Airbnb的可控性高速发展

    不管按照哪种衡量标准，房屋租赁网站Airbnb的发展速度都显得太快了些。短短4年间，这家公司已经新增了约500名员工，估值达到13亿美元，在全球各地都开设了办事处。不久前Airbnb又在旧金山开设了新的办事处，还需要再招募700名员工。但最令人印象深刻的是人们使用这一服务的盛况：每晚都有5万人住在通过Airbnb网站预订的房间里。因此，对该公司联合创始人兼CEO布莱恩•切斯基来说，最重要的教训似乎是告诉自己，该踩刹车了。

    偶然成为CEO的切斯基毕业于罗德岛设计学院（Rhode Island School of Design），来到硅谷时，他坦承自己是个新手。正如他在《财富》杂志（Fortune）举办的技术头脑风暴大会（Brainstorm Tech）上对观众所言，他得到的最好的一些商业建议来自于沃伦•巴菲特。当他与巴菲特和亚马逊（Amazon）CEO杰夫•贝佐斯坐在一起时，这位著名投资家对他说：“创富要慢慢来。”

    另一个教训更加难得，但奥马哈先知的智慧早就提到了这一点。2009年，Airbnb的用户和员工数量在短短几个月里增加了一倍，这时切斯基开始与房地产管理公司合作出租房屋。对一家飞速发展的公司来说，这个举措合情合理：房地产管理公司拥有大量的出租房，难道还有比他们更合适的合作伙伴吗？但切斯基说：“这些有实力的卖家没有自豪可言。我们的工程师花费了6个月为错误的人研发工具。”

    一次巴黎之旅使这位30岁的CEO有了正确的认识。当时，他在Airbnb的两间出租房里留宿，一间由房地产管理公司管理，另一间属于一对巴黎夫妇。他对听众说，前一间出租房就像是酒店，干净整洁而且有备用物品。但那对夫妇带着切斯基在巴黎四处游览，要是没有住在他们的出租房里，就不会有这样的经历。他认为，这些人才是Airbnb需要依靠的人，而不是房地产经理。

    那么，Airbnb最终能变得多大呢？非常大，按照切斯基（有倾向性）的观点：“我们即将迎来互联网新一轮的发展浪潮。似乎无可避免的是，人们将停止上网，走进真实世界。而我们就是在现实世界里在现人们在Facebook上的活动。”

    译者：千牛絮

    By any metric Airbnb -- the social vacation rental website -- has expanded extremely quickly. In just four years, it has added about 500 employees, been valued at $1.3 billion, and opened offices around the world. It just moved into new digs in San Francisco, which will allow for another 700 employees. Most impressive, though, is the fact that people are using the service: on any given night, 50,000 people stay in a space they booked on Airbnb. So it's ironic that the most important lessons for Brian Chesky, the company's co-founder and CEO, seem to be telling him to hit the brakes.

    As he related to the audience today at Fortune's Brainstorm Tech, some of the best business advice the accidental CEO ever received (Chesky is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and was a self-admitted Silicon Valley neophyte when he arrived) was from Warren Buffet: "Get rich slow," the famed investor told Chesky when he sat down with Buffet and Amazon (AMZN) CEO Jeff Bezos.

    The other lesson was harder earned, but echoed the Oracle of Omaha's bit of wisdom. In 2009, when Airbnb was doubling its user base and employees over the course of a few months, Chesky began working with property management groups to rent out properties. For a fast growing company, the move made sense: who else to better keep pace than other companies offering dozens of rooms for rent? But, Chesky said, "They had no pride, these power sellers, and our engineers spent six months developing tools for the wrong kind of person."

    It was a trip to Paris that put things in perspective for the 30-year-old CEO. He stayed at two Airbnb properties: one run by a management company, the other by a Parisian couple. The former, he told the audience, felt like a hotel—sanitized, spare. The couple, however, toured Chesky around the city and gave him an experience he wouldn't have had otherwise. These people, he thought, were the one's Airbnb needed to court, not property managers.

    So how big can Airbnb get? Very big, in Chesky's (biased) opinion: "We are about to enter the next wave of the Internet. It seems so inevitable that people are going to want to come off [online] and enter the real world. We are the physical manifestation of what people do on Facebook (FB)."