Spencer Rascoff, CEO of Zillow: "How the Rolling Stones Inspired Me to Enter the World of Business"

The Rolling Stones concerts have inspired generations of teenagers to learn to play guitar, but for Spencer Rascoff, they have been an incentive to enter the business world.

Teenager, in the 1990s, he was lucky enough to enter in the wings of several groups.

But instead of marveling at Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and the rest of the group, he says he was struck by how the team behind the band did the show work.

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"I saw the producer of the tour as executive director and the group as a product," recalls Spencer, who is now 43 years old.

"It was a formative experience, I was fascinated by the music industry"

Spencer managed to get in in the wings because his father was a business administrator and tour director of the Rolling Stones, and worked with other groups like U2, David Bowie and Paul Simon.

Despite his experience, the father recommends that he not focus on the music industry.

Currently, Spencer is the executive director of the real estate Zillowvalued at nearly $ 3.9 billion.

The company – headquartered in Seattle (United States) – charges over $ 1,000 million in sales annually and is used by 195 million Americans each month seeking to sell, buy or rent a home. House.

A blow for the company

Spencer went to Harvard University, where he studied government and economics.

After two years working as a bank investor in Wall Street, he co-founded his first venture: the Hotwire.com travel website.

He was only 24 years old.

Society is growing rapidly, but the attacks of the September 11, 2001 in New York.

The company has not only suffered the financial consequences of the attack. Much worse than that, he had to face a media storm when the FBI discovered that some of the attackers had used their website to buy plane tickets.

The tickets in question were not bought to commit the attacks of that day, but they were used a few days ago by the group.

Hotwire had to face the headlines and the storm that put the company in question.

"This reputation and the fact that people were not flying long after September 11 forced Hotwire to tighten their belts," Spencer said.

Until they finally sold the company.

How he got up

After working for a year with the Expedia travel agency, he joined two friends who had just put a real estate website called Zillow on the market.

The goal was to have a list of properties for sale in the United States, but, as Spencer acknowledges, they did not know how they were going to go. make money with this project.

"When we left, we had no business model," he says.

"We wanted to have a large group of people who would be part of the site and define the business model later."

To achieve this goal, Zillow allows any business or person to sell or rent their properties at no cost.

And at the same time, guests looking for a property have nothing to pay.

How does the company win then?

With advertising.

Real estate agents, for example, pay for their properties to appear first on the list.

On the other hand, companies pay for ads on the web, offering all kinds of products and services to improve the home.

These types of businesses are attracted by the large number of customers who visit the site. And according to Spencer, the company has a record of 110 million homes in the USA.

The entrepreneur is the executive director of the company for eight years. During this period, the company bought 15 smaller competitors and, in 2011, went public on Wall Street.

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These are years of growth, but there is always uncertainty.

In the months of July, August and September, sales increased by 22% over the same period of the previous year.

However, growth was below market expectations and the firm's shares they lost half of their value in recent months, in the context of a real estate market that is showing signs of slowing down.

And even though Spencer did not follow in his father's footsteps in the music industry, he still travels.

"I travel often because I like spending time directly with my employees," he says.

"A typical day, when I travel, starts at 6 am and ends at 11 pm At the end of this long day of work, I check my emails and social networks."

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