It has been more than three years since Spencer Rascoff guided Zillow to an initial public offering.
But the CEO of the real estate behemoth obviously has some thoughts about the state of Internet IPOs, at least based on a 25-part “Twitterstorm” he unleashed today on Twitter.
It’s interesting to hear Rascoff’s analysis, who before joining the startup ranks spent some time on Wall Street as part of what he later disapprovingly dubbed a “mercenary culture.”
In today’s remarks, Rascoff says that there are usually just one or two questions that investors contemplate before considering a new technology stock. For Facebook, it was mobile monetization. For LinkedIn, it was whether the service could prove useful to non-job switchers. For game makers Zynga and King, it was whether they were too reliant on “hits” and therefore too risky, with Rascoff speculating that “early results not looking good” for either company.
At Seattle-based Zulily, where Rascoff sits on the board, he said it was about shipping times (something GeekWire dug into last month in this post by Tricia Duryee).
Interestingly, Rascoff did not offer any analysis on the big issue facing Zillow, but it would have seemed to have been about total market size and whether the company could successfully provide value to real estate agents, some of whom felt the company was out to eat their lunch.
There were plenty of doubters when Zillow went public, with many predicting that the stock would tank. I remember talking to one stock analyst who was convinced the stock was overvalued out of the gate, with a market value of $651 million on its second day of trading. Now, Zillow is trading at $130 per share and worth $5.5 billion.
Summing up his so-called “Twitterstorm,” Rascoff concludes that “#IPO investing is not for the meek.”
Rascoff is a mad man when it comes to Twitter use, talking about everything from camping trips with the family to Sunday Night Football. Interestingly, one of his Tweets today about a story in USA Today relating to Zillow’s proposed $3.5 billion buyout of Trulia was formally disclosed in a SEC filing under rule 425 related to communications related to business combinations. (Got to say, it was kind of funny seeing a Tweet appear in this manner).
CNBC picked up on the tirade, and posted this recap via Storify.
