Shadowing Practice: $95B Airbnb CEO: People Who Know What to Build With AI Will Pull Ahead - Learn English Speaking with Video

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I think there's a lot of fear about AI outside of Silicon Valley.

I understand why, because it's changing their job, it's displacing them.

And some of that may be true, but I am saying that everyone has the power now.

This is Brian Chesky, co -founder and CEO of Airbnb, a Fortune 500 company valued at $95 billion.

He believes AI is widening the gap between people who have access to the same tools.

So I wanted to understand what actually gives people an edge in an AI -powered world.

AI is like an amplifier it makes the good people better

and the people

that weren't as good it's less of a multiplier for them

I'm just trying to translate this for people who are thinking about different business ideas how do they know

that idea is viable to launch this is what I would do

this video is sponsored by HubSpot hi Brian hey how you

doing good to see you welcome to Silicon Valley girl it's been seven years since we first met

and I wanted to show you this I don't know

if you remember but that crazy girl at the airport who saw Brian Chesky

and then ran to you oh yes

and you were boarding a commercial flight of course what airport was

that it's LAX thank you for being so nice

and friendly of course and look at how well you're doing

and I'm so honored to be on your program thank you

and I invited you to a podcast back then

so seven years later we're doing it we're doing it here we are

so I came to San Francisco building a travel company

and then we were going through really hard times during COVID

and seeing you navigate those times really gave me inspiration

and strength and now we we're in this new era of transformation

which is AI

so today I wanted to focus on how you're transforming the company for the AI era

and I wanted to make it as applicable as possible for

people who are maybe thinking of starting a business in the AI era

or maybe having hard times as a professional because so much is changing so talk to me about Airbnb becoming AI native.

What does it mean for guests?

And also I'm a host.

I have a place in Hawaii that we're renting out through Airbnb.

So what does it mean for both sides of the table?

I think it really just means modernizing every touch point of the app to be more intelligent, easier to use.

And so I'll give you some examples.

Let's say we're a guest.

Before AI, you do a normal search.

You type in a location and you get a bunch of results.

Now with AI, starting today, you can hit a toggle

and you can do AI search it's very natural very much natural language like typing into a chat bot

and then it is a very intelligent search

so you can say I want to go to Paris this

weekend with this number of people I want this kind of view

and I want this kind of architecture

and it will not only serve up all the results

but it will also pre -filter everything for you

because Airbnb is very much about filters and controls you see the So chatbots aren't really great for shopping.

Chatbots aren't really good for travel.

And the reason why is they're text -based.

They're very hard to compare.

You want things to be very inspiration -based and browse -based.

You want it to be fun and entertainment -oriented.

It's multiplayer.

So the average Airbnb people, it's three people traveling.

So they all have to be able to share.

You have to be able to message a host.

You have to be able to have filters.

And you've got to be able to see, like, if I turn this filter off, I get this home.

But if I add this filter back, I get that home.

So we had to find this interface that wasn't a chatbot, but that felt chat -like, that you can start to have a conversation with, but you didn't take away the functionality people loved.

Then when you go to an Airbnb, we have these AI -generated highlights.

So AI basically will summarize the listing for you.

And these are really nice, personalized snippets.

They're personalized to you.

So we can make the listing literally written for you, saying, this is why you will like this listing.

Then when you get to the bottom of the page, if you have a question, you don't even have to ask the host now.

You can literally ask the page and the listing could answer things for you.

You can still message the host, but now you can message.

Then if you have a bunch of listings, you want to compare them.

We've got an AI comparison feature tool, which makes it really smart and easy.

And one of the challenges people don't realize.

And one of the problems of chatbot is Airbnb is very much a comparison shopping problem.

Okay.

I like these 10 homes.

This one's got a pool.

This one's got a barbecue.

This one's got really high ratings.

This one's new.

This one's a little more expensive.

This one's in a really good location.

How do I make decisions and how do I compare side by side and how do I call down?

Then we have brand new maps where I can, starting in Paris, I can tap and see information about each neighborhood.

Eventually, this is going to roll out to a thousand different cities around the world.

And these are just some of the features we have in the guest side.

On the host side, we're going to make the app feel more and more like an agent that can be your coach, understand your goals.

It can help you price your listing.

So I think the basic idea is that Airbnb is getting smarter.

Airbnb's whole app is going to feel more like an agent.

But when I say agent, I don't mean a chat bot.

People, when they hear agents and chatbots, they think they're the same thing.

They're not.

Agent is an evolution of an application.

It's an application that is more intelligent and understands you and knows you.

And it leverages the power of AI.

A chatbot is a user interface.

And I think because most agents are chatbots, we conflate the two.

But they're not the same thing.

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And I think that a chatbot is not the right interface for travel.

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It's not the right interface for shopping but agents are great

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and I think the great thing about agents is the interoperable

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so one agent could talk to another agent and

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so I think agents are definitely the future of Silicon Valley

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and chatbots are not yeah

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and chatbot feels like more like a reactive thing where agent is more proactive knowing your interests

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and I've really liked the comparison feature

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because you don't know how many hours it's like two very similar bookings

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but this one is quieter but this one has a bigger bedroom

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and you like having them side by side i think makes a huge difference

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and you're also adding a social graph something

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that i absolutely love you know it's

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so funny um i came to silicon valley 19 years ago um

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and when i came to silicon valley there was this thing called a social network

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and it was facebook and everyone was on facebook

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and it was mostly just your friends

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and you could keep in touch with your friends

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and they would share what they did

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and now none of my friends are on facebook um and And Instagram is not social networking, it's social media.

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So it's basically Instagram, X, YouTube, TikTok.

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They're really not social networks.

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They're really performance platforms.

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They're broadcast platforms.

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And this is not, I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but I'm saying now there's no place in the internet for me to know not only what my friends are doing, but one of the things I used to like was knowing where people were traveling.

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People in my life, where have they traveled to?

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Where are they going?

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And so here's a use case.

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Let's say I'm going to Chicago.

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I'm sure I have a bunch of friends that have been to Chicago, but I don't know which ones.

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And now, if I connect to people on Airbnb, I can see all of my friends have been to Chicago.

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And I can see where they stayed.

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I might want to stay where they've stayed.

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But more importantly, I can ask them, like, hey, what's good to do in Chicago?

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Because what we found is increasingly people want recommendations for their friends and their family rather than from, you know, celebrities or writers.

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They increasingly want people who feel like they know them.

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Like, you know me, you'll know what I like, but this is an unsolved problem because you don't know where everyone in your life has traveled.

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Another thing about Airbnb is one of the best parts of it is meeting somebody new.

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You know, it's hard to meet people today.

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I asked my parents, how did you meet people?

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They would go to a mall, they'd go to a theater, they'd go to physical spaces.

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Increasingly, people today are not in physical spaces, they're on their phones.

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And phones are really a way for you to talk to strangers online, but it's a really hard way to meet strangers offline.

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And so we want to help solve this problem by making it easier to meet people in the real world

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and stay in touch with them.

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And so if you travel, you stay in a home with somebody, you might meet them.

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If you go on experience with somebody, you can stay in touch with them.

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So I think a lot of what we're trying to do

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is turn Airbnb from a kind of just a marketplace of homes to a little more of a travel community.

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And I think the travel graph is really cool.

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And if you go on Airbnb, you can basically add your friends or family and you can see where they're traveling.

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And yeah, this is a really cool use case.

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Wouldn't you be curious to know where all your friends are traveling this summer?

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I think it's pretty cool.

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Now you can know and you can decide, well, if they're going, we can go at the same time.

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Yeah.

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And one of the reasons I started this podcast, because I wanted to meet people offline and whenever guests suggest do an online thing, I'm like, no, no, that's not the reason I wanted to do that in the first place.

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Exactly.

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So I can totally relate.

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And I think you're also opening up opportunities for new businesses right

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because you're now doing groceries baby gear um restaurant deliveries is it 700 plus features

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that you're launching i think so yeah we're we're launching i think the stat is

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that we're like shipping 80 more features than a year ago most of it's because of ai

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obviously ai is like this incredible superpower you know 10 years

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ago even a few years ago everything had to be coded by hand everything was

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so much harder to do now that you can ship things so much more quickly, we can ship features more quickly.

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It used to take us a year to ship like a new service.

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Now we can do it in weeks.

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And so now, like, for example, with services, one of the things we hear from guests a lot is, I love to stay in homes, but they don't have all the services of a hotel.

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And we thought, well, what if we could have not only all the service hotel, but even more services.

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So we can have baby gear if you have kids, you know, sometimes hotels have cribs, but maybe they have two cribs or three cribs.

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And if they're out, you've got, I don't have kids, but I hear from my friends who have kids, maybe you want laundry done.

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A hotel has laundry.

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Well, now Airbnb, you can get laundry.

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So we just wanted to go down the list.

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Ski rental equipment.

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I'm going to go skiing.

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I don't want to, I don't have my own ski equipment.

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So going to rent ski gear can be very, very, you know.

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it can be onerous right you just get to a city

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you're tired you want to figure out how to get ski

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gear we can have all the sizes waiting for you all the equipment for you

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so we're really trying to make everything be as easy

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and plug and play as possible

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so you're not just getting a home you're kind of getting a full service experience

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so eventually ics adding dozens even hundreds of services

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that can be plugged into the home so that

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when you book a home you can get everything you need

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for your trip what do you see the biggest opportunity for

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small businesses who are trying to build to plug into your system?

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Let's pretend I'm a masseuse.

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I'm a masseuse in Tulum, Mexico.

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I'm just making a random place up.

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Right now, how do I get business?

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I only get business from locals who know about me, but how would I, if a trial was, how would I get business?

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I probably wouldn't be able to get business.

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Maybe I have to go work at a resort and they have to give me business.

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Now I can have my own business.

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I can broadcast an Airbnb and all the travelers coming to Tulum, if anyone wants a massage, they can go on Airbnb and they can book the massage with me

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so kind of like the original airbnb where i had a home

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but no one knew about my home and we gave them a distribution platform

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and they could basically get an audience kind of like the

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way social media gives everyone an audience we can give all these small business audiences

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and we give them a global audience of travelers and

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so this is really really difficult um for somebody i'm a photographer in paris

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and i take photos of families in front of the eiffel tower a lot of People want to get their photos.

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How do you get your photo in front of the Apple Tower if you're a parent, one of you is not in the photo or you give the camera to someone else and they're like being bothered

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and it's just like an iPhone photo.

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Now you can have like amazing professional photos in 30 minutes.

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It's not too expensive and you'll remember those photos forever.

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This photographer would never have known how to broadcast to all these guests from around the world.

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We really feel like there's a whole economy of service providers, whether there's masseuses, chefs, photographers,

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companies that deal with equipment or baby gear or laundry or cleaning service, car rental, welcome pickups, picking up the airport, anything you imagine.

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In other words, now you can Airbnb more than just a home.

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You can Airbnb anything.

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If you're thinking about starting a business, start with something you already know how to do well.

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Maybe it's photography, catering, or a service people keep asking you for.

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Then you think about your first five customers.

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And thanks to HubSpot for sponsoring this episode.

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Now back to Brian.

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And you were testing all of these, I imagine, before launching.

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Can you talk to me about all the tests and what's the decision -making criteria?

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For everything we launch, we're probably testing like many, many more things.

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And we have dozens of services underway.

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So like ski equipment.

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I'm not a giant skier, but I ski a little bit.

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I don't ski enough to have my own skis.

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I don't ski enough to have my own boots, my own helmet.

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So everywhere I go, I have to rent equipment.

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And it's always like, I don't even know where to go.

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Do I go to the mountain to rent equipment?

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Do I have to wait in line?

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I have to wait for someone to size me.

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It's so much more convenient if I were to get to the Airbnb.

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They know my boot size.

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They know my ski size.

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And they just have everything for me.

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So that is something that we're testing.

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I think the test isn't in Italy, but we're going to hopefully bring this to ski mountains all over the world.

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And they're these ski rental companies

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and they would love to be able to bring the equipment

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to you rather than you have to wait in line at the store, which is potentially really inconvenient.

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Surfing equipment, you know, a professional surfer probably will travel with their own surfboard,

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but it's pretty hard to bring a surfboard on an airplane and a lot of people aren't gonna travel the surfboard.

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And so they're gonna have to rent this equipment.

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What if in the house waiting for you was this equipment or you knew exactly where to go to get the equipment?

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So these are kind of the ideas.

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So we're trying to test, you know, we usually do a test in one market one city

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if it works then we bring it to other markets and

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everything we announced today we've been testing so we have a lot of other services coming

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there's literally hundreds by the way the thing that's exciting is the long tail it's like there's

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so many different services and no one service maybe is big enough to be a giant business

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that you've heard of that has an app so that's the challenge like ride sharing there's an app uber Food delivery, there's an app, Uber Eats DoorDash.

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But most other services aren't big enough to have a global brand where you know where to go.

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And even if they do have an app, they're not integrated with Airbnb, and so it's pretty difficult.

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Like Instacart, they got an app, but now you can get groceries at your Airbnb, and you have an option where you can order the Instacart groceries through the Airbnb app.

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It already knows your address.

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It already knows how many guests, and the food can be sent to the house, and the host can open the door and have the food put in the fridge so it's stocked for you.

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Oh, that's amazing.

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It's just much more convenient.

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So what is the criteria for launching?

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I wonder if you have, like, internal metrics.

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Is it like, I don't know, 10 % of guests are using the service?

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I'm just trying to translate this for people who are thinking about different business ideas.

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Oh, I see.

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When they don't have access to data like yours, how do they know that idea is viable to launch?

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It's a great question.

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I mean, we started with the most popular services, the most common ones, chef, masseuse, photography, car rental, airport pickup,

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luggage storage but increasingly the power of airbnb is the idea

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that we want you to be able to provide anything you can imagine

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so my hope is anything you offer

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if it could be useful just to a couple people visiting

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your city then we would love to hear from you

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and i think just contact airbnb i think you can there's a contact button on the bottom of our page

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and we try to intake as many ideas as possible

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so we have like a services platform if you go to list you know you can go to become a host, there's a button you can basically apply to become a services host.

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We might tell you that this is coming soon, but we take every single lead.

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So let's say you do like floral arrangements.

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This is a use case.

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People are on vacation.

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They're maybe on a romantic trip.

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They want to get flowers in the listing.

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Maybe they want flowers in the listing.

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They want to get flowers for the romantic significant other.

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That's a service we're launching and people can apply.

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We don't have it in every city, but if you have this idea, if you have an idea like that, just apply.

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And if we aren't ready to launch it now, we will eventually.

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And so it's just a matter of getting to them.

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But we want every idea.

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I wouldn't want to tell people what ideas to apply with

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because some of the best ideas are ones I don't even think of.

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But if you have something you think is valuable to somebody else, you just need an audience.

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And hopefully we can give you that audience.

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I love that.

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And I imagine shipping all of these features became possible because of AI.

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Do you have an internal metric where you say, okay, AI is adding that much short productivity and output versus just generating more stuff that we're not using?

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So the beginning of the year, there was this whole like token matching thing where CEOs were telling everyone you got to use AI.

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And they were measuring it by how many tokens you were using.

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And there was a little bit of a initial management philosophy to shame people that didn't have a lot of tokens.

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There were like token leaderboards.

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That might have been a good thing to do for a couple months just to make sure people we're using AI, but that was clearly like a long -term strategy that was not going to work.

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And now all of a sudden, everyone's like, wait a second, why are we spending so much money on AI?

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And so I think the most important thing is like the customer doesn't care

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if we're using AI to build their tools or not.

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They just want the product to be better, faster.

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And so we look at product velocity.

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How fast are you shipping?

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How many features are you shipping?

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How quick are you shipping them?

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Are they high quality and are they successful?

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And we have metrics for that.

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So we're shipping 80 % more features.

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That is crazy, though.

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Just think about 80 % more for a huge company like yours.

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Yeah, and it's just two things.

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It's the power of AI that suddenly you don't have to primarily code by hand.

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But it's also cultural.

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People have to use the tools, and they have to use them correctly.

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And it's amazing because AI is the ultimate democracy.

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The tools that Airbnb has is the tools every company in the world has.

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We all have access to the exact same tools.

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There's codex, there's cloud code.

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It's kind of like back in the day I used Photoshop and I was a designer, illustrator.

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We all had the same tools.

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We all have these amazing tools, but they're not equally distributed.

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The very best people know how to immerse themselves and get the most out of the tools. And

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so one of the things we tried to do is we

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tried to make sure people learned how to use the tools correctly.

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And there's no replacement for good thinking.

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You need to have really good data.

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You need to still have good collaboration.

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AI allows an idea to get out of your head into the world faster, but it doesn't necessarily give you better ideas.

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You still have to have great ideas.

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You still have to have great thinking.

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It's now about great thinking.

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It's about great understanding.

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It's about great curiosity.

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And I think AI rewards deeply curious people because you can do endless iteration.

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AI is like an amplifier.

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It makes the good people better.

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And the people that weren't as good, it's less of a multiplier for them.

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So I find that the dynamic range, the performance gap is greater with AI, that the really high performance is even better with AI.

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I'm a designer by training.

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I went to RISD.

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19 years ago, I started to be, I couldn't code.

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And today I could code because I could prompt.

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And so suddenly in that way, it is so democratic.

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all of us can do so many more jobs.

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At the same time, great thinking, great taste, great understanding, understanding user problems.

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These are things that matter even more now because it's no longer can you build it.

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It's what do you build and should you build it and does it matter?

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Quick tip to people who want to upgrade.

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You were describing people who are at the edge of productivity and generating ideas and being curious.

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I think there was a saying by this Nobel Prize winning chemist, Linus Pauling he said, the best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.

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Like Airbnb seemed like a good idea, right?

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It was one of many ideas and we had a lot of bad ideas.

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I think it's about like sheer output.

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The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.

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The best way to create a good drawing is to create a lot of drawings.

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The best way to do anything is to create a lot of it just throughout sheer output.

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I mean, you're really good now what you've done.

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You probably We did it through a lot of repetition, right?

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There wasn't one moment where you got good.

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Similar to exercise.

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You don't get in shape in one workout.

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It's through repetition.

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So what I found is that the very best people are the ones that just practice more than anyone else.

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And they put in the repetitions.

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Working out is actually a good metaphor.

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It's repetition.

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And so idea repetition matters.

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You know, I know at IDEO, they're a very famous design firm.

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They used to do this exercise where the way you generate

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ideas they give every people probably some people might notice to give you every one of post -it notes

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and you have to write an idea down put a post note on the wall another idea on a wall

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and they had a rule you can never critique ideas initially no devil's advocates no critiquing ideas

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because when you critique your ideas you edit your thinking

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and you're afraid and bad ideas sometimes are one step away from a good idea.

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And so I think it's all about volume of ideas.

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I probably, not exaggerating, have 100 ,000 ideas a year.

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And I think 99 ,000 are really bad.

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Out of all the ideas, how do you know which ones not to work on?

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It's more the good ideas jump off the page.

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So for example, I basically have a notebook and every thought is like a sentence or a couple sentences.

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And I probably write maybe a thousand words a day.

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So that's probably 300 ,000 words a year.

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And maybe each line is a sentence.

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There's like 10 words.

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So maybe that's a hundred ideas a day.

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So that's maybe 30 ,000 ideas a year.

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And so then what I do is say I have 30 ,000 thoughts a year.

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99 % of them are not useful, right?

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Just something.

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You write something down, anything that comes to your mind.

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I just keep writing it down.

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At the end of every day, I bold the things that jump out at me.

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And so if I wrote down like a hundred things, a hundred lines, I bolded five to 10.

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And then each day I bold them.

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At the end of every month, I look and my AI now can just read the bold ideas.

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I used to have to manually like pull out the ideas and read them.

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Now the AI can pull out the bolded ideas.

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The AI can also read and find ideas I thought were stupid

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and it can tell me really good ideas it can see patterns.

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And then those become my shortlist.

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And then I iterate them, iterate them, iterate them.

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You know, I think like Catching the Rise 70 ,000 words, and I probably have like four times that output in words.

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And my writing is a thousand times worse.

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It's really bad writing.

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It's not high quality.

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I'm not writing, like if you were to read it, you'd be like, this is borderline nonsensical.

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It's understandable to me, not to someone else.

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And I think that's the point is that most of my words are bad.

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Most of my ideas are bad and it doesn't matter because no one knows about the bad ideas.

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They only need to know about the good ideas.

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And here's the lesson.

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Good ideas don't die.

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If you write something down, you write a good idea down, a month later, you're going to write the same idea down again and you won't realize it comes back.

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So I find that good ideas, they don't want to die.

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They kind of stay alive and everything else just kind of falls by the wayside.

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And these good ideas, they kind of haunt you like ghost and you're like, okay, this, this thing's not going away.

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I don't know if that's useful.

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I never said this before, but I think it's about like just total output, just constantly.

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I remember hearing about Eminem.

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He would just write all day.

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He had a notebook and he'd write lyrics and rhymes all day.

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Bob Dylan was just writing songs all the time, just writing and writing and writing and writing.

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No, not everyone's like that.

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Like Jay -Z apparently like doesn't do that.

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He just like, thinks in his own head and like that's very unique prodigious skill that he has.

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Leonardo da Vinci, he left behind so many notebooks and he was just drawing and writing and drawing and writing.

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By the way, most of da Vinci did was write, not draw.

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If you look at his notebooks, it's 80 % writing, 20 % drawing.

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And he is the most famous painter of all time.

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He had like 12 paintings ever.

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Mona Lisa is one of 12 or 15 paintings he ever painted.

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So think about the sheer volume of stuff he created.

443

Vincent van Gogh, most of his productivity was in the last three years of his life.

444

And he painted more than one painting a day, every single day.

445

And this is in addition to sketches.

446

He just, every day, he wrote, he wrote, he wrote.

447

Hemingway, wake up at 6 a .m from 6 a .m to noon.

448

He would just write and he would write until he had nothing left to write at noon.

449

And it was just, it's this, this discipline of repetition, whether you're a tech founder, you're an artist, you're a writer, it's about pure volume.

450

It doesn't mean you put out a lot of crap.

451

Like you don't publish it all.

452

You have to, you, you, then you edit and you edit and you only publish the very best of your stuff.

453

But I think that what people don't understand is they only see a few things go out

454

and they don't see the sheer volume of what goes in.

455

And I think the problem and maybe I'm going to admit to a problem I have

456

and I think almost every single person watching has is we

457

spend too much time on social media paying attention what other people are doing

458

my vice is x and I like

459

and most most of us are on x or twitter way too much

460

and we're way too focused on what other people are doing oh my god now it's instinct now it's muse

461

and now it's this and now it's that

462

and there's just we're all like kids chasing soccer balls

463

and we're all like trying to play fast fashion trying to copy what everyone else is doing

464

and just it's just so distracting it is and i wonder

465

if we'd all be better off just like not being a

466

little bit ignorant to whatever else is going on in the

467

world part of me is like you know van gogh couldn't doom scroll

468

and if he could doom scroll he might not have painted

469

so much if da vinci could doom scroll he might not have had

470

so much output and

471

if all of us could just block out a bit more of what everyone else is doing and say, it doesn't really matter what people think.

472

Or even if you do care what people think, let people value you years from now.

473

See, I'm going to put blinders on

474

and I'm just going to just dig in

475

and I'm going to work for years and I'm not going to worry about getting attention now.

476

I will earn attention later if it matters to me, but I'm going to practice quietly and I don't need the world to watch me practice.

477

I'm going to quietly practice.

478

I'm going to become great at my craft and when I'm ready, I'm going to put something out there.

479

I think that would be so valuable.

480

We're just put blinders on and just lock in and just go.

481

I think this is such valuable advice, such great practice.

482

We need to be doing more of because - And I will admit, I'm giving advice to others and I have to keep reminding it of myself.

483

Stop worrying about whatever else is going on in Silicon Valley.

484

Focus on - Hard.

485

It's so hard.

486

And you don't want to be naive.

487

Like you want to know generally, if you're a company, you want to know what's going on competition.

488

You want to know what's the latest with AI developments, but you can do that like 10 minutes a day.

489

You don't need to do that two, three hours.

490

You don't need to open X or YouTube or Instagram or whatever your platform du jour is 17 times or 25 times.

491

This is what I would do.

492

And I don't do it as much, but I wish I did it.

493

Once a day for like 20, 30 minutes, I'm going to go on whatever platform I go on, I'm going to learn.

494

Okay.

495

Now I'm done.

496

And then this time is uninterrupted and I'm going to like not have my phone on.

497

By the way, the phone, spend more time on a computer, less time on a phone.

498

The computer is the ultimate tool.

499

We designed phones on computers.

500

We don't design computers on phones.

501

The phone was never designed to be something you stare at all day.

502

When Steve Jobs designed it, his vision wasn't you're on it all day.

503

Long attention span stuff should be reserved for big screens.

504

So you should not be staring at a phone very long

505

because what it does is it trains your dopamine to multitask and to like change things.

506

And what it does is it like, the phone is an enemy to focus and it's not designed to be something you're staring at for hours a day.

507

The computer is great for focus.

508

A large screen, the bigger the screen, the longer your attention span.

509

That's why if you go to like an IMAX theater, you're not gonna go to the bathroom.

510

You're in a living room and you watch a television show but you might get up.

511

On your computer, you'll watch a YouTube film, but on a phone, you'll only be able to pay attention

512

or 15 seconds before you scroll the next video attention span is commensurate

513

or screen size never thought about that

514

if you want to focus you need to have a long attention span

515

if you want a long attention span you need to have a big screen do not look at a phone

516

if you want to focus you mentioned having so many ideas

517

if you are not building airbnb today in the ai era

518

what would you be building i used to think i was i i was lucky

519

because i was 26 when i came to silken valley And when I came to Silicon Valley, the iPhone had just launched, Facebook was like blowing up,

520

YouTube was out, the internet was going global.

521

Cloud computing meant like you could have an app and not have to buy your own servers.

522

What it meant was it's kind of easy to start a company.

523

And there was this iPhone that was distribution.

524

So suddenly you could just put it in an app store and everyone could discover it.

525

I felt like I was the luckiest person alive.

526

because I happened to be born at the right place at the right time.

527

And it was just as much luck as talent

528

that I got to where I am today because I just happened to be here at this magical time in history.

529

And I remember saying for years until the launch of Generative AI ChatGPT, I said, thank God I was born the time I did because now is a tougher time.

530

And then post ChatGPT, part of me said, I wish I was 26 again.

531

Because actually as amazing as AirDB is,

532

if I was 26, I could probably do something just as cool because the tools now are so much more powerful.

533

I don't know what I would do.

534

I'm very interested in education.

535

I think AI can transform education.

536

I think content, like you could build an AI Disney.

537

You could create incredible storytelling with AI.

538

I think health is like an incredible area.

539

I think that like instinct and use are the beginning of consumer AI, agentic AI.

540

But I do not think that the messaging interface is the right interface to do most work.

541

And so I would encourage entrepreneurs to imagine other interface modalities.

542

Like audio or even further?

543

Way further.

544

We're visual creatures.

545

Most people are not text -based.

546

Why is TikTok more popular than Twitter?

547

Because it's video and visual.

548

I think that's the main reason.

549

I don't think it's any other reason.

550

I think that, you know, increasingly people are visual.

551

And I think a lot of entrepreneurs are trying to fit

552

this technology that's the most powerful technology in human history into a messaging platform.

553

It's like putting a jet engine on the back of a bicycle.

554

We're just starting out, I guess.

555

We're just starting.

556

This is not to say these apps aren't amazing.

557

Here's another way of saying it.

558

Anthropic OpenAR, these giant companies, there's going to be 50 more Anthropics, maybe 100.

559

You think so?

560

I know so.

561

This is a cognitive revolution.

562

If people are watching, there are going to be so many companies that are going to be bigger than Airbnb, bigger than Anthropic.

563

There's not this like AI window.

564

We're not in a cycle.

565

We're not in a window.

566

And if we are, it's a thousand year window.

567

You see, if technology doubles every year for 10 years, that's a thousand X.

568

So let's say we're at the beginning of a thousand year cycle.

569

If it's being a thousand year cycle, why do you think there's just going to be two big companies?

570

There's going to be so many huge companies emerge,

571

but also there's going to be tens of millions or millions of small companies emerge because suddenly one,

572

two or three people can start a whole business.

573

It was inconceivable before i think ai is you know i

574

think there's a lot of fear about ai outside of silken valley

575

i understand why because i think people outside of silken valley feel like ai is happening to them

576

and that someone else has it and it's happening to them

577

and it's changing their job it's displacing them and some of

578

that may be true and i'm not defending it but i am saying that everyone has the power now.

579

And that if you have an idea, you can now make something.

580

And it is so much easier to build a company now than it was 20 years ago.

581

I'm really proud of what I built, but the next generation of people watching are going to build things way better than I ever dreamed of

582

because they have tools I never had.

583

This is so inspiring, Brian.

584

Can you tell me 10 seconds, the process that they all have to try in order to realize the power of AI, something that transformed the way you work?

585

I think it's like jumping in a pool.

586

I was, for example, and this is more than 10 seconds, but I was like intimidated to try cloud code.

587

And I just like didn't know how to start.

588

I mean, I had an employee who was really good at it.

589

And I said like, you're going to tutor me now.

590

Not everyone watching has an employee.

591

They can tutor them, but everyone either, you know, more than all your friends about AI or someone knows more about it than you.

592

If somebody knows more about it than you, like have them help you.

593

I mean, like, just start.

594

Just jump in the pool.

595

It's jump in the pool.

596

And the water is not cold.

597

It just looks cold.

598

For those that are already in the pool, just don't get out.

599

Thank you so much, Brian.

600

Thank you very much.

601

Thank you for being as amazing as you are.

602

Well, thank you for being amazing.

603

If you want to stay updated on all the things these founders say here, we take the use cases and prompts from every conversation and put them into my newsletter called Future Proof.

604

And course we also put my own beautiful use cases there for example we'll put together the seven skills

605

that came up again

606

and again the ones people will need in the next few years these are the skills

607

that my team and i are also using daily subscribe through the link in the description you'll get

608

that one and you can also read our previous newsletters and see what you missed.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This video has 608 sentences and 7133 words to shadow. The speech runs for 34:43. The speaker talks fast, about 205 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 85% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.

Key vocabulary in this video

15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
interface noun	/ˈɪn(t)ɚˌfeɪs/	The point of interconnection or contact between entities.
silicon noun	/ˈsɪləˌkɑn/	A nonmetallic element (symbol Si) with an atomic number of 14 and atomic weight of 28.0855.
output noun	/ˈaʊtpʊt/	Production; quantity produced, created, or completed.
gear noun	/ɡɪɚ/	Equipment or paraphernalia, especially that used for an athletic endeavor.
increasingly adverb		Increasing in amount or intensity.
spin verb	/spɪn/	To rotate, revolve, gyrate (usually quickly); to partially or completely rotate to face another direction.
filter noun	/ˈfɪltɚ/	A device which separates a suspended, dissolved, or particulate matter from a fluid, solution, or other substance; any device that separates one substance from…
generate verb	/ˈd͡ʒɛn.ə.ɹeɪt/	To bring into being; give rise to.
rental noun	/ˈɹɛntəl/	Something that is rented.
laundry noun	/ˈlɔːn.dɹi/	A laundering; a washing.
sheer adjective	/ʃɪɚ/	Very thin or transparent.
scroll noun	/skɹoʊl/	A roll of paper or parchment; a writing formed into a roll.
token noun	/ˈtoʊkən/	Something serving as an expression of something else.
cloud noun	/ˈklaʊ̯d/	A visible mass of water droplets suspended in the air.
founder noun	/ˈfaʊ̯n.dəː/	One who founds or establishes (a company, project, organisation, state, etc.).

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
pull out verb	To withdraw; especially of military forces; to retreat.
blow up verb	To explode or be destroyed by explosion.
call down verb	To bring (punishment, condemnation etc.) upon someone, as from above.
come back verb	To return to a place.
come up verb	To emerge or become known, especially unexpectedly.
figure out verb	To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce.
follow up verb	To take further actions remaining after an event; to continue, revisit, or persist; especially, to maintain communication or verify.
get out verb	To leave or escape.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
“Used to” used to + verb — a past habit or state that is no longer true	used to like · used to take · used to do
Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result	if a trial was, how would I · if you were to read it, you'd be
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	is sponsored · be coded · can be plugged
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	people who have · people who are · tool, which makes

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 195 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, I'm, we're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: theater /ˈθi(ə)tɚ/, bother /ˈbɑðɚ/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: sheer /ʃɪɚ/, inspiration /ˌɪn.spɪˈɹeɪ.ʃən/, publish /ˈpʌblɪʃ/, massage /məˈsɑ(d)ʒ/, evolution /ˌiːvəˈluːʃ(ə)n/
Long words — get the stress right: intelligent /ɪnˈtɛlɪd͡ʒənt/, productivity /ˌpɹɒdʌkˈtɪvəti/, photography /fəˈtɑ.ɡɹə.fi/, inspiration /ˌɪn.spɪˈɹeɪ.ʃən/, photographer /fəˈtɑ.ɡɹə.fɚ/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like interface, silicon, output.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: $95B Airbnb CEO: People Who Know What to Build With AI Will Pull Ahead - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

Key vocabulary in this video

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Grammar in this video

Pronunciation to watch

How to practise with this video

What is the Shadowing Technique?