♪ >> hello. i am in singapore. they don't fly much higher than the cofounder of airbnb, nathan blecharcyzyk, today's highflyer. airbnb has listings in nearly every country on the planet, a trailblazer of the sharing

economy. financially self-sufficient at 14, able to make his own way through harvard, nathan always knew he wanted to be an entrepreneur. the company he started in 2008 is now valued at more than $30 billion. a chief strategy officer at airbnb from the company's san francisco headquarters, the company which through the sharing economy could further shape our lives. ♪ nate, welcome to high flyers. good to have you with us today. >> thanks. >> you know, airbnb, it was a

model that was never meant to take off. it was a model against everything your parents taught you. never bring strangers into your house. here you are, one of three cofounders. take us through the early days. >> that's right. this doesn't start with business ambitions. we were solving our own problem, how to pay the rent. >> broke. >> we were roommates in san francisco. suddenly, in the summer of 2007, the rent an apartment was raised 25%. i said that is too expensive, i'm out of here. the two other guys wanted to say. they just quit their jobs to become entrepreneurs, also known as unemployed. [laughter] they were broke as well. they were both designers. they saw the international design conference in san francisco. all the hotels were sold out. they thought, why not rent out my vacant bedroom to designers i wanted to stay. the room was empty with no bed, but joe, my cofounder set up an air bed. he called it an air bead and breakfast. he managed to get three designers to stay there, they pay them a thousand dollars over the course of the conference.

that's what airbnb is is short for. they all went to the conference and had a good experience. it was just supposed to be that. a couple months later, the three of us had quit our jobs. we were living in san francisco. in san francisco, everybody wants to be an entrepreneur, so we were racking our brains, brain, what can we do together? maybe there were other people in other situations where we could do the same thing. maybe we could make it just as easy to book someone's home as a hotel. that is what we set out to do in 2008. >> it wasn't so easy though, right? you were the one who coded the original airbnb website. it must have been difficult. they have a dream, you have to bring it to reality. how do you do it? >> they can often dream faster than i can code it. [laughter]

that's why we wanted to work together. two things we noticed, we had the same work ethic -- >> which was what? >> when we did have jobs, on nights and weekends, we had our own projects. we would be in the living room cranking away on all kinds of things we were passionate about. we noticed that about each other. the second thing is we had complementary skill sets. they are designers. i was helping them create websites for their projects. they were helping create marketing material for my project. well, between the three of us, we can do anything. >> airbnb wasn't your first start up. you had two or three other startups before that. what did you learn from that? how does it help your journey to airbnb? >> well, actually, i got started as an engineer, well, computer programmer at the age of 12. >> you are making money back then.

>> what happened was, it started with me as a young person really liking computer games, like so many young people do. but then, i wanted to modify the games. my dad is an engineer. he has a lot of books on computers. one day i was home sick from school, i guess i was bored, and looked through one of his books. this began a hobby i had. i posted my work on the internet. i said if you like my work send me five dollars. no one ever sent me money. at the age of 14, i got a phone call. they said i saw your work on internet, i want to pay you $1000 to make something similar. i told my dad. he laughed and said son, no one on the internet will pay you $1000. [laughter] i said whatever, i'll do it. i got paid. i got introduced to other people, and began a business i ran throughout high school. i made almost $1 million. >> to pay for college.

>> i used that to pay for college, yes. more important than the money was the lesson that taught me. one, i could teach myself all the necessary skills to build these products. two, i could build things that other people valued. out of that i knew i wanted to be a lifelong entrepreneur. >> what made you think airbnb was going to work? >> i think it is literally because we had seen it firsthand. we had seen the value proposition of those designers from out of town having a place to stay when there were no other options. also, how much they enjoy the local experience and the friendships that were formed. that was hard for people to understand. the first thing that came to mind was, how can you trust strangers? that's what they were thinking. on the other hand, we had

overcome that mental barrier, and seeing what good can result once you get over that. the question was how can we convince everyone? our major innovation in 2008 has been around trust, creating an environment where people can have trust so all the good stuff can flourish thereafter. it's really come down to three things in the beginning, user profiles that were very descriptive, very much about the person. second was how we handle the money so that there's no risk of financial loss. you pay through airbnb as an intermediary. the third is, at the end of every transaction, the host reviews the guest, the guest reviews the host. literally people build up a reputation so you know who you're dealing with. >> have you been surprised by the listings you have? it is not just about homes. it is about castles, treehouses, private islands. >> it has evolved incredibly. we literally offered an air bed

as the first accommodation ever on airbnb. it became entire apartments, and then it branched out from there. one day someone put a treehouse up, an island, a boat. [laughter] at first, we didn't support it. we thought maybe we should. thousands of boats have materialized. the internet has the ability to connect people to so much of the information that was previously lost. the same thing for the off-line world. these tree houses and castles always existed, but you as an individual never had access until now. it's all on airbnb. in a couple of clicks, you can click it and stay there. ♪ >> we went to a lot of investors

and they said things like, this is not a product i would use. by the time we got to the end of the first year, we were having a conversation about, when do know that it's time to quit? ♪

♪ >> success was never certain. for the first one at a half years airbnb was looking along. take us through the challenging times. >> it wasn't obvious. at the time, it was only us that really believed in the vision. we went to a lot of investors, and they said things like "this is not a product i would use." i guess they weren't the target

market at the time. they couldn't believe that there was a large market. they said, how could you trust a stranger in someone else's home? in the entire first year, we were unsuccessful raising money. even approaching our mentors, someone i really respect, i remember him saying, i hope that's not the only thing you are working on. [laughter] it was very discouraging. by the time we got to the end of the first year, we were having a conversation about, when you know that it's time to quit? we had been without a job for an entire year not making money. we still have to pay rent. >> you guys were broke. you have bills amounting to tens of thousands of dollars. >> that's how we were paying for things, on credit cards. investors were uninterested. we had conversations, when do you know that it's time to quit? we had a realization over the course of that conversation that although over the last year we

had been working really hard, we had been a little bit distracted, too. we had side projects going on. at the time i was in boston, and they were in san francisco. we weren't together as a team completely focused. we said let's give it three more months where we will live together and have nothing else in our lives except for this. we will work six to seven days a week. if it doesn't work, we will quit. >> talking about distraction, you bought dozens of dozens of cereal boxes, and you converted them, something to do with obama o's and mccain. what happened? >> we had to be creative with publicity. frankly, we were thinking, how can we make ourselves relevant and get the word out? at the time, it was leading up to the election. we got this idea to create a presidentially themed breakfast cereal.

today we are airbnb, but then we were air bed and breakfast. we said, ok, let's do a play on the breakfast idea, president themed. we came up with obama-o's, and captain mccains. we actually designed original artwork for each box. we printed it on cardboard. we put the boxes together. the first 100 of these we mailed to reporters like yourself. [laughter] if we emailing to her, she will not take it seriously. if she gets this box of cereal, she will be very curious and write about it. we ended up on good morning america and on cnn telling our story. the day we were on cnn, it became number one political video of the day. the other 400 boxes of cereal we created we sold on a website for $40 a box every three minutes. we made $30,000 that week. we like to joke that that is how we financed the company in the

early days. that is far more than we had made in the course of our business activity. haslinda: what helped also is the funding from sequoia capital, $600,000. that was a game changer. nate: at the end of the three months, our business was growing for the first time. we started the three months making $200 a week, having no growth. by the end, we were making $4500 a week, all in the span of three months. sequoia capital we got introduced to. they were impressed with what they saw and gave us that $600,000 funding, which ended up being a good investment. 20% of the company. the company is now worth quite a lot, $30 billion valuation. going back to what i said earlier, we were on the verge of quitting. we said just three more months.

at the end of that three months, we never had to have that difficult conversation about doing this. haslinda: what's interesting is the involvement of actor ashton kutcher. how did he get involved? who approached who? >> i forget the specifics. most people know him as an actor, but he's a savvy and prolific investor as well. he has invested in a lot of technology companies. i forget exactly how the introduction was made, but he loved the model, and we thought it would be great to have him involved. he's obviously a part of mainstream pop culture. we thought, this is a concept that requires a bit of explaining and trust. maybe he can help us build the brand. haslinda: now, you, cto officer, chief technology officer, now chief strategy officer, how are you positioning the company? >> there's three large

directions we are growing. one is geographic expansion, and early on we set our sights on being a global company. traffic is obviously global. it was a question in the early days. we set in the early days, will this work only in new york, united states, western cultures, will it work in asia, china? we did not know. we have proven that it is hugely popular all over the world. we are in 191 countries. we are focused on china. we see that as a huge emerging market. there is 400 million millennials in china part of the middle class and eager to explore the world. >> although there is great potential, there is great competition. companies starting up wanting to be the next airbnb. what do you make of the

competition? it's a complicated market. >> complicated market and fierce competition it is famous for. our approach for china is to focus on our unique strengths. we have homes in 191 countries. none of our domestic competitors have that global network. we have positioned ourselves as the only way for chinese millennials to travel abroad and authentically experience culture. that is our value proposition. no one else has that. it has allowed us to become popular and experience a lot of growth. ♪ haslinda: how does it feel to be a billionaire? >> it's not something i expected. it's easy to give money away, but to do that in a way that has a maximum benefit requires a great deal of thinking. ♪

♪ >> i want to talk about how you grew up. mom's a homemaker, dad's an engineer, and he had a huge influence on you growing up. that is why you talked about picking up an engineering book. that helped change everything for you. >> it started before then. dad taught me a few things. he was always trying to help us understand how things work. as an engineer he was always bringing things home from work that i could take apart. >> like a xerox copy machine. [laughter] >> it literally sat in the backyard for half a year. he would do things like loose in the screws for me but let me do the rest of the discovery. he was a do-it-yourself dad. he's always fixing things

himself. no project was too big or too small for him. he taught that spirit of you can do this. you don't know how to do this, but you can learn how to do this. which is something as an entrepreneur, you have to have that mentality. haslinda: you were also once named in the registry for known spammers. what happened? >> i had this business in high school about internet marketing, specifically stuff around email marketing, of which can border on the line of spam, back in the 1990's. >> it was legal back then? >> back then, this was a new way of promoting oneself on the internet. the internet was brand-new. there were not really any rules around what you could or could not do. this was a space i explored. perhaps it aggravated some folks, but it was an emerging

space. out of that has been born a whole industry that now is more tightly regulated, but also is still very important for companies and how they promote themselves online. but these were the early days. haslinda: would you have done anything differently? >> i don't know if i would have done anything differently, but the advice i would give to any young person is that any setback you experience along the way, put that in perspective, which is to say there's a lot ahead of you. see that setback as a learning opportunity. we talked a lot about my success stories in high school and now airbnb. there's plenty of things and worked on that were disappointing. haslinda: such as? >> programs i created, put a lot of work into that didn't take

off. when i started airbnb, i was working on two other projects very hard that weren't successful. that was disappointing at the time. when i look back on those, each experience was a learning opportunity that made me more successful once i started airbnb. i benefited from that experience. i would just encourage people to see failure as learning opportunity. as long as you don't give up and you keep getting back up to bat. these are all things that make you stronger. haslinda: you know, now you're worth about $3.5 billion. probably more. how does it feel to be a billionaire? did you ever envision -- do you ever pinch yourself? >> it does seem rather unreal. it's not something i tend to think about. i have a lot going on work-wise. [laughter] in my personal life, i have a family. it is not something i dwell on.

obviously, incredibly fortunate. it's a challenge thinking about given this fortunate position, what do you do about it in a way that -- bottom line, what do you do with that? it's not something i expected. i feel a responsibility. what excites me most is having a positive impact on people. i think we do that through airbnb, through business. the question i ask myself is, what can i do with my newfound wealth that will be beneficial to others and do that in a way that is maximally effective? it's easy to give money away, but to do that in a way that has maximum benefit requires a great deal of thinking. haslinda: you are a disruptor. pretty much a part of the future economy. people now are already sharing rides. they are sharing homes. can 20 to 30 years down the road, how does the future economy look?

what kind of other disruption do you see happening? >> i think there are a lot of changes in the broader economy, it is going to create challenges and opportunities. one big challenge is with artificial intelligence and self driving cars, there is going to be a lot of traditional work that will not require people. the question becomes, what will they do? work is important. that is also going to create new opportunities for people to, well, you need to ask the question: what can people uniquely do? one thing people uniquely have is passion. i think things around education and healthy living, bringing people together for special moments. those are things that cannot be easily changed or eliminated through technology and with

these changes will there be enough scale through time for new markets to be created in these areas of teaching and connecting people with similar passions? haslinda: do you airbnb every time you travel? is your home listed on airbnb? >> yes and yes. [laughter] i've literally stayed in hundreds of homes. yes, i am a host in san francisco. >> do they know that it's you? >> sometimes, generally not. sometimes i will have a conversation with them on the sidewalk. they are often very shocked. [laughter] haslinda: thank you so much for joining us on high flyers. >> thanks. ♪

♪ emily: when he took over as ceo of microsoft in 2014, satya nadella had big shoes to fill. bill gates was staying on as a special advisor. microsoft stock had languished for more than a decade. under his leadership, however, care -- shares shot up nearly 100% as he pushed into the cloud and made bold acquisitions, buying linkedin for over $26 billion. what is lesser-known, how he made it from india to microsoft, joining the company in 1992 and rose through the ranks over the next three decades. in his first book "hit refresh," he sheds light on his career in microsoft and how artificial