Spencer Rascoff of Zillow
Spencer Rascoff of Zillow

It’s kind of like the first and second rules of Fight Club.

If you work at Zillow, you do not talk about Zillow’s stock price.

Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff discussed the informal ban on stock watching in a recent interview with The Motley Fool, noting that you can “tie yourself into a pretzel, overly focusing on the near-term.” The remarks echo what the tech exec has said in the past about the importance of building a company for the long-term.

“…We have a prohibition, internally, on employees checking the stock price. I know it happens, but it can’t happen in public. If I ever walk into a meeting and people are talking about, “What’s the stock doing today?” that’s verboten. I set that example, and everybody follows that because, culturally, it doesn’t matter. It really does not matter what the stock is at yesterday, today, the next day. What matters is where’s it going to be in three years? Where’s it going to be in 10 years? Where’s it going to be in 20 years?”

Well, for those Zillow staffers who’ve been missing out on the action of the company’s stock, here’s the low-down. The stock has been on an absolute rocket ride, soaring 167 percent this year. In the past month, the stock is up more than 30 percent, with a market value of $2.56 billion.

It is now trading at about $74 per share — more than triple the initial public offering price of $20 in July 2011. (Speaking of the IPO, Rascoff made some similar remarks about the long-term nature of the business immediately after the first-day pop of the IPO).

Here are Rascoff’s remarks about the ban on watching the stock. Zillow will release its next earnings report on August 6th.

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