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Founder Mode: Brian Chesky, Founder & CEO, Airbnb

#founder-mode#airbnb#ceo#management#hiring#leadership#yc

tldr

Brian Chesky recounts how he lost control of Airbnb between 2015 and 2019 by following the conventional wisdom of "hire great people and get out of the way" — what he now calls Manager Mode. The COVID pandemic became his forcing function: with the company fighting for survival, everyone finally looked to him for direction, and he rebuilt Airbnb from the ground up using Founder Mode — staying in the details, skip-leveling aggressively, and treating 40-50 people as his direct reports. His core thesis: the best companies in the world are founder-led, and the age of AI makes founder-mode speed and alignment even more critical.

Key Takeaways

  • Founder Mode is presence, not absence. Leadership means being in the room with people doing the work — brainstorming, shaping decisions daily — not setting a vision and disappearing. The founder's job isn't to "set the vision" once; it's to set the vision every single day.
  • "Hire great people and trust them" is dangerously incomplete. Brian Chesky followed this advice faithfully and it was "incredibly fatal." Executives built their own fiefdoms, hired their own teams, left, and Chesky inherited the mess — repeatedly, over years.
  • Skip-Level Meetings are non-negotiable. Chesky treats the direct reports of his direct reports as his own directs — a concentric circle of ~40-50 people he co-hires, co-manages, and co-fires. If an executive says "they're my people," the answer is: "They're the company's people."
  • Crises grant permission that peacetime doesn't. The pandemic compressed five years of decisions into three months. Without it, Chesky believes he'd still be slowly fighting the same battles with "a lot more frustration and a lot less to show for it."
  • Founders can skip-level because they've done every job. A founder built the product, did the support, ran the finances — they can sit with anyone doing the work because it was once their work. Professional managers came up one silo and are unfamiliar with the other 19.
  • Founder Mode companies are better positioned for AI. AI demands speed, velocity, and reinvention. Small, aligned teams all rowing in one direction will outperform bureaucratic organizations that can't move fast enough.

[0:00] The Origin of the Founder Mode Talk

Brian Chesky almost didn't show up to the Y Combinator alumni retreat. Ron Conway texted him the night before — in all caps — insisting he come. Chesky arrived late, around 9:30 PM, with no prepared remarks. He decided to tell the "refounding story" — what happened from the pandemic to today — and the room went electric.

quote

"I wasn't even planning to come. Ron Conway sends me a text message in all caps like, 'You have to come. Support founders. They have to hear what you're going to say.'" — Brian Chesky

The talk struck a nerve because it named something every founder felt but couldn't articulate: the pressure to become a manager, the guilt of wanting to stay hands-on, and the slow loss of confidence that comes with scaling.

[2:00] How He Lost Control of Airbnb

As Airbnb scaled, Chesky's co-founders started reporting to him, breaking the equality of the early days. He hired experienced executives — "adults" to his "adolescent" — and they told him how to run a big company. The advice was always the same: hire great people and trust them.

Chesky became a people-pleaser, negotiating between how he wanted to run the company and how each executive wanted to be led. Over 17 years, he went through multiple generations of leaders — each wanting to "do their thing," building their own teams, then leaving. He'd inherit teams aligned to someone else's vision and have to start over.

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"The bigger we got and the more successful we got, the more I lost my confidence. You'd think I would have gained my confidence." — Brian Chesky

When he tried to get hands-on, people accused him of micromanaging. Every negative term — meddling, not trusting, not empowering — reinforced the idea that he didn't know what he was doing. He stopped listening to his inner voice. That's when he became a manager, not a founder.

[6:00] The Blueprint: Steve Jobs and the Pandemic Pivot

Former Apple employees told Chesky how Steve Jobs returned to a company 90 days from bankruptcy and converted it from Manager Mode to Founder Mode. Chesky filed that away but felt he didn't have "permission" — Airbnb was about to go public.

Then the pandemic hit. Board member Ken Chenault — who'd been CEO of American Express during 9/11 and 2008 — called on March 15, 2020: "Remember that conversation about your defining moment? This pandemic is ten 9/11s."

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"Bad companies are destroyed by a crisis. Good companies survive a crisis. But great companies are defined by a crisis." — Andy Grove, as cited by Brian Chesky

For the first time in years, everyone looked to Chesky and asked: "What do we do?" He finally had permission to lead the way he'd always wanted. He took control, rebuilt the company from the ground up, and Airbnb went from "Is this the end?" (Wired magazine) to a $100 billion IPO.

[11:00] Skip-Levels and the Concentric Circle Model

The conventional CEO playbook says: hire an executive team and let them run the company. Chesky calls this "absolutely not what you should do." Instead, he advocates for relationships with as many people as possible — being as close to the people doing the work as you can get.

He practices Skip-Level Meetings aggressively, sometimes going four layers deep. His model: treat the ~40-50 people in his first two reporting layers as direct reports. He co-hires, co-fires, co-promotes with his executives.

Jensen Huang at NVIDIA took this further — 40-50 actual direct reports with no executive layer at all. Chesky respects it but finds it "unwieldy" for most people.

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"First of all, they're not your people. They're the company's people. Because if the executive thinks they're their people and they leave — well, guess who has the team? You." — Brian Chesky

Why can founders do this and managers can't? Because founders have done every job in the company. They built the product before they hired someone to build it. They can sit with an engineer or a designer and actually contribute. Professional managers came up one silo — the other 19 are unfamiliar territory.

[18:05] The Data Is Unmistakable

Chesky's closing argument: the most valuable companies in the world are either founder-led or carry so much founder momentum (like Amazon post-Jeff Bezos) that the pattern holds. Satya Nadella at Microsoft isn't a founder but acts like one — reinventing the company rather than administering it. Tim Cook could sell the iPhone for 13 years, but if Steve Jobs had died in 2005, would Apple have shipped the iPhone? Chesky doesn't think so.

He ends with a wish: that founders don't need a once-in-a-generation pandemic to find their permission. That's the whole point of talking about Founder Mode — to give founders the framework and the courage before the crisis forces their hand.

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"Your employees will mostly all be happier. I was afraid to lead. I thought I would be bossy. It turns out people do want direction. Without direction, you have politics, you have bureaucracy — all the reasons people don't want to work at a big company." — Brian Chesky

People Mentioned

One Thing to Act On

You run FeatureOS and SupportWire with a small team — you're already in Founder Mode by default. The danger isn't that you'll hire 20 VPs and lose control; it's the subtler version: delegating product decisions to process (roadmap votes, feature request counts) instead of staying in the details yourself. Pick one surface this week — the onboarding flow, the empty state, the upgrade prompt — and go four layers deep. Talk to the person building it. Sit in the room. Shape it together. Don't just review the output; be in the creative flow. That's the Chesky move at your scale.

Raw Transcript

Auto-captions from YouTube. Folded by default.

0:00 Carolyn, we are here with Brian Chesy, 0:03 the founder and CEO of Airbnb. 0:06 We are so excited to be talking to you 0:08 this morning on a special topic, founder 0:11 mode. Last year at this very time, you 0:15 came to the YC alumni retreat and you 0:19 gave a seinal talk that everyone in that 0:22 room remembers 0:24 uh where you just described what then 0:27 became known as founder mode and it was 0:31 magical and I want to talk more about 0:33 that. Uh tell us about that talk. 0:36 I mean the talk was like pretty crazy 0:37 because I wasn't even planning to come. 0:39 Um I I told Gary I'm coming from out of 0:41 town. and I don't think I can make it. 0:43 And then the night before the talk, Ron 0:46 Conway sends me like and Ron Conway is a 0:48 very persuasive person and he sends me a 0:51 text message. I think it was like in all 0:52 caps like you have to come like like 0:54 support founders like they have to hear 0:56 what you're going to say. And I'm like 0:58 okay. And I think like the the the 1:00 schedule was like already printed and 1:02 like Steve Hoffman was the last talk. I 1:04 told Gary, "Okay, I'll come." And I I 1:07 remember driving I think it's like was 1:08 like so it was like I got there so late 1:10 it was like dark. It's like 900 or 9:30. 1:12 I get on and I'm only supposed to go on 1:14 for like 20 30 minutes. I don't even 1:15 really know what I'm going to say except 1:18 I speak a lot at Y cominator and I speak 1:20 out the founding story 1:21 and I thought well there's almost like a 1:23 reounding story. There's this thing that 1:25 happened from the pandemic to today. I 1:27 needed to tell this story and I I I I 1:30 thought there was something about YC 1:33 where there's a sense of togetherness. 1:35 Before YC I didn't know what I was 1:36 doing. I thought we needed business 1:38 plans. PG was like do things that don't 1:40 scale and like make something people 1:41 want and we had this methodology and 1:43 there was this like way to do something 1:45 and we did it and it worked and we had 1:48 other founder friends and there were and 1:49 we talked to each other and they did 1:51 things and it worked and then suddenly 1:54 you go on a rocket ship and you're alone 1:56 in that rocket ship and in that rocket 1:58 ship it is so lonely because number one 2:01 your co-founders start working for you 2:03 and so 2:04 suddenly you're not totally equal if 2:06 you're the CEO 2:07 and then you start hiring these 2:08 executives and these executives are 2:11 typically older than you and they're 2:12 much more experienced and they're like 2:14 adults and you're like an adolescent. 2:16 That's that's at least what I felt like 2:18 and I think a lot of people feel the way 2:19 and you don't know quite what to do and 2:21 we didn't have the same community and so 2:23 the people telling us what to do or 2:25 giving us advice weren't Paul Graham 2:27 weren't other YC founders weren't other 2:29 YC alum it's the people we hired or the 2:32 people on our board who have maybe good 2:34 intentions but they're telling us how to 2:36 run a big company with a professional 2:38 CEO and that is not who we were and so 2:42 they're telling you things like like 2:44 hire great people and trust them to do 2:46 their it and that how could you disagree 2:48 with that? Who doesn't want to hire 2:50 great people and trust them to do their 2:51 job? And I did it and it was incredibly 2:54 fatal because I misunders 2:57 them and let them do their thing without 2:59 auditing what they were doing. And 3:01 suddenly you might find out a couple 3:03 years later they maybe weren't the right 3:05 people. They weren't doing the right 3:06 thing. They hired the wrong team. And 3:08 guess what? They'll leave and you have 3:10 to now fix it 3:12 for like five years. And this can happen 3:14 over and over and over and over again. 3:17 And I kind of felt like when we started 3:20 Airbnb, 3:21 we ran the company that we wanted to 3:23 run. 3:24 And then we hired people. And again, 3:26 people with good intentions, but I 3:28 naturally I think I'm I think I was a 3:30 little bit of a people pleaser. And I 3:32 think a lot of founders like we're a 3:33 little bit we can be people pleasers. We 3:35 want to be liked. We want these people 3:36 that work for us to like working for us. 3:38 And so we listen to them and we ask them 3:40 like kind of how they want to be led and 3:42 what we should do. And what you end up 3:44 doing is 3:46 with good intentions. You basically try 3:49 to find some negotiation, some me 3:52 midpoint between how you want to run the 3:54 company and how they want to be led. 3:56 Except each of them have their own 3:57 perspectives. No one agrees on anything. 4:00 So you're kind of negotiating with 4:02 everyone who's going in every different 4:04 direction and they're competing with 4:06 each other. And many of them, if you're 4:08 doing this as long as I am, 17 years, 4:11 what you end up doing is going through 4:12 many generations of this where people 4:14 say, "Let me do my thing." They do their 4:16 thing with their team, leave, and then 4:18 you inherit their team, and you have to 4:20 keep doing their thing, but then you 4:22 hire someone else who wants to do a 4:23 different thing, 4:24 not that thing that they were trying to 4:26 do. And do this with 20 different 4:28 groups, all going in different 4:30 directions. And so suddenly, you start 4:32 to want to get more hands-on. You have 4:34 to fix things. You're saying, "Okay, now 4:35 we're gonna do this." And people are 4:37 like, "Why aren't you trusting me? Why 4:38 aren't you empowering me? You're like 4:41 you're you're meddling. Like you're 4:43 micromanaging me." There's all these 4:45 terms. They're all negative. They all 4:47 come from this notion that you don't 4:49 know what you're doing. You're not a 4:50 good leader. You don't trust yourself. 4:52 You start listening to everyone but your 4:53 inner voice. And that's when you become 4:56 a manager, not a founder. And I just 4:59 like I started thinking I was crazy. And 5:03 the bigger we got and the more 5:04 successful we got, the more I lost my 5:07 confidence. You think I would have 5:08 gained my confidence. 5:09 Yeah. 5:09 But I started losing my confidence 5:11 because the thing was outscaling me and 5:13 I didn't quite know what to do and I was 5:15 basically seeking advice and I should 5:18 have listened to myself how I want to 5:19 run the company because the right way is 5:22 one way and that's the only way and that 5:24 the way is the way you want to do it 5:27 because people some people will stick 5:29 with you but many will come and go. We 5:31 talk about this thing product market 5:32 fit. There's also this thing called 5:34 founder market fit. How do you want to 5:37 run the company? You are the right 5:38 founder for the right company and you 5:40 need to build your team the right way. 5:42 So basically I went last year I told 5:45 this crazy story. I basically said like 5:48 I felt like I lost control of my company 5:50 not from the investors but from the 5:52 employees. Like I just we were all going 5:54 in thousand different directions and I 5:56 didn't know what to do. I started 5:59 basically seeking out advice. I 6:02 discovered like a couple people came in 6:04 my life that were former Apple 6:06 employees. They told me how Steve Jobs 6:08 like basically came back to Apple. He 6:11 was like 90 days from bankruptcy and he 6:13 basically took what was basically a 6:14 manager mode company and got it into 6:16 founder mode. And I learn I put that in 6:19 my head and I said, I wish I had 6:20 permission to do that, but we're about 6:22 to go public. But man, I wish I could 6:24 run this company like during Y 6:26 Cominator. What if we could run like a 6:27 giant startup? What if we could be 6:29 small? What if we could be lean? What if 6:32 every manager was also like in the 6:35 details of the work? So, they knew what 6:36 they were managing. What if people 6:38 weren't focused on promotions? What if 6:40 they were focused on doing great work? 6:41 What if the CEO was still the chief 6:43 product officer? I was in the details of 6:45 the work. What if I reviewed all the 6:47 work and told people what good and bad 6:48 was rather than just saying, "I trust 6:50 you. You do whatever you want because 6:52 we're one brand. We must stand for 6:53 something." What if we all agreed to row 6:56 in one direction and it was my direction 6:58 that I set because I was the founder and 7:00 I was the CEO. That was a beautiful idea 7:04 except to do that I had to basically 7:05 rebuild the company and kind of blow it 7:07 up. So I had no impetus and then the 7:09 pandemic happens. 7:10 There's your impetus. And when you're a 7:12 travel company, I remember the night of 7:15 the pan uh the ids of march March 15th, 7:20 Kenchinol, board member of mine. He was 7:23 CEO of AMX during 911 and 2008. 7:26 Wow. 7:27 So AMX did travel, you know, they were a 7:30 big travel company. And he said, "I 7:33 dealt with 911. I dealt with 2008 as a 7:35 CEO. They were my defining moments as a 7:37 leader. sometime at some point you're 7:41 going to have your 9/11. You're going to 7:43 deal with your 2008. It's going to 7:44 happen on your watch. Something in the 7:46 world's going to happen and it will be 7:47 your defining moment as a leader. And 7:49 that day on March 15th, Ken Chanel calls 7:52 me and he said, "Remember that 7:54 conversation I had about a 9/11? This 7:56 pandemic is 10 of them." 7:58 Oh wow. 7:58 Wow. 7:59 This is the size of 10 911s. And it was 8:01 it was the size of 10 911s. That was the 8:03 impact I had on travel. He said, "This 8:05 is your defining moment as a leader." 8:08 And I I thought about this Andy Grove 8:10 quote. Bad companies destroyed by a 8:12 crisis. Good companies, you know, 8:15 survive a crisis, but great companies 8:17 are defined by a crisis. And I said, 8:19 this is this is he's right. This is 8:21 going to be our defining moment. And 8:22 luckily, I had a blueprint. 8:24 And that blueprint we now call founder 8:26 mode. I didn't have a name for it. I 8:27 just said like, it's a company that just 8:29 gets done. And it's and I'm not 8:31 like I'm not arguing with everyone about 8:33 what we're doing. It's a small team. 8:35 Everyone's really good. We go in this 8:36 direction. and we just do it. And my 8:38 involvement, I'm not micromanaging 8:40 people cuz I'm not telling them what to 8:42 do, but I'm in the room with them like 8:44 when I was a founder and we're back and 8:45 forth. We're brainstorming. It's not 8:47 about I'm giving you space to do your 8:49 job. It's not about Jessica, go right, 8:51 go left. It's about as a leader, we're 8:53 all generally going this way, but how do 8:55 you think we can get there? Great. Well, 8:56 what about this, what about that? It's a 8:58 creative flow like three founders 9:00 building a product. Why does it ever 9:02 have to stop? And that was the creative 9:04 process that allowed us to basically 9:06 rebuild the company from the ground up. 9:08 We went from a company that people said 9:10 was going to go out of business. Wired 9:12 magazine, is this the end of Airbnb? 9:14 Yeah. 9:15 To suddenly having an IPO at $100 9:17 billion market cap. 9:18 And was there no push back or or less 9:20 push back cuz you were literally 9:22 fighting for your life? 9:23 It was so funny. If this wasn't the 9:25 pandemic, there would have been 9:26 pandemonium. There would have been push 9:28 back. Again, I always say really great, 9:31 wonderful, well-intentioned people. 9:33 That's the key. It wasn't like I hired 9:35 these horrible people. They're 9:36 misbehaving. This is how organizations 9:38 are. You can hire an incredible people 9:40 that you interviewed that you want to 9:42 work with. But if you don't lead 9:44 correctly and you just leadership is 9:47 presence, not absence. That's what it 9:50 is. And so, if you lose control of your 9:52 company, it's often from people where 9:54 you're not giving direction. I did not 9:56 have permission to lead company. I 9:58 didn't think I did. When the pandemic 10:00 happened for the first time in many 10:03 years, everyone looks to me and they 10:04 said, "What do we do?" 10:05 Yeah. 10:06 Now, they didn't say that when it was 10:07 good. They said, "Let me do my thing." 10:09 But suddenly, now that we lose friends, 10:11 our business, everyone's like, "What do 10:13 we do?" And I said, "Oh, I guess I have 10:15 permission to operate in the way I've 10:16 always wanted to." And so, I'm going to 10:18 step up. Took control of the company. 10:21 went into basically we I think PGcoin 10:24 founder mode. I went into that mode 10:27 and once the crisis is over a few people 10:30 kind of they didn't say it this way but 10:31 they said like okay when do we go back 10:32 to the way things were and they don't 10:34 they don't go ever back to the way 10:35 things were. 10:36 Oh 10:36 and most of them were happy about that. 10:38 Some were unhappy and left. But that's 10:41 okay. Like I am unapologetic and if 10:44 people watching say I don't want to work 10:45 for a company like that then like well 10:47 99.999% 10:49 of jobs aren't at Airbnb. So you got 10:50 like many other flavors. Like I'm not 10:52 apologizing for how we run the company. 10:54 And it's not for everyone. And the most 10:57 important thing is CEOs and recruiters 11:00 are honest about what it's like to work 11:02 there and then people decide if they 11:04 want to be a part of that. Now I am a 11:06 biased. I think in the age of AI 11:09 AI is all about speed and velocity. I 11:11 think speed and velocity is like a small 11:13 team all being like we're going right 11:16 and everyone goes right. I think that's 11:18 those. So I think founder mode companies 11:20 are much more likely to thrive or even 11:23 survive the age of AI because AI means 11:26 every company has to reinvent itself. 11:28 Yeah. And you did reinvent yourself. One 11:31 thing that stuck out for me from the 11:32 talk and then you mentioned it again 11:34 last night in your talk at the Y 11:35 cominator founder mode retreat as it's 11:38 now called. 11:39 Um 11:40 like the idea about the the skip level 11:43 meetings and how important that concept 11:45 is. I was told like this overly 11:48 simplistic view of how to run a big 11:49 company, right? Like like there's how to 11:51 run a small company and I think like 11:53 Paul has written many essays about it 11:55 and I think there's a lot of knowledge 11:57 that's correct written about how to run 11:58 a small company. But it the thing about 12:00 being a founder before I answer this 12:02 question is it's intuitive. Like 12:04 notwithstanding some unintuitive things 12:05 like do things that don't scale and like 12:08 kind of really simple principles like 12:09 make something people want as in don't 12:11 worry about like how you're going to 12:12 make money. If you make something people 12:13 want, you'll probably make a lot of 12:14 money and we do because people want what 12:16 we make. I think being a founder was 12:18 intuitive. I think being a CEO is like 12:21 not intuitive. I don't think your 12:23 intuition works. Said differently, I 12:25 think people are kind of born good as 12:27 founders. They're innately good 12:28 founders. I don't think people are 12:29 innately good CEOs. I think many of the 12:31 good CEOs start as bad CEOs. I think 12:33 Jeff Bezos say he started as a bad CEO. 12:36 Steve Jobs, I mean, he got kicked out of 12:38 Apple um for the first time. So I think 12:41 even the great CEOs started out as not 12:43 great cos because it's not an intuitive 12:44 job and what people say 12:47 again I think it's it's it's kind of not 12:49 the way that a founder would operate. So 12:52 one of the things they say is the job of 12:54 a CEO is to hire a great executive team 12:56 and let them basically run their 12:58 company. 12:59 And that to me is 13:02 absolutely not what you should do. What 13:04 you need to do is you need to have 13:05 relationships with as many people as 13:07 possible in the company. You need to be 13:09 as close to the people doing the work as 13:12 possible. In an imaginary world, if you 13:14 had infinite time, all thousand people 13:17 would report to you. Now, that's not 13:19 possible, but in a theoretical world, 13:21 there would be no management. Like, you 13:23 could theoretically work with everyone 13:25 doing the work. But of course, that's 13:27 not possible. People need direction. 13:28 They need alignment. And you're not an 13:30 expert in every specialty of what 13:32 everyone's doing, and you have limited 13:33 time. So, you create this like 13:35 management layer. And management is 13:37 necessary. Maybe one day one person can 13:39 manage um a thousand bots. I even think 13:42 in that structure they'll need a 13:43 management structure. I even think like 13:45 you'll need to you're going to get 13:46 you're not going to be able to track a 13:48 thousand bots. You're still going to 13:49 have a management structure. Even if 13:50 you're thinking you're managing AIS, I 13:52 guarantee you it's going to be just like 13:53 people. But I do think that you need to 13:56 have relationships as many people as 13:57 possible. The only way to do that is to 14:00 skip level. This is what they call it. 14:01 It's like you talk to if it's an it's a 14:04 CTO or SVP of engineering, you got to 14:07 talk to the people reporting to them. A 14:09 lot of executives don't like that. I'm 14:11 not saying all executives. A lot of 14:12 executives like like why are you talking 14:14 to my people? Or they might not accuse 14:16 you of anything, be like, um, is 14:17 everything okay? Or people initially 14:20 when you skip a level, they don't want 14:21 to tell you everything because they're 14:23 afraid. And people get really anxious or 14:25 they're like, hey, like I need to be on 14:27 the same page. I don't know what you're 14:28 telling my team. So people for good 14:31 intentions good intentions are like you 14:34 told my team direction I didn't know 14:35 about it or bad intentions I'm insecure 14:38 but either way they don't like it 14:39 there's a responsible way of doing it 14:40 though the first thing I do is I say 14:43 first of all they're not your people 14:44 they're the company's people or they're 14:46 my people like we're because if the 14:49 executive thinks they're people and they 14:50 leave well guess who has the team you. 14:54 And this has happened over and over and 14:55 over and over again. So, first of all, I 14:57 want to have a relationship with them. 14:59 Second of all, how do you know if the 15:01 executive is doing a good good job if 15:03 you're not skip leveling? Of course, the 15:05 executives might not like that, but if 15:07 they're doing a good job, I would want 15:08 them to skip level. They know how good 15:09 of a job I'm doing. 15:10 Right. 15:11 Right. So, this is only kind of a this 15:13 is kind of like a like a um you know, 15:15 this is kind of like a confirmation bias 15:17 towards the good or the bad. Um and 15:19 then, um but also like you want to be 15:22 close to the vision. Like what is the 15:24 what is the job of a founder? I think a 15:26 lot of people think the job of a founder 15:28 is to like set the vision. And I'm like 15:30 what does that even mean set the vision? 15:32 I think it's to set maybe another way of 15:35 saying it is to set the vision every 15:36 day. Is to set the pace of the company. 15:39 It's to like shape it every single day. 15:41 It's not like we just dream up something 15:43 we tell a bunch of people and they do 15:44 it. Every single day we need to be on 15:47 the journey together. And the vision, 15:49 you know, changes a little bit every 15:51 single day. Hey, I mean it's the same 15:52 mountaintop, but like the tip of the 15:54 mountain top, the way you get up it, it 15:56 changes every single day and you need to 15:58 be on that journey. So, I think of 15:59 myself as concentric circles of my 16:01 directs, my drex drex, and I treat the 16:04 drex to my of my directs as my directs. 16:06 So, it's a concentric circle of like 40 16:08 or 50 people and I treat them all as my 16:10 directs. I skip level, I co-hire them, 16:13 and I make decisions on whether or not 16:14 working out and leave the company. Like, 16:16 hire, fire, promote, and manage. I co-do 16:20 it with my executives. 16:22 It's a lot of work, 16:23 but it's necessary. Now, Jensen at 16:26 NVIDIA took it up further. He didn't 16:28 even have an executive team. I believe 16:30 he has 40 or 50 directs. He just said, I 16:32 don't I'm just going to manage them all. 16:34 I think that's like if you can 16:37 theoretically do it, it might work. I 16:39 And he's such a seasoned CEO, been doing 16:41 for 30 years. I think that will be 16:42 unwieldy for most people. Even for me, 16:44 that's unwieldy. It's just a lot of 16:46 administration in a company. Yeah. 16:48 And I I don't want to get too bogged 16:50 down. But 16:51 the inverse is like you have to be able 16:53 to and I sometimes skip level four four 16:56 layers 16:56 because ultimately you want to work with 16:58 the people doing the work 16:59 and solve the problem. And by the way, 17:01 why do founders do this and not 17:02 managers? Because founders are usually 17:04 more technical. 17:05 They actually know usually how to do the 17:07 thing. So they can sit with the people 17:09 doing the thing. And the reason why is 17:10 cuz they did the thing before they hired 17:12 the person to do the thing 17:13 because there was no one else to do the 17:14 thing. Every job in the company I've 17:16 done as a founder. Now I'd like to tell 17:18 people I did it worse than you. That's 17:20 why you're doing it. But every single 17:21 job in the company the founder did so 17:23 they can skip level cuz they're just 17:25 doing your old job. 17:26 Yeah. 17:26 If you're a manager, they came up some 17:29 silo. So every other of the 20 silos are 17:33 unfamiliar domains that were parallel to 17:36 something they've done. they don't know 17:38 about it and they're they're just a 17:41 little more wired for status, you know, 17:42 like it's just little things like 17:44 founders get their hands dirty. Like if 17:46 you're in the bathroom and there's like 17:47 a paper towel, a founder will pick it up 17:49 and put it in the toilet the trash, a 17:52 manager be like, "Why is there a paper 17:53 towel there?" It's like a little thing 17:55 because a founder was starting in an 17:57 apartment where if they didn't take the 17:58 paper towel, throw it out, no one did. 18:00 So it's just like it's ingrained in you. 18:02 And that's a metaphor, but that metaphor 18:03 is true of everything. 18:05 Yeah. And so I don't think all founders 18:08 should or are capable of running giant 18:10 companies, but I do think the best 18:13 companies are when it works in the 18:14 founder scale. It's unmistakable. It's 18:17 unmistakable in the data. And you look 18:19 at the most valuable companies in the 18:20 world. They're either run by founders or 18:23 they have, 18:24 you know, the founders gave them a ton 18:26 of momentum like Amazon or in the case 18:28 of Satia, they are very close and 18:32 characteristic to a founder. um to 18:34 reinvent themselves. He he acts close to 18:37 a founder. He's not a founder, but he's 18:38 acting close to a founder and the way of 18:40 reinventing himself. 18:41 Yeah. 18:42 And I think there's very few exceptions 18:44 to this. I mean, maybe kind of Google, 18:45 but even then, Larry, Sergey, and Eric 18:47 were kind of a trauma for a very, very 18:48 long time. And then they have a kind of 18:50 a search monopoly. Um, but there's 18:52 really not a lot of exceptions to this. 18:54 You know, I mean, once you get escape 18:56 velocity, like Tim Cook was able to take 18:58 the most successful product of all time 19:01 and just sell the hell out of it for 13 19:03 years, but if Steve died in 2005, would 19:05 they have come out with the iPhone? I 19:07 don't think so. 19:07 No. 19:08 Do you ever think about what where 19:10 Airbnb would be right now if the 19:12 pandemic hadn't happened? 19:14 I think we would have 19:16 the pandemic happened in March. I 19:19 transformed the company. I made like I 19:23 made what felt like five years decisions 19:25 in three months and I worry that if the 19:27 pandemic hadn't happened I might still 19:29 be making five years worth of decisions 19:31 but in seven three months in 5 years. 19:32 Yeah. 19:33 And so maybe everything I've done in the 19:35 last 5 years it would take me another 19:37 five or 10 years to do and I'd probably 19:39 be tired. I'd be exhausted. I'd have 19:40 bags under my eyes. I'd be really 19:42 frustrated. I don't even know what I'd 19:43 be telling you. I'd probably have have 19:45 all the same lessons but like in with a 19:49 lot more frustration. and a lot less to 19:50 show for it. You know, there's an old 19:52 saying, a crisis is a terrible 19:53 opportunity to waste. And man, was an 19:56 opportunity. I wouldn't have never asked 19:57 for it. And I hope that people watching 20:00 don't need a once in a generation 20:01 pandemic. 20:02 And so that's why I wanted to do this 20:05 because I want to help founders like 20:07 keep control of their company. And keep 20:09 control of their company is not VV 20:10 investors. It's visv your own team. And 20:13 by the way, 20:14 your employees will mostly all be 20:16 happier. It turns out I was afraid to 20:18 lead. I thought I would be bossy and I 20:19 thought people don't want to be told 20:21 what to do. It turns out people do want 20:22 direction. They may not want to be told 20:24 exactly how to do their job. But the 20:25 bigger the company, the more you're 20:27 yearning for direction because without 20:29 direction, you have politics, you have 20:31 bureaucracy, you've got all the reasons 20:32 why people don't want to work at a big 20:34 company. 20:34 I love it. I think we should end there. 20:36 All right, great. 20:37 This is such an important concept. Thank 20:39 you for being so open and sharing it 20:41 with us because you are going to inspire 20:43 a lot of founders out there. Well, I I 20:45 keep I hope to keep doing this with you 20:47 and Carolyn PG and Gary and like I love 20:50 to keep keep talking about this because 20:51 I think it's going to it's really the 20:53 part two to Y cominator. It's like you 20:55 leave Y comor now what? 20:57 Yeah, exactly. 20:58 I think the punch line here is like we 20:59 want people to be in founder mode 21:01 without having to have a crisis. So if 21:03 you give them all the tools and all the 21:04 content like they won't need a pandmic. 21:06 Stay in founder mode. 21:07 Well, thanks for coming. 21:09 Bye 21:09 bye. 21:13 [Music]

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