Disrupt Backstage Pass: Ashton Kutcher On Why He Invested In AirBnB

Hi. I'm Sarah Lacy backstage at TechCrunch Disrupt with Ashton Kutcher.

The guy in the hat.

The guy in the hat. So you were just onstage, and Charlie Rose did not get out of you what I'm about to get out of you.

He just didn't ask.

That one of your angel portfolio companies that no one knows about, very popular company, Air BnB.

Yeah.

When did you invest?


I've been working with them since about February. I'm an investor, but I'm also a strategic eally taking the brand international, which is really important for them right now because there are so many ex-US companies trying to chase what they are doing.

Right
And so that's kind of our primary focus right now is working on the UK and Germany and starting to build the company there. Now you're a very different Ashton Kutcher than the Ashton Kutcher who came to Tech Crunch 40 or Tech Crunch 50 or whatever we were calling it back then. First of all, you seemed more nervous to be in front of the techies then.

You seem very calm and self assured these days.

I'm still nervous. I probably just know better words now.

But you've also evolved more from Ashton Kutcher, entrepreneur, to Ashton Ashton Kutcher, entrepreneur and Angel investor. You have a portfolio of 12 companies, and really good companies, things like AirBnB, Skype, I don't know how many others I'm allowed to say or not. So how do you see that your role has really evolved in this ecosystem from a couple sort of silly, early companies that do so well to be attached to pretty big names now.

I think when I came here three years ago, I came with a media property. It wasn't really a tech company. It's the space that I knew, I knew how to create media units, right? That's what I was educated in and that's what I knew and that's what I've been doing for the last whatever five or six years.

And then when I came here, I saw this entire ecosystem of people and I just sort of became an apprentice and, like, sat next to some of the smartest people in the system and really just tried to suck information from them, learn from them. I just started reading a ton of stuff because I don't like to fail.

And then what I found from sitting down with them is, I would go through different people's investment portfolios and I would say "I like this one" and "I'm interested in that one" and "This makes sense to me", "I don't get this, but I understand this", "I think I could be helpful this company through an introduction to these people, because there are certain people in the media world that can be really, really influential to a company.

I can kind of get a return phone call from most people that I place a call to, and that can become really, really valuable. Like that level of introduction for people, when they're first starting out a company, can become extremely valuable. So some of my first investments were Skype, obviously, Foursquare, and I'm in investor Path and TinyChat.

And when I saw, I wasn't an angel investor in AirBnB but when I saw the power of that company, I actually saw it as one of the first companies that is so truly cutting edge in what it's doing taking social trust and manifesting that into commerce.

And some people would say online is eroding trust, so they're taking.


So they've actually managed through an integrity of a product and integrity of people to start to create social trust and transfer that into commerce. And if you go, it's like going to a restaurant and looking at tips on Foursquare or something like that. Or like now using Explore on Foursquare where you go and you, I want pizza, and it shows you, like, oh, these are six places that my friends have gone to, and I go, I have trust the fact that these people have the kind of taste that I would endorse, so thereby I'm gonna go to that place.

AirBnB is really doing that with the way that they're creating an ecosystem of trust. And now their new Facebook implementation does it even further, where I can see the places that my friends have stayed.

It's actually, its actually doing something in technology that is a social interaction that people may not have the trust to do without that level of social.

Right, it's solving the trust problem not just trying to not destroy it.

It's actually solving the trust problem, exactly, as opposed to destroying it. I mean, granted, you would say "I'm going to New York for the weekend. Do you have a friend whose place I could stay in?" Sure, maybe. But maybe they don't. But maybe you have a friend of a friend who's endorsed this place and you say to your friend, hey you know that girl, does she have good taste?

And where she would stay is my kind of place. Yeah, absolutely.

Right. It takes out all like sort of the inefficiencies of it.

It takes out the inefficiencies of it and actually lands you in a new commerce that I think is going to have extraordinary value.

Now I want to ask. You've just signed on to a very high profile, very demanding job, being the replacement on Two and a Half Men. You said on stage with Charlie acting is still your first love. Is Catalyst Media, your venture investments, everything you've done on the tech side, now going to suffer?

No. It's to get a benefit.

How?

I'm not going to end up on a set in Shreveport, Louisiana for three months working sixteen-hour days.

Predictability.

Yeah. So, I've worked this job before when I was on The 70s Show. I know what the schedule is and I know it really, really well and I built Catalyst while I was making that show. I built Catalyst, I made multiple movies, I produced Punk'd and starred in Punk'd as well. I was able to have about three different jobs while I was working on a sitcom.

And the great thing about sitcoms is that, absolutely brilliant, the schedule: you work about thirty hours a week. And you work for two weeks and then you get a week off. So, it's two weeks on, one week off, two weeks on, one week off.

That 's pretty sweet.

And then you have three months off in the summer, and three weeks off at Christmas, and a week off at Thanksgiving. So, the way the schedule works, one, it keeps me in and around my office instead of ending up in France shooting a movie. And secondly, there's an extraordinary amount of time around that.

And thirdly, it's just an absolutely brilliant job. I get to make people laugh for a living. I don't know if it gets better than that.

Wow, suddenly I'm envious. I thought I had a great job at TechCrunch. I think we work like 90 hours a week and I never get a vacation. Thank you so much for joining us Ashton. Always great to have you here.

Thank you.

Pleasure.