American entrepreneur who co-founded Airbnb with Joe Gebbia and Nathan Blecharczyk — building it from renting air mattresses in an apartment to the world's largest accommodation platform — and who rebuilt the company post-COVID by becoming deeply product-focused and re-centering on founders' instincts over professional management.
Rebuilt Airbnb post-COVID through CEO-as-product-owner and radical simplification — Chesky's decision to cut 25% of the workforce in 2020 and use the reset to eliminate complexity (reduced 200+ features to a simplified product), combine roles (CEO as CPO as CMO), and focus on organic word-of-mouth over paid marketing became the most cited post-crisis company rebuild story.
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