Jason Silver’s Post

Six MORE Things I Learned from Airbnb's Brian Chesky on Rapid Response: 1. Chesky says hotels can be better than Airbnb: "If you need to stay one night and you're on a business trip, I think hotels are better." 2. But for all his broader ambitions, Chesky's easiest gains are still against hotels: "For every person who stays in Airbnb, eight or nine stay in a hotel. If we can get one of those to stay in Airbnb, we'll double the size of our company." 3. Chesky thinks OpenAI is making mistakes: "There's not been a lot of innovation on the application layer. No great designer I respect thinks a chat interface is the best. And the future is definitely not voice." 4. Chesky also admits he's made plenty of mistakes: "You go from being like a world class founder to a pretty crappy CEO." 5. Internet memes aside, Chesky's arms have been bulging for decades: "I was the seventh most muscular teenager in the country. I competed in basically the teenage Mr. America." 6. Chesky isn't going anywhere: "I hope to do this for a couple more decades." Masters of Scale https://lnkd.in/eeBnh5kE

Why Airbnb’s Growth Strategy Was a Masterclass for Founders Early on, Airbnb faced the classic "chicken-and-egg" problem: No users without listings, no listings without users. Their hack? Founders literally visited hosts' homes to take professional photos and improve listings. Result? A 2x increase in bookings. Key takeaway: Don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty and manually solve problems at the start. What creative growth hacks have worked for you? Share them below!

One of the most iconic growth hacks of all time and what we learned: Airbnb Problem: Acquisition Airbnb faced a chicken or the egg problem. Initially they manually invited people to the platform. This was tedious but worked. Unfortunately, it was not scalable. Then they cleverly leveraged craigslist to get new hosts for the platform. A bot easily allowed cross posting in 1 click. Lessons: 1. "Do things that don't scale." (Initially) - Paul Graham 2. Meet customers where they're at. 3. Make it easy and obvious. How can you apply these lessons to your current product? 💬 If this was interesting, lmk and repost 🔄

Airbnb was rejected by investors. Now it's worth $75 billion. The difference? Proper idea validation before execution. It's like taste-testing your recipe before serving it to guests. Here's how to do it: ⏵ Internal evaluation: Does it align with your company's values? Can you actually pull it off? ⏵ User research: Chat with your target audience. Are you solving their pain points? ⏵ Market analysis: Scope out the competition. Where's your opening? ⏵ Pre-prototype: Create a "coming soon" page. Gauge interest before building. ⏵ Test & prototype: Build that MVP. Refine, refine, refine. Remember: Not every idea's a winner, and that's okay. Validation saves you time, money, and heartache. ----- What's the craziest business idea you've heard that actually worked? 🤔 Image source: Ideanote.

“Don’t aim for 1 million people who ‘kind of like’ your product.” That’s what most businesses get wrong. You don’t need a million customers right away. You need 100 die-hard fans. Airbnb began with a few people renting air mattresses. But those first customers? They loved the experience. Most startups focus on quantity. More features, more users, more advertising. The first 100 customers will give you more than money can buy: → Word of mouth → Honest feedback → Real loyalty → Free promotion → Great foundation You know what? 100 raving fans > 1 million lukewarm users. So, Are you building something everyone kind of likes? Or something 100 people will obsess over? The choice could define your business. Call to action: Focus on your first 100 fans. Create something they can’t live without. Scale with love, not numbers. Ready to build your fanbase? Let’s talk in the comments. (♻ Repost this to help your network) P.S. This is inspired by what Charlie Hills posted today! Thanks a ton.

#MotivationalMonday Start your week strong with a focus on growth and innovation! 🚀 Case Study: Airbnb's Creative Growth Hack In the early days, Airbnb's founders found themselves struggling to attract new users. Instead of relying solely on traditional marketing, they took a creative approach by enabling their users to post their listings on Craigslist, a popular platform at the time. This simple hack opened up new channels for exposure, rapidly expanding Airbnb's user base and propelling their growth. How can you apply a growth mindset to your business? * Identify Opportunities: Look for unconventional partnerships or platforms to amplify your reach. * Experiment: Don't be afraid to try new approaches—sometimes the most unexpected strategies lead to significant breakthroughs. * Learn and Adapt: Track your progress and iterate based on results. Each setback is a learning opportunity! What growth hacks have you tried recently? Share your experiences and let's inspire each other to think creatively and push the boundaries of what's possible. #GrowthHacks #Innovation #MondayMotivation #BusinessGrowth #PCG

How to deal with negative responses? -- Not every time things will go your way. And you have to accept that and do better next time. I want to read you a letter that helps me go through these types of situations. To Brian, CEO of Airbnb August 1, 2008 "𝘏𝘪 𝘉𝘳𝘪𝘢𝘯, 𝘈𝘱𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘭𝘢𝘺𝘦𝘥 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘱𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘦. 𝘞𝘦'𝘷𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘥 𝘢 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘤𝘶𝘴𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘶𝘯𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘶𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘥𝘰𝘯'𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘵'𝘴 𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘪𝘯𝘷𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘮. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘰𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘢𝘭 𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘬𝘦𝘵 𝘰𝘱𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘴𝘦𝘦𝘮 𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘦𝘯𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩." ↯ Now, Airbnb is worth around 90 billion dollars. Takeaway: ↳ Just keep going. P.S. Leave your strategy to deal with negative responses in the comments. -- #edtech #elearning #founders #ecommerce #d2c

How to avoid trading short-term wins for long-term losses 👇 In Prod Dev, accurately estimating long-term impact of actions is crucial. Many teams typically focus on short-term metrics due to the simplicity and immediacy of data, often relying on traditional A/B tests. However, these tests often fall short in capturing extended impacts. Future Incremental Value (FIV) helps measure those long-term effects of today's actions. Instead of just looking at immediate results, FIV provides insight into how actions impact key metrics over time, ensuring decisions are sustainable. When I worked at Nextdoor, I faced this challenge many times. One particular case was the effect of push notification disables on weekly active users (WAU). Push notifications boosted short-term WAU but led to more disables, harming long-term WAU. I used propensity score matching (PSM) to estimate FIV: 1) Calculate Propensity Scores: Model the likelihood of disabling notifications. 2) Match Users: Pair users who disabled notifications with similar users who didn't. 3) Estimate FIV: Compare long-term WAU between matched pairs. 4) Leverage FIV: Evaluate short-term results, balancing gains with long-term impacts. This is fairly standard approach for inferring FIV, but what I find really cool is how Airbnb significantly expanded on this methodology by automating and scaling the FIV process: 1) Input: Teams submit configurations. 2) Data: Constructs groups and stores data. 3) Modeling: Processes samples, applies PSM, computes FIVs. 4) Dashboard: FIV results presented via a dashboard 🎉 The end product is a comprehensive, scalable, and automated framework that allows for standardized, data-informed decisions across various teams! 💡 Which got me thinking: could there be a business around providing such a tool? A specialized tool that automates PSM and calculates FIV? Is there already? If you're interested in discussing further or exploring how these concepts can be applied to your work, let's connect! 👉 Follow Shane Butler or schedule a 1:1 chat: https://lnkd.in/g2zV_xFQ 🔗 Check out the full article on AirBnb's Tech Blog to learn more about scaling FIV: https://lnkd.in/gJvjMy55 #DataScience #CausalInference #LongTermImpact #DataDrivenDecisionMaking

it is strategically informative advice for new start-ups....!!

Worth the watch. I have experienced first-hand how ambitious objectives can hinder organic growth, which is far more sustainable. On the other hand, founders are forced to talk big numbers to get funding and sustain interest. It ain't easy. However, if Instagram reels at 1am taught me anything it is this 👇 Don't have to figure it all out at once. Focus on the next step. #foodforthought