Airbnb co-founder Brian Chesky is obsessed with culture and wants to hire those who share the same values. He once wrote: ‘The culture is what creates the foundation for all future innovation. If you break the culture, you break the machine that creates your products.’ Find out what his staff thinks.

Three years ago, Kelly Coldwell caught the travel bug and left her job as general manager in a recruitment agency in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. Wanderlust led Coldwell back to Asia, where she had once volunteered for post tsunami relief efforts.

She spent a year wandering around the region, staying at homes she found on Airbnb. This experience made such an impact on her that she called up the home-rental site for a job when she moved to Singapore.

Today, Coldwell is Airbnb’s regional recruitment manager for Asia-Pacific and is based in its Singapore office. She still remembers vividly her job interview with the company.

“I think I got asked, ‘What was the best mistake you have ever made?’” she says, recounting her experience of two years ago.

Coldwell, who had spent almost her whole working life in the recruiting business — except for a stint as an Emirates stewardess — was no stranger to job interviews, but the question dumbfounded her. “I sat there, stumped for a good minute before I bumbled my way through the interview,” she recalls with a laugh.

She explains that the interview is meant to gauge a person’s core value, or as one of her co-workers rightly calls it, “a real-life checklist on your perception about humanity”.

Airbnb has a particular set of core values, from No 1 (Be a host) to No 6 (Embrace the adventure), which its owners champion and employees preach. Would-be recruits are screened to ascertain whether they share these values and the interview process can be lengthy, stretching anywhere between one month and five months, with candidates under going about eight such sessions.

“We designed the interview that way because we want to find the right fit for the organisation, and if it takes five months, so be it,” Coldwell explains.

Founding values
Airbnb started on a whim in 2007 when two unemployed and down-on-their-luck arts graduates, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia, decided to sell sleeping space in their apartment to attendees of a trade show — in order to pay their rent. The idea attracted some hype on design blogs and a few months later, their engineer friend Nathan Blecharczyk joined them as the third co-founder.

By 2008, the site had adopted a lengthier version of its current name — Airbedandbreakfast. com. The idea stuck, and investors and users came filing in. According to Fortune, Airbnb now has some 2,000 employees in 21 offices scattered across the globe. It is also the third-highest-valued start-up at US$25.5 billion ($36.6 million), richer than hotel giant Marriott International, which runs more than 4,000 hotels, or travel site Expedia. It is also eight times more valuable than its competitor, HomeAway.

In 2015, Airbnb was expected to bring in US$900 million ($1,281 million) in revenue. It made US$250 million in 2013 — one-third of its current forecast. By 2020, the company claims it will grow to US$10 billion, and finally be profit able. Right now, the company is burning cash on ambitious expansion to reach its lofty targets. It forecast an operating loss of US$150 million for 2015, according to the Wall Street Journal.

As Airbnb grows at breakneck speed, Chesky is obsessed with its culture. In 2012, an investor who had just poured US$150 million into the company told him that companies inevitably destroy their own culture once they reached a certain size. Chesky is adamant this will not be his future, or Airbnb’s.

He once wrote: “The thing that will endure for 100 years is the culture. The culture is what creates the foundation for all future innovation. If you break the culture, you break the machine that creates your products.”

He makes it a point to write to his employees often, reminding them of the company culture. In one letter, he included the advice he got from the investor: “Don’t f*** up the culture.” In talks and welcome speeches, he encourages employees to be bold and tells them — according to at least one media report — that they are there to “design the future world we want to live in”.

For gravitas or inspiration, the man has a 98% approval rating from his staff on Glassdoor, a site that rates companies through anonymous employee feedback. Airbnb recently topped the site’s Best Places to Work For list. Google is positioned at No 8.

In Singapore, Chai Jia Jih, managing director of Airbnb in Southeast Asia and India, says the company’s culture has become a reference point to guide employees through daily processes. “As a fast-moving company, it becomes easier when people understand the culture because they will then have an idea of what the founders would do, or what their managers would do in any situation,” he explains.

Chai was the first employee at the Singapore chapter. He adds: “The more you rely on core values to make decisions, you can have everyone make the right decision [on their own without relying on corporate rules].”

As far as he is concerned, these values have translated into good business practices as well. For example, when the Singapore team wanted to produce its own merchandise, it considered getting them manufactured in Thailand or Malaysia, to save costs.

“If you are an entrepreneur, you might think the cheaper the better. But having a strong focus on every detail of our products, which helps us maintain the quality, is also part of our culture,” he says (No 3 — Every frame matters). In the end, the team managed to find the right manufacture to deliver on the quality it wants, at an affordable price.

Having co-workers sharing the same values naturally creates some manner of affinity at work, observes Chai. “If someone needs something urgently, you have your own thoughts, such as, ‘What is the right thing to do at that point in time? Do you go out of your way to help them?’ For Airbnb, the answer is yes because you’re a host,” he says (No 1 — Be a host).

Still, building a team that shares the same values is hard work. Coldwell, who recruits staff for Airbnb in Asia-Pacific, explains that candidates go through cross-functional and technical interviews as well as core value interviews by staff from different departments. “We involve our staff [because] we want everyone in the company [to be] invested in the people we bring in,” she says.

The core value interviews are conducted exclusively by those “who truly breathe the Airbnb culture”, she adds. “They can be from any function and any level, and they ask plenty of questions that can give them insights into the values that a person holds dear. Their job is to make sure everyone who walks through our door is the right fit.”

Finally, the interviewers would come to a unanimous decision on whom they want to hire. In 2013, Airbnb received 180,000 resumes for 900 positions. Based on Glassdoor data, most candidates rated the company positively though not all got the job, and many aired their grouses about the lengthy interview process.

Living Airbnb
At the Singapore office, Airbnb looks like a typical start-up co-working space with too many Christmas decorations. (It was December then.) It is not as grand as its San Francisco counterpart, but there are the same carefree vibes and friendly atmosphere. At one end of the office, there are colourful lockers for each employee. At the other is a sprawling kitchen where staff can help themselves to sandwiches and cereal from a dispenser.

As Coldwell puts it, Airbnb strives to create an inclusive and open environment for all its employees. There is no hierarchy; everyone can approach anyone to voice their thoughts. To that end, she adds, it is free seating — or standing — at Airbnb. There are tall tables as well as long communal ones.

“Free seating brings people together,” she says. “I can go sit next to [someone from] our legal department and learn what he does for 20 minutes, then go sit next to the head of talent and find out what he does,” she explains. There are about six dogs belonging to various employees that clock in regularly at the office.

As part of its efforts to bring staff closer together, Airbnb has a food programme. A healthy spread for breakfast and lunch is provided three to five days a week. The company’s effort, to Coldwell’s delight, has led to a free flow of employee-led activities. For one, some of the staff have created their own cook-off competitions, preparing things from steak to cupcakes.

“Yesterday, I walked into the office and a whole bunch of people from different departments were making steaks and mashed potatoes for lunch. When they were done, they sat together and ate everything,” she says. “Things like that bring people together and lead to sharing of new ideas.”

Bonding stretches beyond the office, too. Coldwell and her team recently went to Bintan for a one-night off-site. “We went paddle boarding and at night, we had some really creative discussions about how we can do better as a team. That also brought us closer together as a team.”

One of Airbnb’s core values is entrepreneurship — its founders had sold cereal before Airbnb became successful — which it actively encourages its employees to be involved in.

Chai says: “At Airbnb, anyone can come up, pitch an idea and make a case for it. And they can own the project and run with it it (No 6 — Embrace the adventure).” For instance, the business travel portal founded in 2014 was the brainchild of an employee from a totally unrelated department.

Chai then points to a large, tastefully deco rated wall at one end of the office. It used to be plain white, until one of the staff proposed getting his artist friend to decorate the space.

In any case, Airbnb’s core values are embodied in everything the company does, including training programmes. Airbnb Singapore uses an online partner to provide training sessions for employees. This can range from coding to how to be a better manager. Like its free-seating policy, employees can choose any programme they like, and complete it in their own time. As Coldwell quips, “It is all about self-initiative.”

Creating the Airbnb sub-culture
For Lynette Tay, there is no distinction between co-worker and friend — she gets along well with her co- workers. “We joined Airbnb because we are aligned to its values. It is comforting in a way, which is why I see them as friends.”

Tay, who frequently brings her pet dog to the office, heads the customer training team at Airbnb Singapore. She adds that the company’s values guide her interaction with the larger Airbnb community. Essentially, she trains customer service agents to serve hosts and travellers. At times, she pitches in too. “I used to help out Taiwanese hosts and sometimes, the words they used were not familiar to me. But once I got what they meant, I would mirror them. And when I caught on to the fact that they preferred calls to email, I made sure I called them back (No 2 — Champion the mission).”

She recalls handling a case where a Singaporean student travelling overseas had some trouble locating an Airbnb listing. Her mother phoned Tay, who followed up immediately with the host and then checked in on the student, before contacting the mother.

Although many of the staff are like Tay, who passionately serves the Airbnb community, the company is not devoid of blemishes. The death of a guest in Texas from a snapped swing has pushed Airbnb to consider its safety policies. And recently, it landed a lawsuit over a camera allegedly hidden in one of its US listings.

Still, the staff have plans to do more for the community. Samyabrata Deb, head of design of Airbnb Asia-Pacific, says they are looking at how they can enable community projects proposed by hosts in different communities.

“It is not like it is a corporate social responsibility project that makes us looks good. For one of the big programmes we did in San Francisco, we helped a neighbourhood rebuild the local library. We redesigned the space so people can live better, which is more meaningful than just donating money,” Deb says.

Airbnb also has a citizenship programme, run on a regular basis, to give back to the community. For example, new hires during their on-boarding process would pack food for vulnerable communities as part of the programme. In Asia-Pacific, the on-boarding is held in Singapore. “I think this strong community culture gives the company a competitive edge because you have big brands like Amazon, Apple and Disney. But we’re more like a football club, where everyone can just come together and belong, which is part of our core culture,” he adds.

Growth
Still, the investor who sounded the warning to Chesky may have a point. As the company expands rapidly and continues to recruit new staff, can Airbnb uphold its strict values without compromising on its growth rate? Chai concedes that there is the risk of losing focus as the company grows bigger.

“We may, for instance, grow too rapidly and it may become harder to sustain the culture. But we need to try to find the nice intersection where we can continue to have the right sort of culture to grow by engaging our employees so that we can get the best ideas out of them,” he says, adding that the founders are fully committed to preserving the culture.

For now, Tay, Deb and the rest of the staff at Airbnb Singapore are imbibing every detail of the company culture. “This afternoon, we just sat and talked during lunch, about travel, life events, anything. This is the key to our culture. [The last thing we want] is to create a space where you don’t know one another anymore,” says Tay.

This article appeared in the Enterprise of Issue 710 (Jan 11) of The Edge Singapore.