Back to Biz with Katie and Boz: Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky - podcast episode cover

Back to Biz with Katie and Boz: Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky

Jul 02, 202038 min
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Episode description

2020 was going to be a big year for Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky: With a valuation around $31 billion, Airbnb was going to go public on March 31. And then the pandemic hit. Within weeks, Airbnb was gutted and Brian was forced to lay off 25 percent of his staff. “It would have been so easy to just spiral,” Brian Chesky says. “But every moment is a moment for us to be doing something that’s defining, to make us better.” On this episode of Back to Biz with Katie and Boz, co-hosts Katie Couric and Bozoma Saint John talk to Brian about how he quickly pivoted his company and how travel will be forever changed. In the wake of the national anti-racism protests, Airbnb has also had to reckon with its record on discrimination. Brian Chesky shares his regrets on not doing more sooner on race and the steps the company is taking now to make the platform and the company more equitable.  

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Transcript

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That time you got home from a week of double shifts and your dog didn't recognize you. Hate me? Hate me? Do you want to treat? You want to treat? You knew it was time for something new. Let's job it up. At career Builder. You can find jobs with the work life balance and salary you want, plus build a resume and apply to multiple jobs in just one click. Start your search at career builder dot com. The moment you

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automatically get meeting notes. Auto dot ai works for virtual meetings like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet. Sign up on the web for free or download in the app stores. Auto dot Ai. That's O T T E R dot Ai. Hi everyone, I'm Katie Couric and I'm bosmas st John and this is Back to Biz with Katie and Bose Bose. I'm really excited to have Brian Chesky on our podcast today. I've known him for a long time. He's been the boy wonder as the CEO of air B and B. Yes,

for sure. I mean even when I was in Silcom Valley at Apple and then at Uber, I was always impressed by what he was doing. But his backstory is so interesting for people who don't know. Brian started the company twelve years ago, yes, during a recession, with two buddies. He had studied industrial design at Risdy. He moved to San Francisco Go so he and his friends rented out their apartment. When there was a convention in town, but not enough hotel rooms, they blew up a few air

mattresses and voila. The idea was born. Air Go Airbnb, get it. Listen. I'm a marketer, and that joint is fresh. I like it, very fresh. But the last couple of months have been crazy, right, he was about to go public and then bam, here comes the pandemic. I can't imagine bows the stress he's been under in recent weeks. So we started there, we asked Brian just how he's managing right now? Yeah, let's get to it. Yeah, I'm I think I'm I'm doing about as well as somebody

in my circumstance could be doing. Right. Um, it's been a pretty uh intense and harrowing four months or so, and I'm sure I'm sure most people listening will have identified with that experience. You know, when we started Airbnb a dozen years ago, I told myself, no, I don't think I'll ever do something as crazy as that. Uh, And I think I've just we have experienced something that

is probably even crazier than starting this company. When you're the child the two social workers and you're like unemployed, and suddenly twelve years later you have a company like Airbnb and you're gonna go public, you just you have this real sense of, um, wow, I've really done something the last twelve years. So then to lose eight of it in five weeks is like, um, you know that was definitely um. And if if I thought my life was crazy the first twelve years, the next five weeks

got even crazier. Losing eight percent of it or of it and um, and then suddenly you know, we found ourselves in this kind of total crisis where it felt like, you know, I don't know, probably like a lot of people, you feel like you're staring into the abyss and you can't quite tell if it will ever be better. And

for me, so much of it was your psychology. It would have been so easy to just say the spiral and you know, when you're responsible for thousand the people and you know everyone's pretty scared and a little freaked out, it's really really important that the psychology organization maps, matches and mirrors the psychology of the leader. And so you have to find your way to stay positive and you have to find a way to say, for every single

bad thing, this is an opportunity. I'm not gonna exploit this, but every moment is a moment for us to do something that's defining to make us better. And that was the thing that we like went into this crisis with. How did the pandemic fundamentally change your business? As you said you were set to go public, Uh, instead, you've taken a huge hip, you had to lay off of your workforce in may Um. I know you've tried to be very generous to your employees. You let them keep

their laptops, keep their health insurance for a year. But um, you know, how did you figure out how to move forward? And with all your hopes and dreams, as you said, shattered in a period of five weeks. Boo oh god, Yeah, I mean, and I felt so terrible because it wasn't just our hopes and dreams. It was all these employees who had stock and you know, I, you know, and many people. I'm sure they were employed planning to do things like buy homes and stuff with that money, and

they really counting on it. And investors have been really paci with me. Probably the hardest thing though, um with the host. We have four million hosts and of them telling us they depend on me to pay their rent or the mortgage. And we had guests who wanted to cancel their their future A bookings because they told us I can't travel. Well. Was more than a billion dollars of cancelations and the problem was that these were a host who were depending on the money to pay the

rent or mortgage entering an economic recession. So what do you do when guests are telling you I feel unsafe, I can't travel, I need a refund, and host saying if you refund them their money, I'm going to be in a really bad economic position. And we ultimately did the following. We decided to refund the guests the money. We felt like, we told the host like, we have to do this because we can't. We have to say we were not signing with the guests, were signing with

health and safety. We can't have people being put in harm's way. And you know, um, this is a global at the time was global shutdown too, and a billion people shutdowns. So we can't be part of everyone traveling right now if they don't want to travel and they want their money back. But then you know, there was a huge uproar and host were like super upset and they were very upset with us and me, and we decided to take and this was at the depth of

our kind of our own despair. Um, two million dollars of our own money. Now in good times it's you know, you could you raise money, and bad times though, it wasn't clearly we'd be able to raise any money. So this was two we thought we'd probably need and we just gave it to our host. Um, we didn't make them whole, but it was the most we could do.

And then something crazier happened. Our employees pulled together of their own money, a million dollars in their own money UM to of the host and so then we the founders, we we put some of our own money in and we started doing all these things. And that was probably the first kind of defining action we did. And then after that we said to ourselves, you know, we can't we're not as relevant right now as we used to be because people aren't traveling, but we can be useful

in a crisis. And so we noticed that these nurses and UM and fireworks, firefighters and others UM and doctors, UM, we're going to sites and they needed Airbnb. They need homes to stay in or they didn't want to stay with their families and get their families sick. So we worked with our host community and two thousand of our hosts offered homes for workers on the front line for a discount, and we kind of shared the discount. We had these products, this product called Experiences where you can

do these three our activities with locals. I remember, I remember, Brian, when you and I talked about how you were expanding that that service to Airbnb. You know, and it was the next second act of Airbnb, and then it got stopped because, um, you know, social distancing. You can't be bringing travelers together from countries. It's like the exact opposite what people want. So our host said, well, we're um,

can we offer them online? And so in fourteen days our team build a product to create online experiences, which ended up being like the fastest growing product we ever created. So that worked out really well. But like master classes, yeah, yeah, they're they're kind of but they're interactive so um so basically it's a one hour activity. So I'll give you an example. We have Olympic athletes, so we did a partnership we did we're one of the sponsors the Olympics.

The Olympics aren't happening this year. We got I think thirty Olympian athletes and by the way, the average Olympic athlete, a lot of people don't know this, lives around the poverty line because a lot of them, you know there that you dedicate your life to your sport and then a lot of sports you don't get a sponsorship, so they kind of have to start their careers over. And so we said, well, you know, we we created a way for them to be able to offer a one

hour kind of online class. Um. You know, it could be a workout, it could be like learning about setting goals, it can be a bunch of things. We have about thirty of them now and hope they hope to get a lot more. And then of course we had to raise two billion dollars because we were burning cash very very quickly. And then of course we had the layoff, which was probably the heart decision I've ever made in

my life. And um, and it became an unavoidable truth when we we realized, you know, travel stopped, and we don't know what's gonna return, and when it does return, we know it's going to be different. When you're in a crisis, you learn a lot about yourself in a crisis. You also get clarity in a crisis that you may not have had in any other period in your life. And in this crisis, I kind of got clarity and like like we got clarity, like why are we even

doing this in the first place? Like what would the world lose if we just disappeared tomorrow? And it became really clear that the part of yournb that was special, where the everyday host that we're offering, like connection and belonging, and if we disappeared from this earth and they couldn't offer what they're offering, that would be the thing that would be bad. And she thought, you know, that's what we need to get back to. We need to get

it back to why we started this company. Back to belonging, back to connection, back to empowering regular people, um, back to our roots. And so we decided we're gonna like scale back or shut down things that aren't that. So we paused our transportation effort, we had a content effort, we paused that. We scaled back our hotels business. You really just got really focused and we said, that's what we're gonna do. And UM, you know, I think we're gonna build off that base now. So we can't do it.

We're not as big as we were in some ways, we can't do everything we used to. But things we're gonna do, we're gonna be very very passionate about. And I I think ultimately, I'm hoping years from now, we'll look back on that as a really important decision when we come back. Brian Chesky on how travel will forever change, whether your event needed one room or an entire conference center.

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Let's drop it up at career builder. You can find jobs with the work life balance and salary you want, Plus build a resume and apply to multiple jobs in just one click. Start your search at career builder dot. You're listening to Back to Biz with Katie and Bows. Let's return to our conversation with Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky. By the way, I do have a confession for you that when I was at uber Um. First of all, I'm I'm a nerd of marketing, right I I obsess

over everyone's creative, everyone's strategy, everyone's vision. And I was absolutely in love with the idea of belonging. But I thought it was just it just hit the mark so beautifully because in that instance, you don't have to pick a side. You know, it's not you're you know, the folks who are booking versus the host. You know, it's not it's not versus, it's just belonging. Everybody wants to belong and we all understand that from a very deeply

emotional human level. And it is still true, you know, it's what we are dealing with right now with the crises in the world around racial inequality and everything else. Everybody wants to belong. It is the fundamental need, you know.

And now I think there's also an opportunity to serve in sort of future hope about continuing to belong to the world, because what this pandemic has done has brought us home and we are you know, inside, and we are concerned and we're anxious, but we also want to connect back to people and back to outside, and you know, we all have a deep longing for that. So what do you think is the future of travel and of that belonging to the world. Because let me tell you something,

I'm tired of my house. Can I get some kind of membership, you know, for Airbnb where I could just, you know, frequently, just move around the way I want to, because because I would like that future for myself. That's actually a really good idea to talk about. That, I mean, a really good idea we should definitely talk about. Um,

what is the future of travel? Well, um, I'm hoping, and I think that travel will get more focused on communities, more focused on people, more intimate, authentic, small, off the beaten path, truly being connected to communities where you go, not being an outsider, being an insider. And I think that the last fifty years of travel has been very

defined by being an outsider. The only other thing I'd say is I think that we used to live in this world where you lived in one place and you would take a week vacation somewhere else, or you travel for business, and I think that is also changing. I think that living and traveling will blur together because now you could instead, like you could go somewhere for a few months. Is that living or traveling or is that

something in between? And so I think you're gonna see this blurring this the idea that people will be mobile. They won't just have moble devices, they themselves would be mobile. I think that you're gonna see UM travel being longer length of stay, two smaller communities, UM to you know, local, authentic,

and UM more immersive, more experiential. Maybe the one thing that makes that obvious to me is you ever want to know what the future will look like, just look at what young people want, because they're going to define that future. And the younger the person is, the more they want something that's authentic, and the more they want

to have an experience, not own a thing. I remember reading that all these small towns across America were dying because the older residents were passing away, the younger people didn't stick want to stick around, and they were all migreeting to cities because that was where the exciting cultural things were happening. So I'm curious what you what you see in the future for some of these major metropolitan areas.

Do you think that there will be a return to more rural kind of pastoral or bucolic and all those words lifestyles? Yeah, I think the short answer is yes, but UM, I thought that the small communities, UM, Pittsburgh's um, you know, like I'll just pick Pittsburgh and Cleveland. I thought they were going to see a resurgence, but I thought that would happen over the course of ten years. So I thought, you know, before COVID, that maybe by the orty that you would see the rise of small communities.

And the reason why was, UM, you know, for the first time in human history, more people live in cities than out of cities. And the cities they're they're they're congering to are not just metropolis mega metropolisis so these are like ten million plus cities like New York or you know, SF is only a million, but it feels really dense, the second densist city in the country, and then outside of the United States. And I think there was this problem where there was a little bit of

an alienation of urban living. So UM people lived in apartment buildings, but they didn't quite know their neighbors. It was really expensive live in cities, and if you live in if you live in San Francisco, l A, New York, London, you'll, I mean anyone living these seas will know how expensive it is. And they're really it was becoming like city life was becoming a thing really really hard, and for each new generation going to city, I think it was it was it was getting a little bit difficult. And

so we're in a way. I think we were reaching what I call a temporary not a permanent, a temporary peak city moment um. I thought that was going to take a lot longer, and I think what COVID did is I think it accelerated that. And I think the big other unlock was Zoom, because now people are realizing, actually, you can get work done without being in the space. Now.

To be clear, I do think there's a huge value people being together, and I also want to be clear that I do not think this is the death of the city at all. I think it's a sign wave. So I think you're gonna see over the next five years people doing what I'm what we're calling travel redistribution and population redistribution. Um. I think you're gonna see people

traveling to smaller communities. And I think people are kind of We've got used to this industrialized mass tourism world where you were in lines and crowds, and I think people really want something more intimate more authentic. What I would say, though, is the is the following. I think New York's best days are ahead of it. I think Los angeles best days are ahead of it. I think big cities best days are ahead of them, not behind them. But I think before they get better, they're gonna get

a little tougher. And I think what's going to happen is that you're gonna see, um, the business predictions. So it's the risk of predictions. Is I'm wrong, um but um But I do think you're gonna see a population slow down in urban cities. A lot of creative people I come from a creative background, are going to choose. They were already a lot of creative people were already not living in New York. They were going to New Jersey, they were going all sorts of other places. It was

just too expensive. They're going to redistribute. And then I think what's gonna happen is cities are gonna be cheaper. And as cities like New York gets cheaper than a new generation of people are going to go into cities. But they're gonna come and they're gonna bring a whole fresh perspective to new urban living. And I think they're gonna do something awesome that like, and I'll be like, you know, in the next five or ten years, I can't predict, and I think the city will be something

different when we come back. We asked Brian about Airbnb's race problem. That's right after this, still living in and manually taking notes. Start the new year with auto dot ai to generate automatic notes for meetings, interviews, or lectures. With auto dot ai, you can search the meeting notes, insert images, playback the audio, and share them with your friends or co workers. You can capture action items, remember

meeting details, and keep everyone informed. Auto dot ai works for in person or virtual meetings like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google meet. Sign up for free at auto dot ai or download the app for free auto dot ai. That's O T T E R dot Ai. The moment you realized you were mistaking your kids for co workers? Okay, team, I'm taking my fifteen Now. What was the moment you knew it was time to get back to work? Let's

drop it up. A career builder are simple, customizable search tool lets you search for part time, full time, and even work from home jobs so you can find a job that fits your lifestyle. Get started now at career builder dot Com. This episode is brought to you by Death on the Nile, exclusively in theaters February eleven. The greatest detective of all time, Hercule Poiro, returns to solve another deadly case. Join Poiro on a wild ride down

the Nile River, promising luxury, intrigue, and murder. Grab your friends and get ready to solve this murder mystery on the big Screen, starring Kenneth Branda and Galgha dot premiering only in theaters February eleven. Hi, everyone, you're listening to Back to Biz with Katie and Bows. Let's pick back up with Brian Chesky. One of the things I'm hearing you say, Brian, is you think this pandemic is going to result in a real reset for society for all

of us. Our priorities, our relationships are, you know, our hopes and dreams, how we want to live our lives um and and I'm wondering, you know, I hope so, because I think the world needed to be recalibrated. There was something that was off. But I wonder after a vaccine is is uh you know comes about do you worry and wonder is it just going to go back to the way it was or do you think we will be forever changed. I think it will be forever changed. I think the big question is how long does this

go on? And the longer the shutdown happens, the more we can't go back, and the more profound the shifts, because where people are gonna invent and they're gonna adapt, they're going to create new habits. And I think the way to ask this question is how many things were we doing in the old way just because we were doing them or because they were habits. Because now we're gonna have to make a choice to go back to the old way. We're not going to be doing that

because we were just doing it all along. And so I think we will go back to a bunch of stuff because people will choose, but they're not gonna choose everything. They're going to choose to only go back to the things that were essential. And then I think new things are going to emerge, so we'll go back a little bit. It's like a pendulum. We we're gonna but we're not.

I don't think we go back all the way. And my my point of view on this would be um less will return than than than is intuitive that that that this is a new world. Um and I think we're only the beginning of it, because what are we only four months into this? So I mean, and it's probably gonna go on, Like we may not be in lockdown the rest of the year, but like you know, I think another four months of this, you know, Like I know, our industry is going to be changed forever,

and I doubt we're the only one. Yeah. Well, I I really enjoyed the conversation around change because we've been waiting for it a long time, especially as it relates to diversity, inclusion, just crimination. Like this is a time of real change. And you know, as a as a black woman who travels alone by her you know, a lot for work and sometimes were personal. Um, it's always been on my mind, you know how discrimination or my own safety, Uh how I managed that in the world.

And I wish that more companies and more businesses would pay attention, you know, to my particular plight. I know Airbnb is certainly one in which you know, discrimination on the platform and within you know the product has been a challenge and so what what are you thinking around that? Yeah?

I think this has been like a wake up call for a lot of a lot of US and white people and like business leaders and others, like it's been a it's just been a it's has just been like a fundamental wake up call that I think that everyone needed. And so I think that's another example and a good example. But we're not going back act like whatever change happens this front, it's it's it's happened, and it's not going backwards. UM. I think specifically to Airbnb, UM, we have a unique

history in this area. You know, in two thousand sixteen, there was a hashtag that was trending on Twitter and the hashtag was airbm hashtag Airbnb wall black, and the hashtag basically meant that black travelers, primarily United States, We're chronicling their experiences trying to book an Airbnb and being rejected by white hosts primarily. And it took me by surprise, and you know, we were not fully conscious that some

of our platform could be used for discrimination. So this became an existential risk to our business and we um we ended up actually bringing Eric Holder before Uber, so we were the first ones to I think bring an Airic Holder and he did. He did a whole report and analysis. We worked in the American Civil Liberties Union, this woman Laura Murphy, and we basically created Anti Discrimination

TAW Force and we made a bunch of progress. We did a couple of things, like one of the things we did, which seems really basic, was we asked everyone to basically like a test. It's kind of like checking a box, like in terms of service box saying that you will not discriminate on the base of like age, race, religion, um orientation, gender, things like that. In one point three million people chose not to do that. So we said, fine,

see you later. We were moving through the platform and so but we we we had we had limitations because we were not measuring the amount of discrimination or platform. And as you know in Silken Valley, what you can't measure, you don't often optimize, and we were only responding to anecdotes. Now, it's really hard to measure discrimination. How do you do it? You have to know people's races to do that. Well, how do you find out someone's race without violating their privacy?

And so we ended up doing two years ago, as we started engaging with Color of Change. There obviously you know the I think they're the largest online civil rights group UM, and we worked with them other civil rights organizations and c P and we worked at privacy groups because you know, you've got to be thinking of us

the rights and privacy. And we designed a way where and we just launched this like I think it was a week ago, where we can collect this thing called perceived race data because of course discrimination is about perceived race, because no one asked somebody what their races. They just perceive a race. But we had to do it in a way that was UM consistent with privacy. So it took us longer than I wouldn't want admit, and we

developed a bunch of principles. We said, you know, we're gonna anyone who doesn't want to be in this research can opt out. UM, we're gonna decouple your perceived race from your account, and we're gonna be transparent about UM what we're doing with this information and the results. And so now we have a way to like follow cohorts of data on our platform and then measure the bias and discrimination on our platform, and hopefully with that data we can then design our platform to be more equitable

and UM and and create more belonging. I'm hoping there's a really big silver lining here, and we're going to open source our learnings around discrimination and also even how we work to anonymize this data. So this is just one of the things we're doing. And I don't say this to pat ourselves in the back, because frankly, we

got issues we gotta work on. But I think we'll be remembered for what we do, and I think that every tech company and probably every company, but every tech company the world will remember what we did on this issue. We can either choose to be a mirror to society, or we can be a mirror to what we want society to look like. Those are those are literally choices we have and why wouldn't we make that second choice? And why don't we at least try, And so that's

what we're doing. I'm also very proud of Alexis Sahanian, who is a is a friend because some friends with Serena williams Um But I am very impressed by his decision to, you know, stepped down from Reddit's board so that it could be flat filled by a black candidate. And can I tell me? Can I tell you about who that person is. Do you know him? Yes? Yes, yes, Michael right, you know his history with Airbnb? No? No, please share. Had it not been from Michael Cybel, I

probably wouldn't be here telling you this story. Michael Cybel um is um. Joe Night and I started Airbnb, and I remember telling like people about Airbnb and they thought it was like like the worst day they've ever heard of. And so we were trying to raise a hundred fifty dollars at a one point five million dollar evaluation. Nobody wanted that deal. I mean, just like we remember we got in True to twenty investors couldn't get raised money and we ended up meeting Michael Cybel. We met Michael

Cybel in March. Now we launched in October Town seven and he basically when I was like we were nobody and we didn't know anybody, he took us under his wing because our roommate, my roommate Joe and I, my roommate had was this guy named Phil. He worked for a company called Justin Do TV. Michael Cybel was a CEO justin I TV, which is the basically the predecessor to Twitch with Amasam bought and Michael basically met with us every Friday, and I'm not exaggaly for like three

to five hours. We'd go for a happy hour. He'd take us through a site and we'd be there until like late in the evening. And he eventually helped us get into y Combinator. And I think that he's probably, after the founders, the most significant person um in the founding story of Airbnb. Um, you know, and I think we used to call Michael the god founder because like the Godfather, we'd go every week to him everything. Michael,

we got problems, can you help us? But I just wanted to give a shout out to Michael because um, you know, he's he he embodies the culture of Silk and Valley, you know, he he he didn't want something from us and we he said, this is the culture is a culture of trust and you pay it forward. I think that's so. I mean, that's a that's an

amazing story. But it goes to the Testament and probably points out even more so why there needs to be more open spots, you know, for people of color, black people to be on board, you know, ordinarily wouldn't make it. So is there another Michael cybel or MICHAELA Cybel somewhere

who can step onto your board. Yeah. Absolutely, Yeah. I wanted to ask you about that, Brian, because you know, there's a Courts article granted from two thousand and sixteen that says the dirty secret of Airbnb is that it's really, really white. So I'm curious about how you if you've managed to change that, and how you plan to continue changing it in the future. Yeah. We're part of the way there, but not not nearly where we need to be. UM.

We've just let's start with the board. So probably the time that article was written, UM, it was it would have been five people on the board. Were three founders were white guys, and then we had to venture capitalists. You know, when you raise money, a VC takes a board seat, typically in UM. And so since then we've appointed four independent board members. UM. Three were women, UM, including my former CEO. We have an Mathers. She was the CFO of Pixar for Steve Jobs, Audit Chaff, Google

and Netflix. And then Angela Renz you probably know she UM ran Apple Retail. Before that was CEO Burbery, and then we added Ken Channel, who was CEO of amex um so UM not to make excuses, but we are we are trying, but we definitely need to get more diverse, even on the board. And so absolutely, I I would definitely be interested in US, UM continuing to add a couple more people, UM, you know, in time I don't know win, but absolutely on the executive team. UM. You know,

we UM, we also need to make progress. We UM we we we were. We We have set diversity targets that we want by the end of next year of our board and executive team to be people of color. UM. I think I think we can get there for sure. UM and maybe we can we can beat that actually and UM, and you know, I think that we've the last three hires I made to them or women, UM, my head of operations, UM, Tara Bunch, she was running operations for Apple. And I hired this woman named Katherine Powell,

who ran basically seventy of the Disney parks. And I mean, I would just say from my experience that I can say this, UM, a more diverse company is not only the responsible thing to do, it is actually a competitive advantage. UM you know, And I really mean that, like, like we we became so much higher performing when we started becoming more diverse, and we're not there. We're not even close to where we need to be. We should at least map to the demographics and the country you operate.

So if you know, like you shouldn't and you could be better, but you shouldn't be worse than that. So we want to go a lot further. I was going to say, given this reckoning that and the movement we're witnessing and this realization and wake up call as you referred to it, Brian too of systemic racism and what, it's just no longer acceptable. I mean, you can't really

get away without with with not being diverse. I mean, not only for all the reasons you just outlined, but let's face it, it's just not it's not an acceptable look anymore. No, it's and and that is as it should be. Um. It probably overdue and and um and so that will be one of the one of the good that come out of a crisis. Are you embarrassed you haven't done more? Brian? Um? I wish I did more. I wish I did more sooner um and um and

I'm proud of what we have done. Um. I think that UM, I think you know, coming like ours um mission is built around belonging connection. I think that's like really really important and so um yeah, if I could it over again, I would have done more sooner. And I think that's a good lesson here for everyone, that every one of us could be doing more sooner. Bose.

I think Brian is absolutely right. I think there wasn't an urgency to fix this problem before, but there's certainly an urgency now and hopefully this will be a real moment in time where things will change for the better finally, I really hope. So. I mean, we're demanding more of ourselves right now, and that's really what matters. Again, we've been talking to Brian Chesky, the CEO of Airbnb, and that does it for this week's episode of Back to

Biz with Katie and Bow. If you're not already, you can subscribe to the podcast on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows, and you can learn more about all the cool people were talking to, as well as our favorite moments from these interviews on our Instagram feeds and stories. Until next time, I'm Katie Currik and I'm Bozema st. John and this is Back to Biz. With Katie and Bo's Thanks for listening. Everybody.

Back to Biz with Katie and Bows is a production of I Heart Radio and Katie Curve Media. The executive producers are Katie kurrit bozmus St John, and Courtney Litz. The supervising producer is Lauren Hansen. The associate producers are Derrek Clements, Eliza Costas and Emily Pinto. Editing by Derek Clements and Lauren Hansen, Mixing by Derek Clements. Special thanks to Adriana Fasio. For more information about today's episode, go to Katie Kirk dot com. You can also follow Katie

Kirk and both St John on Twitter and Instagram. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. So I Want Fresn State, whoever football in Latina, in San Yankee there, but always keeps k okay There, cal Hope, Punta La Judas Let's pans will be a key in California

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