Leading through uncertainty: A design-led company - Brian Chesky (Config 2023)
Summary
TLDRAirbnb 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
- π Brian Chesky, CEO and co-founder of Airbnb, studied industrial design in college and brought a design focus to building Airbnb.
- π Airbnb's business dropped 80% at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, forcing major changes.
- π¨βπΌ Chesky brought in Apple's former design leads to help transform Airbnb into a more design-driven company.
- π Airbnb went from break even to generating nearly $4 billion in free cash flow after its redesign.
- π Chesky sees designers as architects that can design not just products but entire companies.
- π¨ Chesky elevated designers to drive product development rather than just serve engineering teams.
- π Airbnb mapped out every user touchpoint to systematically improve core customer experiences.
- β Chesky cut down projects and experiments that weren't improving the core product.
- βοΈ Chesky reviews all work on a weekly basis as the company's 'chief editor'.
- π 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
π 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.
π 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.
π 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.
π€ 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.
π’ 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.
π 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.
Mindmap
Keywords
π‘design
π‘uncertainty
π‘nerve
π‘crucible
π‘roadmap
π‘hypothesis-driven
π‘craft
π‘storyboard
π‘blueprint
π‘intuition
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
[Applause]
[Music]
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