Office Hours Podcast: How Outer Aims To Disrupt The Outdoor Furniture Industry

Spencer Rascoff

Spencer Rascoff serves as executive chairman of dot.LA. He is an entrepreneur and company leader who co-founded Zillow, Hotwire, dot.LA, Pacaso and Supernova, and who served as Zillow's CEO for a decade. During Spencer's time as CEO, Zillow won dozens of "best places to work" awards as it grew to over 4,500 employees, $3 billion in revenue, and $10 billion in market capitalization. Prior to Zillow, Spencer co-founded and was VP Corporate Development of Hotwire, which was sold to Expedia for $685 million in 2003. Through his startup studio and venture capital firm, 75 & Sunny, Spencer is an active angel investor in over 100 companies and is incubating several more.

Office Hours Podcast: How Outer Aims To Disrupt The Outdoor Furniture Industry
blog.liveouter.com

I don't quite remember why I passed on investing in Jiake Liu's company, Outer. But I do know why I had him on this week's episode of "Office Hours."


Liu has all sorts of qualities I admire in founders: He's dedicated, smart, experienced and he's had some high-quality "failure" that taught him big lessons about how to lead and run a business.

Running businesses was something Liu started doing as a teenager, largely by solving business problems for his family. That hands on experience gave him a fundamental understanding of how to run a successful enterprise. It also fed his entrepreneurial thirst and ultimately led to his cofounding and leading Outer, an outdoor furniture and lifestyle company.

Hear some hard-earned lessons from Liu about startups, his "Shark Tank" pitch day experience and how he maintains investor relationships even if they pass on investing — like with me.

Want more? Subscribe to Office Hours on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio or wherever you get your podcasts.


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Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.

LA Tech ‘Moves’: Mapp Gains New CPO and CTO, Prodoscore Taps Boeing Exec
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Raises
Image by Joshua Letona

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\u200bPhoto: Gitai

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