Paid Family Leave and Running Your Family Like A Startup with Nate Blecharczyk

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
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**SPEAKER_2** (0:58)
Business Dad is presented by ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire.
I'm Seven Seven Six in Realm, I'm Alexis Ohanian, and this is Business Dad. The podcast where I set out to ask the most successful men across tech, sports, entertainment, media, entrepreneurship and more, how do you balance being a dad with a successful career?
On this episode, I talked to Airbnb co-founder Nate Blecharczyk about traveling the world of his family, the importance of paternity and paid family leave, and how becoming a dad changed how he ran his company. Odds are you're one of the 150 million people who have booked over one billion stays on Airbnb, an online marketplace that connects people who want to rent out their homes with people looking for a place to stay. What got me so excited to have Nate on was an op-ed that he wrote about paternity leave for Fortune Magazine. It's a great read, but what grabbed my attention in particular is that he talked about how being a dad actually made him more productive, which feels counterintuitive. And I wanted to dig into that. Nate has a nine-year-old daughter and a six-year-old son, and we talked to him at his place in Maine over the winter holiday. You know, Nathan, we should just take this from our start, because people listening or watching this won't necessarily know that you went through Y Combinator. Well, I was like a quasi-visiting partner at Y Combinator, but I've seen y'all from the earliest days of Airbnb, one of the greatest, if not the greatest success stories to come out of Y Combinator. And somehow, with all that success, you've still made it a priority in your life to be a dad. So like, give me just in a nutshell who you are, Nathan. What defines you and why?

**SPEAKER_3** (3:03)
That's a big question.
You know, I think, you know, I take a lot of pride in my work and being the best that I can be. And I think that's true whether I'm building something, building a company, building something around the house, or being a father now. If you're gonna do something, take the time to do it well and give it your all. I think that's something that, you know, my dad often told me growing up, if you're gonna do something, you need to do it the right way. So I think that's a big part of how I approach things with a fair amount of focus and intention. You know, starting a company and being an entrepreneur has a lot of uncertainty with it.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:38)
That's an understatement.

**SPEAKER_3** (3:39)
So before Airbnb, there was a long journey.
I started coding at the age of 12 I had my first business at the age of 14, but you know, I also had a normal job after college briefly. And it took a couple of years to kind of find myself from an entrepreneurial perspective, trying things, having them not work out, until I met my two co-founders, Joe and Brian, and we started Airbnb together in 2008, which kicked off a period of just incredible intensity. And you know, I look back on it, and I was so lucky to have gone on that journey and gone through the efforts of starting a company, probably prior to kids, because I'm sure you've experienced too, it was 110% of my life at that period of time. I was also lucky that my, well, my then girlfriend, fiance, now wife, mother, to my children, but we have been together for well over 20 years, I guess it's been about 22 years now. So we go way back.

**SPEAKER_2** (4:35)
Impressive.

**SPEAKER_3** (4:35)
And while I was starting Airbnb out in California, she was in medical school in Boston and going through her own intense journey. So I think that was also good that we each had the space to succeed professionally and kind of take that big leap that was all encompassing of our time and then have success and have that under our belts so that when it came time to have a family, things were in a little bit more of a sustainable place.