The issue of being friendly and welcoming to one another isn’t ancillary, the way, say, Dove soap believes in healthy body image but sells soap, or the way lululemon believes in community but sells clothes. Airbnb sells welcoming and acceptance, and has built its entire brand and mission around the idea of belonging. If there were a polar opposite of belonging, this would be it. “Discrimination to most companies is an adjacency to their mission,” Chesky said in an onstage interview at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference as the controversy was erupting. “Our mission, most importantly, is to
...more

