Building Products at Airbnb

The way you get things done is very relationship-driven at our company. So you have to be able to build influence.

The typical time horizon for a product team’s north star, or long-term vision, is three to four years out.

The King of the Hill at Airbnb has switched from designers to product managers in most parts of the org. Vision-led rather than design-led.

" Brian and most everyone at the company is comfortable failing publicly , which I admire. But it’s definitely a challenge for us: figuring out how to be more successful merging that vision-oriented approach with an organizational muscle that helps us reduce failure."

But an orientation toward storytelling and vision can sometimes cause challenges with execution : The only new product launch that succeeded was Airbnb.com. Every other big launch over the last eight years has actually been a complete flop.

Chesky pushes PMs to always lead with the perfect experience without constraint . "Airbnb has stretched me to think about entire experiences, not just software."