Brian Chesky, the Airbnb founder who changed the way we holiday, shares his next big gig
Brian Chesky is sat in a London apartment, about to tuck into a plate of biscuits. He chooses a glazed pink ring from the very British selection, nibbles, grimaces, and says “I do NOT like that”.
Not what you might expect from a CEO evangelical about new horizons.
As co-founder and CEO of Airbnb, the online “sharing economy” success story that enables 150m people in 191 countries to let out rooms - or their entire home - to holidaymakers, Chesky is worth an estimated $3.8bn.
Now, having conquered the home rental market, he has flown into the capital to launch his company’s next big venture: Music Experiences, a bespoke service that offers Airbnb users access to the local music scene - intimate gigs, sold out concerts, band rehearsals and so on.
To make the point, Chesky held a party here last week, and was one of just 60 people watching Brit-award winning singer Emeli Sande perform (though 500,000 tuned in on Twitter).
Airbnb might be valued at $30bn today, but it could hardly have started smaller. It began life in 2003, when Chesky and his school friend Joe Gebbia couldn’t afford to pay their rent, so let out airbeds in their San Francisco loft to conference delegates.
They formally founded the company in 2008 with another friend, Nathan Blecharczyk, and by 2012 it had about 100,000 registered “hosts”.
“It started working well and we asked ourselves, what’s next?” says Chesky. “Airbnb for office space, Airbnb for dogs? But, really, we’re in the business of providing amazing trips. We are a travel company.”
They are now poised to move into flight-booking, with a view to eventually providing an “end to end” platform covering every aspect of a holiday. Last year, Airbnb Trips launched, offering tailor-made tours. Music Experiences is an extension of that same model, allowing experience-hungry app users to feel they are accessing the music scenes of 13 cities including London, LA and Tokyo.
As always, Airbnb is the broker: it doesn’t organise gigs or own property, just as ride-sharing services like Uber do not own any cars. The difference is that Airbnb is became profitable last year (Uber, valued at over $60bn, lost an estimated $3bn). This is partly because it fought off copycats to become pretty much the only game in town.
Some predict a contraction in the sharing economy but Chesky thinks that trading experiences and skills will become more important as “artificial intelligence and automation displace tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions of jobs over the next 20 years”.
For eight years, Chesky - who was raised in New York State, by social worker parents - lived in the apartment where he and Gebbia started Airbnb. Then, last year, he and girlfriend Elissa Patel, an artist he met four years ago on Tinder, bought a “small home” near San Francisco where they “live a low-key life”.
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The 35 year-old calls himself as a “serial entrepreneur” but deliberately spells it “cereal” - as he and Gebbia generated seed money for Airbnb during the 2008 US presidential election by selling breakfast cereal in collectable Obama boxes for $40 a pop.
They were design students rather than money men, and he credits that with helping to build a service that people actually enjoy using. In a business based around inviting strangers into your home, “caring for others and having a sense of warmth and hospitality was important”.
Although Chesky refers to Airbnb as “people-powered”, it has not escaped criticism. Some hosts have returned to find their properties trashed and neighbours infuriated by wild parties. Professional landlords cashed in on a site designed for individuals, with the result that Airbnb has been accused not just of disrupting the hotel trade but (in Australia especially) of pricing out first-time buyers and pushing up rents. Some cities have passed new legislation limiting the number of days that private householders can lease their property.
“Listen, any time you have an idea that’s small then suddenly more than 100m people use it, there are going to be unintended consequences,” Chesky says. In the past he tried to fight legislative interference, but then realised it was better to work with local authorities. This month, Airbnb launched an advisory committee and announced quarterly Facebook Live events for hosts.
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The company’s image was re-burnished in 2012, when it responded to a host who wanted to offer her property free to those made homeless by Hurricane Sandy, which swept up the US east coast, claiming 117 lives and causing an estimated $50 billion damage. “Since then our community has provided free housing for more than 50 global disasters,” Chesky says. It has also started housing refugees, vetted by UNHCR or similar organisations.
As a global CEO, like his friend Mark Zuckerberg (“not a Facebook friend, but a friend in real life”) Chesky suggests that he is above politics. But he does think that the global swing towards nationalism, embodied by President Trump, is “a temporary thing”.
“Children today will travel more, go to more countries, live in more places,” he says, reaching for a custard cream. “They will think somebody on the other side of the world is more like them than different."
The 5 best apps for music lovers
Sofar Sounds
If you want to discover live music across the world, this app lets you find secret gigs in 327 cities globally. Whether you’re on holiday or in your home city, you’ll be able to find intimate events from upcoming new artists.
With Dojo’s curated weekly gig guide, you can find everything from electro-pop to indie folk, as well as a category dedicated to live music. The app, which lets users search by location and date, currently focuses solely on London and Paris, but is set to expand globally. Watch this space.
This global app lists gigs happening all over the world, from Helsinki to Sydney, and links with Facebook so you can notify friends if you’ve found an event you want to attend. It also has free promos meaning people can claim free merchandise at some gigs.
This concert discovery platform uses people’s music tastes to let them know when their favourite artists performing nearby. With more than 60 markets globally, it’s the ideal way to find your dream gig abroad.
For music-loving Britons, this app provides an easy way to search for gigs, concerts and festivals - as well as buy tickets without booking fees. It won’t help you abroad, but it’s the perfect app for buying gig tickets in the UK.
