Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky’s mom used to worry he’d have ‘the only job in the world that pays less than a social worker’

“We called it the air-bed-and-breakfast,” he told Fortune in 2017 at the World’s Greatest Leaders event.

Chesky and Gebbia were hooked on the idea of making money and meeting new friends through their makeshift accommodations, so they opened their home to three guests: “What if you could book someone’s home the way you could book a hotel anywhere in the world?” Chesky said about their inspiration. They launched Airbnb with Gebbia’s former roommate Nathan Blecharczyk in 2008.

Chesky’s social-worker parents in upstate New York (he was born in Albany) told him to pursue a high-paying career, but much to their chagrin he went to art school instead, at the famous Rhode Island College of Design.

“I’m going to become an artist,’” Chesky recalls telling his mom, to which she responded, “You somehow managed to pick the only job in the world that pays less than a social worker. You’ll get paid nothing.’”

Today, Chesky doesn’t have to worry as much.

As of January, Airbnb has a market capitalization of $91 billion, back to its level from before the pandemic threatened its very survival as a business. The company lost 80% of its business in the first months of the pandemic, and Chesky reorganized it in a scramble for survival.

Chesky’s business ethos was shaped by his creative background

Though Chesky’s creativity is what birthed (and saved) Airbnb, it also meant business veterans did not initially take him seriously.

Chesky’s design background…