Lenny Rachitsky: evaluation

Transcript context

…sentially were like, "Let's go inspect our inventory. Let's actually try to manage our inventory more." And really what we should have done is taken a step back and be like, "What's the real problem?" The real problem is people want to know what they're getting themselves into. We need to represent the homes a lot better. And I think the other piece here that's really important is what, as a company, is there strategic strength? And what's in your wheelhouse? So for example, Airbnb, we weren't that strong in operations. We again, we're this platform with this marketplace. And so if you don't have that muscle and then you're asking the company, the teams to essentially build it from the ground up, that's really, really difficult. Not to mention the unit economics. Are the unit economics actually going to work, even as you scale? Yeah, I feel like Airbnb Plus is an untold story that somebody should tell, and that could be its own podcast, I guess. Jiaona Zhang (JZ) You and I can tell it. We could tell it. This could be Airbnb Plus the hidden, the story. As you said, the problem it was trying to solve was people don't really trust, they don't want to even consider Airbnb. Like, "No, I don't want to stay in someone's home. I don't know what it'll be. It's unpredictable." And so as an outsider, it felt like a really clever approach. We're going to get them, we're going to make sure they're awesome. There's a minimum bar. And I guess this is the question is do you think it was just like this is never possible because we'll never make money as a business doing this, because we don't make that much booking and investing time, resources, sending people pillows, all that stuff is ever going to be economical. Or do you think there was a path, and it was just not executed well? Jiaona Zhang (JZ) I think there wasn't really a clear path. I think there was [inaudible 00:42:55]. Exactly. And it was more just like if you understood, again, this is my point around unit economics, there are things where I think you have magical thinking around unit economics. You're like, "Well, when we get to the scale of X, it's all going to work out. We can make these things happen." I think you actually need to really make sure the unit economics work right at the beginning. So that is definitely one lesson. And I think the other thing is, and going back to the spirit of what are you trying to achieve. If you're trying to achieve this idea of really knowing the quality of the place, and for a platform like Airbnb, the right way to go about doing is through our reviews, through our guest reviews, which are essentially free as opposed to literally sending out inspectors. And I think that the other things are if you can get signal on what are the things around quality that people care about? Is it cleaning? Is it the, "Hey, I'm locked out." And I think that there are other solutions besides inspection that then get at that. So for example, it is actually cheaper to go send everyone a lockbox than to deploy an inspector and go look at your property, right? here are other solutions besides inspection that then get at that. So for example, it is actually cheaper to go send everyone a lockbox than to deploy an inspector and go look at your property, right? It is actually cheaper to maybe do a partnership with a bunch of cleaners in different local areas, and then get that as part of the feat as opposed to doing inspection. So again, it's really about what are you really trying to achieve? What is the user problem in each of these areas, and can you target that problem with the particular listing that you're looking at? And so yeah, I personally don't believe the unit economics ever would've really worked out. I think we should have known that, or we should have dug into that more at the very beginning, and then to get very tailored instead of one blunt instrument to solve it all. Hey, we're going to go inspect. It's like, what is the problem for this listing, and what's the best solution to fix that problem? Our second to last story is from Gina Gotthilf, who was an early growth leader at Duolingo. She's currently COO of Latitud, and this is her sharing a wide-ranging and important point about how everyone has both an A side and a B side to their career, and people often only share their A side. So this is Gina sharing her B side. We are very encouraged in our lives, especially professionally, to talk about our A side all the time because that's what impresses people. That's what opens doors, that's what allows us to keep growing, and it's so important. So it means that a lot of what you hear in podcasts and on stage ends up being the Instagramable version of someone or a company or a country's trajectory. It's just the highlights. And when I talk about my A side, it's very impressive. I did things like, we'll talk about, I met President Obama, I worked on the Mike Bloomberg presidential campaign. I helped Duolingo scale from three to 200 million users. I worked with Tumblr, helping them scale Latin America, Andreesen Horowitz invested in my company, etc. But between all of those highlights, there were so many B moments that get shoved under the rug because it's just easier for me and it's more impressive for others. But I really like to highlight those because I think that most of us have a lot of B moments every day, every week, every month, and every period of our lives. And it's easy to think that things aren't just not going to work out for us because we're in one of those B moments if we don't recognize them as moments.…

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