Video · ~40 min

Brian Chesky, Co-Founder and CEO of Airbnb

Brian Chesky · Y Combinator Startup Library Free Beginner

Chesky describes flying across the country to personally sit in hosts' living rooms because nothing in a survey told them why hosts hesitated to list their homes. It is the clearest founder-told example of show, don't ask, applied to a product nobody had seen before.

• When the product is unfamiliar, physically go to where people are trying to use it and watch.
• Small, unscalable acts of attention (a personal visit, a professional photo) surfaced the real objections.
• The insights that mattered most came from noticing hesitation, not from anything a host said outright.