What I understood about building a business, having worked for seven years at Airbnb

In 2012, shortly after Airbnb bought our startup, I heard one of the company's founders (Joe Gebbia) instruct the designer, who needed to change the design of the main page: “Do something that the Internet has never had before” . I remember well how I thought: “What does it all mean? Is it such a strap here for everything that is being done? ”Looking back, I can say that Airbnb was the main engine of growth for this kind of thinking - in combination with six other key components, which I will discuss below.

I joined Airbnb as a developer, and then connected to the team that was still forming, which was responsible for the private messaging function. At that time, the company had a couple of dozen developers, several designers and two very cute dogs. Over the next seven years, the company has grown to thousands of employees around the world, countless lovely dogs, and has been valued at more than $ 30 billion, and I managed to work with wonderful people on many interesting tasks. After leaving the company a few weeks ago, I wrote down the most important lessons I had learned during this time, and only after that I plunged into my own undertaking. I soon realized that I needed to share these lessons with everyone who is trying to start their own business. I do not promise that all this will be applicable to your situation, but I can say that what I have described has been the basis of the success of Airbnb over the years.
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Transferred to Alconost

1. The competitive advantage of culture, values ​​and rituals

We, both as consumers and as candidates in search of work, are increasingly choosing companies that match our personal values. From the earliest days at Airbnb, great attention was paid to culture, clearly delineated values ​​and strange rituals. Over the years, I have watched how effectively this has worked as a competitive advantage and allowed me to hire the best talents , quickly use the opportunities that have arisen and overcome obstacles in the way. Most important of all, it was easy for managers to stay true to the long-term mission, and for the team to recover from them.

How did Airbnb form a strong culture? Using three key components:

1. The founders' obsession with the idea of ​​a strong culture. See example A and example B. This is the most important thing - especially when the company is growing. If you focus on the culture, it will determine who the first few employees will be (who will participate in the formation of culture), what values ​​you set for yourself (consciously or unconsciously) and how much priority it will be many years later.
   
2. A solid understanding of your own self. In Airbnb, a code of core values ​​was written for this, on which a small working group worked for about three years. Through these values, success is measured (are we really performing our task), they are used in hiring (one of the selection stages is to test a candidate for compliance with core values), in evaluating effectiveness (they are included in the peer review process) and when considering major transactions . Each employee of the company can list the values ​​by heart.
   
3. Rituals. “Cookies Time on Tuesdays”, “Tea Party with a Newbie”, “The Master's Bar”, “Human Tunnels”, “Fun Facts” are silly, but regular rituals help employees strengthen social ties and rejoice in the workplace. There is no need to philosophize - try and see what works and what does not.
   

Some of the first Airbnb rituals in action: “Official Friday” and “Human Tunnel”

Here is a great video that will help you start building your own values ​​and culture.

The main conclusion : pay great attention to the culture of the company (and the team).

2. Formulate the task exactly

I would venture to say that the formulation of the problem and its communication to all is the most important step in solving any problem. More than once I have seen how simple projects with an indefinitely formulated task go in circles of the week and even months — while complex, but with a clear formulation of the task, rush through all pairs. This became especially evident after the closure of unsuccessful projects: in nine out of ten cases the main reason for the failure was the lack of a clear AND task (OR) of general agreement on what is the team’s task.

Basic tools that came in handy to me:

1. A one-page template — I worked on it for several years and used it to formulate tasks and opportunities that could be presented to the team and management.
   
2. The principle “situation - complexity - solution” is very useful in explaining any concept to a wide audience.
   
3. The principle of "tasks performed" will help not to deviate from meeting the actual needs of customers.
   

The main conclusion : try to describe the problem being solved as accurately as possible and make sure that the rest of the team and you are on the same wavelength.


Tips for new employees, painted on the walls during the hackathon ( Andrea Nguyen , Jeni Ngo , Katie Chen )

3. Ambitious results - a consequence of even more ambitious goals.

At the end of the year, looking at growth charts, we were often stunned by how close we came to achieving insanely ambitious and seemingly unattainable goals. And, calling the goals insane, I even understate: Brian, the general director of Airbnb, is (sadly) known for doubling the indicators we offer as targets — often even doubling them. Either he knew something that we did not know, or such crazy goals made us think bigger and take on new heights. In the second I believe much more willingly.

Five key components that you will need:

1. Set goals that will not let you relax . We have always tried, firstly, to choose a goal that would not let us relax, and secondly - to clearly understand why its achievement would be incredibly useful for business. When setting goals, we often asked two questions: 1) the realization of what will make it possible to achieve this goal and 2) what can be achieved without any obstacles (budget, people, dependencies, etc.)?
   
2. Someone must necessarily bear direct responsibility for the goal . Achieving the goal should be a work task for a particular person. If there is no name next to the number, this goal will not be achieved.
   
3. Think in perspective. Defining the goal for the year in terms of growth and the mission of the company, we usually repelled from the time horizon of 5-10 years. Over time, more and more attention was paid to the impact of our work on those for whom we work (although this did not always work out perfectly) - this is what Brian recently told in a published open letter.
   
4. Gather a multifunctional team around your goal and give it the resources that will enable you to achieve this goal. Your first priority as a manager is to pick the right team, direct it in the right direction, and vigilantly ensure that nothing interferes with your work.
   
5. Celebrate success, do not punish failures. Implement the underlying intent behind the goal: it should push forward, not kill. If the goal is not achieved, but you come close to it, congratulate the team and go on to the next ambitious task.
   

The main conclusion : when setting goals, think wider.

4. Start with the perfect case and build on it.

One of the varieties of Amazon’s reverse working methodology has been exceptionally well-established in Airbnb: first, you determine what the ideal user interaction will look like, and then, starting from this, you go in the opposite direction.

The classic example that I witnessed when I was hired was a project codenamed Snow White. Inspired by Disney’s approach to working on the first Snow White movie, the company’s founders began to view Airbnb not just as a website or service, but as a story with a beginning, middle and end. “Snow White” was one of the first films to use the storyboard technique, and so the team developed a set of storyboards of ideal ways for the guest and host and revealed key emotional moments. Such storyboards quickly took a key place in identifying our biggest gaps and opportunities and served as the basis for shaping the company's strategy in the early stages. Read more about it here and here . You can also watch a great video in which the team discusses this process.


Storyboards for host and guest in the project "Snow White"

Or here's a fresher example: we somehow wanted to significantly simplify the booking for guests. The process itself consisted of several stages, one of which was an unpredictable waiting period while the host manually checked the guest's request. Instead of spending months and even years on optimizing individual parts of the funnel on trifles, we retreated to the very beginning and thought about what a perfect booking would look like. In this case, the guest, of course, could reserve any desired room, without waiting for confirmation. At first it seemed impossible to convince all hosts to allow guests to book without approval (at that time only 5% of the bookings were “instant”). However, it quickly became clear that in this direction the company should move in the long term, so we directed all the team’s resources to this. A few years later it turned out that we had transformed the market in such a way that the vast majority of bookings were now made instantly.

A couple of key components of this process:

1. Write down or draw what a perfect user path looks like. In our case, before we dive into the short-term optimization, we outlined in general the perfect booking process and wrote an example of a blog entry announcing a new feature, as if it had been implemented. Thanks to this approach, the task in a matter of days takes on a very specific shape.
   
2. Create a schema. To make the task more understandable, find a way to break it into pieces that you can work with. In the instant booking example, the biggest challenge was to give the owners more control over who could instantly book their room. We broke this clause into tasks like “I CAN” (“Can I use it?”) And “I WANT” (“Do I want to use it?”) And worked on them in order of priority.
   
3. If there is a feeling of insecurity, collect more data. Often a significant change scares colleagues and even some users. However, I recommend not giving up immediately, but looking at the real data. Test your assumptions by conducting a quick experiment, researching users, or viewing archived data. As one of the tested hypotheses, the view was expressed in the company and outside that the trip booked instantly would be much less qualitative (that is, less communicative and more formal), which would damage long-term growth. A quick review of the data clearly showed the opposite, and this, along with several other key measurement points, helped the team endorse the new approach.
   

The main conclusion : look for the possibility of step-by-step changes in functionality - imagine the ideal and work, starting from it.

5. Think of your organization as a product.

Moving up the career ladder in the company that creates the product, you quickly learn that the most important thing is the proper organization of employees. The structure you attach to a company can be a great help in fulfilling a mission and can become a huge obstacle. From my experience I can highlight several key components of a successful company organization:

1. Focus on specialized multi-functional teams with a clear task . In my experience, this gives the greatest contribution to efficiency. We need independent teams that can move to the set goal as autonomously as possible. Missing resources (for example, designer, data, budget), additional intergroup dependency and conflicting areas of interest significantly reduce team effectiveness (at first this may not be obvious). Consider how many times the team will have to contact other departments or wait for them, and try to reduce the number of such cases to a minimum. A well-functioning team is like a black box that provides regular updates and does an amazing job.
   
2. Set the right goals . Much has been said about goals ( SMART goals , OKR , etc.), but it seems to me that teams still underestimate the importance of setting the right goals. Based on my experience, I can say that the right goal is the difference between lightning progress and endless customer churn. In my case, the following rules work best: 1) goals should be as small as possible - ideally only one or two, 2) goals should have fast feedback loops so that you can see the results immediately, 3) there should be a direct link with the growth of the company's gross indicators, (4) the goals should be easy to understand and they (5) should not let you relax.
   
3. Remember that an ideal organization scheme does not exist - there are only the best ideas available at the moment . In Airbnb, I went through almost a dozen reorganizations. At the same time, there has never been such an organizational scheme that would solve all problems and satisfy everyone. It is necessary to take into account the most problematic issues, try to look into the future as far as possible - and only after that just move forward. An organizational chart will have flaws (for example, overlapping roles in product ownership, two teams with the same key indicator, a team or department that has taken too many resources), so mark them and implement systems that will allow you to bypass these obstacles. Let everyone know that the organization of the scheme will change again in the future.
   

“Don't be silent,” Shantell Martin, drawn by hand during the day at the main office of Airbnb

The main conclusion : form autonomous units with clearly defined goals and do not interfere with their work.

6. Maintain a high standard FOR ALL

Having swum in among startups, I got used to moving quickly, agreeing to “quite good” and thinking in the short term: too much work, too little time - and so constantly. No one knew whether the company would exist in a year. Shortly after starting work at Airbnb, one of the first managers instilled in me the ability to keep the bar high, whatever I did. Looking back, I understand that this change in thinking has had a profound effect on my career.

A few examples of how and in what cases you should keep the bar high for yourself and your team are the little things that often have great importance:

1. Emails . Force yourself to at least once look through the letter before sending it: there is always something to reduce or clarify. For example, my favorite style borrowed from the military.
   
2. Documents shared. Before giving wide access to the document, ALWAYS ask someone to view it and give feedback - even if it is one person. Formatting should be neat and consistent. Before submitting the document to the management team, close the comments. The document should be easy to read. Force yourself to improve your writing style.
   
3. Meetings . Specify in the invitations the main purpose of the meeting, and better still the full agenda. If you come to a meeting and it does not seem productive to you, point it out. Invite as few people as possible. Following the meeting, there should be a clear list of actions. Send after the meeting a letter with a list of actions and responsible.
   
4. Presentations . Think about whether you need a presentation - is it not enough to have an email? The audience needs to know exactly the purpose of the presentation: making a decision, getting feedback, or simply sharing information. This is not as obvious as it may seem. Ask viewers to give feedback on the presentation - a fresh look will always help to catch the most problematic issues. Be concise: no one wants the presentation to be delayed.
   

The main conclusion : often ask yourself and the team the following questions. Is it possible to act a little bolder? What needs to be done to make the task a little better? How to make a meeting a little more productive? How to make this document or this letter a little clearer? Is it possible to raise the bar a little more?

7. Less is more. Concentration is power

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About the translator

The article is translated in Alconost.

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