Blitzscaling 18 – AirBnb

Key points

  • startups don’t die abruptly, they fade away
  • Conviction about an idea is not something that you get right out of the gates, its something that you develop over time as you mull over it again and again
  • Focus on building something that a 100 people deeply loves so that they will very enthusiastically tell their friends about it
  • design is about how it works not just how it looks. Anything can be designed
  • culture can be designed and values needs to be repeatedly

An infinite learner

  • to be able to scale well as a CEO
  • to short circuit learning, learn from the definitive source
  • Keep asking till you know
  • people are willing to help and share knowledge when they are asked
  • The role of a CEO changes drastically every six months

Copy cat competitions

  • when faced with copy cat focus on making your product better
  • dont buy them out
  • In the long run Missionaries tend win against versus Mercenries

Conviction

  • a necessity for leadership
  • built overtime through continued exposure to problem space and thinking about problem
  • great companies build new markets. Conviction is a necessity. Estimated via proxy

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