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When Brian Chesky took the stage at Figma’s Config conference, he made a comment that sent shockwaves through the tech industry: he appeared to suggest that Airbnb had eliminated the traditional product management function. While the headline was provocative, the reality of Airbnb’s transformation is far more nuanced—and perhaps more revolutionary. Facing a near-death experience during the pandemic, Chesky completely overhauled how the company operates, moving away from the standard Silicon Valley playbook of decentralized autonomy and toward a singular, synchronized vision.
This new "playbook" challenges the prevailing wisdom on everything from organizational structure to marketing strategy. It offers a compelling alternative for leaders who feel their companies have become slow, bureaucratic, or disconnected from their core product. Below is a deep dive into how Chesky dismantled the divisional model, redefined the role of product managers, and why he believes the CEO must also be the Chief Product Officer.
Key Takeaways
- Shift to Functional Structure: Airbnb abandoned the divisional "General Manager" model in favor of a functional structure (Design, Engineering, Marketing) where all departments report to the CEO to ensure a cohesive experience.
- The Unified Roadmap: The company operates on a single, rolling two-year roadmap. There are no independent team roadmaps; if it isn't on the main roadmap, it doesn't ship.
- Product + Marketing Fusion: Traditional product management was evolved to include product marketing responsibilities. Managers must be able to not only build the product but also tell its story and drive its distribution.
- "Founder Mode" is Being in the Details: Chesky argues that "empowerment" is often a cover for absentee leadership. He advocates for deep executive involvement in the details, distinguishing this from toxic micromanagement.
- Marketing as Education: Moving away from heavy reliance on performance marketing ("lasers"), Airbnb focuses on brand marketing and major product launches ("chandeliers") to educate users on new features.
Redefining the Role of Product Management
The controversy surrounding Chesky’s comments on product management stems from a fundamental dissatisfaction with how the role had evolved in Silicon Valley. At many large tech companies, product management had become distinct from the actual craft of building or selling. Chesky observed that designers often felt like service providers rather than partners, and engineers were disconnected from the market.
To fix this, Airbnb did not "fire" all product managers; rather, they radically changed the job description. The goal was to combine inbound product development with outbound product marketing.
"You can't build a product unless you know how to talk about the product. You can't be an expert in making the product unless you're also an expert in the market of it."
Merging Building and Selling
In this new model, a product manager cannot simply ship a feature and move on. They are responsible for the distribution plan, the messaging, and the story. If a team builds a great feature but no one uses it because the distribution failed, the product development is considered a failure. By making the product group smaller, more senior, and responsible for the narrative, Airbnb ensures that engineering efforts are always aligned with customer education and adoption.
The Shift from Divisional to Functional
Prior to the pandemic, Airbnb ran on a divisional structure. There were separate divisions for Homes, Experiences, Luxury, and Transportation, each with its own General Manager, marketing budget, and technical stack. While this is a standard scaling strategy, Chesky argues it led to silos, redundancy, and politics.
When the pandemic wiped out 80% of Airbnb's business in eight weeks, the necessity of survival forced a restructuring. Chesky centralized the organization, modeled after Apple during Steve Jobs' tenure. In a functional organization, there are no "business units." Instead, there is one Design department, one Engineering department, and one Marketing department.
The Problem with Divisions
Chesky notes that divisions naturally create bureaucracy. When a company is divided, individual teams begin optimizing for their specific metrics rather than the holistic user experience. Teams accumulate technical debt by building separate stacks and create political friction by fighting for resources. By returning to a functional model, Airbnb operates like a massive startup—one where 7,000 employees function with the agility of a much smaller team.
The Single, Rolling Roadmap
Perhaps the most operational change in Chesky’s playbook is the elimination of autonomous team roadmaps. In many organizations, different teams (e.g., Host Team vs. Guest Team) build features independently, hoping they align in the end. At Airbnb, there is only one single roadmap for the entire company.
This roadmap is a rolling two-year plan that is updated continuously but anchored by two major release windows per year (May and November). This approach subordinates metrics to the calendar. Rather than shipping features whenever they are ready, Airbnb bundles them into "seasons" or "episodes," allowing the company to tell a cohesive story to the world.
"If you want to light up a room, performance marketing is a laser. It can light up a corner of a room. You don't want to use a bunch of lasers to light up an entire room; you should use a chandelier. And that's what brand marketing is."
This release cadence forces alignment. Marketing, Engineering, and Design must work in lockstep because the deadline is public and the narrative is shared. It prevents the fragmentation of the user experience where the app feels like it was designed by ten different committees.
"Founder Mode": The Case for Being in the Details
Conventional leadership advice often tells founders to "hire good people and get out of their way." Chesky argues that this advice is often disastrous for product-led companies. When leaders detach from the details, they lose the ability to judge quality, and standards inevitably slip. This creates a culture of "managing by influence" rather than managing by competence.
Chesky distinguishes between micromanagement (telling people exactly what to do) and being in the details (understanding the work deeply enough to be an effective partner).
"How do you know they're doing a good job if you're not in the details? I made sure I was in the details and we really drove the product."
At Airbnb, the CEO acts as the ultimate editor. Chesky reviews creative work, product designs, and marketing copy on a weekly basis. This isn't about lack of trust; it is about maintaining a shared consciousness. When the CEO is in the details, they can identify bottlenecks that individual engineers cannot see, remove obstacles immediately, and ensure the final output meets the company’s highest standards.
Avoiding Burnout Through Intensity
A common critique of this high-involvement leadership style is that it leads to bottlenecks and burnout. Paradoxically, Chesky found the opposite. In the "delegated" model, he spent his days putting out fires and mediating disputes between siloed teams—reactive work that is draining and inefficient.
By getting involved early and staying in the details, the company achieved "shared consciousness." Once the team understood the standard and the vision, they could execute autonomously without constant course correction. This alignment reduced the amount of rework and "fake work" (meetings about meetings), eventually freeing up time for the CEO to focus on future strategy rather than crisis management.
Conclusion
Brian Chesky’s new playbook is a rejection of the professional management class theory that has dominated Silicon Valley for decades. It suggests that as companies scale, they shouldn't necessarily chop themselves up into autonomous divisions. Instead, they should fight to remain functional, integrated, and product-obsessed.
By merging product and marketing, centralizing the roadmap, and validating the founder’s right to be deeply involved in the details, Airbnb has provided a case study in how to maintain the soul of a startup at the scale of a Fortune 500 company. For leaders, the lesson is clear: do not apologize for how you want to run your company, and never delegate the understanding of your own product.
