Reference meeting: "a11-xxx — talk — startup culture — lessons from airbnb, doign things that don't scale".
Parent project: Course on Culture and Leadership
Participants: Marcio S Galli
Text language: en-us
Tags: Leadership, culture, technology, start-up, growth, do things that don't scale, Paul Graham, Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, Reid Hoffman, Marcio Galli, focus, patience.
Context: Study notes taken from video interviews with Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia, Airbnb cofounders.
Document status: Copyright, draft.
735 00:22:01,269 --> 00:22:03,394 The second thing was, Paul Graham.
736 00:22:03,394 --> 00:22:06,075 I think the second thing was Paul Graham
737 00:22:06,075 --> 00:22:07,433 gave us a series of advice
738 00:22:07,433 --> 00:22:10,815 that probably changed our business forever.
739 00:22:10,815 --> 00:22:13,777 Probably the most important single piece of advice I got,
740 00:22:13,789 --> 00:22:15,604 which is probably advice that is probably
741 00:22:15,604 --> 00:22:16,941 the most important advice I can give you,
742 00:22:16,941 --> 00:22:18,293 or one of the most important advice,
743 00:22:18,293 --> 00:22:20,128 is he basically drew out this chart
744 00:22:20,128 --> 00:22:21,927 and he basically said,
745 00:22:21,927 --> 00:22:24,748 it's better to have 100 people that love you,
746 00:22:24,748 --> 00:22:26,222 100 customers that love you,
747 00:22:26,222 --> 00:22:29,198 than a million customers that just sort of like you.
748 00:22:29,198 --> 00:22:30,167 In other words,
749 00:22:30,167 --> 00:22:32,141 if you have 100 people that absolutely love your product,
750 00:22:32,141 --> 00:22:34,069 they'll tell 100 people, and then they'll tell 100 people,
751 00:22:34,069 --> 00:22:36,101 or even 10 people, and this thing will grow.
752 00:22:36,101 --> 00:22:37,309 We call it growing virally.
753 00:22:37,309 --> 00:22:39,329 In fact, almost all movements in history
754 00:22:39,329 --> 00:22:40,768 have grown this way as well.
755 00:22:40,768 --> 00:22:42,626 There's like deeply passionate followers
756 00:22:42,626 --> 00:22:43,512 and they grow it.
757 00:22:43,512 --> 00:22:44,970 And they're customer advocates.
758 00:22:44,970 --> 00:22:46,724 And the problem is, in Silicon Valley,
759 00:22:46,724 --> 00:22:48,290 the general wisdom is,
760 00:22:48,290 --> 00:22:49,370 I need to build some app,
761 00:22:49,370 --> 00:22:51,030 this thing it needs to have this viral coefficient.
762 00:22:51,030 --> 00:22:52,540 I need to get millions of people to use it.
763 00:22:52,540 --> 00:22:54,079 And they gotta like it enough to share it.
764 00:22:54,079 --> 00:22:55,639 That's totally the wrong way to think about it,
765 00:22:55,639 --> 00:22:57,926 especially if you're in a service business like ours.
766 00:22:57,926 --> 00:22:58,889 So Paul Graham said,
767 00:22:58,889 --> 00:23:00,202 "All you have to do is get 100 people to like you.
768 00:23:00,202 --> 00:23:01,502 "Don't worry about millions of people."
769 00:23:01,502 --> 00:23:02,907 That was totally freeing.