Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky directly oversees about 50 employees at the $79 billion company, personally hiring, promoting, and letting go of staff. On a recent podcast, Chesky said, “I skip level, I co-hire them, and I make decisions on whether or not they’re working out and leave the company… Like, hire, fire, promote, and manage.”
While conventional wisdom suggests that CEOs should rely on their executive team, Chesky rejects that view. “That to me is absolutely not what you should do. What you need to do is have relationships with as many people as possible in the company. You need to be as close to the people doing the work as possible,” he added.
Chesky calls this approach “founder mode,” a strategy reinforced after Airbnb’s revenue dropped 72% during the COVID-19 pandemic and the company cut 25% of its staff. Inspired by advice from Apple’s Jony Ive and lessons from Steve Jobs’ leadership style, he removed layers of management to keep the company nimble.
Chesky argues that in the age of artificial intelligence, companies must operate with the agility of startups to adapt quickly, a lesson he believes applies to entrepreneurs as much as established leaders. He emphasized, “The job of the founder is to set the vision every day, it’s to set the pace of the company, it’s to shape it every single day.”
