Brief Summary
This episode of Masters of Scale features Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, discussing the importance of doing things that don't scale in order to achieve massive growth. Chesky shares how Airbnb started by handcrafting the user experience, focusing on individual customers, and iterating based on their feedback. The episode highlights the need to balance empathy for individual users with the analytical mindset required for scaling, and emphasizes that the most innovative leaps often occur when a company is small and can quickly adapt to user needs.
- The only way an organization can truly scale is to first do things that don't scale at all.
- Handcrafting the user experience before you start to scale.
- The most innovative leaps you'll ever make often especially for your network are gonna be when you're really really small.
Introduction: Airbnb's Early Struggles and the "Do Things That Don't Scale" Philosophy
In 2008, Airbnb was struggling with minimal website traffic and bookings, leading co-founders Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia into significant credit card debt. To rescue the company, they created Barack Obama and John McCain themed breakfast cereals to sell during the election year. Despite the initial success of selling the cereals for $40,000, the founders had to manually assemble the boxes themselves. This experience highlighted the value of painstaking, handcrafted labor as the foundation for future success. Reed Hoffman introduces the concept that the only way to scale is to first do things that don't scale, emphasizing the importance of hand-serving customers and winning them over one by one.
Designing with Empathy and the Importance of User Feedback
Brian Chesky emphasizes the importance of designing with empathy, drawing from his background in medical design where he had to imagine himself as the patient. He recounts a meeting with Paul Graham from Y Combinator, who advised him to go to New York to meet his users and understand their needs. Chesky and his co-founders followed this advice, commuting between Mountain View and New York to personally meet hosts, photograph their homes, and gather feedback. These home visits became Airbnb's secret weapon, allowing them to learn what people loved and to create a handcrafted experience.
Extracting Detailed Feedback and Designing the "Perfect" Experience
Brian Chesky shares his method for extracting detailed feedback from users by asking what could be done to make them tell everyone about the product. He also emphasizes the importance of discerning which users to listen to, as some feedback may lead the company in the wrong direction. Chesky describes an exercise where they imagined a one- to eleven-star Airbnb experience, with the higher stars representing increasingly extravagant and personalized service. While the extreme scenarios were not feasible, they helped identify a sweet spot for creating a magical and doable experience.
Balancing the "Perfect" Experience with Scalability
Brian Chesky discusses the two stages of a startup's product: designing a perfect experience and then scaling that experience. He highlights the need to balance the ambition to create an awesome experience with the practicality of making it doable. Airbnb initially built everything by hand, including photographing homes and managing listings with spreadsheets. Ellie, an early intern, manually managed the process of connecting photographers and hosts, retouching photos, and uploading them to the website. Over time, they gradually automated the tools to make the process more efficient.
Examples of "Doing Things That Don't Scale" at Other Companies
Reed Hoffman shares examples of other entrepreneurs who have embraced the "do things that don't scale" philosophy. Patrick Collison, the founding CEO of Stripe, had a chat room for customers and wrote a bot that would page him if someone asked a question and didn't get a response within 30 seconds. Paul English, the founder of Kayak, had his cell phone number as the customer service number for years. Nancy Lublin, who launched the nonprofit Dress for Success, invited strangers to stay on her futon while they learned how to start their own affiliates.
The Transition to Massive Scale and the Importance of Maintaining the Handcrafted Mindset
Reed Hoffman discusses the challenges of transitioning from the handcrafted phase to the massive scale phase, noting that it requires two opposing mindsets: empathizing with a single user and worrying about everyone. Brian Chesky describes the difference between designing an experience and scaling an experience, comparing it to the difference between writing and editing. He notes that as a company scales, it needs to prune, compact, and distill its product to run at a rocket ship rate.
Challenges of Scaling and Reinventing the Industry
Brian Chesky discusses the challenges Airbnb faced as it grew, including building 24/7 support, adding secure payment instruments, and dealing with lawsuits and regulations at the city level. He notes that as an organization scales, it can develop antibodies against new handcrafted things, making it important for founders to be choiceful about which innovations they protect. To reinvent the travel industry, Chesky looked to cinema for inspiration and hired a storyboard artist from Pixar to visualize the perfect Airbnb experience.
Creating the Perfect Trip: The Story of Riccardo
Brian Chesky describes how Airbnb sought to create the perfect trip by anonymously seeking a traveler and photographing their experience in San Francisco. After learning that the traveler, Riccardo, had an awful trip, Airbnb flew him back and storyboarded the perfect experience for him. The trip included a driver, a perfect Airbnb, dinner parties, and a midnight mystery bike tour. Riccardo was so moved by the experience that he cried and thanked Chesky, leading Airbnb to develop a blueprint for creating deeply moving trips.
Scaling the Perfect Trip and the Hero's Journey
Brian Chesky discusses how Airbnb developed a systemic breakdown of the perfect trip, incorporating elements of the hero's journey from movies. He notes that a welcome event, a challenge outside the comfort zone, and a moment of transformation are essential ingredients for a memorable vacation. In November 2016, Airbnb unveiled 500 trip packages in 12 cities, fully embracing the scaling mindset.
The Value of Staying Small and the Importance of Daring Leaps
Brian Chesky advises entrepreneurs who don't have traction to take advantage of their small size and make daring leaps. He notes that the biggest innovative leaps often occur when a company is small and can quickly change the protocol. Chesky encourages entrepreneurs to dream big, act small, pay passionate attention to their users, handcraft the core service, and then figure out what part of that magical handcrafted thing can scale.
