— Analytics, Thoughts — 2 min read
I recently listened to a podcast from Reid Hoffman's Masters of Scale Podcast on the episode with Brian Chesky, AirBnb's CEO. They talked about the impact of current pandemic to Airbnb and how he had to make a difficult desicion and their plan to bounce back. I knew Airbnb is a great company. But after listening to that podcast, I admire them more than ever.
If you listen closely to what Brian was saying, he mentioned about how the new travel market is gonna look like:
I think his vision is super clear & reasonable. Not only that he's optimist, but they've done the actions to bet on that vision (or should I say: hypotheses). Now go to Airbnb's website and you can see all sort of new features relevant to those visions: Online Experience, search for Nearby accomodations, etc.
Maybe those features are not rocket science, but that's exactly why it's great. I admire those who can repeatedly do all of these steps:
Even more on those who can do all of those quickly. I think most companies are good at one or some of those 4 steps, but not all. Or they do all 4, but not interlinked (they do experiment, but on completely unstructured mode/not based on insights). Why? maybe they're scared to take risk and bet/pivot on something new, maybe the code is too messy to be able to deliver new feature quickly, maybe there are too much bureucracy, or maybe they just don't have any vision, or maybe they are just not used to it. Who knows.
Now that's disappointing. I love working in tech industry because of the possibilities. Here you don't just try to grab the biggest segment in the market, but you'll also dare to bet on a new segment that doesn't exist yet. You can actually invent the market, and I think that's the beauty of internet company. Before Airbnb, who would think someone would want to stay at a stranger's home?
Airbnb is great.
Listen to the podcast below