, Airbnb had more than 25,000 short-term rentals listed in New York City.

Tenant groups across the city accuse short-term rentals platform of hollowing out neighborhoods and causing already high rents to grow even higher. New York is actually not the only place affected by this problem. Smaller towns in California and Colorado have also started implementing taxes and zoning policies to curtail or eliminate the short-term rental market. We had the chance to sit down with the company's chief business officer, Dave Stevenson, and chat about this, along with what the company's been doing to advocate for renters.

So, Dave, I want to start by talking about icons, which is a new category for Airbnb. It includes rentals revolving around pop culture icons like Prince as well as an X-Men house with stunned people. Tell us more about that. Yeah, I'm really excited for this announcement of icons on Airbnb. I mean, these are like once-in-a-lifetime events.

Things like staying in Prince's Purple Rainhouse and being one of the first people to hear unreleased tracks. I think these icons are highlighting what is kind of truly unique that you can do at Airbnb. It's going to engage Gen Z, millennials, Gen X with varying different kinds of experiences that is going to be incredibly exciting. I think like John B. Kapoor, who's one of Bollywood's

royalty is going to inspire so many people in India to kind of think about Airbnb. You know, we have Fade, you know, who's a reggaeton superstar in music in Latin America. I think it's going to inspire a lot of Latin Americans to kind of think about, you know, Airbnb. You had previously done some stuff. I remember Gwyneth Paltrow famously had an outhouse that people could stay in for a one-time thing. So this isn't totally new, right?

No, we've actually been doing it for a number of years. This is just at another scale. Last year, we did the Barbie Dream House. We've had people stay at the Louvre. I was just in London and I saw a stay that we had set up in the library at the St. Paul Cathedral and it was incredibly amazing. I want to talk a little bit about rentals. Cities like Raleigh, North Carolina,

San Diego, Tulsa have adopted renter-friendly laws. What do those laws actually look like and how do they help Airbnb? I think what's exciting, and we have a program where we think of Airbnb-friendly apartments that

And it's where we work with landlords to have buildings where the entire building is actually friendly to Airbnb so that they actually see the activity going on in the building that all of the folks and people in the building understand and are supportive of short-term rentals. And they actually even get a portion of revenue share from the activity going on. So it just ends up being a win-win. The renters earn additional income.

The building understands the activity going on in the building, and they all benefit from the economics. So that's a building-related policy, but are there any laws that sort of facilitate that kind of thing? Yeah, it depends on the laws in each individual community that enable it. We can work on it kind of city by city to make sure that we have the right local short-term rental regulations in place.

What are some of those rental regulations that you are advocating for? We're advocating for the enablement of short-term rentals in leased places. Many places allow it explicitly for owned rentals.

properties and not necessarily specifically for rented properties. And again, it depends on the jurisdiction where those laws are in place. Last year, New York City, which is where we're based, made headlines when it all but banned Airbnbs and other short-term rentals within city limits.

Since the pandemic, Airbnb had overtaken almost 40,000 rental units. And, you know, some people said hollowed out neighborhoods and caused already high rents to grow even higher. It also turned out about 1% of operators owned about 300,000 listings. What do you think about speculators and investment companies buying multiple homes for short-term rentals on Airbnb? How do you as a company think about that?

Yeah, let's say a few things. One, the vast majority of our hosts are actually our individual hosts that own kind of one or two properties. That's company-wide. The vast majority are individual hosts.

There's a very small minority that are larger, what we call professional hosts, that have multiple properties. And it's a very small minority that's very large scale. So it's not something that we see as being a predominant growth driver for us. In fact, it's one of the things that we feel separates our business from other kind of short-term rental operators is that we encourage individuals to be able to share their homes and build tools and capabilities uniquely for them. And I think what we've seen with businesses

areas such as New York City is actually, but the actual effective ban of Airbnbs in New York City is actually not played out very well for the city. You have hotel prices that are up, you have people in the city not being able to earn income, and that you have as much of this activity going underground. So we really continue to work with cities all around the world to find what is important to them and finding really positive ways

to have short-term rental regulations that are reasonable and supportive of the communities that they're in. You know, I hear you when you say most rentals across the company are from sort of people who own the apartments or sort of not from operators, basically. But are you as a company kind of agnostic whether an apartment is owned by sort of an operator who owns a bunch?

We are relatively agnostic. What we care about is quality. We care that people are following the rules, that they are providing a great experience to our guests, and that we have a positive kind of ecosystem of hosts and guests in all the places we're at in the world. So we very much care about the quality of the experience. I saw a trend that because Airbnb is all but banned in New York City, a lot of people are staying in New Jersey.

What can you say about New York City's future with the company? Are you still sort of campaigning to get those laws changed?

You know, we think that short-term rental regulation, reasonable laws would be prudent for New York. So we want to continue to positively work with them. We have open dialogues with them. And we think that it's short-sighted of them to not think about the support that they give to local people in New York to earn income from their homes when they're not staying in them. Right now, about 90% of Airbnbs in Bozeman, Montana and Nashville are whole homes. And

And both Bozeman and Nashville are also relatively small towns with an exploding local population and limited housing stock. That means that every home set aside for a sort of year-round short-term rental deal is a home unavailable to local residents who, in some cases, are struggling to find or afford housing. And that's forced some locals to move away. My guess is that you may not agree with the sort of law that New York City imposed, but

But do you dispute the effect that people are describing or that communities are describing here? I think when we look at the data in detail, and it does vary a bit by community, when we have even whole homes that are available on Airbnb, they're not available necessarily 365 days a year. Many of the homes are second homes or homes that people are sharing when they are not there themselves.

And again, I think it varies community by community what's important. There are some communities that are actually vacation rental communities and the percentage of homes that might be available there are going to be higher. There are other locations that are not necessarily vacation specific and that community may want them to be lower. And so we work with those communities.

Bozeman is an example of where there are actual neighborhoods within Bozeman that short-term rentals are actually not allowed. We think that's perfectly reasonable to work with the community to find the neighborhoods where it should be enabled and where it's not. This is why we have

the what we call the city portal. It's a portal of information which we can have the community see the activity going on in the city so that they understand what is actually going on on Airbnb within the community. And then we work with them to have regulation which is appropriate for that community.

How do you work with them when it comes to coming up with regulation? Are you suggesting solutions? Is it more lobbying? What does that look like? Yeah, I think it's an open dialogue. What is important to the community?

How should we regulate short-term rentals in a way that is positive and is supportive of residents being able to earn money from their properties when they are not staying in them? And when is it appropriate to actually support the communities themselves? Because again, one of the other benefits that we should think about of Airbnb is when people stay in Airbnbs in communities, they actually benefit the local community.

When people visit and stay in a hotel, their money is going to the hotel restaurant, the hotel spa, the hotel coffee shop, and the hotel earnings back to kind of corporate. When you stay in an Airbnb, the money is going to the Airbnb owner. The people are often buying from the local coffee shop.

the local store nearby, you know, the local grocery store, it's much more supportive of the community itself. And so we work with each community to understand what's important to them and find the regulation that supports the objectives of that community.

Other cities and counties are, you know, have already or are considering regulations on short-term rentals. And that could include things like a limit on Airbnb square footage or forbidding manufactured housing from becoming Airbnbs. What do you think about these moves to kind of restrict the type of properties available on the platform?

Again, what we're seeing is actually really good clarification of the laws all around the world. Our supply is actually growing very healthfully. We had 7.7 million listings available on Airbnb as of the last quarter. It's growing in the high teens kind of percentage year over year. So we're growing well, and we're growing well while we're continuing to support the regulations that are taking place around the world in specific communities. So again, every community is a bit different.

Their needs vary depending on the location and what the objectives are of that community. And I think we're working really well with them and continuing to grow our supply while also supporting homeowners to earn income when they're not staying in their homes. You've mentioned the kind of quality of the stays a bunch of times. And I understand how you work with communities, you know, when it comes to sort of figuring out how to work around or with them when it comes to regulation. Yeah.

Tell me about how as a company you can enhance the quality of a stay beyond, you know, just figuring out where to put Airbnbs and who to allow to do them.

I think there are a number of things. A lot of it is around host education about what they need, so make it easy to check in, make it easy, a match of the photographs are representative of the actual place. Help hosts actually have the guests feel hosted. Maybe that's, you know, do they provide them with tea and coffee in the morning?

Do they have the right kind of linens in place so that they have enough towels? Just how is the experience? Is there good communication between the guests and the host? Maybe the host provides some better information around their favorite local coffee shop. Like I'm a host in just outside of Seattle. I have a ski cabin that I share in the wintertime. And again, I try to have them feel very hosted.

When they arrive, I leave them a bottle of wine. I give them instructions on how to use a pizza oven. I share my favorite coffee shop that's kind of nearby. I think that's a higher quality experience. And the more we educate hosts on how to do that, the happier the guests are and the better the quality experience overall. Got it. Well, Dave, thank you so much for coming on the show. Appreciate you taking the time to talk us through all this. Excellent. I really appreciate you meeting with me.

Okay, so we're back with Liz and David, but we also have our wonderful interns, Layla and Ellie, joining for this segment. They helped out with a bunch of scripting, and we're super excited to hear what they're keeping track of. They're also Gen Z, so it's good to know what's on their minds, because I don't understand them. So, hey, Layla and Ellie. Hey. Hey, guys. Hey.

So it's time to wrap up the show. As you know, with Keeping Tabs, this is where each one of us shares a story, trend, or piece of pop culture that we're following right now. And why don't we start with you guys? Layla, what are you keeping tabs on? I'm keeping tabs on unfavorable.

unsexy products so there's this trend going around on tiktok right now and i think mostly women are promoting these products but um they're promoting products that aren't necessarily like super trendy or like have the cutest packaging or like the function of it isn't really aesthetically pleasing but they work and they're super effective so i guess like some examples would be like head

Head and shoulders shampoo. That stuff rules. Anti-chafing sticks. Like, yeah, like that whole thing. I've even seen women promoting just for men beard dye, saying it works well for like their eyebrows. Famous. Oh. Mm-hmm.

I could use some Just For Men beard dye. I'm getting a little gray in my, what is this hair, goatee area. And my eyebrows, I could do. It's time for you to get a soul patch, Josh. Gray soul patch. Ellie, what are you keeping tabs on?

So I know we're talking about summer and I know it's a little bit early maybe to have a song of the summer, but I feel like a lot of people have been saying this espresso by Sabrina Carpenter is going to be the song of the summer. Sabrina Carpenter. I have heard it. She's making an interesting run. She has one of the weirder trajectories of a career.

that has happened. I mean, she was on, like, Girl Meets World. Remember that show that was, like, the reboot of Boy Meets World? And then she has maybe the worst Christmas song I've ever heard. What?

Wait, I haven't heard it. What's the title again? I forget exactly how it goes, but it's like aggressively sexual in a really uncomfortable way. That's so funny. The only thing I know about her is that she's tiny and she's dating Barry what's-his-face. Barry Keoghan. Yes. Barry Keoghan. Liz, what are you keeping tabs on? Okay, so Patagonia dropped a little movie and it's called Shitthropocene.

Which is basically, you know how we define every major era in the planet, right? And so they're basically making a statement about how we're in the area where all products are shit, which I can really get behind that, right? It's been something that I've been talking about for a long time. The quality...

Well, I mean, it started with fast fashion, right? Which became all fashion. And everything was about making things as inexpensively as possible because we're going to throw it out anyway. It seems true for like, you know, furniture. It's not the quality has gone down. I just want to say it wouldn't be a Liz Segrin episode if we didn't get to sustainable fashion at some point. And anti-fast fashion takes. Oh my gosh, I'm so...

It's so predictable. It's like every time it's like, how is she going to creatively do it? Yeah, I'm really predictable. I'm really boring at cocktail parties. Oh, you know, she's a fashion reporter. And then they start talking to me. They're like, no, this is really bumming me out. So, yes, you guys should watch it. It's really good. It's shit drop a scene. That's a very like it feels like that was produced by former mid aughts emo kids. Yeah, I was 100 percent.

It feels like such an early Vice documentary. Totally. David, what are you keeping tabs on? I was going to say Girls 5 Ever because I watched it. It's good. You should watch it. It's so good. I haven't seen it and I've been meaning to watch it for a while. It's so funny. Like, it's so broad and so ridiculous. And Renee Elise Goldsberry is

like scratches every itch if you were a big 30 rock like Jenna Maroney fan like scratches every itch that like that gave you

Love it. Yeah, she's wonderful. It's wonderful. Really made me appreciate Busy Phillips as a comedic actress, which I didn't expect. But I wanted to say that I'm keeping tabs on A24's music imprint. It is like really growing in its capabilities here. Like they remastered and re-released the Talking Heads Stop Making Sense documentary last year.

and then sort of separately they acquired the rights and publishing rights to the songs on the soundtrack. They're releasing a cover album with people like Lorde, who's covering Take Me to the River, and then a bunch of... Paramore was the first sort of single off of that doing Burning Down the House, and it'll be very exciting. But at the same time, they're releasing sort of an original soundtrack

for a new movie that comes out May 3rd called I Saw the TV Glow, and that has original songs from Caroline Polachek and Florist and an artist I really love named Francis Quinlan. They are sort of building out their ability to put out

Good music. I love that. Josh, what are you keeping tabs on? Cats the musical. It's back in New York, at least. Yeah. So the Perlman Performing Arts Center and my CPAC, which is actually right across the street from our offices. If you don't know, it's that big cube building that they built with like a shit ton of money from Michael Bloomberg. I had no idea.

That's what that was. Yeah, that's a big performing arts center. It's a beautiful facility. My wife works in theater, as anyone who listens know, at this point. And she has recently become gun to know and gun close with the artistic director there, Bill Rauch, who's directing this revival of Cats that's going up this June. Cats is...

Somehow one of the most successful yet most reviled musicals of all time. It's ridiculous. The movie version that was made a few years ago was absurd. But this revival is setting cats in ballroom. So it's going to be super gay, like, pose-style ballroom. And it's the only concept for cats that I've ever heard that I went...

I want to see that because it's cats is nonsensical. All it is is ridiculous, like vignetted numbers that have no discernible real plot and a bunch of crazy dancing. That's ballroom culture. This is what it is. It's just going to be serving looks and shablams and insensitivity.

I'm all about it. Andre DeShields is going to be in it. Yeah, I'm actually really excited for a production of Cats for the first time ever. And also Bill Rauch is just a terrific director. So excited to see that. And the choreographer is like from ballroom culture, like is like a famous ballroom choreographer. So it should be really good. And it's just a beautiful theater. I just feel like we can't get our hopes up too high when it comes to Cats. Yeah.

Anyways, Yaz, what are you keeping tabs on? We couldn't get out of this. I have two keeping tabs, and they're both, one is a random fact, and one is a headline from the Daily Mail. I'll start with the headline from the Daily Mail. Everyone's on their beat right now. Everyone is like deep in their bag. Ellen DeGeneres admits being branded the most hated person in America was huge blow to her ego. Which is just like such a good headline. Yeah.

Oh, my God. That's fantastic. Is the sky blue? Thank you, Daily Mail. Some incredible work. It was a slow news day. And that's exactly what I go to that website for. The second is I found out this random fact on Twitter this morning that cracked me up, which is and this is for the millennials here.

Everybody remembers I Will Follow You Into the Dark, the Death Cab for Cutie song that came out in 2005. Please guess what it lost the Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a duo or group with vocals to. God, was it LMFAO? It's so close. My Humps by the Black Eyed Peas. Incredible loss. Oh, yeah. That song grossed me out so much.

And that's it for Most Innovative Companies this week. Liz, David, Layla, Ellie, thank you for joining us. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Our show is produced by Avery Miles with special help from our interns, Layla Frankina and Ellie Stevens. Mix and sound design by Nicholas Torres and our executive producer is Josh Christensen. Remember again to subscribe, rate and review and we'll see you next week.