On Monday, October 21, 2013, I sent this letter to our entire team at Airbnb. I have decided to publish this in the event it is helpful to entrepreneurs building their cultures….( Brian Chesky Co-founder, CEO of Airbnb Apr 20, 2014)
Hey team,
Our next team meeting is dedicated to Core Values, which are essential to building our culture. It occurred to me that before this meeting, I should write you a short letter on why culture is so important to Joe, Nate, and me.
After we closed our Series C with Peter Thiel in 2012, we invited him to our office. This was late last year, and we were in the Berlin room showing him various metrics. Midway through the conversation, I asked him what was the single most important piece of advice he had for us.
He replied, “Don’t fuck up the culture.”
This wasn’t what we were expecting from someone who just gave us $150M. I asked him to elaborate on this …
https://medium.com/@bchesky/dont-fuck-up-the-culture-597cde9ee9d4#.qb1t4bkca