Airbnb

"While other venture firms seek out executive talent for their clients, Andreessen Horowitz goes further. It develops ties with the Valley’s best software engineers, designers, and product managers, helping them with introductions and career counseling. At times it connects these engineers and managers to one of its portfolio companies, but often there’s no direct payoff. It does the same for top Valley executives, much as CAA negotiated employment contracts for studio executives. Andreessen Horowitz aims to forge long-term relationships that might eventually prove helpful at a future start-up, or as part of future deal flow. And Marc and Ben’s thesis has worked brilliantly. They have rapidly established themselves as one of the nation’s top five venture firms, with prescient investments in Facebook, Skype, Stripe, Airbnb, GitHub, Instacart, Lyft, and Pinterest, among many others. As Marc told the New York Times, “We’ll wire up talent first with the goal of knowing and building relationships with all the best people. It’s more like a Hollywood talent agency.”"

"When I met Brian Chesky in 2013, I was astounded that this 2004 graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, a former competitive bodybuilder with no coding experience, had cofounded and led one of the great start-ups of his era, the “sharing economy” juggernaut that is Airbnb. After providing occasional help to Airbnb over the years, I recently met with Brian to brainstorm about how Airbnb could keep growing. In one of our sessions, we discussed an “end to end” or “door to door” experience, and spent three hours whiteboarding how the company could curate your entire trip, from the time you left home. I told him, “Go larger, tackle the total vacation experience.” The following year, Airbnb announced its “Trips” service, where hosts will introduce travelers who want to experience local living from everything to a dinner party to a Tai Chi class. It’s currently available in fifty-one cities around the world."

"Brian asked, “How did you learn to think so big at CAA?” I reminded him that Airbnb had consistently thought big: it hadn’t been at all content with its original business of renting out air mattresses on floors. Then I added that one way to conceptualize how to think in business is a martial-arts precept: “If you aim at the target, you lose all your power. You have to hit through the target to really smash it.” To get where you want to go, you have to set out to go even further."