Redfin’s Tedx Talk: Take the Red Pill
A few weeks ago, I flew to Chicago for a Tedx presentation on my favorite subject, how software entrepreneurs can build real-world companies. If you’re a coder looking for ideas to start a company, we have a few suggestions for you at 8:45: If you’re just wondering what happens when a software CEO attends an… Read More
All You Have to Do Is Ask: How to Hire Smart People Everywhere
Many years ago, one of Redfin’s investors asked Sean Moriarty, former TicketMaster CEO, to take me to lunch. Sean asked only two questions: “Are you some kind of star-f****er?” (I’d breathlessly inquired, as if it wasn’t self-evident, what David Lee Roth was really like) and “Do you have an eye for talent?” “Well,” I said,… Read More
Alone, Just the Two of Us
I’d just sat down last month for a chat with the CEO of a very successful startup when his co-founder, the company’s chairman, walked into our coffee-shop. The two had been apart for a few minutes, but the chairman made such a beeline for us that I worried he wanted my pastry. He was in… Read More
Since When Did We Become a Lobby?
When one of my best friends was just getting started in his career, he wrote a paper arguing that Nevada has the most business-friendly laws in the U.S. He’d just moved there to take a position as head of marketing for SuperPawn, the world’s second-largest chain of pawnshops. Now he runs business development for one… Read More
Life on a Short Street
On the empty sidewalk opposite my house, I was toodling along on my bike recently — and yes, I was also talking on a cell phone with my brother — when I heard a driver yell, “HEY BUDDY, WHY DON’T YOU WATCH WHERE YOU’RE GOING?” Before even looking up, I responded: “WHY DON’T YOU GO… Read More
Never Tell Me the Odds
In a board call last month, I finally told everyone that the commission savings that Redfin offers home sellers and buyers dramatically lowers our profits margins and there is no evidence that it drives more revenue. We have, I told our investors, given away $100 million because of my irrational belief that Redfin was put… Read More
There has been over the past 18 months a Cambrian explosion of startup life, many incubated by angels and seed funds. And now the process of natural selection is beginning again. I got back from the Valley Thursday and what I gathered from the people there is the same as what I’ve heard here: that… Read More
I was talking to a friend in Silicon Valley last night who told me about a consumer Internet startup that is generating tens of millions of dollars in revenue, with eye-popping year-over-year growth. What was striking about the conversation wasn’t the revenue itself, but that I’d never heard of the company it came from. This has… Read More
Have you read the wonderful, deeply counter-cultural lecture on solitude and leadership delivered by William Deresiewicz in spring 2010 to the West Point plebe class? I just found it via David Brooks, and can hardly recommend it enough. Part of what makes the lecture seem so important is the audience hearing it. West Point students are… Read More
I just toured a startup the other day and what struck me while making the rounds was the fundamental sameness of the startup vibe: a handsome group of slack-jawed folks drowning out their ADD with 80-decibels of music. Startup offices are supposed to have the buzz a newsroom once had, but often are sort of… Read More