Rapid Response: Airbnb’s Brian Chesky: "Crisis is pushing us back to our roots"

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We were preparing to go public. We had a plan, and I felt great about the plan. And all of a sudden It felt like I was a captain of the ship. and a torpedo hit the side of the ship. The world changed irreversibly.

It just felt like everything was breaking at once. And so we had this really, really difficult choice. Never thought I would have to make a choice like this before. My principles were do more than people expect, be remembered for how we conduct ourselves. Be nimble. Pivot to where we think the world is going. It feels like you're in a house and it's on fire, and you've gotta put out the fire while you're having to rebuild the house.

Never in human history. Have all seven billion people. been united in a common predicament, a common cause. In good times you kinda wonder. What people are like, crisis has a way of exposing who people truly are. I've seen a kindness and generosity, I've been incredibly inspired by what everyone's done, and and so it's been pretty amazing to witness.

When we started Airbnb, it was it was about connecting with people. And that's what we're meant to do. And if it took a crisis for us to get back to our roots. Then a new better Airbnb will emerge. On the other side of this.

There is gonna be a new day. The clouds do go away and the storm will end. Hi, listeners, this is Bob Safian, editor at large for Masters of Scale, and for eleven years the editor in chief at Fast Company. We're continuing our special coverage, and today I'm talking to Brian Chesky, co-founder and CEO of Airbnb. With the coronavirus pandemic and social distancing, Airbnb has come under intense pressure.

As Brian explains, the company was preparing for an IPO just as the crisis hit. Airbnb recently passed a hundred billion dollars in fees earned by its hosts. Providing more than seven hundred and fifty million guest stays across the globe. But suddenly. That all became secondary.

Today, Brian talks through how he's grappling with the crisis, trying to balance the needs of all of Airbnb's stakeholders. With new financial pressures and dramatic uncertainty. His clear eyed view of what he calls complete madness. Is coupled with a strain of unvarying optimism. The road traveled so far has been action packed, lots of shifts and moves made in just a few weeks' time.

He's also mindful, though. That this is just the beginning. That there's plenty more to consider as we look ahead. It's instructive. And inspiring.

Let's listen. I'm Bob Sapian and I'm here with Brian Chesky, the co-founder and CEO of Airbnb. Uh, in this special series at Masters of Scale, we're interviewing Founders and operators who have agreed to share their experiences grappling with the effect of the coronavirus crisis in hopes of helping others find their way through. And no industry has faced A more tumultuous abrupt change than travel and hospitality.

Brian's had to make a lot of tough decisions as social distancing has hit both sides of Airbnb's two sided market, guests and hosts. And while bookings continue, activity and revenue is dramatically lower. Personally, Brian is foregoing his own salary and has agreed to donate millions of his own money to a host relief fund, as have his co founders, Joe Gebia and Nate Blecharsic. At the same time, he's just raised a cool billion dollars in additional capital for the company. Brian has appeared in previous episodes of Masters of Scale and is coming to us today remotely from California as I ask my questions from my home in New York. Brian, thanks for joining us.

Well thank you, Bob. Good to be on. So I'd like to start by going back a bit. As it happened on March 4th, I was in San Francisco and I visited the uh Airbnb headquarters to see one of your colleagues. And it was mostly Normal. You know, there was maybe a little bit more hand sanitizer out.

And uh fewer handshakes, but otherwise it was pretty much business as usual. And then within days Like everything changed, right? I mean, I know business had already begun to soften. But at what point did you realize Like

Wow. This is like nothing. We've ever seen before sudden realisation. Rolling realization How did that come to you?

Around the time that you would have been in the office, March third, March Fourth. We were preparing to go public. I was working on our S one document. And I was also working on a a a launch. We were Preparing for a really big launch on June fourth.

We had a plan and I felt great about the plan. And all of a sudden It felt like I was a captain of the ship. and a torpedo hit the side of the ship. And that happened literally the week after you came.

You see, we got early indications in China because we've got a really big business in China. But it's so hard to extrapolate what's gonna happen in China to 220 countries and regions. And this is mostly just in one part of China. And all of a sudden We found ourselves in crisis. And

I've been through crisis before. We started Airbnb. In late two thousand eight. Right in the middle of the recession. But I've never ever experience anything like this.

You see, usually you have a crisis because something is wrong. And in this crisis. All of a sudden, in the matter of a week or two It felt like everything was wrong. Everything broke at once.

There was this feeling of panic. I just remembered I had to breathe. When things are really bad. It's really hard to make business decisions. Because you cannot possibly predict.

how things are gonna play out. You ask yourself How do I want to be remembered? How do I want to be remembered in this crisis? And frankly, I gotta tell you.

It's extremely hard to run a travel company. in the middle of a pandemic. We have been preparing for crisis. And I wanted to make sure that if the next September eleventh happened, we would be prepared. Because many travel company CEOs had told me about how bad it was the September eleventh.

And each week it went from, you know, a nine eleven type thing where travel was down twenty five percent for a month to all of a sudden it felt like a great recession. To all of a sudden it felt like something much worse than anything we'd ever seen. The escalating risks and changes. Is that why you went out to raise Another billion dollars this past week? Yeah, I mean originally we didn't know how long this crisis was gonna be, and I first thought it would be a few months.

And all of a sudden I thought In the middle of a crisis, the best thing you can do is be super pessimistic and be wrong. then be optimistic and be wrong. And so I imagine what if this goes on for a couple years? You know, I I think that

many people had predicted that this was gonna put us into recession. And now it looks like this may put us into a depression. Where you could have double digit unemployment for more than a year. And so I wanted to make sure that if we're like a ship out to sea

We have enough rations for a really long storm, we could weather it. And one of the things that started happening is couple weeks into this In the March. We started getting a lot of outreach from investors. people reaching out to us wanted to support us.

And we had investors come to us, one of those was Silver Lake. Silver Lake, um It's a private equity firm. They came to us with uh sixth street, which is a debt office. you know, they were really, really bullish about our future. And I've been very, very optimistic about the outlook. You know, I I I wanna like kind of find that balance of it's gonna be really bad for a long time. But on the other side of this, there is gonna be a new day and the

The clouds do go away and the storm will end. So you've talked about Airbnb as a twenty-first century company, differentiated from twentieth century companies by a commitment to broader constituency than just investors, right? To guests and hosts. And communities and employees. And this

Situation has put that philosophy to the test in entirely new ways. I'd like to go through with you how you're approaching each of these different stakeholders. I know first thing You took care of employees by shutting down the office. That safety was the first order of business, right? And then for guests, you adjusted The cancellation policy so that they could

not be beholden to commitments they've made before. Is that right? The first thing to happen is the moment This outbreak. started turning into a pandemic.

We started having Um millions of guests. Inquire about cancellations. And so for many people, this pandemic was disruptive, but for a travel company that's a two sided marketplace. It threw some things into disarray.

I'll give you an example. We had more than a billion dollars of reservations. That guests wanted to cancel. And the problem was that The way our model works is guests prepay us.

We hold the money. For the host. And then once the guest checks into their Airbnb or book their experience, we pay out the host. And suddenly we're sitting on, you know, more than a billion of money. That is the guest money. that we're intending to pay out the host.

And all of a sudden the guests start calling us or emailing us saying They can't travel. They can't even leave their home. They're being ordered to stay inside. And they're telling us that They feel like they want a refund. The cancellation policy that the host has won't give them a refund, but if they don't get a refund, therefore some of them will feel compelled to travel because they can't get a refund. And we don't want them to put themselves in a moral hazard.

And so we had this really, really difficult choice. Never thought I would have to make a choice like this before. And we sided with health and safety. And we said that we're gonna issue an extenuating circumstance policy. Where any guests during a pandemic that wants a refund will get a full refund. We did that. That

was very important. But then the next problem that happened is our host had a major income shortfall. You know, fifty percent of our hosts depend on Airbnb to pay their rent or their mortgage. And then suddenly they weren't having any income coming in. And so we had to make a decision. What are we gonna do? And what we decided to do

is take two hundred and fifty milyen dollars Of our money. And send it to host. to pay them a portion of their cancellation policy. And this was really, really hard, and there was no financial model.

That Justify doing this. It was just something that seemed right. And I said it's gonna work itself out. We're gonna do as much as we can for the host at this moment. The next thing that happened is our employees rose up. And they said that they wanted to donate their travel credit. We give every employee travel coupons ever you know to use on Airbnb.

Employees donated over one million dollars of travel coupons. To our host. Those are the kind of things that make you really proud. Not when people just do what you ask them to do. But people do something you wouldn't have thought to ask.

And Joanne and I were really inspired. And so what we did is we said, Well, let's double down on that. And so we put another nine million dollars. And with this ten million dollars from employees and the co founders. We created a relief fund for our best host, our super host. And then recently we've increased that superhost relief fund to seventeen million dollars.

Then we thought to ourselves, well, maybe Airbnb can help them. But maybe, you know, we can also get some government relief for them. So in the United States. Congress was drafting the CARES Act, a two trillion dollar economic relief program.

And we noticed that hotels were included in the relief program, restaurants included the relief program. But Air B hosts were not. We mobilized thirty thousand hosts in our host community, and they sent more than one hundred thousand. emails and phone calls to members of Congress. I was on the phone with members of Congress and Senators trying to get Our host

small business loans and unemployment relief because again, these are mostly regular people. We eventually got them written into the CARES Act. With our employees, you're right, we shut the office down. Yeah. I decided to do a weekly QA from my desk, from my office where I'm sitting here, and I told employees

I'm gonna tell you just honestly how bad it is every week. I'm gonna answer every single question you have. I know I don't have every answer. Every Thursday I'm here at four o'clock and we're gonna get through it one week at a time. Once we did that, then we had communities to take care of. You know, we're in a hundred thousand communities. We started getting emails from nurses, doctors, um first responders, firefighters that needed housing. Either they were working far away from home or they wanted to be quarantined and not in the same house as their family if they're exposed to something. And so we worked with our host and we created something called frontline stays. Where we committed to providing a hundred thousand Places to stay for people working on the front lines.

Within two and a half weeks. That grew. From zero. to a hundred and forty thousand places to stay. And so I inspired by that, we started putting our own money behind it.

to provide discounted and free housing I even myself put in two million dollars um to the city of New York and to provide um housing for frontline workers in New York because I'm from New York, my family's in New York, and I have a deep, deep care and connection for what happens to everyone there. So those were the stakeholders, but of course that leaves one more stakeholder, our shareholders. And I knew that we had to be decisive.

We had to preserve cash. And so we immediately started reducing all our variable costs. We cut back our marketing budget eight hundred million dollars All of our executives went to half pay. The founders took no salary.

We started renegotiating With vendors, froze hiring. And then finally we raise money, a billion dollars from Silver Lake. What I'm so proud of is I've seen the best of this company. People are closer together than I've ever seen them, and people are rising to occasion.

And you know, in a crisis you really learn a lot about people. I've seen a kindness and generosity that I think if I told you what I thought it would be You would have said I was naive. But yet I've been incredibly inspired by what everyone's done and and so it's been pretty amazing to witness.

As you describe all the things that you've done in just three weeks, I mean it is uh It is a lot. It sounds very cohesive right now. And I guess for some of our listeners who are struggling with trying to figure out what to do next. It's not like you knew this sort of immediately out of your head that like these were all the pieces, right? I mean, I I listened in on one of the webcast you did for hosts where you sort of did this maya culpa about like, Oh, we should have done some of this sooner.

How hard is it to sort of know how to build the plan. Know what the next plan should be. Whether you even have a plan. I mean, do you feel like okay, we've done this for three weeks now, we're gonna stop for a little while. We know what it is. No, it never stops. And um, you're totally right. It wasn't like it was all smooth. Like it was like frantic. Um,'cause we had a plan.

And all of a sudden. The entire plan was not relevant anymore. The world changed. When we were funded all those guest cancellations. Not all of them. Seventy percent of our hosts have flexible cancellations.

But a percentage of our hosts were really upset and they were upset with me. And I was really disheartened by it. And again, it just felt like everything was breaking at once. We did not have a plan. We had a plan that was outdated. We had to conceive of a plan. And you just focus one foot in front of the other. You write down who are all my stakeholders? What are their needs? How do I prioritize them?

What are my principles? My principles were be decisive, care for my stakeholders, do more than people expect, be remembered for how we conduct ourselves, be nimble. pivot to where we think the world is going. And It only seems cohesive in hindsight. It is complete madness when you're going through it. It feels like You're in a house and it's on fire, and you've got to put out the fire while you're having to rebuild the house.

It is unlike anything I can experience describe. I I think it goes back to just this will. One of the most important things For me. was to be optimistic.

Yeah, I had to carry this balance of being honest about how bad it was, and it was really bad. With the spirit of optimism. Because as a leader What most people look to me is to look to me to understand if things were gonna be okay. And if I was completely freaked out.

they would be completely freaked out. The emotions you have are contagious. And if I was optimistic and said we're gonna get through this and said, You know what? We're gonna be better because of this in every crisis. is an opportunity to make you stronger. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Everything bad that ever happened to me I learned from. Well, that's what this is gonna be. I remember when you guys first

were coming out in the early days of Airbnb and you were so scrappy. That's the word you know, you would like you would try and do anything. And of course When I go to Airbnb's headquarters now, I mean, it does not feel like a scrappy place. It's a it's a very well appointed and comfortable place. And I'm curious how in this transition, like, how do you reinforce that? Scrappiness, which I know you have the well of because you've been there before, but not everyone who's worked at Airbnb went through what You and Joe and they went through.

We've been scrappy. And even though we've raised a lot of money We actually have been free cash flow since two thousand sixteen. We were um casual positive in two thousand sixteen. Casual pause in two thousand seventeen.

Casual positive has an eighteen. And we were even casual positive last year, even though we did not make money at EBITDA basis. We were cash flow positive. So, you know, we've always had this spirit in our minds of like trying to do more less. But there's something about this crisis that makes you so much more scrappy than you ever would have been before. When you raise billions of dollars. And then you hire people from other flush companies. Maybe they came from Google, or maybe they came from an like a consumer package good company, but that's like eighty years old and they're used to like having huge budgets.

you kinda start to lose a little bit of that start up hustle. And then suddenly What used to take ten thousand dollars to do takes a hundred thousand dollars or a million dollars. And I used to say we used to do that for almost nothing. And there's something um

About A crisis about constraints. Constraints create creativity. If it hadn't been for constraints, probably wouldn't have done half the creative things I did. And I told our employees actually last meeting.

That this was bringing us back in time. But this is like a new chapter. A founding of a new chapter. And that we were gonna be scrappy again. When you build substantial wealth through your business, it's often tied up in a single equity position.

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I hope to see you there. At this point in the interview, Brian and I reminisced about the founding story of Airbnb. But the best way to experience that story is to go back and listen to Brian's first episode on Masters of Scale. Which was in fact the very first episode of Masters of Scale full stop. That was three years ago, in April twenty seventeen.

We'll now jump forward in the interview to Brian reflecting on this moment. We need to also get back to basics. You know, when you have a lot of money, you can do a lot of things. And the moment you have constraints, you suddenly have to ask yourself, there's this clarity of a crisis. What's truly important to me? And for us What's truly important.

Our host. Joe and I were the first host on Airbnb. And I want us to get back to our basics. Back to regular people being host. offering this feeling of connection and community.

All over the world. And I think that is the essence of what we have to do. So you you've got this plan now that you came together with in a storm. You've got your team. being scrappy. Like what is the next stage thing you're

looking towards you're asking of your team Is there a next innovation that you're thinking about or or do you have to be more reactive in an environment like this? I think that you have to be anticipating where the world's going. I think many of us are feeling this longing. For connection.

We don't need all the things we thought we did. But I think the thing that um we know we need Uh. People we care about. And basic human connection.

But I also think The world is gonna change. Forever. I can't quite predict how it's gonna change. But I think that all of us are getting a glimpse of a different way to do business.

And we're realizing that you can do a lot on video conferencing and Zoom. And so I think that business travel isn't gonna you know, it's not gonna go away, but it's gonna come back in a very different way. But I also would say What would used to be was we would go to work for business, travel for business, and often entertain ourselves at home on screens. And I think that may inverse.

I think you may actually see more people doing business on screens. But if the if you're on a screen all day, the last thing you want to do is vacation on Zoom. You want to actually get out. And before this crisis, we brought two million people together a day. And I think that when this starts to reconnect once again, we're gonna go back.

to our very basic mission of bringing people together. And to do that The first thing we need to do is be really nimble. We need to be scrappy and we need to simplify. We need to simplify how we're run. So we can move very, very quickly. And what we're gonna focus on

Is anything that makes us different. I told the team let's make a list of everything we're doing. And at the top of the list, we're gonna double down to the things that make us most different. What makes us most different are our host. the incredible design that we like to focus on.

And the basics. And so we wanna go back to host and regular people. And I think the way travel is gonna recover is first, I think people are gonna take trips that are close to home. Destinations of under three hundred miles. Next People are gonna want things that are cheap and affordable. In a recession or depression, people wanna save money.

The next thing is the nature of housing's going to change. With all this video conferencing, I think we're starting to realize we don't have to necessarily be tethered to one city. And so because of that, I think you're gonna see a generation of people That are less tethered to any one city. And they're going to want to live around the world. And so what we're going to do is provide longer term stays, monthly rentals. And then finally, providing experiences in your own city.

Restaurants aren't all coming back online right away. Theaters aren't all coming back right away. But we have a community of hosts that can offer all sorts of experiences from concerts and living rooms to outdoor activities to experience the animals. You know, we announced yesterday that we launched online experiences, another thing we put together in 14 days. We have five Olympians doing experiences. That's just kind of what we're gonna be focused on right now. When the world recovers. That's what we're gonna do, having regular host offering short term stays, long term stays, and experiences for people

In their own city or people traveling. The only other thing I'd say is We have a really resilient community. Because most of our hosts rent the homes they live in. In the hotel industry

When a hotel goes below thirty percent occupancy, they usually shut the hotel down. It's some point not cost effective to run the hotel. But if you have a listing on Airbnb, a home or experience, it doesn't cost you anything to keep it up. And in a economic depression. What people are gonna need more than anything are gonna be new ways to make money.

You know, we saw that sixty million Americans have lost their job. You we could be looking at multiple years of double digit unemployment. And travel's a massive industry. One in four jobs in the world are in travel, hospitality, or entertainment. It's a large percent of a global GDP.

And cities are hurting right now. You know, there are entire countries based on tourism. And they're hurting as well. And we want to be able to partner with those cities. And you know, we're right now we're partnering with them to provide frontline stays.

for people to provide housing for workers in the front lines. But during this economic recovery, which is gonna be a painful and long one. We're available to work and partner with cities. So that they can rebuild their, you know, their local economies. And if that means bringing in guests and visitors and Or even having locals do experiences in their own city.

Offering a new type of twenty first century job. We're here to help them. And so we're we're definitely open and we're gonna be partnering with cities and countries all over the world. And maybe just the last thing I'll just say. Is This month we're gonna hit a milestone. As hard as it is for our hosts, I'm proud to say that our hosts have now earned

A hundred billion dollars in our platform. one hundred billion dollars. And they did this by hosting Seven hundred and fifty million Guest arrivals. And these are people that came from nearly every country in the world.

You know, we have four million hosts, and if that means providing Opportunities for tens of millions more. That's what I want to do. You use this phrase most different. sort of accelerates the momentum behind the kind of model you have versus the

traditional hotel companies. Am I hearing that right? That like It's a very difficult time. for travel and hospitality. Unfortunately, one of the challenges is you can't run a hotel at low occupancy. You know, and the big chains will be okay, but they're half the hotels in the world are independents.

And so these are like small businesses. Think of a small hotel like a restaurant. They're in a basically similar predicament. And so I think the nature of travel and hospitality is already gonna be different. And You know There's a great use for all these different ways to travel.

It's really important that we offer What only we can offer. That makes us so different. And what makes us so different are our hosts. Every host is a person, every person's different.

And so You know, what makes us most different are people, and that's what we're focused on. As you described the traditional hotel business, one of the things that would make the marriage of the world Successful was You knew what you were expecting.

Right. Which There's also some limitations. Going forward, what Marriott might be able to offer is, well, you know with confidence that this room has been cleaned to a certain standard, or that everyone going to the hotel has had their temperature taken, or something like that. How do you think about how you apply that kind of reality in this new world? To

The very sort of disperse and diverse host universe that you guys work with. It's a great question, Bob. And Ultimately uh uh traditional hospitality was rooting this idea That the way to make things trusted.

would be to take people out of it. Because people are variable. And we want to make things more consistent by not taking people out of it. But by making the people more verified and more trusted.

And so one of the things we said is we're gonna verify every single home and experience on our platform. The first step is to educate hosts, give them the tools, give them the resources, step two in reviews. Ask guests if they met the cleanliness standard. And step three is then verify listings for a standard of cleaniness. So that would be the point. And what we've done already is we're updating a review system. We ask guests. A number of questions, including where you satisfied with the cleanliness of your Airbnb.

And as of this march thirty first. Ninety four percent of our reviews guests said they were satisfied with the cleanliness. They left a four or five star review. And so I think that's a great foundation. For us to continue to build upon. Great.

So you're optimistic. You're also working like crazy. Totally crazy. You must have some moments where the mood gets tough. Or the stress gets hard. Um, what do you try to do? Si Keep yourself

Motivated, release the stress, keep the mood up. Do you have any advice for other leaders who are facing the same kinds of you know, challenges that you find yourself having to grapple now on an Unending level. Yeah. I've never been in my home for five weeks in a row, not really able to get out or do anything. And so

I've taken up some new things I don't usually do. I've lived here for a dozen years. And um I never rode my bike around the city before. I mean, first of all, there are a lot of cars on a lot of hills in San Francisco. There's no cars anymore. And so I got a bike and I'm suddenly biking around. I live near a park and so I try to make sure that I take walks every single day. But probably the most important thing I do or connect with people. It's odd in one s sense

I'm certainly more physically disconnected. And in some ways more socially disconnected. than I have ever been in my life. And I have periods of time throughout the day where I feel the sense of loneliness. And you know, occasionally you get this just sense of panic.

you know, your heart beating. And I think if if anyone feels that way, I certainly would say, Well, they're certainly not alone because I feel that. But then I also feel In other ways more connected than ever before. Because what I year for, what I wanna do is

not watch a show or do something like that, or even read What I yearn for more is any kind of human connection. And so I do uh I I do Zoom with my friends from college. I make sure I I'm calling people. And you notice in your life there are certain people that give you energy. And there's certain people that when you talk to them, they take away your energy. And you gotta be really, really judicious about surrounding yourself with people that give you energy energy.

А'срин то ремон. That no matter how lonely it feels right now. In a larger sense. We're not alone. Because I guess never in human history.

Have all seven більon people. been united in a common predicament. A common cause. You know, crisis has a way of Bringing people together.

Even if it's not physical. And I've never felt closer. In the some kinds of ways. to many of the people in my life. As an example, um

You know, I started Airbnb with My two co founders twelve years ago, Joe and Nate. And We're still together. Twelve years later.

Not a lot of companies that go through we went through all the success, all the ups and downs were still together. But this thing it's it's kinda made us even closer. And I I feel Closer. to my team and I

You know I I'm just I'm I'm easier on people because I'm more grateful of things. When you lose things, you start to appreciate what you still have. And that's what I have, and so suddenly I feel lucky. Two months ago I thought I had everything.

I have a better perspective now than I did back then. And I I appreciate what we have and I now realize that You know

When you feel like This You get this clarity. And my my mission and what I'm meant to do has never been clearer than than right now. I mean, I think your purpose gets really clear, right?

There's a there's a stillness around the world. It's quiet. In some ways. And then suddenly You see what you're meant to be doing.

What I'm meant to be doing is You know, not to I'm not meant to do real estate. I'm not even meant in a larger sense to just do travel. You know, when we started Airbnb, it was it was about connecting with people.

That was the roots of Airbnb. And that's what we're meant to do. And if it took a crisis for us to Kind of Get back to basics, back to our roots.

Then a new better Airbnb will be will emerge. And we'll be back. You know, and this mission is gonna live on. Travels live through world wars. It's lived through economic depressions.

And the one thing you see over the course of generation after generation is every year more people travel. Nineteen fifty twenty five million people crossed a border. And last year one point four billion people did. And it's because there's this innate human desire to travel to explore. And our desire to explore, our desire to connect with one another.

That is never gonna go away. It may be on pause right now. But the one thing I know for sure is this gonna be more popular when it returns. And Airbnb. I'm gonna make sure that we are stronger. When the world goes back.

to a new normal. Well, Brian, I I wanna thank you again for Taking the time to talk with us and Talk with our listeners and share your thoughts. Oh, thank you. Good luck with everything. I'm Bob Safian, thanks for listening.

Masters of Scale Rapid Response is a wait what original. The show is recorded remotely using sanitized audio gear. It's hosted by me, Bob Sapian, Masters of Scales editor at large, and Masters of Scale host, Reed Hoffman. Our executive producers are June Cohen and Darren Triff. Our supervising producer is Jay Punjabi.

Our producer is Jordan McLeod. Scripts by Christina Gonzalez. Original music and sound design by Ryan Holiday and Daniel Nissenbaum. Audio editing by Keith J. Nelson and Lena Sillicen. Mixing and Mastering by Brian Pugh.

Special thanks to Emily McManus. Sarah Sandman. Adam Heiner, Kelsey Capitano, Tim Cronin. Charlie Menessis.

And Saida Sappy Ever. Visit masters of scale.com slash rapid response. To find the transcript for this episode. And be sure to subscribe. to our email newsletter.

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