“Brian took Reid back to his lean years, the early days when he went door-to-door, meeting Airbnb hosts in person. This clip we’re going to hear starts with Brian recalling a conversation he had in 2009 with Paul Graham, of Y Combinator fame,
who gave him some perplexing, it seemed at the time, advice….

CHESKY: And he asked us, “Where’s your business?” And I go, “What do you mean?” “Like where’s your traction?” And I go “We don’t have a lot of traction.” He goes, “Well people must be using it.” I said, “There’s a few people in New York using it.” And he said something I’ll never forget. He said, “So your users are in New York and you’re still in Mountain View.” I said, “Yeah.” And he said, “What are you still doing here?” And I go, “What do you mean?” He said, “Go to your users. Get to know them. Get your customers one by one.” And I said, “But that won’t scale. If we’re huge and we have millions of customers, we can’t meet every customer.” And he said, “That’s exactly why you should do it now because this is the only time you’ll ever be small enough that you can meet all your customers, get to know them, and make something directly for them.” ”

See! It works. It helped the founders of AirBNB and it will help your business. -Dan