It was minutes before the 1984 Apple event that would change everything for the company. At the end of Jobs’ presentation that day, the nervous young entrepreneur in a bow tie walked across the stage to a table with a mystery bag on it. Inside was a computer. As the blaring theme from “Chariots of Fire” sounded, the computer woke up and began to speak.

Good morning. I am Macintosh. It feels really great to get out of this bag.

Since that moment, the product launches that Jobs made cool have become the norm throughout Silicon Valley. Apple, Microsoft, Google, Nvidia, Meta: they all host flashy events to unveil the release of their latest, slickest technology.

Now imagine all the hype, drama and glitter to reveal the latest… Taco Bell chalupa.

Would you like to watch it?

Brian Chesky probably would. Chesky, Airbnb’s chief executive, is one of the most influential technology leaders today and has become an evangelist for the value of annual product launches.

In fact, he thinks they’re so powerful that he’s made product launches the organizing principle of his company.

I recently asked Chesky to explain the benefits of product launches and his eyes lit up with enthusiasm. You would have thought I had told him that Buckingham Palace wanted to list rooms on Airbnb.

“I’m very, very passionate about this,” Chesky said.

These releases are not just publicity stunts. He very passionately advocates for product announcements as a management strategy, a way to get a company’s attention and even accelerate the pace of innovation.

After all, if you’re committed to featuring products once or twice a year, you really need to offer products that are worth featuring.

Chesky’s enthusiasm for annual product releases began with his admiration for Jobs, who traded his bow tie for black turtlenecks as his keynote speeches became cultural spectacles. The iPod in 2001, the iPhone in 2007 and the iPad in 2010: Chesky remembers watching all these events and waiting for the next one.

But he didn’t think annual product launches made sense for a software company specializing in home sharing and short-term rentals. Unlike Apple, Airbnb didn’t sell new products every year.

“What were we going to publish?,” Chesky said.

Even when Airbnb became one of the most valuable startups in the world, he didn’t change his mind. But after the company went public in 2020, Chesky felt the lack of a cohesive force. Without a common destination, too many teams found themselves working on their own projects and taking paths that too often did not converge.

“It’s very difficult to get everyone to work together,” he says. “The mechanisms that people use to bring everyone together are, for example, priorities and strategic indicators. That doesn’t really work.”

It’s understandable that executives at most public companies wake up every morning thinking about the next earnings conference call, not the next product release. Their performance is measured in financial quarters, which becomes the rhythm of the entire company. “Because it has to be something,” Chesky said. He just thinks it should be something else. “I’m sure for Apple in the 2000s, earnings calls weren’t the thing the whole company was focused on,” he says. “The outings were.”

Focusing on product launches, not strategic priorities, doesn’t just result in better work. It also leads to happier workers, something Chesky learned firsthand whenever he was trying to recruit people at Apple. “It was impossible,” he said. And every time he was turned down, he was given a similar explanation: I just want to stay for the next launch.

All this inspired him to launch on Airbnb.

After the company went public and emerged from the pandemic, Chesky listened to customer feedback and felt it was time to fix everything that was wrong with the Airbnb experience. And he knew exactly how to do it.

The company launched its first product in 2021 and has since held two events per year to announce new features. Over the past three years, Airbnb says it has released more than 500 updates to its app, significantly more than in the previous three years.

The release cycle had another useful effect: it disrupted the company’s internal cadence. These days, Airbnb employees and executives submit to the pressure of deadlines, then take a deep breath. Chesky finds that running toward the release of a product as a team is more satisfying and less exhausting than feeling like you’re on a treadmill, running as fast as you can without actually going anywhere.

And the experience of Airbnb’s reorientation convinced him of one thing again.

“Most consumer companies would benefit from talking to the public at least once a year about what they do,” Chesky says.

Of course, it’s easy to see how this could turn into parody, with executives pretending to be Steve Jobs and treating every product like the original iPhone.

But it’s become an effective strategy even for companies where the idea of ​​a blockbuster product launch might seem absurd, like Taco Bell.

Last year, the fast food chain’s marketing director was watching an Apple event when he had an epiphany.

“More people in America eat at Taco Bell than have an iPhone,” Taylor Montgomery mused. “Why can’t we do something like that?”

They could. That’s what they did. Earlier this year, Taco Bell hosted Live Más Live to showcase what it calls “an unimaginable range of food innovations,” from crispy chicken nuggets (marinated in spicy jalapeño buttermilk!) to a street chalupa at revolutionary cheese (“the shell has cheese on the inside!”).

In the months leading up to the event, Montgomery studied Jobs’ speeches to prepare for his appearance on stage at a pop-up venue the company built in Las Vegas for the occasion. After introducing the Cheesy Chicken Crispanada and Mountain Dew’s Baja Blast Gelato as menu additions, he paid tribute to the showman who wowed crowds with the intrigue of “one more thing” – one last magical Apple product which was a secret until then. moment.

“Should we do one more?,” Montgomery said. “Introducing: the Cheez-It Crunchwrap.”

The inaugural event was so successful that the next one was immediately scheduled for January. In the meantime, it has already changed the way people within the company imagine ambitious products.

“Is this idea big enough to be on stage at Live Más Live?,” Montgomery said. “It’s the new bar for a big idea at Taco Bell.”

Write to Ben Cohen at [email protected]