HANDCRAFTED: Brian Chesky

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky knows: If you want your company to truly scale, you have to do things that DON’T scale.

I initally chose to listen to the podcast on Brian Chesky and Airbnb because of the title. It interested me how a company such as Airbnb could be handcrafted because it was such a broad idea since the start. My questions on this service included, “How can Airbnb be handcrafted? It’s such a broad business and has many diffferent users.” “How did they get their market research done?” “How does Airbnb target it’s market effectively?” “How did Airbnb get started and become what it is today?” “What did Brian Chesky do differently to make Airbnb as successful as it is?”. I had so many questions about HOW it was possible to start a business and if it was normal to feel like you might not get anywhere because you’re putting so much effort into something you didn’t know would succeed. Little did I know Brian Chesky’s speaking about his experience on a podcast would change my entire perspective on entrepreneurship.

When establishing a business or organization, it seems that a common mistake founders make is trying to cater to a large audience they don’t have yet and trying to rush the process. Through this podcast I learned that handcrafting a product for a niche market you already have, proves to be extremely helpful in building and achieving a larger market because at this level you are able to continue to grow and make improvements. On the other hand if you begin to focus on a larger audience you don’t have, you will potentially lose your current market if their needs are unmet. Hearing Chesky speak about how he missed his tiny startup was ridiculous because it is now a mulit-million dollar company but I can understand why. Many people fail to realize the beginning of a company is when you learn the most and are able to cater and learn the most about your customers.

Serving customers one-by-one, setting doable goals and handcrafting a core experience, while your company is still fairly new begins to set the tone for where the business will go. Chesky says “I realize that to get to this awesome experience, I have to ratchet back to something that still seems like magic, but is totally doable. And then I need to design the elements that get me into the totally doable thing.”

Chesky designed a service with the appropriate level of magic, and started building it by hand. From glueing cereal boxes together to photography, Airbnb’s motto was “do everything by hand until it was painful.” It is easy to get frustrated with your business not going anywhere but if Brian Chesky of Airbnb started out making cereal boxes, then you’re probably not far off from where he started.

Thanks to this podcast I now know the true struggles of entrepreneurship and how everyone that wants to start a business needs to have the will to see it succeed. It has inspired me to believe no matter how bad things seem, you may be headed in the right direction, as the famous saying says…”Rome wasn’t built in a day.” Going above and beyond, not expecting a return on investment right away and acting small while paying attention to your users will be the root of the company and after you have done this begin to scale and succeed.

Link to Podcast: https://mastersofscale.com/brian-chesky-handcrafted