Airbnb founder Brian Chesky: Hire people who will "champion the mission"

So when we hire people, the first thing we need to make sure is, if that's our mission, you need to champion that mission. You champion the mission by living the mission. Do you believe in it? Do you have stories about it? Have you used the product? Would you believe for the product? I used to ask, like, crazy questions. Like, one of the crazy questions Sam reminds me of is I used to interview people. So I interview the first 300 employees at Airbnb, which people think I'm, like, really neurotic, and that may also be true. And I used to ask them a question, which I've now amended. I used to ask them, if you had a year left to live, would you take this job? And actually, the people who say yes to that, you probably don't want, because that's, like, they should probably spend time with your family. So I amended it to 10 years, because I feel like you should whatever. If you Knew you had 10 years left to live, whatever you would do in those last 10 years, you should just do. And I really wanted people to think about that. That was enough time for you to do something you really cared about. And the answer doesn't have to be this company. And I say, fine. If what you're meant to do is to travel or what you meant to do is start a company, you should just do that. Don't come here. Go do that. And so there's this old kind of parable, probably many have heard of it, about like, two men are laying bricks. Somebody comes up to the first man, says, what are you doing? He says, I'm building a wall. He asked the other guy, what are you doing? He says, I'm building a cathedral. There is a job, and then there's a calling. And we want to hire people that aren't just looking for jobs. They're looking for a calling. And that's kind of the first value.