Brian Chesky is an American billionaire entrepreneur and industrial designer. He is the co-founder and chief executive officer of the peer-to-peer lodging service Airbnb. Chesky was named one of Time’s “100 most influential people of 2015.”
Career
After attending college, Chesky worked as an industrial designer and strategist at 3DID, Inc. in Los Angeles. In 2007, he moved to San Francisco, where he shared an apartment with Gebbia. In October 2007, the Industrial Designers Society of America was organizing a conference in San Francisco and all hotel rooms were booked. The pair couldn’t afford their rent that month and decided to rent out their apartment for money. They bought three air mattresses and marketed this idea as “Air Bed and Breakfast,” with three guests staying the first night.
In February 2008, technical architect and Harvard graduate Nathan Blecharczyk became the third co-founder of Airbnb. Each co-founder took on a role within the new company, and Chesky became the leader and CEO. To receive funding, Chesky and his co-founders created special edition cereals called “Obama O’s” and “Cap’n McCains,” based on presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain. Impressed by the cereal boxes, Y Combinator accepted Airbnb into its seed funding program. In its first year, the company began to internationalize and opened several offices in Europe. In 2011, Chesky wrote a letter on behalf of the company for its handling of a resident’s complaint about tenant vandalism, announcing a 24-hour hotline, additional support staff, and a guarantee for theft or vandalism. In 2015, Chesky announced that Airbnb was the official sponsor of the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He said that more than 120,000 people had stayed in Airbnb homes during the 2014 FIFA World Cup. As of December 2020, Airbnb had a valuation of $100 billion.
Chesky told Kara Swisher’s Recode Decode podcast that he has a regular standing check-in call with former U.S. President Barack Obama.