Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky has recently spoken about how he looked to Apple co-founder Steve Jobs for guidance when his company faced a crisis that threatened its survival. When the travel industry came to a halt during the 2020 pandemic, Airbnb’s planned IPO was derailed and its revenue fell by 72%. The company was just 12 weeks away from insolvency. To pull the business back from the brink, Chesky, who co-founded Airbnb, turned to the turnaround blueprint Jobs had used at Apple. Speaking on an episode of the How I Built This podcast, Chesky reflected on his shift in leadership philosophy during the height of the crisis and how it reshaped the company, which has since grown into a $105 billion rental platform.To steer Airbnb out of its tailspin, Chesky said he studied how Steve Jobs salvaged Apple when it was similarly three months from financial ruin.“I didn’t know a lot about him. And so I first studied how did this guy – 12 weeks from bankruptcy – take the company out of this tailspin?” Chesky recounted. “And basically what I realised is he got in all the details. He cut a bunch of projects. He made a lot of really hard decisions. He was present. Leadership was present, not absent.”
Apple chief design officer Jony Ive’s advice to the rescue
Chesky then recalled how an advice from former Apple chief design officer Jony Ive further cemented the transition. Ive told Chesky: “You don’t manage people. You manage people through work.” Chesky subsequently eliminated layers of management and immersed himself in operations.“He was dictatorial, which seems like not something you should do. He said, ‘no more’; he said ‘yes’. He was brutal about everyone going the same direction. He was exacting with standards and he paid attention to every pixel, every word, and I only did that to navigate the crisis because in the crisis, I had to look through all of our expenses. We had to be very very hands-on,” Chesky said.He compared the environment to surviving in the trenches together: “Basically, it was like we’re all in the foxhole. So now I’m running the company hands-on for the first time in 15 years. Not telling you to do, but like we’re in the foxhole together.”
From ‘Terrible CEO’ to crisis leader
Chesky described himself as someone who spent his childhood designing, taking apart toys and pitching items to friends, feeling he had decades of instincts suited for founding companies. However, managing scale proved to be an entirely different challenge.“I think I was pretty much naturally a great founder, and I was naturally a terrible CEO,” Chesky explained. Early on, Chesky followed traditional corporate advice: bring in seasoned executives, step back, and give them autonomy. But when disaster struck in 2020, hands-off management was no longer viable.