Leading through uncertainty: A design-led company - Brian Chesky (Config 2023)

Summary

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky recounts how in 2019 he realized Airbnb was becoming too corporate and losing its original vision. After the pandemic caused Airbnb's business to drop 80%, Chesky used it as an opportunity to rebuild Airbnb around design principles with a simpler organizational structure. He eliminated wasteful projects, empowered small creative teams, minimized A/B testing, and reviewed all work regularly as 'chief editor' to orchestrate shared consciousness. Over the next 3 years with this approach, Airbnb went from break-even to nearly $4 billion in free cash flow. Chesky urges designers to have nerve, make products they love, simplify everything, and know they can run companies putting design at the center.

Takeaways

• 😊 Brian Chesky, CEO and co-founder of Airbnb, studied industrial design in college and brought a design focus to building Airbnb.
• 🏠 Airbnb's business dropped 80% at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, forcing major changes.
• 👨‍💼 Chesky brought in Apple's former design leads to help transform Airbnb into a more design-driven company.
• 📈 Airbnb went from break even to generating nearly $4 billion in free cash flow after its redesign.
• 😀 Chesky sees designers as architects that can design not just products but entire companies.
• 🎨 Chesky elevated designers to drive product development rather than just serve engineering teams.
• 🔎 Airbnb mapped out every user touchpoint to systematically improve core customer experiences.
• ❌ Chesky cut down projects and experiments that weren't improving the core product.
• ✏️ Chesky reviews all work on a weekly basis as the company's 'chief editor'.
• 👍 Chesky encourages designers to have nerve, simplify everything, and craft excellent experiences that they would want themselves.

Q & A

What realization did Brian have in 2019 about the way Airbnb was being run?

Brian realized that despite his design background, Airbnb had become very conventionally run, with a business unit organization, lots of A/B testing, and increasing costs. He felt Airbnb was losing its creative magic.

How did the COVID-19 pandemic impact Airbnb in early 2020?

Airbnb's business dropped 80% in 8 weeks due to COVID-19. They went from preparing for a hot IPO to questions about whether the company would survive.

How did the COVID crisis lead Brian to rethink how to run Airbnb?

Facing an existential threat, Brian wanted to rebuild Airbnb around what mattered most - its creative spirit. He reorganized around functions, limited projects, elevated designers, and focused on shipping quality products.

Why does Brian believe designers should have more confidence in organizations?

Brian thinks designers undervalue themselves and give away too much ground. Designers should have conviction in their ideas rather than compromising, similar to how lawyers and CFOs carry themselves.

How does Brian view the relationship between marketing, design and engineering?

Brian wants integrated teams where marketing provides vision, design defines solutions, and engineering brings them to life. None are subordinate - it is a harmonious partnership from the outset.

How far ahead is Airbnb's product roadmap planned?

Airbnb plans around a 3 year roadmap, with very clear plans from now until a year out. Beyond 2 years the plans get more tentative. The roadmap is updated weekly.

How did creating an 'Airbnb Blueprint' help improve the product?

Mapping every guest/host journey screen and policy document helped identify pain points. Addressing these systematically through data and user input greatly improved satisfaction.

What is Brian's advice for designers who want to start companies?

Brian encourages designers to have conviction and nerve to build the world they envision. Design skills lend themselves well to conceptualizing new businesses and products that connect emotionally.

How does Brian interpret the role of a designer?

Brian sees design as much more than aesthetics and interfaces. Great designers understand products deeply and can design optimal business models, organizations, and user experiences.

What unique value does Brian believe designers offer?

Brian believes designers offer crucial creativity and human-centered thinking to business problems. They can forge innovative third path solutions between two bad options.

Outlines

00:00

😊 Welcome and Introduction

Sarah Culver and Shou Amoto welcome attendees to Day 1 closing keynote at Config 2023 conference. They acknowledge capacity issues with talks but say recordings will be shared. Theme for talks is navigating uncertainty.

05:03

😟 Sarah Defines Uncertainty

Sarah discusses how the world is undergoing a lot of change and uncertainty recently like pandemic, economy issues, AI developments. She says design is about envisioning the future, even when things are uncertain.

10:04

😃 Introducing Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb

Sarah introduces Brian Chesky, CEO and co-founder of Airbnb, as epitome of design-led company that has navigated ups and downs well. He will have a conversation on stage with Dylan.

15:04

🤔 Brian Shares His Realization

Brian recounts a disturbing dream that Airbnb was becoming unrecognizable in 2019. He realized designers don't become CEOs, though that was the original vision for Airbnb. He started conforming instead of leading with design.

20:05

😢 Brian Describes Airbnb Near-Death in 2020

In early 2020, Airbnb lost 80% of business in 8 weeks due to COVID. Brian says it was like a near-death experience. He wondered what he wanted to be remembered for if Airbnb failed.

25:07

😌 Brian Rebuilt Airbnb Around Design

Brian hired Apple's design leadership and rebuilt Airbnb around design again. Simplified organization, roadmaps, focused on quality and user-centric principles. Airbnb became hugely successful after.

Keywords

💡design

Design refers to the creative planning and problem-solving process for developing products, services, interfaces, and experiences. As a trained designer himself, the speaker believes design should be at the core of a company's strategy and decision-making rather than just an implementation step. He provides the example of how he rebuilt Airbnb around design during the pandemic.

💡uncertainty

Uncertainty refers to the lack of predictability and feeling of doubt about the future. The speaker notes how the world is undergoing major upheavals and disruptions, making the future unclear. He argues design can provide vision and solutions amidst such uncertainty.

💡nerve

Nerve refers to courage and willingness to take risks. The speaker believes designers should have more nerve in advocating for and leading design-centric strategies in companies, rather than compromising on design ideals.

💡crucible

A crucible is a transformative experience through intense pressure and hardship. The speaker describes how the pandemic and shutdown acted as a crucible moment for Airbnb, forcing major changes.

💡roadmap

A roadmap refers to a strategic plan laying out priorities and development timeline for products/services. The speaker emphasizes the importance of aligning the entire company behind a unified product roadmap.

💡hypothesis-driven

This refers to designing experiments/tests based on an initial theory or hypothesis about why one variation might perform better. The speaker critiques the overuse of A/B tests without sound hypotheses.

💡craft

Craft refers to meticulous attention and care for each design detail, akin to traditional craftsmanship. The speaker urges designers to obsess over craft as a way to make emotional connections.

💡storyboard

A storyboard visually maps out the sequential frames/screens of a user's journey. The speaker explains how they created an Airbnb storyboard documenting every touchpoint.

💡blueprint

A blueprint is a comprehensive documentation of policies, workflows, systems etc. They created an "Airbnb Blueprint" to holistically improve customer experience.

💡intuition

Intuition refers to the nonlinear thinking and instincts that creative people like designers possess. The speaker argues that rather than be nervous about intuition, designers should see it as a strength.

Highlights

Designers don't start companies and designers don't run boardrooms.

Uncertain times call for more vision and that's hard but it's important.

I realized I was running Airbnb in a very conventional way despite my design background.

I had brought in people from other companies and they brought their way of working to us.

I decided to pull decision making up into an orchestra conductor and created a shared consciousness with the top people.

We rebuilt the company from the ground up after losing 80% of our business.

In the last 3 years we went from break even to nearly $4 billion in free cash flow.

A designer can design a company to have fewer parts and save more money.

Design is not just how something looks, it's how it fundamentally works.

Designers should not constantly have to justify their jobs like other functions.

Design is probably too self-conscious and should have more nerve.

Designers came late to the party and functions like product management were built before them.

Start product development with marketing to establish vision and tell stories.

Growth is a direction not a strategy or goal in itself.

Designers can run companies, build things, ship things, and know what people want.

Transcripts

foreign

[Music]

welcome back to the closing keynote of

day one of config 2023 I'm Sarah Culver

I'm a design manager at figma and I'm

shokuamoto vice president of product

um first of all I just wanted to thank

everybody for being here with us today I

know a lot of you guys have traveled and

taken time of your out of your day to

come here and I also know that not

everybody could get into the talks that

they wanted to get into due to capacity

so I just wanted to acknowledge that and

thank you guys we're going to make some

changes oh now I think they took the

clicker because uh I they gave me the

thing okay anyway they're gonna Advance

it okay this is like a actually this is

a comedy routine you didn't realize this

but it's going to be comedy

um so anyway so we're sorry about that

and uh we're gonna make some tweaks

tomorrow to some of the room assignments

and layouts and things like that so

hopefully that would be better for

tomorrow

and also all the talks are recorded and

we're going to try to email them out to

you as fast as possible so that we can

you can see them when you uh get back so

thank you for sticking with us

but we're not done yet for today we're

back to introduce our closing keynote

sessions uh the theme for this afternoon

is navigating uncertainty what does that

mean to you show

um okay so uncertainty to me well

the world as we know is

um you know going through a lot right

now we've had pandemic closures we've

have an economy that's affected a lot of

people's jobs we have ai which is

exciting but every month every week

There's new news and you know it's hard

to even know what is the world going to

look like 20 years from now or even five

years from now

and the way that I think about it is

that design is fundamentally about what

do we want to build what do we want to

make what do we want the future to be

like and it's hard to think about that

when things are so uncertain

so you know times aren't certain and I

think uncertain times call for more

vision and that's hard but it's

important so design is kind of a

solution to uncertainty ultimately I

like that a lot

um our first Speaker of branchesky has

really taken the approach of putting

design at the center of everything and

his leadership of Airbnb to me Airbnb is

the epitome of a design-led company you

know you can see it in both the product

and in the culture and it's been really

impressive to me to see how Airbnb has

navigated the ups and downs of the past

few years

yep so please join us in welcoming Brian

in conversation with Dylan

[Applause]

[Music]

[Music]

welcome to config Brian well thank you

for having me thank you all and for

being here uh I think that Brian

probably needs no introduction but just

in case uh Brian is the CEO and

co-founder of Airbnb and I looked at the

entire Fortune 500 all the CEOs and I

believe correctly if I'm wrong that you

are the only designer CEO in the fortune

500. if there's another one I'd love to

meet them

so

you know maybe we can start off with uh

we were talking last week about this you

were telling me that at some point in

the company Journey

you sat down and realized

uh that you were doing things in a very

conventional way yeah despite your

design training and uh maybe you can

tell us more about that what that

realization was like

yeah so let me take you back to um

2019 the end of 2019.

I had this suspicious feeling that like

I mean well actually you can go back

further I went to the Rhode Island

School design with um my one of my

co-founders Joe gebbia and

um it was kind of crazy the idea that a

founding team would have two designers

and one engineer it was so crazy that I

remember when we pitched one of our

First Investors he said we love

everything but you and your idea and one

of the things they managed strangers

will never sleep save those strangers

and designers don't start companies

and at RISD in the year 2000 when I was

there I studied industrial design

and there was this whole mantra

how do you get design in the boardroom

and Joe and I maybe we didn't know any

better we thought what if design just

ran the boardroom

and that was the whole premise behind

Airbnb and so we had these magical ideas

of what everybody could become and for a

moment for a while I felt like it was

really special and magical

and then 10 years later it's now 2019

and I wake up one day and I have this

like I have this horrible dream and the

dream is it's as if I've been gone for

10 years I come back to the company and

it's unrecognizable and I go on a hike

in Bolinas California with my two

co-founders Joe and Nate and I tell them

about this dream and they said what

happened and I said that dream that we

had that company that would be magical

that was like an amazing product people

loved that we were starting to lose it

it was starting to wear down wear out

and let me explain what was happening

see I basically was a designer and I

kind of noticed

there's two types of people and

companies never become CEOs Engineers

become CEOs at Silicon Valley marketers

become CFOs Finance people come CEOs

operators become CEOs but the two people

that never run companies are designers

and head of HR

I started thinking why is this

and I think it's because design in some

ways is fragile because companies are

organized around the scientific method

and the creative process is something

that requires nerve and over the years I

started losing my nerve and I brought in

a lot of people from a lot of different

companies and they brought their way of

working towards us so what do we do we

had divisional we basically

divisionalized so we had like 10

different divisions they had like 10

different subdivisions we were very much

run by product managers

we had a plethora of a b experiments and

the thing I started noticing is the more

um people we added the more project we

pursued the less our app changed and the

more the cost went up and I didn't know

what to do it's now late 2019 and I tell

Joe and I'm like this is like I don't

know what to do and they're like well

what are you going to do and I said well

I don't know because we're about to go

public

and so blowing up the company before

you're like ready to go public is kind

of a bad time

so I go back uh home for the holidays

and it's now early 2020.

we're preparing to go public

and I actually it's right before 2020 I

meet two people that changed my life

the first person I meet is a guy named

Hiroki assai

Hiroki assai was the creative director

at Apple and he reported Steve Jobs and

he worked at Apple from like 1998 to

2016. wow and the second person I

already knew but I got reacquainted was

Johnny Ive and Johnny I've ran designed

apple and at that moment I kind of

forgot about the magic of this design

Renaissance that Steve Jobs had and they

described this company to me and the way

of running a company with a design at

the center where like it was a totally

different way of running a company than

everything I was taught everything I was

taught about how you run a company was

opposite of what Steve Jobs and Johnny

Ive and Hiroki did at Apple

so I hired Hiroki Johnny had this firm

we brought him on we became our number

one client and now I have this idea

there's maybe a better rate around

company

but there's still a problem we're going

to go public

so what do we do

all of a sudden

I remember our business drops 80 in

China it's January 2020.

and there was this thing that no one in

the United States was talking about

called covid and I remember thinking wow

if this thing spread Beyond China be

really bad

eight weeks we lost 80 percent of our

business

and when you're our size you lose 80

percent of your business in eight weeks

it's like an 18 wheeler going 80 miles

an hour and then slamming on the brakes

nothing good happens we go from one of

the hottest IPOs in the world to within

eight weeks people running articles like

is this the end of Airbnb will Airbnb

exist eight weeks before we're prepared

to go public

at this point I've never luckily had a

near-death experience but the way it's

been described to me is your life

flashes before your eyes

and that's kind of what happened with

our business our business flash for our

eyes

and at that moment I remember thinking

to myself I don't know what's going to

happen if we can save the company but

how do I want to be remembered if this

Airbnb is like a burning house and I can

only take half the things out of the

house what do I take with me it suddenly

was really clarifying and another thing

happened

I realized that for 10 years I was

apologizing about how I wanted to run

the company because how I really wanted

to run the company was as a designer but

I just didn't have the nerve but the

moment like it was a crucible moment we

did that so what do we do we rebuilt the

company from the ground up we went from

business unit organization to a

functional organization so we had a

design Department a marketing department

engineering department the way every

startup is run

we took all the projects in the company

first of all I asked every leader show

me your roadmap they couldn't even

figure out their road maps because

everyone had a sub road map on sub teams

and those teams had road maps and those

teams had road maps and so I said

there's a simpler rule if it's not in

the road map it can't ship and it must

be on one road map so with this giant

exercise we put every single thing on

one road map then I said we can only do

10 of the things on the road map that

was a wet Reckoning so I said we're only

going to do a few really big things we

took the very best people we put them

all in a few projects and then I said

we're not going to do a B test unless a

B test a b testing is abdicating your

responsibility to the users and so we're

going to do a little bit of

experimentation but if we do a b testing

you're going to only do it if you have a

hypothesis

if B is better than a you have to know

why B was better than a otherwise we're

stuck with that for like the next 10

years and so we are going to focus

number one on shipping things that

you're proud of if you don't put your

name on it you don't ship it the

designers are equal to the product

managers actually we got rid of the

classic product management function

Apple didn't have it either

well let's be careful

hold on we have we we have product

marketers we combined product management

with product marketing and we said that

you can't develop products unless you

know how to talk about the products we

made the team much smaller we elevated

design by the way I started thinking

myself who's the product manager when

you designed a building

the architect

so

we thought of designers very much as

Architects and we started doing these

release Cycles where we'll ship 80

percent of the products twice a year

during these releases and then to be

clear we do do optimizations we do ship

code every single hour of every single

day but that's a budget that's about 20

percent

and this is how we start around the

company

and I started reviewing all the work I

reviewed the work every week every two

weeks every four weeks before people

thought that was meddling and I said you

know what screw it like we're going to

review everything I'm going to be the

chief editor and I didn't push decision

making down I decided to pull decision

making into Orchestra conductor and what

we created was a shared consciousness of

like the top 30 40 people in the company

and it was like one neural network one

brain

so all this is what we're doing while

people say we're going to go out of

business something remarkable happens

not only do we not go out of business

but in the last three years we went from

a company that was Break Even to last

year we did nearly four billion dollars

in free cash flow I think that deserves

a round of applause yeah and

it was like it was totally crazy because

like that is actually more free cash

flow for every dollar earned than Apple

or Google

and the crazy thing is we did that by

not trying to make money

but there's something amazing a designer

can do more than move pixels on a screen

a designer can design a company to have

fewer parts so we were able to State my

competitors are some of them are former

CFOs and yet as a designer we were able

to imagine a way to save more money

because you could design a company with

fewer Parts fewer projects we and so I

think that

you know design is much more than a

department it's a way of thinking about

the world and I think there's a whole

new generation of designers that aren't

just going to work for engineers they're

going to sit alongside Engineers they're

not just going to be told what to do by

product managers they are going to be

helping Drive the product and some of

them are going to choose to drive

companies because ultimately what

everyone wants is to have a product

people love you take a company of The

Head and the Heart and a lot of

companies cut themselves off at the head

and they really focus on one side of the

head but most people are like they don't

think like that they want a product that

is deeply loving and so that's kind of

our story of what we did

I love it thank you

it was it was interesting to hear the

audience reactions you talked because

you're like no way be tested people like

should I applaud limited I don't know we

do a control treatment but like it's not

like we don't well I thought you don't

like responsibility I have a hypothesis

think by first principles and metrics

are not a strategy a strategy is not

growing that's not a strategy yep that's

not a strategy we all want to grow but a

strategy we talk about putting your arms

around the entire company we try to have

one small design team that sees the

entire product and this is critical

because if you have an idea it's like

pulling on a string of a shirt if you

are contained to one surface then you've

got to get the entire company on board

and so that's why I think this

integrated approach is so important so

if you're somebody in the audience yeah

you're an IC designer a design manager

maybe a design leader somewhere and

you're not the founder of the company

uh you're not in a company maybe that

even has a Founder anymore that's no

one's maybe it's a CFO running the

company yeah you know and there's a lot

of great CFOs out there running

companies yeah

how do you push for a design driven

strategy

well

it's a really good question I I think

that um

I've been thinking a lot about this

this something interesting I noticed

lawyers never have to justify their job

like well I'm a CFO doesn't have to

justify like why you need a CFO

and there's very few functions where

people feel like they have to constantly

justify their job and designers seem to

constantly do it designers seem to

constantly justify their job

I think that designers are probably a

little too self-conscious I think the

designers should have a nerve and they

should ask themselves like what are we

trying to solve and be a little less

compromising I don't mean to be

completely difficult inside the company

but I think that design as a function

has probably seated too much ground you

know again in many companies like

Architects don't seem to have this

problem because there's like a thousand

years of History around that field

but we designers a lot of us came late

to the party web designers came after

software designers and a lot of the

great designers stayed in print in other

areas and so these entire functions like

product management got built before a

lot of the design Department came in

make no mistake product managers are

critical but they shouldn't be doing the

job of designer and so I think that it's

really important to really like focus on

a number of principles number one I

would try to make sure if you are going

to do an A B test or experiment it

should be hypothesis driven that if it

works you should be able to say why not

just what I think that Designer should

not be just focused on Services they

should be focused on user flows I think

they should only ship something that

you're proud of don't test something

until after you're happy because

ultimately the artist and you should

first and foremost make something for

yourself and when you love it and you're

proud of it now you're ready to put it

out to somebody else I think that

designers should be trying to simplify

every single thing they do and I used to

think simplifying was removing things in

which Johnny herokid Apple taught me is

that's not what simplifying is about

simplifying is distilling something to

its Essence and to distill something to

its essence you have to deeply

understand it it's physics it's first

principles and then I think there has to

be a sense of craft obsessing over every

single detail and then I think if you're

in an organization you have to use their

language and explain why it benefits

them if people love our products they're

going to want to buy more of them what

is the goal we're trying to do well the

goal goals we need to grow this thing

well why do we need to grow this thing

growth is not a goal growth is just a

direction like like that can't be just

the goal and so these are some of the

things I would do and I would try to

like do it in maybe in as collaborative

a way as possible but like I often tell

our engineers

the best thing for you is to pair you

with design because otherwise it's like

running and one of your legs is shorter

than the other you're not going to go

very fast and so the best thing for

engineers and the best thing for PMS is

to pair them with great design from the

beginning because a lot of companies

design has become a service organization

design should not be a service

organization unless that is explicitly

the intention of the CEO and that means

it's not your job to catch things to

stop them before it goes out it means

it's your job to work from the very

beginning that design challenges

technology and Technology inspires art

it's not more important than technology

it's a perfect harmony from the very

beginning and I think just figuring in a

way to tell the story and helping people

understand that you benefit from me

one of the things that

[Applause]

something that I find truly impressive

about Airbnb is how far ahead you think

and I know that right now you're while

we're probably sitting here

some part of your brain is on okay what

is Airbnb doing in six months 12 months

18 months two years yeah

and I think it's really interesting how

the marketing messages that you have

informed the roadmap and inform the

design

can you break down more for us

the way that you see marketing design

products and Engineering all working

together in harmony exactly so the first

thing is we try to have a road map and I

Am The Keeper of the roadmap is CEO and

I think generally usually the CEO should

be The Keeper of the roadmap our roadmap

is typically about three years out but

it's very fuzzy it's like those video

games where it gets fuzzier the further

over the horizon but I have a pretty

good idea of what we're shipping between

now and next November so we'll have a

release in November we'll release next

April next November and I have a pretty

clear picture and then about two years

out it gets pretty fuzzy now to be clear

it changes and I update the roadmap

every single week now the long-term

roadmap the near term is hopefully not

changing that's churn but the long term

is constantly changing

and okay let's start with this that you

can measure the Health Organization by

the relation between marketers and

engineers

and in most companies marketers are like

waiters and Engineers like chefs if the

waiter goes in the kitchen the chef

yells at them and that is not a great

relationship so the first thing is that

we actually like to start a lot of

product development not just with design

but with marketing because our marketers

we want to actually have a vision and

figure out how they can tell a story

then product marketing again product

marketing is product management plus

outbound marketing it's a smaller

function it's a extremely influential

function they will work with the

designers and us to establish like what

is this project what are the goals what

are we trying to solve then um you know

we often will like try to present

something against the most native form

so if it's going to be a keynote we'll

start with a keynote then we um you know

we go through like a long like depends

on the the roadmap a really long concept

development so like let's say we

launched this product Airbnb rooms

we noticed the original Airbnb was

really slowing in growth and we wanted

to figure out how to revive it and so it

often starts at insight and the Insight

was people are nervous staying in the

homes of other people they don't want to

stay in the same home

as we started realizing wait a second

our listing the person is like

non-existent because we've been

optimizing entire home so we're having

this conversation and we're

brainstorming and that's when we had an

Insight we said what if we elevated the

profile on Airbnb and so then what we

tried to do is we have historical

references we always try to combine data

and research they're equally important

in research not just means the user but

historical references and what is a

historical reference of a profile with

travel it's a passport so we said what

if we make the equivalent of a host

passport for every single host

so then we started doing research on the

kind of attributes you would want to

know to stay with somebody then we

started looking at design language for

how you can create an animation I love

design language systems but the problem

with design language systems is you

should design whatever you want and you

put it in the design language system if

you can only pull from the system you're

never going to be able to take a giant

leap if it is breaks the system and so

there was there were this new animations

we had that opened and closed the

passport but then we started noticing

that people had bad photos so then we

built an operation to take headshots of

40 000 people

if you were a designer in a corner of an

app it'd be hard to convince the

marketing department to spend money to

take photos but when you're integrated

you can start to do this and so these

were the things we were able to start

doing and then we started thinking about

how can you tell the story so we start

thinking about what a marketing campaign

could be to elevate this product because

a lot of products fail because they're

not well marketed if you ship a feature

and no one knows did it really matter

and so a lot of times people give up in

features too soon they ship something

the data says it doesn't work they kill

the feature well did you tell people

about it do they know about it and so

this is kind of a little bit of the life

cycle of how we do it and then once we

ship we unders we try to study how

people are using it we do look at data

we do sometimes do treatments and

controls but again they're always

hypothesis driven

and

I think we can all agree that designers

should be talking with users and

customers yeah

of course then the line starts to blur

when you're really trying to find design

versus product management yes versus

research and how do you much should

design go into product or research in

the situations

let me let me I think that I think that

um we so way we organize it we try to go

really deep with experts so not only do

we have a design function but we have a

workshop group of a few dozen people

that are trying to cover the entire app

we have a studio that is going through a

lot of the like specific implementations

we have like people who focus on haptics

people focus on animation I want to have

people focus on typography and color you

know we put user ux writing under

marketing because marketers historically

are more writers they have more of a

writing background so we really try to

align everything to the functional

expertise and let me tell you a quick

story about how we improve the product

so we recently created this thing we

call the airme blueprint and I was

inspired by something Walt Disney did in

the 1930s he was making this movie

called Snow White it was the first

feature-length animated film and it was

so long he couldn't keep track of the

film so he created this thing called the

storyboard and that's when we realized

what if we do the same thing Airbnb what

if we created a storyboard so we

storyboarded the end-to-end journey for

guess and hose

then why ask the team every single

screen a user sees put it on one wall it

turns out there's 150 screens then I

said every user policy every time you

call customer service what policy

referencing it turns out there were

nearly 70 user policies some of these

are all 700 pages each we map those out

then I asked them to map out every

single operational touch point we map

those out this was really arduous we

call this wrapping your arms around the

company and then we went through like 20

million customer service calls we went

through hundreds of thousand social

media posts tons of workshops and even

our first hand experience again we

believe people make radic products make

products for themselves and based on

that we created a prioritized map and

systematically tried to fix our product

and I was like really focused on I used

to tell a team we can't do new things

unless we have permission and we don't

have permission working on new things

until people love our course service and

if they're complaining on social media

and they're calling customer service

they don't love our core service so we

have to get our house in order first and

so so that's kind of what we did but I

really try to focus on some pretty deep

functional expertise and I I guess like

I would also just be useful like

wherever there's a hole you can fill it

so it's almost like uh talking with

customers isn't enough you really have

to get that bird's eye view of your

entire experience I think so otherwise

how can you do research and I think you

should be systematic about how to talk

to customers like you should talk to

customers you look at the data you

should understand them you should be

using the product yourself becoming the

user in all this is like your intuition

I think being a designer is like holding

5 000 ideas in your head some of them

contradictory and we tend to call this

intuition and we get really nervous

because it seems somehow not systematic

but I actually think a lot of great

design comes from deep understanding of

a problem and so you're trying to absorb

as much information as possible

before we end

I'm sure that there's a bunch of people

in this audience who are inspired by

your story

and are thinking maybe I should go start

something

what advice do you have for them

well I'll just go back to wristy

why does design need to be in boardroom

when it can occasionally run the

boardroom why aren't there at least a

few more designers running Fortune 500

companies

I don't have an answer for that

but I do know a couple things

I think of myself maybe as a designer

but I'm not a designer the way most of

you are but a designed our business

model I designed our expense base I

helped designer organizational chart our

business how we work our story I think

that design is not just how something

learns it's how it's fundamentally works

and I think it is one of the most

important skills that we're going to

need in the 21st century you ever see

like there's two bad options and you're

not trying to pick between two-bit

options sometimes the right path is the

third path and that third path requires

creativity I think that a lot of

business needs more heart and more

imagination and that is what everyone

this room can provide and so I would

just encourage designers to have a Nerf

I would encourage them to know that you

can design the world that you want to

live in and I just want to encourage as

many people as possible whether it is

just

not asking permission for how you want

to run your company for how you want to

do your job speaking up about what you

believe in if you're running a design

Department try to make sure that the

entire company is bracing your phosphate

or at least have a conversation and also

just know that designers can run

companies they can build things they can

ship things and ultimately you know when

I join y combinator Paul Graham said

make something people want well who

knows what people want as well as

designers not many other people I think

that is a core value that we have to the

world and I I just think more designers

should rise up and start companies

foreign

I can't wait to see all the change that

this room will bring and Brian I can't

thank you enough thank you please join

me in giving him a great Round of

Applause

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