Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky Reveals Why He Doesn't Do Emails And Early Morning Meetings, Says Silicon-Valley Founders Don't Need To Be 'Miserable'

Airbnb (NASDAQ:ABNB) chief Brian Chesky is shredding the Silicon Valley's grind-set playbook, insisting bosses can run multibillion-dollar companies without living in misery.

What Happened: "Don't apologize for how you want to run your company," he told The Wall Street Journal as he explained why he ditched email and any meeting before 10 am.

The 43-year-old billionaire admits the inbox once ruled his life. "[Emailing] was the thing about my job that I hated the most before the pandemic," he said, adding that calls and texts now handle anything worth his attention.

His first huddle never starts before double-digits: "When you're CEO, you can decide when the first meeting of the day is."

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Chesky's schedule flips the early-bird trope. Creativity hits at 10 p.m. and runs until a 2:30 a.m. lights-out, after a 90-minute workout that ends around 9:30 p.m. The late shift is possible, he quips, because "If I had a girlfriend, that would probably change. But I don't, so I'll enjoy this."

His approach is rubbing off. "[Chesky] always said to me that being a public-company CEO doesn't have to be miserable," Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd recalled, crediting his example for her own comeback as CEO.

Why It Matters: Chesky isn't the only boss attempting to rewrite the playbook by which business leaders are expected to function. Nvidia's Jensen Huang refuses one-on-one meetings, arguing, "Our company was designed for agility. For information to flow as quickly as possible. For people to be empowered by what they are able to do, not what they know." Elon Musk came out in support of Huang’s managerial style of discouraging meetings, too.

Similarly, Mark Cuban, the billionaire investor, has criticized the overuse of meetings, stating that they are the primary workplace practice that negatively impacts individuals‘ productivity and consumes their precious time.

Image via Shutterstock

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