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Brian Chesky: People Who Know What to Build With AI Will Pull Ahead
Brian Chesky says AI rewards strong thinking and gives builders more power to turn ideas into companies.
Silicon Valley Girl · Marina Mogilko
- Brian Chesky is cofounder and CEO of Airbnb.
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- 10:04Airbnb can give local service businesses a global audiencePro pick 7 min
- 20:04Generate many ideas, then let the strongest ones stand outPro pick 5 min
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Skip the sponsor reads, the opening reunion, and the extended Airbnb feature and services rollout discussion.
Full analysis · 5 min read
Real Alpha · Nov 8
Brian Chesky says Airbnb ships about 80% more features
- Chesky said Airbnb was shipping like 80% more features than a year earlier.
- That is output, not evidence of better customer outcomes, and the metric lacks quality data.
- Teams should measure adoption, service reliability and cost beside shipping speed.
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6 sections, the 4 other voices it tests Chesky against, and what it means for you. Every episode we cut gets one.
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More features show capacity, not customer value
Chesky said he thinks Airbnb is shipping like 80% more features than a year earlier. He said most of that increase comes from AI.
At Airbnb’s scale, that is evidence of increased shipping capacity. But feature counts alone do not show whether guests use new features or find them useful.
Chesky dismissed token counts as a lasting measure. He said product velocity, quality and success matter more, but gave no figures for those outcomes.
As CEO, he is describing an Airbnb roadmap that expands the company’s marketplace. Farza Majeed’s October 2026 Lightcone episode offers a more user-facing test.
A HeyClicky demo drew 7,000 downloads, but about 100 people used it daily for five days straight. Those are early usage signals, not proof of a durable business.
“we're like shipping 80% more features than a year ago.”
Our read
The 80% figure supports a claim that Airbnb can ship faster, not that each feature works better. Teams should pair release volume with adoption, quality and cost measures.
Airbnb puts AI inside the shopping interface
Chesky says Airbnb’s AI search accepts natural language, then pre-filters homes. Personalized summaries, page-based answers and comparison tools add intelligence inside the existing app.
That is a product choice, not simply a model choice. Travel involves visual browsing, filters and comparisons among several homes, often with groups deciding together.
For example, a traveler can compare a pool, barbecue, ratings, price and location side by side. One chat window could make some choices harder, even if it understands the request.
The distinction matters to teams deciding where to put AI. Conversation may help express a need, while visible options can help people compare and decide.
Our read
Airbnb’s approach treats AI as a capability that should fit the task. The product question is where conversation helps, and where visible choices work better.
Services could bring local providers traveler demand
Chesky describes adding services such as photography, massage, laundry, baby gear and ski equipment alongside a stay. AI may help Airbnb ship these additions faster, but distribution is the central offer to providers.
He says Airbnb could give small operators access to travelers who might never find them locally. For example, a Paris photographer could reach visitors seeking family pictures near the Eiffel Tower.
Airbnb’s existing trip context may make some services easier to arrange. Chesky says a grocery order can use the stay’s address and guest count, with food delivered to the home.
That is a marketplace expansion, not just a feature list. But the episode gives no provider economics, repeat-use figures or service-quality data.
Anton Osika’s September 2026 Silicon Valley Girl episode makes a useful distinction. His dog-portrait example adds service and customer testing around AI-generated images, rather than treating the image alone as the whole business.
Our read
The opportunity is plausible because Airbnb can connect travel demand with fragmented local supply. The test is whether both sides benefit repeatedly, not how many services appear in the app.
Airbnb tests services locally before expanding
Chesky says Airbnb usually tests a service in one market or city, then expands if it works. He describes ski-equipment rental as a test and hopes to bring it to ski destinations worldwide.
Starting with common requests such as chefs, photography and airport pickup gives the team a practical first set. But Chesky also says a service useful to only a few visitors could matter.
That leaves a gap between collecting ideas and proving a launch. Airbnb accepts suggestions broadly, but Chesky gives no threshold for customer use, provider supply or profitability.
Paul Copplestone’s October 2026 Lightcone episode describes dogfooding and testing partner ideas at Supabase. He says many experiments fail, while successful ones help the company adapt.
Alex Danilowicz’s October 2026 Lightcone episode offers a stricter validation marker. None of Magic Patterns’ earlier pivots had 10 users who were paying and using it, his definition of love.
Paul Copplestone · Lightcone · Oct 30Supabase uses dogfooding and team capacity to adapt
Alex Danilowicz · Lightcone · Oct 22Magic Patterns took nine months of pivots to find paid users
Our read
A one-market test limits exposure, but it still needs a defined success bar. For services, that means checking provider availability and customer use, not just launch speed.
AI can sort ideas, but judgment sets direction
Chesky describes writing down ideas, bolding the ones that stand out and asking AI to find patterns. The workflow preserves rough thoughts without making each one a project.
His idea counts are explicitly rough, and they do not reconcile. He first says he probably has 100,000 ideas a year, then calculates maybe 30,000 thoughts from his daily writing.
That mismatch does not invalidate the habit, but it cautions against treating his volume as a productivity benchmark. The useful part is filtering, then revisiting ideas that persist.
AI can surface patterns in notes, including ideas he once dismissed. But it cannot establish that an idea solves a customer problem or merits a team’s time.
Our read
Idea volume widens the search; it does not replace choosing or testing. Use AI to organize possibilities, then look for evidence outside the notebook.
Curiosity and focus shape who benefits from AI
Chesky says AI can get an idea out of someone’s head faster, but does not necessarily give them better ideas. He emphasizes curiosity, understanding and good thinking.
He also says AI may amplify already strong performers more than others. That is his view, not a measured result in this episode, and it puts judgment at the center of his argument.
For people intimidated by the tools, Chesky recommends trying them and asking someone more experienced for help. He says an employee tutored him when he struggled to start using a coding tool.
He also says he wishes he checked social platforms once a day for like 20 or 30 minutes, then protected uninterrupted work. That is personal advice, not a reported productivity study.
Our read
Lower building costs make problem selection more important, not less. Teams can make tool practice and focused work explicit, then measure what those routines produce.
What it means for you
- Track shipped value. Pair feature counts with adoption, quality and support cost. Review whether each release improves a customer task, not just whether it shipped quickly.
- Set pilot thresholds. Before a one-market service test, define customer-use and provider-availability signals that would justify expansion. Keep launch activity separate from validation.
- Keep an idea log. Capture ideas cheaply, then review recurring ones against customer problems. Use AI to surface patterns, but require evidence before committing a team.
- Protect focused time. Set a bounded window for industry updates and separate it from building time. Check whether that routine improves completed work instead of assuming it does.
What to watch
- Whether Airbnb reports customer use and provider outcomes for its new services
- Whether the 80% feature increase is paired with quality or success measures
- Whether AI search and comparison tools help groups choose places to stay
Send this to the product leader setting your team’s AI success measures.
Watch the minute where Chesky gives Airbnb’s 80% feature figure
Written by Real Alpha from the episode's transcript and the other moments it links, then checked against the transcript. Quotes are the speaker's exact words.
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Read it with Pro, 7 days free- 10:04Airbnb can bring customers to local providers
Chesky says Airbnb could give providers such as a masseuse in Tulum or a photographer in Paris access to travelers they might not reach on their own. He describes testing services in one market before expanding, with delivered ski and surfing equipment among the examples.
- 14:56Chesky welcomes niche service ideas
Chesky says Airbnb began with common services such as chefs, photography, car rental and airport pickup, but wants to hear about anything useful to even a couple of visitors. He says providers can apply with ideas such as floral arrangements, even if Airbnb is not ready to offer them in every city.
- 20:04More practice produces more ideas
Mogilko cites a rule she tentatively attributes to Linus Pauling: the best way to have a good idea is to have many ideas. Chesky agrees, comparing idea generation to exercise and design practice, and says people should generate ideas before they start critiquing them.
- 21:37Chesky uses AI to sort ideas
Chesky says he writes roughly 1,000 words a day and highlights five to 10 ideas from around 100 daily notes. He uses AI to read the highlighted notes, find patterns and build a shortlist; he says worthwhile ideas tend to return, while most bad ideas can remain private.
- 29:01Founders should rethink AI interfaces
If he were 26 again, Chesky says he would explore education, storytelling and health. He argues that messaging is not the right interface for most work and encourages entrepreneurs to consider other modes, noting that people are visual.
Published Oct 1, 2026.
Transcript · 31 min read
Silicon Valley Girl, hosted by Marina Mogilko, with Brian Chesky.
Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there. Where the podcast’s audio and the video part ways, some times are a minute or so off.
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. Well, 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 are 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 touchpoint 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 chatbot. 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 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.
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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 chatbot. 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. And I think that a chatbot is not the right interface for travel. It's not the right interface for shopping, but agents are great. And I think the great thing about agents is they're interoperable. So one agent can talk to another agent. And so I think agents are definitely the future of Silicon Valley and chatbots are not. Yeah, and chatbot feels like more like a reactive thing where agent is more proactive, knowing your interests.
And I really like the comparison feature because you don't know how many hours I spend. It's like two very similar bookings, but this one is quieter, but this one has a bigger bedroom. And you're like having them side by side, I think makes a huge difference. And you're also adding a social graph, something that I absolutely love. You know, it's so funny. I came to Silicon Valley 19 years ago. And when I came to Silicon Valley, there was this thing called a social network and it was Facebook and everyone was on Facebook. And it was mostly just your friends and you could keep in touch with your friends and they would share what they did.
And now none of my friends are on Facebook. And Instagram is not social networking is social media. So it's basically Instagram, X, YouTube, TikTok. They're really not social networks. They're really performance platforms. They're broadcast platforms. And this is not I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but I'm saying now there's no place in 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. People in my life, where have they traveled to? Where are they going? And so here's a use case. Let's say I'm going to Chicago. I'm sure I have a bunch of friends have been to Chicago, but I don't know which ones. And now if I connect to people on Airbnb, I can see all of my friends have been to Chicago and I can see where they stayed. I might want to stay where they've stayed, but more importantly, I can ask them like, hey, what's good to do in Chicago? Because what we found is increasingly people want recommendations for their friends and their family rather than from, you know, celebrities or writers. They increasingly want people who feel like they know them. Like, you know me, you'll know what I like, but this is unsolved problem because you
don't know where everyone in your life has traveled. Another thing about Airbnb is one of the best parts of it is meeting somebody new. You know, it's hard to meet people today. I asked my parents, how did you meet people? They would go to a mall, they'd go to a theater, they'd go to physical spaces. Increasingly, people today are not in physical spaces. They're on their phones. And phones are really a way for you to talk to strangers online, but it's a really hard way to meet strangers offline. And so we want to help solve this problem by making it easier to meet people in the real world and stay in touch with them. And so if you travel, you stay in a home with somebody, you might meet them. If you go on experience with somebody, you can stay in touch with them. So I think a lot of what we're trying to do is turn Airbnb from a kind of just a marketplace of homes to a little more of a travel community. And I think the travel graph is really cool. And if you go on Airbnb, you can basically add your friends or family and you can see where they're traveling. And this is a really cool use case. Wouldn't you be curious to know where all your friends are traveling this summer? I think it's pretty cool. Now you can know and you can
decide, well, if they're going, we can go at the same time. Finding the right candidate for my small business used to feel like a guessing game. With LinkedIn Hiring Pro, I get a short list of top-bit candidates, and I can chat with it, just like I would a recruiter. It helps me compare applicants and refine what I'm looking for, so I spend less time sorting and more time talking to the right people. You know, four out of five small businesses agree LinkedIn helps businesses make better hiring decisions. Hire right the first time. Post your job for free on LinkedIn today at linkedin.com slash quality. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser but Gemini and Chrome that's new it can help you with practically anything on the web like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks Gemini and Chrome is here for it ready to make anything online make sense there's no place like Chrome check responses set up required compatibility and availability varies 18 plus yeah and uh 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 life. So I can totally relate. And I think you're also opening up opportunities for new businesses, right? Because you're now doing groceries, baby gear, restaurant deliveries. Is it 700 plus features that you're launching? I think so. Yeah, we're launching. I think the stat is that we're like shipping 80% more features than a year ago. Most of it's because of AI. Obviously, AI is like this incredible superpower. You know, 10 years ago, even a few years ago, everything had to be coded by hand. Everything was so much harder to do. Now that you can ship things so much more quickly, we can ship features more quickly.
It used to take us a year to ship like a new service. Now we can do it in weeks. 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. And we thought, well, what if we could have not only all the services of a hotel, but even more services? 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. And if they're out, you've got, this is what we, I don't have kids, but I hear from my friends who have kids, maybe you want laundry done.
A hotel has laundry. Well, now Airbnb, you can get laundry. So we just wanted to go down the list. Ski rental equipment. I'm going to go skiing. I don't want to, I don't have my own ski equipment. So going to rent ski gear can be very, very, you know, it can be onerous, right? And you just get to a city, you're tired. You want to figure out how to get ski gear. We can have all the sizes waiting for you, all the equipment for you. So we're really trying to make everything as easy and plug and play as possible. So you're not just getting a home. You're kind of getting a full service experience. So eventually, ICS adding dozens, even hundreds of services that can be plugged into the home so that when you book a home, you can get everything you need for your trip.
“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.”
And I imagine shipping all of these features became possible because of AI.
Do you have an internal metric where you say, okay, AI is adding that much of productivity and output versus just generating more stuff that we're not using? So at the beginning of the year, there was this whole token maxing thing where CEOs were telling everyone you've got to use AI. and they were measuring it by how many tokens you were using. And there was a little bit of a initial management philosophy to shame people that didn't have a lot of tokens. There were like token leaderboards. That might've been a good thing to do for a couple months just to make sure people were using AI, but that was clearly like a long-term strategy that was not gonna work.
And now all of a sudden, everyone's like, wait a second, why are we spending so much money on AI? And so I think the most important thing is like, the customer doesn't care if we're using AI to build our tools or not. They just want the product to be better faster. And so we look at product velocity. How fast are you shipping? How many features are you shipping? How quick are you shipping them? Are they high quality and are they successful? And we have metrics for that. So we're shipping 80% more features. That is crazy though. Just think about 80% more for a huge company like yours. Yeah, and it's just two things.
It's the power of AI that suddenly you don't have to primarily code by hand. But it's also cultural. People have to use the tools and they have to use them correctly. And it's amazing because AI is the ultimate democracy. The tools that Airbnb has is the tools every company in the world has. We all have access to the exact same tools. There's really, there's codex, there's cloud code. It's kind of like back in the day I used Photoshop and I was a designer, illustrator. We all have the same tools. We all have these amazing tools. But they're not equally distributed. The very best people know how to like immerse themselves and get the most out of the tools.
And so one of the things we tried to do is we tried to make sure people learned how to use the tools correctly. And there's no replacement for like good thinking. You know, you need to have like really good data. You need to like still have good collaboration. AI allows an idea to get out of your head into the world faster. But it doesn't necessarily give you better ideas. You still have to have great ideas. You still have to have great thinking. It's now about great thinking. It's about great understanding. It's about great curiosity. And I think AI rewards deeply curious people because you can do endless iteration.
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. So I find that the dynamic range, the performance gap is greater with AI. That the really high performers even better with AI. I'm a designer by training. I went to RISD. 19 years ago, I started with me. I couldn't code. And today I could code because I could prompt. And so suddenly in that way, it is so democratic. All of us can do so many more jobs. At the same time, great thinking, great taste, great understanding, understanding user problems. These are things that matter even more now because it's no longer can you build it.
It's what do you build and should you build it? And does it matter? Quick tip to people who want to upgrade.
“at the end of every day, I bold the things that jump out at me.”
Vincent van Gogh, most of his productivity was in the last three years of his life. And he painted more than one painting a day, every single day.
And this is in addition to sketches. He just, every day, he wrote, he wrote, he wrote. Hemingway, wake up at 6 a.m. from 6 a.m. to noon. He would just write and he would write until he had nothing left to write at noon. And it was just, it's this discipline of repetition, whether you're a tech founder, you're an artist, you're a writer, it's about pure volume. It doesn't mean you put out a lot of crap. Like you don't publish it all. You have to, then you edit. And you edit and you only publish the very best of your stuff. But I think that what people don't understand is they only see a few things go out and they don't see the sheer volume of what goes in.
And I think the problem, and maybe I'm going to admit to a problem I have, and I think almost every single person watching has, is we spend too much time on social media paying attention to what other people are doing. My vice is X, and most of us are on X or Twitter way too much, and we're way too focused on what other people are doing. Oh, my God, now it's instinct. Now it's Muse, and now it's this, and now it's that. And there's just, we're all like kids chasing soccer balls and we're all like trying to play fast fashion, trying to copy what everyone else is doing. And just, it's just so distracting.
And I wonder if we'd all be better off just like not being a little bit ignorant to whatever else is going on in the world. Part of me is like, you know, Van Gogh couldn't doom scroll. And if he could doom scroll, he might not have painted so much. If Da Vinci could doom scroll, he might not have had so much output. And 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. Or even if you do care what people think, let people value you years from now. See, I'm going to put blinders on and I'm just going to just dig in and I'm going to work for years. And I'm not going to worry about getting attention now. 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. I'm going to quietly practice. I'm going to become great at my craft. And when I'm ready, I'm going to put something out there. I think that would be so valuable. We're just put blinders on and just lock in and just go. Here's your report. Oh, thanks, Jane. I wish I could hire someone just like you. Try LinkedIn Hiring Pro. It's more than a job board. It's like the recruiter you always wished you had. Hiring Pro uses real-time insights
to match your role to LinkedIn's unique network of professionals and delivers a shortlist of best-fit candidates. You'll spend less time sorting applicants and more time talking to the right people. Let's do it. You're irreplaceable, Jane, but another you would be great. Hire right the first time. Post your job for free on LinkedIn today at linkedin.com slash quality. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks.
Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies 18+. I think this is such valuable advice, such great practice. We need to be doing more of it. And I will admit, I'm giving advice to others, and I have to keep reminding it of myself. Stop worrying about whatever else is going on in Silicon Valley. It's so hard. And you don't want to be naive. Like you want to know generally if you're a company, you want to know what's going on competition. You want to know what's the latest with AI developments.
But you can do that like 10 minutes a day. You don't need to do that two, three hours. You don't need to open X or YouTube or Instagram or whatever your platform du jour is 17 times or 25 times. This is what I would do and I don't do it as much, but I wish I did it once a day for like 20 30 minutes I'm gonna go on whatever platform I go on. I'm gonna learn Okay, now i'm done And then this time's uninterrupted and i'm gonna like not have my phone on By the way the phone spend more time on a computer less time on a phone The computer is the ultimate tool. We designed phones on computers. We don't design computers on phones The phone Was never designed to be something you stare at all day When Steve Jobs designed it, his vision wasn't you're on it all day.
Long attention span stuff should be reserved for big screens. So you should not be staring at a phone very long because what it does is it trains your dopamine to multitask and to like change things. 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. The computer is great for focus. A large screen. The bigger the screen, the longer your attention span. That's why if you go to like an IMAX theater, you're not going to go to the bathroom. You're in a living room and you watch a television show. You might get up. On your computer, you'll watch a YouTube film.
But on a phone, you'll only be able to pay attention for 15 seconds before you scroll to the next video. Attention span is commensurate with screen size. I never thought about that. If you want to focus, you need to have a long attention span. If you want to have a long attention span, you need to have a big screen. Do not look at a phone if you want to focus. You mentioned having so many ideas. If you were not building Airbnb today, in the AI era, what would you be building? I used to think I was lucky because I was 26 when I came to Silicon Valley. And when I came to Silicon Valley, the iPhone had just launched.
Facebook was like blowing up. YouTube was out. The internet was going global. Cloud computing meant like you could have an app and not have to buy your own servers. What it meant was it was kind of easy to start a company. And there was this iPhone that was distribution. So suddenly you could just put it in an app store and everyone could discover it. I felt like I was the luckiest person alive because I happened to be born at the right place at the right time. And it was just as much luck as talent that I got to where I am today because I just happened to be here at this magical time in history.
And I remember saying for years until the launch of Generative AI Chachupiti, I said, thank God I was born the time I did because now is a tougher time. And then post Chachupiti, part of me said, I wish I was 26 again. because actually as amazing as Airbnb is, if I was 26, I could probably do something just as cool because the tools now are so much more powerful. I don't know what I would do. I'm very interested in education. I think AI can transform education. I think content, like you could build an AI Disney. You could create incredible storytelling with AI. I think health is like an incredible area.
I think that like instinct and muse are the beginning of consumer AI, agentic AI. But I do not think that the messaging interface is the right interface to do most work. And so I would encourage entrepreneurs to imagine other interface modalities. Like audio or even further? Way further. We're visual creatures. We're not, most people are not text-based. Why is TikTok more popular than Twitter? Because it's video and visual. I think that's the main reason. I don't think it's any other reason. I think that, you know, increasingly people are visual. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs are trying to fit this technology that's the most powerful technology in human history into a messaging platform.
It's like putting a jet engine on the back of a bicycle. We're just starting out, I guess. We're just starting. This is not to say these apps aren't amazing. Here's another way of saying it. Anthropic opening out of these giant companies, there's going to be 50 more Anthropics, maybe 100. You think so? I know so. This is a cognitive revolution. If people are watching, there are going to be so many companies that are going to be bigger than Airbnb, bigger than Anthropic. There's not this like AI window. We're not in a cycle. We're not in a window. And if we are, it's a thousand-year window. You see, if technology doubles every year for 10 years, that's a thousand X.
So let's say we're at the beginning of a thousand year cycle. If we're at the beginning of a thousand year cycle, why do you think there's just going to be two big companies? There's going to be so many huge companies emerge. But also, there's going to be tens of millions or millions of small companies emerge. Because suddenly, one, two, or three people can start a whole business. It was inconceivable before. I think AI is, you know, I think there's a lot of fear about AI outside of Silicon Valley. I understand why, because I think people outside of Silicon Valley feel like AI is happening to them and that someone else has it and it's happening to them.
And it's changing their job. It's displacing them. And some of that may be true, and I'm not defending it, but I am saying that everyone has the power now and that if you have an idea, you can now make something. And it is so much easier to build a company now than it was 20 years ago. 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 because they have tools I never had. This is so inspiring, Brian. Can you tell me in 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?
I think it's like jumping in a pool. I was, for example, and this is more than 10 seconds, but I was like intimidated to try cloud code. And I just like didn't know how to start. I mean, I had an employee who was really good at it. And I said, like, you're going to tutor me. Now, not everyone watching has an employee. They can tutor them. But everyone, either you know more than all your friends about AI or someone knows more about it than you. If somebody knows more about it than you, like, have them help you. I mean, YouTube's an incredible resource. And I just think, like, just start. Just jump in the pool.
It's jump in the pool. And it is the water is not cold. It just looks cold. For those that are already in the pool, just don't get out. Thank you so much, Brian. Thank you very much. Thank you for being as amazing as you are. Well, thank you for being amazing. 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. And of course, we also put my own beautiful use cases there. For example, we'll put together the seven skills that came up again and again, the ones people will need in the next few years.
These are the skills that my team and I are also using daily. Subscribe through the link in the description. You'll get that one and you can also read our previous newsletters and see what you missed.
