What I learned about growing supply at Airbnb that you can apply to your marketplace business — An abridged version of this article was originally a guest post on Andrew Chen’s blog. Below I’ve included that entire post, along with dozens of bonus examples and tips that didn’t make it into the original post. …

The fifteen best ways to inspire new ideas, and three to avoid — Talking to customers 👂️ Talking to employees who talk to customers (e.g. sales, customer support, marketing) 🤗 Observing your customers, through data and user research 🧐 Spending quality time with previous data dives and user research 🔬 Using the product yoursel️f 🕵️‍♀️ Thinking in a quiet place 🤔 Having small…

Figure out if this role is for you, how to make the move, and what skills you’ll need to build in order to be successful — The role of product manager (PM) is the most fascinating role within tech teams right now. PMs are closest to the center of the action, have a disproportionate amount of influence over key decisions, and often go on to start their own companies. It’s no surprise then that product management…

The Buddha would have made an excellent product manager. He was obsessed with solving people’s problems, he summarized his ideas into handy lists, and he developed simple frameworks for achieving his vision. He was also one of the earliest practitioners of working from first principles, famously sitting under a Bodhi…

It’s 2012 and our team has just joined Airbnb. We’re tasked with building out a “social travel” experience for Airbnb travelers. The thinking is that travelers on Airbnb are siloed across the city, and if we make it easier for guests to meet up and do things together, Airbnb trips…

Create strong culture, stay laser-focused on problems, and set wildly ambitious goals — In 2012, shortly after Airbnb acquired our startup, I overheard co-founder Joe Gebbia giving guidance to a designer tasked with redesigning the homepage. He said, “Build something the internet has never seen before.” I vividly remember thinking, What does that even mean? And is this the bar for everything around…