Airbnb Is in Midlife Crisis Mode

As Brian Chesky tells it, the reinvention of Airbnb started with the coup at OpenAI. On November 17, 2023, the board of OpenAI fired company CEO Sam Altman. His friend Chesky leapt into action—publicly defending his pal on X, getting on the phone with Microsoft’s CEO, and throwing himself into the thick of Altman’s battle to retake OpenAI. Five days later Altman prevailed, and Chesky—“I was so jacked up,” he says—turned his buzzing mind to his own company, Airbnb. Thanksgiving weekend was beginning. The Chesky extended family had already held their turkey get-together a week earlier, and the Airbnb CEO had no holiday plan. He was completely alone in his sprawling San Francisco apartment except for Sophie, his golden retriever. Still wired out of his mind from the cathartic corporate rescue, Chesky began to write. He wanted to bust the company he’d cofounded out of its pigeonhole of short-term home rentals. Amazon, he was fond of pointing out, was first an online bookstore before it b ... Read full article.