Online acquaintance Om Malik has a long piece out today about AirBnB redefining travel as creating experiences and getting us out of our heads, in the age of AI.
It struck me that’s precisely what I just used AirBnB to do, with my trip to the Netherlands.
I didn’t get a hotel room, and I didn’t create a detailed itinerary. Instead, I rented a house for two months and explored the country on my own. I had a vague goal in mind, to learn how e-bikes are changing the world. The Netherlands made itself e-bike ready decades before that boom was born.
I learned a lot, enough for a book. It rebooted my love of writing and gave me original reporting with a clear focus. I saw the strengths and weaknesses of the Dutch model. Since my return, I’ve seen that model being transported to the United States, under the radar of the national Administration.
The point is it couldn’t have happened without AirBnB. They made finding a place to rent in Maarssen the work of a few minutes. I overpaid, and my hosts were generous to me as a result. But isn’t the point of technology trading money for time? That’s what investing in productivity represents. You give technology companies your money and they make you more productive.
AirBnB let me do that in my personal life, and it was transformative. You might say they rebooted me.
An Om-Eye View
Om has been cheering on AirBnB from the sidelines since 2020, when he identified what could make it great. Like Netflix and other winning companies, it has a clear purpose, it’s easy to use, and it creates a good time. The company was failing back then because of its focus on rooms and on hosts. Om saw an opportunity in doing what it just did for me.
Travel essayist Pico Iyer has written that “Travel is not really about leaving our homes, but leaving our habits,” experiencing new places, cultures, food, and ideas. The best travel experiences, like mine, are about rebooting ourselves, by immersing us in what once seemed foreign.
I don’t know if AirBnB founder Brian Chesky’s relationship with Sam Altman is meaningful, but I do agree that his status as a founder matters. Founders with a clear vision have what I call the power to “bind and loose.” They can turn their creations inside out, for better or worse.
I’m left wondering if there was anything else AirBnB could have done for me, which is the growth vector Om is promoting. The answer is they could have provided me with a guide, a local contact, who would get me over my delusions about the place and point me in the right direction. In this case I found such a person on my own, on Facebook.
This tells me the answer to AirBnB’s future growth lies in creating relationships. I will let them figure out how.
