YouSaid · the spoken record

Adi Tatarko

lines on the record: 90
first: 2022-05-30
most recent: 2022-05-30
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Started growing by word of mouth the minute that we opened it to the outside world and people could refer each other, the referral started happening. It took life of its own really.”
2022-05-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Houzz: Adi Tatarko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So he potentially may be able to continue with this and with our plan that I will be the main supporter. And nobody thought about money, big business. That was too big for us to think about these things at this point”
2022-05-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Houzz: Adi Tatarko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was On my way, you know, to take over the business from Phil. And I kept doing everything I had to do in terms of licenses and tests and studying and taking over and meeting with clients in order to fulfill my agreement to him, that at some point he can retire and I'll take over. And actually in my head, when we started seeing, you know, the ramp up of this, I thought, well, Maybe that's going to be Alon's thing, you know. May”
2022-05-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Houzz: Adi Tatarko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we said okay, you know, we can afford 35 bucks and we got it. It was not yet open to the outside world. We were just, you know. Using it with 20 parents from our kids school that were the first users that provided feedback about it with the first set of professionals mainly on the design side, architects and interior designers from Palo Alto and the Bay Area that we knew. And when we did it, we worked in the morning, came home, spent time with the kids, put them to bed, and then our second shift started at night when the kids were sleeping.”
2022-05-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Houzz: Adi Tatarko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not available. Haves was the closest we could get to house, which was a combination. Back then, the word buzz was heavily used with lots of consumer websites. It was a buzz to do this, a buzz to do that. So we said, hmm, house with 2Z at the end, it's kind of people can think it's a combination of house and buzz. It sounds good. It's just five letters.”
2022-05-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Houzz: Adi Tatarko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we needed a website to put everything in. It started with a website, not with the app. And money was limited, right? And so we went and looked for domains and obviously more common house names like house were.”
2022-05-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Houzz: Adi Tatarko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So by that time, after working a year with multiple professionals and also meeting different homeowners that been through remodeling projects in our area, we had the first people to go to and say, hey, we are trying to build this platform that we can all use where we'll connect the dots. Would you participate? And people said, oh yeah, sure, why not?”
2022-05-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Houzz: Adi Tatarko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, so it started with a website and he started programming. But when you program a website, you need somebody to use the website besides us in order to know if it's useful.”
2022-05-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Houzz: Adi Tatarko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's more than that. It's even a layer before that. Even the fact that many times you see a picture and the person that is being interviewed is the homeowner, you know, a celeb that builds a beautiful home and they're interviewing about the home. You don't know who was the builder, who was the designer. Is it too expensive that I should be, even if they mentioned the name, that it makes sense for me to call them or they're going to laugh in my face because my project is way too small for them? And for us to make sure that these professionals can stand behind their work and say, that's my job, let me explain to you what I did, how I did it. And that wasn't possible.”
2022-05-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Houzz: Adi Tatarko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Correct. And so when we started building house, it was very clear to us that one, it needs to be very, very visual. And two, it needs to bridge these gaps between what the professionals know in the industry and what the homeowners don't know but should know. And all this data need to come attached to the photos, which is the uniqueness of house. Today we have over 370 million metadata tag attached to these millions of photos. So when you are looking at a photo, you don't just look at something and say, I like it. You know what is that style? Which materials, products, layout were used? What was the budget? Who created it? Who are the professionals that worked on it? You can ask them questions. And that helped from the get-go to bridge some of these gaps.”
2022-05-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Houzz: Adi Tatarko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People in the community. We have a neighbor that is an architect. We have friends from our kids' school that experience the same thing when they try to remodel. We met some professionals during our process and we started asking questions. And the more we talk to people, the more we realize there are lots of frictions in this. And this frustration about the process was something that professionals in the industry shared as well because they were pointing fingers to us and they said, hey guys, you know, you understand that you're asking us to do something impossible. You are pointing your fingers to a picture that costs so much more than what you can afford. So educate yourself before you ask things.”
2022-05-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Houzz: Adi Tatarko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The idea that there must be a better way for us doing it, for people doing it, was already forming itself in 2008 when we struggled with our own process. But not in a way of thinking, oh, and now we're going to build a huge company out of it.”
2022-05-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Houzz: Adi Tatarko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So during that year, we tried to look for solutions for it. First, there was the problem of getting to good professionals that would really understand. Our style be able to accommodate our budget and do what we want, right? And so we looked a lot. And the more we look, the more we realize it's problematic. It's many of the professionals in the industry did not even have websites. They had a listing in the yellow book or some directory or legion sites, but you couldn't tell what it's all about, what are their expertise, what they're good at, what's their style. We couldn't get what we wanted online. And the more we tried, the more frustrated we became. How come we can do it efficiently? So that was it. That's how we started. And Alon kept saying it doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense that it works like this. There must be a better way of doing it, must be a better way of doing it.”
2022-05-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Houzz: Adi Tatarko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's going to cost 10x from what you have. So it's not an option. So frustrating took a long, long time to get plans in our hands for the first part of the remodel. And when we looked at it, we realized two things. One, we just don't like this plan at all. None of us like the plan. And two, we can't afford it. We're so far between what we have in the bank right now and what this is going to cost us. And we had to throw it away after lots of money that we spent to get these plans and start all over again. And we wasted more than a year on that. So that's on the bad side. On the good side, house was born because of that.”
2022-05-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Houzz: Adi Tatarko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh yeah. So first we saved the money. So it was possible to do something, not everything, but something. And we started looking for professionals, architects and builders and people to help us. And this is where we started facing some challenges. First, finding good professionals that would be relevant for us was extremely hard. Our network was very, very limited to the people that we knew. We ended up hiring someone that worked with us for almost a year on plans and that process was so tedious and problematic because we were asked to run to the bookstore on University Avenue and buy books and showing the books what we like and what we don't like. And then just to hear from the architect or the people, you know, yeah, that's very nice that you like this.”
2022-05-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Houzz: Adi Tatarko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Had no choice. We had no money. When we finished paying for the house, we had very little left. We knew we're going to live with it for a while and we'll need to save again in order to start slowly updating different parts of the house. That was the deal. We knew it. Yes, it was livable, but livable in a way that our tiny master bath was so tiny and so small and Aloni is six foot three. He had to stand on his knees when he brushed his teeth in the morning and evening, right? You know, it was that little.”
2022-05-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Houzz: Adi Tatarko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, of course. But we knew that we had to save money first in order to do that. And I remember Alan telling me, oh gosh, you know, we're going to put all our savings into this down payment. Price is so high here if it will go down, we're broke.”
2022-05-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Houzz: Adi Tatarko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think the first few years were all dedicated to our new careers. Alon was really, he built the API from scratch, you know, for eBay. Wow. And so he was very, very busy doing what he did there at the beginning. They didn't have it. Then he built it. And then all of a sudden,”
2022-05-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Houzz: Adi Tatarko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was obvious. If there was something obvious in our life, it was that Alon is entrepreneur, born to be intact. He at some point will start his own company. I had no doubts. It was me that experienced tech for years, both in Tel Aviv and later on, you know, for another year in New York that said, it's too intense for me. It's not something that I can imagine alongside with having a family. And it wasn't an option for me not having a family.”
2022-05-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Houzz: Adi Tatarko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was very flattering, and I talked with Alan a lot about it, which for a moment sounds very compelling to him as well. He said, well, if you do that, I'll be able to leave eBay and start my own thing.”
2022-05-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Houzz: Adi Tatarko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He liked that. The fact that I came and challenged everything was something new and compelling to him. And he wanted me to talk like this all day long. So he was ready for his retirement, which I didn't know at this point. He was getting close to 70 at this point. And he at some point came to me and said, I want to offer you a full-time job and the deal. And I said, what's the deal? He said, I want you in a few years to take over the practice from me.”
2022-05-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Houzz: Adi Tatarko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think I was very honest with him about lest sugar coating of different things that I wanted to say about the approach, about where I thought that he's too conservative, then I would dare to say it what other people didn't say. And I had nothing to lose at this point. I wanted to learn and grow. And when I saw something that made like, what? How can you do it like this? This is so old school. I would say it.”
2022-05-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Houzz: Adi Tatarko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, I studied. I started the internship halfway through school and my boss Phil had a branch of Commonwealth financials. It's a very big financial planning firm, but he had his own branch for 40 years in the Silicon Valley. And what was interesting about his branch was he served lots of the tech executives in the valley. So the exposure through financial planning was really striking to me. Learning and coming to it from this direction. And feel at some point realize that I'm not his, I think, typical worker.”
2022-05-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Houzz: Adi Tatarko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Continue jumping with me, we'll find what we want, but you have to continue jumping and you have to believe that it will happen. It will turn to battery. You will see. And Alon Isso, not that person. So it was striking to me that usually it's the opposite. And it was so inspiring. Okay, I'll jump with you. I came all the way here. I'll jump with you.”
2022-05-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Houzz: Adi Tatarko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But we had moments there that I always remind myself how we sat one day this small hotel and I told him, what are we doing in this place? I want my friends. I want my family. I want the city. What are we doing? It's not going to happen. We're wasting time and money and energy. And then he said, do you know the story about these two frogs? And I said, what? And he said, the two frogs that fell to the bucket full of milk. And I said, no, I don't. And he said, Adi, two frogs fell to a bucket full of milk. They were jumping, jumping, jumping. One of them got very tired. So what she did, she stopped jumping, drowned, died. The other one kept jumping and jumping and jumping until the milk turned to butter. She climbed on it and got out of the bucket.”
2022-05-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Houzz: Adi Tatarko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, after 16 interviews and four rounds where they called him to eBay, he finally got the offer. So it must have been like a month and a half at least where we are renewing our hotel every single week until he got the offer.”
2022-05-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Houzz: Adi Tatarko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You make it sound easy, I can tell you that that period of our life is something that I always tell to other entrepreneurs and to my kids and remind ourselves where we were when we got to the Silicon Valley because we didn't know a soul in the Silicon Valley and we came, we didn't have money. I was still on that visa. We had zero knowledge what's going to happen, and the clock was ticking on the visa and our savings.”
2022-05-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Houzz: Adi Tatarko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He was very drawn here and he thought it's going to be amazing. But I was actually so not into it, this area, the Silicon Valley. And I said over my dead body, I meant it. This is the suburb. You know, I need a city. I need Tel Aviv. I need New York. I can't live in a place like this where young, we don't have kids. What am I going to do there? And he looked at me. He said, I think you should really, really just give it a chance for me”
2022-05-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Houzz: Adi Tatarko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We knew that when this deal will end, both my salary and the working visa will end, and we can no longer stay in the US. And so we knew we have a few months. And then we had to make a decision. What is it we're going to do the day after this will end? Are we going to go back to Israel? Are we going to try to look for something? Are we going to move like Alan wanted to the Silicon Valley? Now, the year guy is 2001 now, and the end of the dot-com, you know, the bubble burst pretty much. And everybody is getting out of the Silicon Valley. Lots of jobs are being cut, lots of startups are shutting their doors, and everybody is telling us that we're crazy. Alone, however, had a very different idea in his mind. He wanted to move to the Silicon Valley.”
2022-05-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Houzz: Adi Tatarko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so you're absolutely right for two reasons. One, we had some savings, but they were not enough to stop working, small savings. And we absolutely needed the money. And two, the clock was ticking with the working visa because we are pretty nerdy on that front. We're people that will never spend one minute in a place without the appropriate approval.”
2022-05-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Houzz: Adi Tatarko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, and now we are married, no kids, and an offer comes our way to legally merge our business into a start of the just raised a few million dollars, move to New York with the thinking, by the way, that we'll do it for a few years and go back. That's what we thought. Go back to that to Israel.”
2022-05-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Houzz: Adi Tatarko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Correct. But Alon said, I have a better idea. I'm about to finish my service in the Army. And I got a few clients that want me to build these systems for them, program for them. And why don't you come and partner with me and you'll deal with everything related to the business side. He already had IBM and other big tech companies asking him to develop systems. And so I learned a lot about it when we, again, we lived together. We were already together for a while now.”
2022-05-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Houzz: Adi Tatarko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Books, life outside of Earth, if possible or not, what do we know? What we don't, philosophy, all kinds of things that you can't even imagine. It's just try to squeeze first five, six dates with someone into one ride of 15 hours, right? And you're trapped. You can go anywhere. And when we arrived to the area of the islands, I was supposed to go with... My girlfriends, and you know, just stay all the time with them. And I ended up spending all the time with him. And I always say our life started in a honeymoon. And I thought, well, from here, it's only going to go down, right? You know, how can you keep things at that level of the islands in Thailand the rest of your life? And when we ended up being together, I said, I'm going to hold you up to these standards. That's what I like.”
2022-05-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Houzz: Adi Tatarko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, in Bangkok, we had to travel with very, very limited budget. And, you know, in order to get to the island, we had to take a 15-hour bus. And I was traveling with two girlfriends. The three of us sat in front of the bus and the bus driver came to me at the beginning of the journey. And he said, I'm sorry, you cannot sit here. More people need to come in next station. You have to move to the back. And then he literally took my hand, walked me to the back of the bus, pointed to an empty seat next to Alan, and said, you sit here. So we ended up sitting next to each other for 15 hours. And we talked the entire time. Or if you ask alone, he will say, I talked 14 and a half hours. He said a few things. I don't think so, but we did talk a lot. And it was just very, very magical.”
2022-05-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Houzz: Adi Tatarko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Correct. So I think I had a very, very meaningful service. And I think I learned a lot at a very young age how to emphasize what's important, how to juggle gazillion things and still, you know, catch all the balls. And again, be sure that what's the most important is being catched first.”
2022-05-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Houzz: Adi Tatarko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was involved in very interesting plans and missions and one that is very well known to the public today was the rescue of Jewish people from Ethiopia at the time that politically it was very, very challenging to do that.”
2022-05-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Houzz: Adi Tatarko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I ended up selecting going to the Air Force. I think that a big part of who I became later on is due to my amazing experience in the few years I serviced in the Air Force and what I did there.”
2022-05-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Houzz: Adi Tatarko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was an okay. I wouldn't say excellent student. I made it through. You know, guy, my mom was so liberal and so, you know, trusting. And she said to me in high school, look, I know that many kids just in high school don't tell the truth to their parents. So let's have some ground rules here. I don't want you to ever need to lie to me. If you don't want to go to school, or you'd rather have a fun day once a month or whatever it is with your friends at the beach, let it be. Just don't lie to me. And if you tell me the truth and you promise to never do things behind my back, I will always have your back and always support you. And she did. She said, that's your life. I'm telling you why you should study and I know you're capable. Of doing whatever you want. However, do it your way. Just never lie to me.”
2022-05-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Houzz: Adi Tatarko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was actually a guy studying with the same thirty eight kids in the same class from first to eighth grade. And I'm very, very proud to tell you. That to date, I'm in touch with the vast majority of the kids from that class. We meet every several years with some of kids. I still call them kids. I still have close relationship to date. So it was a very warm, friendly, close environment with lots of fun memories.”
2022-05-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Houzz: Adi Tatarko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We went on a social event from our little son's preschool. And then I met this nice grandparent of one of the kids and said, I love homes, I love renovation, I did multiples in my life, you know, send me the link. And I sent him the link. And then he calls me afterward and he said, are you crazy? How many users you said you have? And why aren't you raising money for this? He said, well, you know, it's our thing. Nobody tells us what to do. And he said, you know what? I think that you're making a mistake. I'll just say this. If you're not going to raise money, somebody else will realize what you're doing. They will raise money. They will copy you. You will say goodbye to this initiative.”
2022-05-30 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Houzz: Adi Tatarko · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT