The first thing to recommend is that they don’t work in some place that they don’t like, that they don’t do things that they don’t like. That they look for what they really want to do and what kind of thing they want to be involved in, or if they want to go it alone by themselves, to find that.
What advice would you give your twenty-year-old self, and what should they ignore?
Question
How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a favourite failure?
Failure & regret
Question
What is one of the best or most worthwhile investments you have ever made — of money, time, or energy?
Money & investment
Getting rich slow isn't actually slower. It's slower in year one, but it might be faster in year seven.
Chesky's remarks to Fortune in 2017, quoted by Business Insider, Business Insider (Markets Insider), August 2020 source ↗
Others on this question
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Carlos Slim Helú
Businessman and investor; chairman of Grupo Carso and América Móvil
Rahul Dravid
India Test and one-day international cricketer, 1996–2012; later India head coach
I know it is utterly fanciful to expect professional cricketers to play the game like amateurs; but the trick, I believe, is taking the spirit of the amateur - of discovery, of learning, of pure joy, of playing by the rules - into our profession. Taking it to practice or play, even when there's an epidemic of white-line fever breaking out all over the field.
Recorded
Bradman Oration, Anzac Hall, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, ESPNcricinfo, 14 December 2011
source ↗
Elie Wiesel
Writer and human rights advocate; Nobel Peace Prize laureate, 1986
Sensitivity. Be sensitive in every way possible about everything in life. Be sensitive. Insensitivity brings indifference and nothing is worse than indifference. Indifference makes that person dead before the person dies.
Lee Kuan Yew
Prime Minister of Singapore, 1959–1990; Senior Minister 1990–2004; Minister Mentor 2004–2011
The sky has turned brighter. There is a glorious rainbow that beckons those with the spirit of adventure. And there are rich findings at the end of that rainbow. To the young and the not too old, I say, look at the horizon, find that rainbow, go ride it. Not all will be rich; quite a few will find a vein of gold; but all who pursue that rainbow will have a joyous and exhilarating ride and some profit.
Recorded
Singapore Press Club (title proposed by the Club), Singapore Press Club, Petir (People's Action Party), reproducing the speech in full, 7 June 1996
source ↗
More from Brian Chesky
View profile →When we started Airbnb, no one wanted to invest. I felt like a failure so many days. It was small, it wasn't growing... A sane person probably would have quit. But we kept going through obscurity, through rejection. We couldn't raise money — but over time, it started growing.
We need to have mentors. I think I've always been pretty shameless about seeking out people much smarter and much more experienced than me from the very beginning. Michael Seibel and other people. And the more successful I got, the more leaders I started seeking out, whether it was investors, or Sheryl Sandberg at Facebook, or I got the opportunity to spend time with Warren Buffett and he became a close mentor of mine.
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