One of the first lessons I learned is that in a crisis, you have to move much more quickly. Airbnb, in a sense, was started during my own personal crisis when I could not afford to pay rent. That’s like a car going 80 miles an hour and you slam on the brakes. Within eight weeks, our business dropped 80 percent. Then, all of a sudden, I felt like a captain whose ship was hit by a torpedo. What was happening at Airbnb?īrian Chesky: Like many people, I came back from holidays in 2019 thinking my life would go in a certain direction in 2020. Before we get into that, take us back to the spring of last year.

Brian, you had a remarkable 2020, bookended by events that could not have been more different. But what does that look like? One CEO whose company was forced by the pandemic to do just that is Brian Chesky. James Manyika: In order to pursue and capture the 21st century’s unprecedented opportunities while addressing its challenges, companies may need to chart a different course from the past. You can listen to the full podcast and subscribe to the series on your preferred podcast platform, including Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.

This is an edited transcript of the discussion. In this episode of the Inside the Strategy Room podcast, James Manyika, who chairs the McKinsey Global Institute and recently co-authored a paper about the 21st-century company (inspired by conversations with CEOs like Brian Chesky), learns from the Airbnb leader what that ride was like. The online lodging marketplace went from predictions that it might not survive the COVID-19 crisis to staging a successful IPO less than nine months later. For Brian Chesky and Airbnb, the pandemic crisis was a bigger roller-coaster ride than almost any other organization experienced.

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