YouSaid · the spoken record

Eric Wu

lines on the record: 83
first: 2019-10-11
most recent: 2019-10-11
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

“My sound bite would be these social systems have created an environment, which is I call this crazy environment of sharing with ulterior motive. Which is completely damaging to psychology and behavior and the fabric of many things. You are.”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, from a side from Hollywood, obviously. And answer that a couple ways. One is I thought I'd have a hard time finding good talent. Local talent that hasn't been the case. Now we're still fairly small, so we've hired, I don't know, 60 or 70 people over the last three or four years, not 600 or 700 or thousands. I think if you were at that scale, you would definitely run into a kind of a market-based problem in terms of supply demand. But for the smaller companies, the talent's great. You get a lot of people that want to move from some of the big studios have great talent coming out of animation studios, et cetera. So there's a lot of that kind of cross-industry pollination. And we're actually seeing a lot of people from the Bay Area. Interested in coming down to LA. It's still a tiny bit cheaper than up in here, up here in the bay.”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So once we get everything working comfortably, it's like, wow, you could double, you know, maybe not double load overnight, but you could double the business with international expansion. Because what you see in the international markets are a bunch of teeny tiny companies that are even smaller scale. It's the 10 people in Germany who've come up with some kind of interesting offering. There's no pan-European or pan-Asian Evite that's out there. So that could be a natural expansion point.”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We've been playing catch up for such a long time. We finally now got a healthy platform where we can kind of build these revenue streams on top of it. So regardless of where we ended up, I think there's a standalone path, which could be just get this thing much, much larger. One simple example of that. We're not in the international markets at all. Most people don't know that. We are 90% in US and Canada.”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, for us, I'm always telling the T. Yeah, although they hit that magic scale inflection point, of course, right, and went out, we're still at the point where I think we could five or 10x the business as it exists because, again, we haven't.”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But it's true. I mean, it's true that these things are just so massive now that they just. Which is their right now that they've got the scale. They just get big enough, wait for something to get into. I'm not”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And email. And the email infrastructure that we built is pretty massive and pretty complex. So you have all these tech startups who start up and they're like, well, we have a tech solution. It's like, but that only solves a little narrow niche. So it's definitely a superior platform to have the full end-to-end full cross-platform text, email, shareable links. You can put it onto Facebook and other things. Those are all things that we added after I joined. So that's one, makes it hard to disrupt. Two, the fact that our core user base is our core model is free. So it's always harder to disrupt free with free. So then you're kind of in the boat of... Can you out deliver an experience versus us? And as I mentioned, we are hardcore focused on the customer, our net promoter rating is up in the high 70s or low 80s for the experience.”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Turns out that's hard for a couple of reasons. One, the nature of at least the types of parties that we touch, which are these kind of high value moments, are not going to happen all in mobile. They are going to be a hybrid between text.”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. Yeah, no, it's fascinating. One of the things I was most worried about, and we chat with the exec team that I put together, is what are the existential risks to the business as we see it? And one of my theories going in was absolutely that, which is like a small mobile centric startup could effectively get the early traction with a better proposition, start mobile first, because we were behind and effectively take over the space. Like millennials.”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At the same time, you don't have 100 million folks that you can put something in front of and trust. So we get this amazing scale platform. We can't move quite as fast as a brand new startup, but of course then we have. The scale that a startup would die for in terms of a testing platform and environment. Right.”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If I get the gist of your question, I don't think there's a big drain on the fact that we have existing infrastructure and brand because one of the things that I brought in was Nothing is sacred at the end of the day, right? In some ways, let's think about the business on a moving forward basis. What do the customers need and want, and let's go chase that? So the only real big drag from a legacy perspective is the drag on the That's the result of the complexity of the infrastructure. So we do get some folks that say, well, if we were just doing this from scratch, we'd be able to build that tomorrow and launch. And it's like, yeah, that's true.”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's one of the draws going back to your question, one of the appeals to me of joining Eva was that it's from an employee size. It actually is. Almost like a series A or early series B in scale. So we're 110, 120 employees, but we're sitting on this massive infrastructure that reaches, you know, sends out 2 billion emails and hundreds of millions of invitations. We actually get to move at the speed of a company that's fairly small, which is great. So no, I'd say if you had to draw the spectrum of super big company kind of based on our footprint versus startup, we still operate much more in a startup vibe, I would say”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Makes sense. Like those businesses. So, when you think about shifting the culture of the company to do this, how hard is it these days to do that from a entrepreneur? You said you acted like a startup, but you're not really a startup.”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's one of the first things I did is I absolutely looked at a ton of those places. My general take is those are actually very interesting sister businesses. They're very interesting adjacent businesses. There's some top line synergy to be had. Very few of them would really benefit from being part of Evite. Those are actually all standalone value propositions or networks that are going to. I think it's just the value that we bring as an invitation platform provides some acceleration to those businesses, but never sufficient energy to immediately 100 exit, if that makes sense. Those businesses will need to build their scale on their own merits.”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just die Actually, Ophodo was one. Right. That was why I was fighting in my first CEO role. It was fighting a negative social network. And there's just so much negative momentum in that system that it's very hard to stabilize.”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Don't let Keith sell it Just don't. It's a good idea, actually. That's an Airbnb. I'm like, don't let those idiots sell it. It's actually fascinating. If you can do it right, that's really, I think, the biggest challenge. Yeah.”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think managing through a recession will demonstrate that the business is anticyclical. I think we'll see demand increase for the product. Again, when there's more volatility, we see consumers flocking to the website.”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I think we've done it an excellent job of scaling that business and showing that there's high conversion at a six and a half percent fee, one in two sellers convert. And so it's extremely high converting. What's unique about it is that the value proposition is also interesting. It cuts through the clutter. And people just want to understand, okay, what can they get today? And then the next chapter for us is how do we build a buyer experience that consumers love? How do we eliminate all of the pain points for people shopping and buying a home and then tie the two together? And I think in the medium term and certainly the long term, Open will be a marketplace for real estate where you can list with us, you can sell to us, and also you can buy from us and buy any home on the market.”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think what we're focused on is now the demand side. So we spent the past four years building a way to sell your home online in five minutes or less.”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think there are certain roles of realtors too that are useful to consumers today and largely based on being your advisor. So it's like local expertise in where to live and obviously some financial components, whether you should be able to, you can financially afford to buy that home is one big question. But I do believe that today realtors spend a great deal of time down two dimensions that will be automated away. The first is lead generation, which talked about relationship building. The second is project management. There's just a lot of different steps in the transaction and you have to coordinate across multiple parties. And actually software does a really good job of automating those pieces. And so in the future, I think realtors will look like financial advisors.”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Here's for less is more affordable Who do you hope to replace? I mean, again, real estate agents really, I see them coming after you, the hotel people came after Airbnb. Like you have a lot of people who are coming after you. How do you answer that? What are you worried about?”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To your point, I'd rather just say to the buyer here's his home is more affordable as opposed to wrapping it up and then like removing all the things.”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're not going to do staging. We actually stage homes. What's funny is because we sell so many homes a month, we can A-B test things. Actually, we end up AB testing staging. It doesn't work. It does work in certain price points in certain areas, but it's just operationally complex. What's funny is that we used to work with the stager in Phoenix and. The max capacity was something like 20 homes a week. We were doing five. Now we're doing 400 to 500 a month. And so just like there's just no way to really make that a scalable part of the process. But also I just think it's.”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, I think that's what open source tackling had on, which is like, you know, what is the role of the traditional process agents included? And that includes Heidel and Escrow agents. This includes mortgage brokers.”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The other form is Well, I think it's more of a, in real estate, it's not defined why you particularly need someone. Like, for example, I sold a house in San Francisco relatively recently. I had two of them for reasons you don't need to go into. But they were like the whole staging thing and everything else. And I'm like, don't you get like 10 offers? Why do I even need to stage anything? Why do I have to spend that $2,000? Well, it'll sell more. I'm like, will it? How much more? $2,000 more? Is it $10,000? This is a pain in my neck. Like, just leave it open and empty. What do I care? And it was really interesting when I sort of think about where the value change is. Why isn't there an easier way to do something that's such a significant transaction? You know, as easy as Amazon or something.”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so that's one form. Sure. The other form is relationship based services. And it's that you feel obligated to use a certain person because they're a friend of a friend or you're a brother-in-law. And that's the form of agents that I think needs to change. And so it's not about necessarily feeling obligated to use someone. It's about, okay, what are the services they're providing and what are the jobs to be done?”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's interesting you say that because I think there's two forms, right? So one is that I'm providing value and helping you through a process that is confusing and causes you stress.”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, of course. Yes, that's a drum. I'm being unfair to real estate agents. I have very good friends with real estate agents, but I think that it's sort of like, what do I need you for is what I think about. I think about that about lots of service people, like lawyers. Like, do I need you for this? Because I'm sure we can AI this thing. Or an agent right now. I get approached by agents every day, like, Carrie, do you want to write a book? I'm like, what do I need you for? I can call a publisher myself. Like, now look, I'm Cara Swisher, so I can do that. But can't they make, there's a lot of roles like real estate agents, agents, things like that, that don't actually, you don't get an economic benefit.”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, here's two options. One is really around convenience, the other is around maximizing price if you want to list and see if you can get more that Open Doors will want to pay. And it does build trust with that specific agent walking into appointments saying, here are the options and kind of agnostic to what option you choose and what was best for you. And that's really the role of an agent to be your advisor.”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think agents are using us to help their clients. And so in cases where agents are able to walk into a listing appointment with a client saying,”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's been mixed. I think there's certain agents who really love the fact that we give their consumers choice. There's a lot of people in situations where they need open door, right? They need the certainty of execution. They really want the simplicity they're going through a move. They had just had a child. They just got married. And so there's either two dimensions that people love us for. One is obviously a massively simplified transaction. It's simple.”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so those two in tandem means that the market is still relatively healthy. But we continue to monitor those two metrics.”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, we're cautious. I think the two key metrics that we track are affordability, and that's been very high for the past five or six years. And so that makes us more cautious. And then there's months of supply. So we're still in a market where there's no supply, which causes the pricing to stay relatively high, even though they're not affordable.”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Especially in the market. Yeah, we monitor the data daily. Actually, the pricing models are built on that data and they get updated constantly. And so the first step is, okay, what's our perspective in terms of the demand side? And that's just an exercise in monitoring the data, seeing how fast homes are selling, what types of homes are in high demand, ensuring that we can price the homes effectively based on those signals. And the second is in making sure that we charge the right fees. And that's really think about it as like our buffer for risk. And so if we're seeing signal that homes are still in high demand, then the fees could be lower. If they're starting to slow, then the fees have to be higher.”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we can charge low fees. Right. So a recession, how would you be thinking about that now with all the different yield curves and everything else? And housing is always the first, especially in the market.”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just ensuring that we monitor the risk, right? So it's not holding the asset that is the thing that causes anxiety or fear. It's really monitoring the risk, are we charging the appropriate fees based on the volatility in the system? And then are we geographically diverse in terms of our portfolio? And so these things we spend a lot of time on, and we have obviously a very large pricing and risk team to focus on this. Okay, can we deliver”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, right. And then I think it's an important point, which is we have a rolling portfolio of real estate and we need to monitor the health of the economy. And obviously, specifically the health of the housing market. We're cautious.”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I guess it's going to be hated. So, yeah, the pain points across those three dimensions. Capital is not constrained today. Obviously, we're well capitalized.”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right, and what are your pain points right now? What are the issues? Capital, because you need to buy, well, your buying and selling house is constantly, correct? One would be the economy if we have a recession. What happens to your business? And third, the pushback from the industry itself, which must be, they hate you, I have to say.”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we've entered a variety of cities at this point. So Phoenix is one example of having housing stock that's more homogenous, more new. But we're also in Dallas. We're in Sacramento. We're in Los Angeles. And so some of these cities with older housing stock were also operating in.”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I were in 20 markets all over the country. And we've really just demonstrated that one, the business has scale. And two, there's demand for this product experience basically everywhere.”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That too, but we're also helping you buy homes and not owned by Open Door. And so we're able to give you kind of price intelligence plus the ability to pay cash, as well as full inspection, which we do very well, and then provide you this guarantee, which is a 90-day buyback guarantee.”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The net of it. And so, how do we provide a guarantee, help you with the inspection so that you have peace of mind when you buy that home? It's really important decision. It's the largest financial investment you're going to make. And so how do we make sure that you're not buying lemon? And so we help you with the pricing piece.”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Our homes are empty, but other hums.mls aren't empty. And so you can also schedule a visit with no realtor with our app. And then there's two really distinct pain points we want to solve for consumers who are buying a house So, one is really around price. There's a lot of uncertainty on what to pay, and it actually creates a lot of anxiety, which you don't want to overpay. And so we're offering the ability to pay cash so that you can have the ability to offer the seller a cash offer. So you're either more competitive or you can get a better deal. And then the second piece is really you have fears around condition. And so you don't want to buy a lemon is really the. Sure.”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think when you're shopping, obviously we solve the visit part, which is, again, we talked about how it was confusing to me that when you find a home online, you have to. Enter your information through lead form just to visit that house. And so we want to make it really seamless to visit the house. And so we build the hardware, speak to the smart lock. You walk up to homes and you click on lock and kind of you get this personal open house. We've also made that possible for every home in the market. So we built a system of task effectively”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Holding the funds and releasing the funds. And so, and that comes with a fee. And so our belief is that if we can leverage our technology backbone to automate more of the processes, then we can reduce the cost of the transaction.”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All the disclosures, and just ensuring that all the documentation for the mortgage is in place. Obviously, there's title insurance.”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, at a basic level, it's just coordinating the clothes. Right. So they're filing the basic paperwork. And there's a lot of paperwork in the transaction. So they're just ensuring that all of the documents are put in place. And they charge a fee for that”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and so we've been partners with a company called OS National for a couple of years and really. We've uncovered that, again, with coordination in various parties working on the transaction, it causes delays. And we want to make it defect free. And so in order to do that, again, like I mentioned, we want to vertically integrate. So we've acquired OS National, which is a 500-person title and escrow company based in Atlanta. And really with the intention to build technology to enable a more seamless close.”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it's a lot of hassle, and it creates anxiety for you as a consumer. So in order for us to say, okay, we're really going to try to deliver on a seamless move and a seamless close, we have to build all the components in-house.”
2019-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: OpenDoor CEO Eric Wu / Evite CEO Victor Cho · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT