Airbnb's Brian Chesky Writes Almost No Emails—He Texts Instead

By Grace Kim

Airbnb cofounder and CEO Brian Chesky isn't sure he drafts even one original email per week. He told Time last month that email ranks near the bottom of his communication stack—and he'd rather text.

"I just find it inferior to almost every other form of communication," Chesky said.

Chesky does reply to emails sent to him. But asked directly whether people should use email at all, his answer was blunt: "Not very often."

Why does Chesky prefer texting?

His reasoning comes down to structure. Email is organized around subjects, Chesky explained. Texting is organized around people. That single difference, in his view, makes texts faster and more personal.

"You feel a deeper connection to the person," he said. "It doesn't feel like work to respond."

Speed matters too. "The notifications pop up right on your phone," he added—so people respond faster than they do to an inbox.

The takeaway in plain words: for Chesky, person-first beats subject-first.

Where does texting sit in his hierarchy?

Texting isn't the top of the chain. Chesky said Zoom calls beat texts, and the best communication of all happens in person. Texting is simply the fastest default when a face-to-face conversation isn't possible.

What about work-life balance?

Chesky tries not to text staff when they're with their families. But he concedes his own boundary between work and life is, in his words, "probably [more] blended than the average person."

"I think that everyone has a right to run their company how they want," he said.

Is Chesky alone in ditching email?

No. Last year, Francis Hellyer, founder and CEO of the ticketing platform Tickadoo, told Fast Company that email slows communication down rather than speeding it up.

"Email isn't the holy grail for every team," Hellyer said. "[Messaging apps bring] real-time connections, speedy decisions, and a culture of instant collaboration."

So two CEOs, two companies, one shared verdict: the inbox is a bottleneck, not a superpower.

What's the so-what for business leaders?

Chesky runs a public company worth tens of billions on a communication habit most executives would consider too casual for serious work. His model is a simple ranking—in person first, video second, text third, email a distant last—and it's built on one design choice: channels organized around people move faster than channels organized around threads. Whether that scales beyond founder-led companies is the open question; for now, Airbnb's CEO is voting with his thumbs, not his inbox.