Brian Chesky says AI is about to rewrite the consumer product playbook — and he’s got opinions about who gets to run that play. Welcome to Tech Podcast Podcast. We listen to the best tech podcasts so you can decide what’s actually worth your time. Today: Chesky on AI and consumer products. Right, but is he actually giving a framework here, or just using the AI era to dress up Airbnb’s next product cycle? Let’s see whether there’s a real idea in this, or just a very polished founder monologue. This one's from TBPN:
Yeah, I mean things are really good. Um we've accelerated growth for the first time since the pandemic. Um we grew 10% um last year in revenue and this quarter we announced that revenue was 18%. So from 10 to 18% which is a pretty big acceleration.
Brian Chesky is back on TBPN, and this part is worth flagging: Airbnb went from 10% revenue growth to 18% in one quarter, which is the first real acceleration since the pandemic. That’s not nothing. The Project Hawaii bit is the one I care about — tiny team, obsessed with conversion, Chesky basically playing seed-stage founder inside a company with a hundred billion in gross bookings. Either that’s real, or it’s the best founder story he’s ever told himself. And to be fair, the Ralph Street apartment callback — the original Airbnb founding lore — at least gives him a real operating frame. That’s different from just saying, “we got back to our roots.” I’ll believe it when they show the actual conversion numbers. But if TBPN pushed for specifics and he gave them, that’s the episode. If they let the mythology run, skip it. Got thoughts on today’s episode, a tech story we should track, or a correction we need to make? Send us a note anytime at techpodcastpodcast at lantern podcasts dot com.
You’ll find links to every story we covered today in the show notes, so if something caught your ear, it’s easy to dig in a little further.
That’s Tech Podcast Podcast for today. Thanks for listening, and we’ll be back tomorrow. This is a Lantern Podcast.