Brian Chesky Quotes

The great thing about the business is how Darwinian it is. We have to swim or die - if you are found wanting over a period of time, you've either got to change what you're doing or find something else to do.

He who puts ... a product upon the market as it demands, controls that market, regardless of color. It is simply a survival of the fittest.

It's important to reinvent yourself often, because if you don't, someone else will and squash you like a bug.

If you have a strong opponent, a competition is stimulating. I am generally most open to ideas when I have had a bad result. In chess, too, players specialise. This specialty then becomes an entry barrier.

With each new day in Africa, a gazelle wakes up knowing he must outrun the fastest lion or perish. At the same time, a lion stirs and stretches, knowing he must outrun the fastest gazelle or starve. It's no different for the human race. Whether you consider yourself a gazelle or a lion, you have to run faster than others to survive.

The trick is, a market has to be nonexistent when you start. If the market is large early on, you will have too many competitors. You have to make it large.

It's very difficult in the technology space when you have been leapfrogged to prosper again.

You have to be willing to risk things; otherwise, somebody else will put you out of business.

I think the high-tech industry is used to developing new things very quickly. It's the Silicon Valley way of doing business: You either move very quickly and you work hard to improve your product technology, or you get destroyed by some other company.

Adapt or Die

Since I became CEO, 87 percent of the companies in the Fortune 500 are off the list. What that says is that companies that don't reinvent themselves will be left behind. I also think that's true of people. And I think it's true of countries.

You have to do what the market requires of you... You either keep swimming, or you sink.

Competition is one of the most important drivers of innovation because you have to stay in the race. You have to think of something new, and if you don't, well, of course you should leave the market.

The second you get set in your ways is the second a newer, fresher, more innovative company is going to come in and take your market share.

It is good to have competition because that helps you survive in the long run.

I think competition is the best thing for everyone. Competition is what makes us evolve, from when we were itty bitty little tadpoles in prehistoric times to what we've turned into now. Competition makes us evolve and makes us push ourselves better.

No company has a permanent consumer franchise. No one has the only game in town. The never-ending cycle of destruction and change inherent in a capitalist economy always provides new opportunities for those with determination, goals and concentration.

You want an idea that turns into a monopoly. But you can't get a monopoly, in a big market right away; too much competition for that.

You never quite know in business if what you are doing is the right or the wrong thing. Unfortunately, by the time you know the answer, someone has beaten you to it and you are out of business.

Winning is important, but survival is even more important. If you don't survive, you don't get to fight the next battle.

Out there in some garage is an entrepreneur who's forging a bullet with your company's name on it. You've got one option now - to shoot first. You've got to out innovate the innovators.

If you can’t out iterate someone who is trying to copy you, you’re toast anyway.

In fighting, in evolution, in life, efficiency is the key.

The only big companies that succeed will be those that obsolete their own products before somebody else does.