DIRS.INFO The most relevant business & tech news

☆ Airbnb CEO says he changed how he ran the business during the pandemic and now follows a simple rule Steve Jobs used
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-05 | by ( Aaron Mcdade | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky told the "This Week in Startups" podcast the pandemic forced him to change how he runs the company. Now, Chesky said the company follows a principle Steve Jobs held at Apple — to never work on more than the CEO can focus on. "We were like staring into the abyss," Chesky told host Jason Calacanis. According to Chesky, a few people who famously worked closely with Steve Jobs during his time at Apple ultimately proved instrumental in reshaping how Airbnb runs. Chesky told Calacanis Ive used to tell Jobs it was important for Jobs himself to be personally involved with product development.

☆ Watch CNBC's full interview with Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

Share Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailWatch CNBC's full interview with Airbnb CEO Brian CheskyAirbnb CEO Brian Chesky joins CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin on 'Squawk Box' to discuss the company's renewed focus on private room rentals, new programs and margins, the potential of A.I., and more.

☆ Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on going back to company roots with private room rentals
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

Share Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailAirbnb CEO Brian Chesky on going back to company roots with private room rentalsAirbnb CEO Brian Chesky joins Andrew Ross Sorkin on 'Squawk Box' to discuss the company's renewed focus on private room rentals, new programs and margins, the potential of A.I.

☆ Airbnb will now tell you about any annoying checkout chores a host requires before you book — and take off listings that get low reviews for chore lists
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-03 | by ( Will Gendron | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Listings can now also be rated based on chores — and will be removed if they are too extensive. From now on all checkout instructions will be available on a listing's page ahead of booking, Brian Chesky, the CEO of Airbnb, announced on Twitter. Users will also be able to provide ratings on checkout tasks, and if a listing receives enough negative feedback, it will be removed, he said. One host, for example, has changed her approach and no longer requests any tasks from visitors upon checkout. Other new features include "Airbnb Rooms," which makes it easier for guests to stay with locals in spare rooms, and an interface that helps visitors find and book longer stays.

☆ Airbnb is rolling out extensive changes to its platform, including 'Airbnb Rooms,' which it says will make it easier for travelers to stay with locals
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-03 | by ( Sam Tabahriti | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Airbnb is rolling out extensive changes to its platform, including over 50 new features, it said Wednesday. Among the changes is the introduction of "Airbnb Rooms," which marks a return to the company's origins. "Rooms" is designed to make it easier to stay without locals in their spare rooms, Airbnb said. "Airbnb Rooms are often more affordable than hotels, and they're the most authentic way to experience a city. Among the other changes, Airbnb listed seven that aim to improve the guest's experience, including better, faster maps and a redesign of guest wishlists.

☆ When Brian Chesky co-founded Airbnb, his mom said, 'You're not an entrepreneur, you're unemployed'—now he's worth $9.3 billion
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-03 | by ( Megan Sauer | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

That's according to Chesky, who told the story at a recent Stanford Graduate School of Business event. Months before Airbnb's scheduled initial public offering, business dropped 80% in eight weeks during Covid-19 lockdowns, Chesky told Stanford students. Today, Airbnb's market cap is $75.49 billion, and Chesky's net worth is $9.3 billion, according to Forbes. "I never focused on trying to make a lot of money," Chesky said. DON'T MISS: Want to be smarter and more successful with your money, work & life?

☆ Airbnb CEO says his $75 billion company was rejected by investors—until a $40 box of cereal turned things around
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-18 | by ( Megan Sauer | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky and his two co-founders did it with $40 boxes of cereal. Specifically, they sold self-designed cereal boxes featuring then-presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain as a breakfast option in Airbnbs. The cereal proved popular, selling more than 1,000 boxes and making $30,000 for the company, Chesky said. It might have never happened without the cereal: Airbnb was rejected by multiple major investors during its first year of operations, Chesky noted in a 2015 Medium post. "The investors that rejected us were smart people, and I am sure we didn't look very impressive at the time," he wrote.

☆ OpenAI's Sam Altman and TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew just cracked the Time 100 Most Influential People list for the first time
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-13 | by ( Sarah Jackson | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Time released its annual 100 Most Influential People list on Thursday. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew made the list for the first time. Altman has drawn attention following OpenAI's release of ChatGPT, and Chew is under scrutiny as governments consider banning TikTok. download the app Email address By clicking ‘Sign up’, you agree to receive marketing emails from Insider as well as other partner offers and accept our Terms of Service and Privacy PolicyTime published its annual list of the world's 100 most influential people, and two business leaders made it for the first time: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew. In his blurb on Altman in Time's list, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky wrote, "If anyone knows where this is going, it's Sam.

☆ Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky's assistant shares the main reason why his schedule is so difficult to manage and how she broke into Big Tech
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-28 | by ( Elle Hardy | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Sugar-Carlsgaard is the senior executive assistant to the cofounder and CEO of Airbnb. She was headhunted to join Airbnb as the senior-executive assistant to Chesky, the CEO, in 2019, and she describes the company as "captivating." Before Sugar-Carlsgaard started, Chesky's team was beginning to transition into having "a lot of eyes" on them as Airbnb grew bigger. It's the way Airbnb functions, she said. Breaking into Big Tech was about "trusting myself and being able to sell myself and my experiences," she said.

Brian Chesky, a former hockey player and industrial design student, is now worth $9.6 billion. Chesky started Airbnb after renting out his apartment to conference-goers who couldn't find a hotel. download the app Email address By clicking ‘Sign up’, you agree to receive marketing emails from Insider as well as other partner offers and accept our Terms of Service and Privacy PolicyBefore running Airbnb, Brian Chesky attended art school. As of March 2023, Airbnb is worth $76 billion. Here's how the Brian Chesky, an upstate New York native, became one of the richest young tech founders in America.

☆ In San Francisco, some people wonder when A.I. will kill us all
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-20 | by ( Kif Leswing | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +7 min

If the super-powerful AI is aligned with humans, it could be the end of hunger or work. Or, as a sign at the Misalignment Museum says: "Sorry for killing most of humanity." Most of the works are around the theme of "alignment" with increasingly powerful artificial intelligence or celebrate the "heroes who tried to mitigate the problem by warning early." As AI technology becomes the hottest part of the tech industry, with companies eying trillion-dollar markets, the Misalignment Museum underscores that AI's development is being affected by cultural discussions. Even as companies and people in San Francisco are shaping the future of artificial intelligence technology, San Francisco’s unique culture is shaping the debate around the technology.

☆ Steep cleaning fees? Ridiculous chore lists? Who cares? Apparently, people still love Airbnb.
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-24 | by ( Dan Latu | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Travelers critiqued some Airbnb hosts' steep cleaning fees and checkout-chore lists last year. The Wall Street Journal even published a front-page story with the headline, "Welcome to Your Airbnb, the Cleaning Fees Are $143 and You'll Still Have to Wash the Linens." Some hosts rushed in to please travelers, boldly highlighting $0 cleaning fees as a marketing tactic. This month, 42% of surveyed consumers held a favorable view of Airbnb, Morning Consult found, up from 38% of surveyed consumers in January 2022. In 2018, when Morning Consult began tracking Airbnb, only 23% of surveyed consumers held favorable opinions of the firm.

☆ A tiny shed, a luxury shipping container and a dark-sky dome: here are 10 of Airbnb's quirkiest properties
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-19 | by ( Sam Tabahriti | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +1 min

Airbnb posted a $1.9bn net profit for 2022 on Wednesday after two consecutive annual losses. The rental site has benefited from a return to travel after the pandemic. Insider compiled a list of Airbnb's 10 quirkiest and most-wanted US properties last year. Cofounder and CEO Brian Chesky said it recorded guest demand and ended the year with a record number of active listings globally. Insider brings you a selection of Airbnb's quirkiest US properties that were popular with renters last year, based on company data.

☆ Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on travel outlook
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-15 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

Share Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailAirbnb CEO Brian Chesky on travel outlookAirbnb CEO Brian Chesky sits down with Deirdre Bosa to discuss earnings, outlook for travel, and the potential of generative AI, which Chesky sees as bigger than the cloud, mobile and internet revolution combined.

☆ The ChatGPT and generative AI 'gold rush' has founders flocking to San Francisco's 'Cerebral Valley'
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-31 | by ( Thomas Maxwell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Because of pandemic-era closings, San Francisco became somewhat of a ghost town for two years. Now, a race to succeed in the fledgling space of generative AI has founders flocking back. Generative AI takes training data — for instance, a vast corpus of written text — and teaches itself how to produce completely new, unique works. After giving New York a try for several weeks, the generative AI boom picked up. Thomas Maxwell/InsiderPerez said that the sense of urgency to get working on building better AI models comes from how generative AI improves with more data.

☆ Airbnb hosts' latest trick to draw more bookings: $0 cleaning fees
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-28 | by ( Dan Latu | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Airbnb guests griped last year over cleaning fees added after they picked a place but before paying. Still, some hosts say explicitly advertising $0 cleaning fees helps increase bookings. More than two months after the change took effect, some Airbnb hosts told Insider they still saw resentment lingering among travelers. The hosts told Insider it seemed to generate interest in their rentals and even increase bookings during a tough time for some short-term-rental owners. Dan Latu/InsiderMelissa Hughes has never imposed cleaning fees at her goat farm in Tallahassee, Florida.

☆ Airbnb has banned 30 listings where slaves lived or worked, but travelers and the company itself say the platform has other bias issues to address
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-23 | by ( Robert Davis | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

The move comes about four months after the company received backlash for listing an 1830s slave cabin in Mississippi. Some travelers and experts say the company still has work to do to reduce instances of bias and discrimination. But some say there are other bias issues on Airbnb’s platform that still need to be addressed. Airbnb defined its booking success rates as a measure of how often people from different perceived racial backgrounds can successfully reserve an Airbnb listing where the host must confirm the booking. The audit sampled 750,000 random reservation requests and found that Black travelers had a 91.4% booking success rate compared to 93.4% for Latinos and 94.1% for Whites.

☆ Airbnb suspended almost 4,000 hosts and guests this year for violating its policy against discrimination
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-14 | by ( Sarah Jackson | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Guests perceived to be Black had the lowest percentage of bookings confirmed after trying to reserve, a company report found. Airbnb says it removed nearly 4,000 accounts worldwide in 2022 for violating its non-discrimination policy, according to a company report published Tuesday. The policy prohibits Airbnb hosts from declining bookings or imposing different conditions on guests based on factors like their race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Last year, guests perceived to be Black were confirmed to book the Airbnb of their choice 91.4% of the time, compared to 94.1% for guests perceived to be white. Guests perceived as Black or Latino have fewer reviews than guests perceived as white or Asian, according to Airbnb.

☆ Airbnb has promise as the quasi-immobility firm
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-30 | by ( Lauren Silva Laughlin | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

NEW YORK, Nov 30 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Airbnb (ABNB.O) is a boon to mobile travelers - but soon might benefit from immobile, old-school renters too. But the deal, which secures buy-in from large housing managers that should otherwise hate Airbnb, makes sense in a post-pandemic era. The agreement paves the way for some of America’s largest landlords to list their empty abodes for traditional long-term leases on Airbnb. Still, Covid-19 has fundamentally changed people’s habits in a way that could benefit both Airbnb and the apartment rental firms – if they innovate. In the past, that has enabled apartment companies to hold their tenants hostage to an extra couple of months’ rent.

☆ The Sinister Logic of Hidden Online Fees
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-23 | by ( Michael Luca | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Airbnb recently announced that it would start offering more upfront information about prices on the platform. CEO Brian Chesky tweeted: “I’ve heard you loud and clear—you feel like prices aren’t transparent.”Until now, Airbnb has used a pricing strategy that is informally known as “drip pricing,” in which a company lures in customers by showing a low price and then tacks on fees as they go along, in the hope that customers will focus their attention on the low initial price rather than the total. An Airbnb customer who tries to book a $300 room for a night can easily end up spending $600 after fees and taxes are tacked on. Hidden fees are good for Airbnb but bad for customers.

☆ Wall Street finally has the leverage it's been wanting over Big Tech
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-18 | by ( Matt Weinberger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Take one giant step back, and there's one group benefitting from all the tech carnage: Wall Street investors, who finally have leverage over Big Tech after years of having to swallow spending to excess. Wall Street is ready to slice and dice. The balance of power has shifted: With tech companies struggling on the public markets, Wall Street has more leverage than it's held in a long time. Read more about how Wall Street is taking the driver's seat in tech here. Their mutual interest is complicated by fights over licensing and costs, Insider reports here.

☆ The most important thing for an Airbnb guest is affordability, says CEO Brian Chesky
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-17 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

In this videoShare Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailThe most important thing for an Airbnb guest is affordability, says CEO Brian CheskyAirbnb CEO and Co-Founder Brian Chesky joins 'TechCheck' to discuss robust travel demand post-Covid, the rate of churn for Airbnb hosts and making rental pricing more affordable and transparent.

☆ For $0, you can now book a room in Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky's home. He'll even bake you cookies.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-17 | by ( Huileng Tan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky has listed a bedroom in his San Francisco home on the platform. The video shows Chesky walking down a flight of stairs with his dog and taking photos of a living room and the bedroom he is listing. There's a lot of fun things we'll do," Chesky told CBS. However, the room already booked out till March 2023, an Airbnb spokesperson told Insider. Chesky's room listing shows a large bed — queen size "with a real mattress," per the listing — two closets, a desk, and an armchair set against the backdrop of a world map.

☆ Airbnb CEO on the tech downturn: ‘It’s like we’re all in a nightclub and the lights just came on’
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-17 | by ( Catherine Thorbecke | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

CNN —After years of seemingly unstoppable growth, the tech industry is now facing the “ultimate reality check” as it confronts broader economic uncertainty and waves of layoffs, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky told CNN on Thursday. Facebook-parent Meta said last week it was cutting 11,000 jobs after nearly doubling its staff during the pandemic. And Twitter recently cut approximately 50% of its staff as new owner Elon Musk races to bolster its bottom line. Chesky said the company is not undergoing layoffs at this time, and in fact is hiring. “We need more diversity in Silicon Valley, but that diversity should not just be demographic diversity.

☆ Airbnb says single-room listings jump amid cost-of-living crisis
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-16 | by ( Abhijith Ganapavaram | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Nov 16 (Reuters) - Airbnb Inc (ABNB.O) said on Wednesday it had recorded a "disproportionate" 31% rise in single-room listings on its platform in the third quarter, as more people sought extra income in the face of a cost-of-living crisis. The company said property listings rose across regions, without disclosing specific numbers, and to aid the growth, it unveiled an app update on Wednesday to make the process easier. Some popular tourist destinations have, however, blamed the company for aggravating housing shortages, as landlords increasingly rent out properties to vacationers amid a surge in travel, rather than going for long-term tenants. It is also expanding its 'categories' feature, which will allow users to book vacations without entering a destination. Reporting by Abhijith Ganapavaram in Bengaluru and additional reporting by Doyinsola Oladipo in New York; Editing by Shinjini GanguliOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Search resuls for: "Brian Chesky"

25 mentions found