Opendoor

“Opendoor had had many seven-step plans over eight months to become in-person. It never worked.”

“In my first four weeks, I killed two entire business lines. Opendoor used to have, essentially, we provided general contractor services to other companies, which was, it was a profitable business for us, but it was not the mission of our company. Our job isn't…”

“And usually for tech companies, like, your largest expense to an external vendor ends up being, like, your cloud provider. But for Opendoor, number one was millions of dollars written to a very large consulting firm.”

“Where the founders are no longer there, there's no large shareholder that cares a lot about the company. So over time, many of these companies essentially become hosts for professional leeches whose job it is to suck the company dry while making management loo…”

“We're buying six to seven times more homes this week than we did last year this week. And it's almost entirely because we reduce friction.”

“We make our money in two ways. First, we make money in each transaction, relatively thin margins of each transaction. But we make our real money from the first derivative of the business, which is a mortgage, Insurance, title and escrow, all the things that go…”

“All success is unique, but all failures rhyme. Good people leave. People lose control of innovation. GNA goes up, and over time you end up fighting, picking fights with your customers and partners.”

“Yeah, honestly, Opendoor would have died had it not been for maybe a dozen people.”

“I sent my team, I have a blueprint that I sent to the entire company, because my job was to create strong, repelling forces. I.e., I wanted everyone who didn't like how I was going to run the company to quit.”

“So the first week in Open Door, I changed our career page. Our career page used to say something along the lines of, this is a happy place to work where we all care about each other, and by the way, here are all of our ERGs. Opendoor's career page now says, th…”

“We have built the AI exoskeleton around every human being at Opendoor, such that they can be three, four X more efficient than everyone else.”

“We've had to basically hire an entirely new company, and that has been very painful.”

“So we literally gave everyone corporate cards and said, hey, if you see a home whose power is not on, if you type in the address into Slack, you will get back the phone number you're supposed to call, the account number you're supposed to say, and the credit c…”

“To give you a sense, the last time Opendoor bought as many homes as we bought last quarter, Opendoor's OPEX was more than twice as high.”

“If you think of my time at Opendoor, I think it's reasonable to say I've only started three products. And we've shut down a few dozen.”

“Say it now. Like the second you know something, say it. Say it about the thing, not the person. Always say this sucks, not you suck. And say it until you've been heard.”

“Chemical spills are notoriously difficult to solve and clean up. But if you arrive at the site of a chemical spill, The first bit is really easy to solve. Just grab a shovel. Yeah. The last bit requires a bunch of microscopes and shit, but the first bit is sho…”

“So Open Door had gone fully remote. So at nine a.m. That Monday, I told the entire company, hey, Open Door is going to be back in the office next Monday. If you don't plan to be in one of these offices, we appreciate your help, but you're no longer with us.”

“I have a rule at Open Door that people decide things, not teams. So whenever someone says legal decide X, I'm like, who? Legal doesn't get to decide thing. Like, was the name of the person.”