Spencer Rascoff

I ran over to my co-founder and said, we need to pivot the whole company to mobile. This is going to change everything because this is when you want Zillow, is when you're untethered from your desk. It's when you're driving around looking at houses. It's when you're walking around a neighborhood. It's when you're at a cocktail party at someone's house. That's when you want Zillow.

It's not when you're at your desk. It's when you're away from your desk. And so if this can work on a smartphone through an app, oh my God. By the end of the week, we had changed the name of the company from Zillow.com to just Zillow because .com really denotes a website. And I felt strongly that we were not a website anymore. We were a service, which was going to be mobile first.

It's not when you're at your desk. It's when you're away from your desk. And so if this can work on a smartphone through an app, oh my God. By the end of the week, we had changed the name of the company from Zillow.com to just Zillow because .com really denotes a website. And I felt strongly that we were not a website anymore. We were a service, which was going to be mobile first.

I had announced to the company that every product and design meeting had to start with mobile screenshots. And anyone that showed desktop screenshots before mobile screenshots, the meeting would just be ended right at that moment. I think I only had to do that once or twice.

I had announced to the company that every product and design meeting had to start with mobile screenshots. And anyone that showed desktop screenshots before mobile screenshots, the meeting would just be ended right at that moment. I think I only had to do that once or twice.

where I would just walk out of a meeting and declare the meeting over, and people learned pretty quick that we were going to be a mobile-first company. And within a couple months, we had the first version of the Zillow iPhone app out. And I was right. We have three things that were special. Number one, as I already said, the consumer wanted to use our app on mobile. Number two, we had...

where I would just walk out of a meeting and declare the meeting over, and people learned pretty quick that we were going to be a mobile-first company. And within a couple months, we had the first version of the Zillow iPhone app out. And I was right. We have three things that were special. Number one, as I already said, the consumer wanted to use our app on mobile. Number two, we had...

much less competition on mobile than on desktop because the real estate brokerage companies that had decent websites that we competed with, they were nowhere on mobile. So it was a much better competitive landscape for us. And number three, you sort of alluded to this, we actually monetized on mobile in a way that most other companies didn't.

much less competition on mobile than on desktop because the real estate brokerage companies that had decent websites that we competed with, they were nowhere on mobile. So it was a much better competitive landscape for us. And number three, you sort of alluded to this, we actually monetized on mobile in a way that most other companies didn't.

So if you think of Facebook, for example, when they went public, half of their usage was on mobile and they had never run an ad on mobile before. And that's why the Facebook IPO was such a debacle because it was unclear how they were going to monetize on mobile. And with a small screen on mobile, there's less real estate, no pun intended to pop up ads or whatever.

So if you think of Facebook, for example, when they went public, half of their usage was on mobile and they had never run an ad on mobile before. And that's why the Facebook IPO was such a debacle because it was unclear how they were going to monetize on mobile. And with a small screen on mobile, there's less real estate, no pun intended to pop up ads or whatever.

And so a lot of advertising models monetize very badly on mobile. Well, Zillow monetizes much better on mobile because of click to call. So when I'm looking at a home on my iPhone or Android, I can now click and call or click to text. And so it generates more leads and more highly qualified leads than desktop where you can't click to call.

And so a lot of advertising models monetize very badly on mobile. Well, Zillow monetizes much better on mobile because of click to call. So when I'm looking at a home on my iPhone or Android, I can now click and call or click to text. And so it generates more leads and more highly qualified leads than desktop where you can't click to call.

So not only do we have a better product that consumers like that had a less competitive landscape, we made more money from mobile usage than desktop usage. And that was a really rare thing for a startup or for any tech company to have at that time.

So not only do we have a better product that consumers like that had a less competitive landscape, we made more money from mobile usage than desktop usage. And that was a really rare thing for a startup or for any tech company to have at that time.

Absolutely. So at Zillow, we use the word persona. Beth the buyer, Susan the seller, Harriet the homeowner, Alan the agent, those are the most important personas at Zillow. And if you walk the halls of Zillow, well, I guess you can't do that anymore because it's a remote company now. But when I was CEO, it was in an office company.

Absolutely. So at Zillow, we use the word persona. Beth the buyer, Susan the seller, Harriet the homeowner, Alan the agent, those are the most important personas at Zillow. And if you walk the halls of Zillow, well, I guess you can't do that anymore because it's a remote company now. But when I was CEO, it was in an office company.

If you walked the halls back then, you would see posters of these personas And you'd hear employees talking about, oh, Beth wants this feature, or Rachel the renter wants that feature, or we should build this for Susan. So yes, understanding your consumer and your professional personas and building for them is critically important. And that's exactly how we ran Zillow.

If you walked the halls back then, you would see posters of these personas And you'd hear employees talking about, oh, Beth wants this feature, or Rachel the renter wants that feature, or we should build this for Susan. So yes, understanding your consumer and your professional personas and building for them is critically important. And that's exactly how we ran Zillow.

It was hard, not easily. I wrote a blog post in 2007 that's probably out there on the web still somewhere on Zillow's blog. The headline was, The Tidal Wave is Coming. And it was quite easy for us to see in our data that we were going to have a foreclosure crisis. You could see the increasing number of late payments and mortgage delinquencies happening