By Brian Chesky, co-founder and chief executive of Airbnb, in a 2025 portrait. Photo: Celeste Sloman / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Brian Chesky was an industrial designer with a hockey background and a rent problem when he and a roommate put air mattresses on the floor of a San Francisco apartment in 2007. Less than two decades later, the company that grew from that weekend, Airbnb, is a public corporation, and Chesky, its chief executive since 2010, is among the best-known founders in American tech.
For readers along the Front Range, one chapter of the story runs through Denver.
A Denver convention and a second try
Airbnb’s first website, built by co-founder Nathan Blecharczyk, went up in 2008 under the name Airbed & Breakfast. It was timed to South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, and drew little. The founders relaunched it ahead of the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, when hotel rooms in the city were scarce. Press coverage of the effort crashed the site, according to Wikipedia’s account. The relaunch produced about 800 listings and 80 guest bookings.
Money was still tight. Chesky and co-founder Joe Gebbia, who had been classmates at the Rhode Island School of Design, were each carrying roughly $20,000 in debt. They designed and sold election-themed cereal, “Obama O’s” and “Cap’n McCains,” and raised an estimated $20,000 to $30,000. In early 2009 the company joined the Y Combinator startup program, which provided $20,000 in seed money for a 6 percent stake. Sequoia Capital partner Greg McAdoo later invested $585,000.
From Niskayuna to RISD
Chesky was born Aug. 29, 1981, in Niskayuna, New York, near Albany. His parents, Deborah and Robert, were social workers. He graduated from Niskayuna High School in 1999 and captained several ice hockey teams as a teenager. At RISD he studied industrial design, earned a bachelor of fine arts in 2004 and captained the school’s hockey team. RISD gave him an honorary doctorate in 2017.
After college he moved to Los Angeles and worked at a design firm, 3DID, on products that included toys, guitars and medical equipment. In 2007 he cut back his hours to concentrate on furniture design, then moved to San Francisco to share an apartment with Gebbia. When a design conference filled the city’s hotels, the two rented out their living space with air mattresses and breakfast. That was the idea behind the business.
Running the company
Chesky became CEO in the fall of 2010. Growth was fast, including a push into Europe in 2011 through the purchase of a German company, Accoleo, after Airbnb declined to buy the rival Wimdu. That same year a host’s home was vandalized by a guest. Chesky was criticized for how the company first responded, publicly acknowledged the failure, and the company expanded its customer service and set up a fund for hosts.
The pandemic hit travel hard. Airbnb eliminated several departmental divisions and laid off about 1,900 employees, with severance that included extended health benefits. The company went public in December 2020.
In September 2024 Chesky gave a two-hour talk at a Y Combinator event about how he runs the company. Investor Paul Graham later wrote an essay that coined the phrase “founder mode.” Some critics called it a rebranding of micromanagement and said women founders would not be allowed to lead that way. Chesky has said the term was misread, that it means leaders staying deeply involved in the product, and that workplace culture has to change so women can lead in the same manner.
Recognition and giving
Chesky appeared on the Time 100 and on a Forbes list of America’s richest entrepreneurs under 40 in 2015. That May, President Barack Obama named him a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship. Fortune named him one of its World’s Greatest Leaders in 2017 and ranked him No. 43 on its 2024 list of the 100 most powerful people in business. Forbes has estimated his net worth at $9.2 billion, mostly from a stake of roughly 10 percent in Airbnb.
He joined the Giving Pledge in June 2016. In May 2022 he pledged $100 million over five years to the Obama Foundation for the Voyager Scholarship, which supports students pursuing public service careers and includes free Airbnb housing for a summer work experience. The Chronicle of Philanthropy ranked him No. 20 among top U.S. donors that year.
Source: Wikipedia.
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