Debrief w/ Spencer Rascoff (Zillow Co-Founder) - Here's What He Said

Hey Squad!

As promised - I sat down with Spencer Rascoff (Zillow co-founder) on Friday. And I brought YOUR questions into the room.

Here's what came out of it:

@Naomi Entwistle

- You nailed it.

I asked Spencer about building community features into a real estate platform. His exact words: "I love it. That's exactly what I would do." He didn't mention if Zillow is considering this, but said this is exactly what we should focus on with strIQ.

He said the biggest moat isn't technology - it's community. He even connected me with two guys who've built massive real estate communities (one of them "did extremely well with only 4 employees" doing exactly this).

The Waze model we talked about? He's all in. Crowdsourced intelligence from investors helping investors. That's where strIQ is headed.

@Ben Temple

- On AI disrupting real estate:

His take: "You should think of AI as your co-founder."

Not as a tool. As a partner. He said founders can now "hack mentorship for free" by feeding AI their business model and getting strategic guidance that used to require expensive advisors. (Sound familiar? That's literally what we're building into strIQ 2.0 with AI-powered deal analysis.)

On strIQ's direction:

I shared the strIQ Score concept to help people make more "confident" decisions (our 0-10 property rating) with him. His response: "I love it. I think it's super smart."

He compared it to the Zestimate - make it provocative, make people debate it, and make it the thing everyone talks about.

In summary: the guy who built Zillow validated exactly what we're building together. Community-powered intelligence for STR investors.

You're not just members. You're the early believers building something with me.

More updates coming as we build toward strIQ 2.0.

-Matt

6 comments